Peter Donaldson

Freelance aerospace, defence and tech writer, sceptical observer of economics. #MMT, #JobGuarantee, #ModernJubilee, #JC4PM2019, #BlackLivesMatter, he/him

[Richard Murphy @RichardJMurphy]

Is this the beginning of the end for neoliberalism? It's not just what is happening in France that makes me think so. Everywhere, there are signs that neoliberalism is out of road, and a replacement is needed. Thankfully, there is one. https://t.co/9nH7WWRFfZ

[Dirk Ehnts @DEhnts]

"Suppose investors demand a higher yield from France because the country continues to run large deficits, debt is approaching 120 percent of GDP and still rising, trend growth is weak and parliament is unwilling to agree a credible adjustment."

The Eurozone cannot work if there is a risk of default. If the ECB does not promise to backstop government bonds from a member of EMU, the optimal ratio of public debt to GDP is zero. This nonsensical result could only be reached by default or imposing draconic cuts in government spending, including the dismantling of the welfare state. Other EMU members would experience negative demand shocks through the export channel. The lesson from the Eurocrisis is that the ECB has to be the dealer of last resort for EMU government bonds. The alternative is political chaos und poverty.
https://t.co/hk5e30dJee

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

Complete and utter rubbish, like the 70,000 machine gunned Iranian protestors.
Russia asked Zelensky for the names and details of these "tens of thousands" of children. They got 453 names.
Just under 200 of those were located in Ukraine. Russia is investigating the remaining 250.
Some of these were found unaccompanied in active war zones and removed for safety, and will be returned.

[DrMichelleKalehzan @Vossvik7]

A message I received from Gaza today, written by a starving teenager. Knowing what they are living through these words should cut through each one of us who has witnessed for over three years this genocide. Food is so scarce and medicine is even more scarce. Please read these words and consider what their family and countless other families have been living with for 3+ years. It is truly devastating:

“Israel has allowed goods to enter Gaza, but continues to prevent the entry of vegetables, fruits, and anything related to food aid.

What Israel is doing is nothing but deliberate deception of the world, and an attempt to cover up the crime of genocide and the systematic starvation policy it continues to inflict on families in Gaza through different methods and means.

Israel allows goods that families do not need to enter, while preventing them from accessing everything they need to stay alive: food, water, and medicine.

It is not opening Gaza’s doors to life; instead, it continues to strangle it through starvation and deprivation, deceiving the world with false appearances, while families are left to face hunger, disease, and death.”

******
Please stand up for these innocent children and stop imposing a famine on them. There are children, losing teeth from malnutrition, and there are few dentists to help them. We American citizens have to say no - we have to say no more financing the Zionist state, no more financing genocide, no more financing child murder, no more financing a famine that is being imposed on starving traumatized innocent people.

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

A French journalist. This is what 50 years of propaganda have done. Unless he's just a jobsworth. Either way, the morons will lead us over the edge of a very high cliff.
"What is destroying our public services is that we no longer have the means to fund them to the level of our expectations. We will have to make choices, but that has nothing to do with neoliberalism, which has its flaws but which we can no longer do without."

[Dr. Yousef 🇵🇸 @yousef_ki1]

This link is to help my family overcome incredibly difficult circumstances! Please give this post a push!

[Red 'til I'm Dead @suziegeewizz]

You can keep trying to bully us into silence but it doesn't matter how many times you screech anti Zionism is antisemitism it doesn't make it true. Israel is built on and maintained by genocide and land theft. Zionism *is* anti Palestinian racism and you can kiss my arse.

[Nermeen from Gaza 𓂆🇵🇸🍉 @Nermeenalswaisi]

Mentally, Physically, Emotionally .. Tired

Your comment isn’t just support — it’s the reason this post gets seen, to reach someone who can help/support my family in these harsh circumstances!

If you’re scrolling, PLEASE leave a dot . it's just a dot 🍉

https://t.co/vTilY1IgTj

[FuzzFoster💙 @fuzzfoster]

@ProfSteveKeen Wasn’t Piketty a French economist who warned of political turmoil, if wealth inequality wasn’t addressed?

[Prof. Steve Keen @ProfSteveKeen]

French Authorities Insist It’s Not a Riot. “It Can Only Be Called a Riot if It’s From France’s Riôt Region, Otherwise It’s Sparkling Social Discontent” https://t.co/9WuEefK7E3

[David McNab @[email protected] @DavidMcNab17]

That’s funny. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[Prof. Steve Keen @ProfSteveKeen]

Such a sad milestone, but you have handled yourself brilliantly since that tragedy, and you deserve happiness now. I am so glad you are getting it--even if we'll never live forever.

With David @davidgraeber, one of the truly good did die young

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

The crime scene in the Congo.

The crime scene in the Niger Delta.

The crime scene in the Sahel.

The crime scene in Sudan.

They are not separate crimes.

They are the same crime in different phases.

The phase where the extraction was called colonialism.

The phase where the extraction was called "development."

The phase where the extraction is called "investment."

The phase where the extraction is called the "green transition."

The product changes. The phone. The car. The battery. The solar panel.

The child in the mine does not change.

The armed group protecting the access route does not change.

The government that will be destabilized if it demands a fair price does not change.

The international institution that will cut off funding if the terms are renegotiated does not change.

The academic who measures the output of the system and attributes it to the biology of the people inside it does not change.

[CrémantCommunarde #GreenTransitionNow 💚 @0Calamity]

Listening to the @SkyNews paper review as they talk about finding "a balance between the climate and the economy".
That's ok. As long as the economy is doing well, it won't matter if people can't breathe clean air or drink clean water. Those who have enough money will be able to buy their own air and water.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Activist: "You've all got your loophole anyway. Give the farm to the kids before you die and there's no tax."

Farmer: "I did. In May. Want to hear the rules?"

Activist: "Go on."

Farmer: "I have to live seven years. If I go in year three it's as if I never gave it. So the plan is that I die on time."

Activist: "That's the same rule for everyone."

Farmer: "It is. Next one. I can't keep living in the farmhouse. If I sleep in the bed I was born in without paying my daughter rent, the taxman says I never gave it away."

Activist: "So pay her rent."

Farmer: "I do. Out of a state pension, to my own child, for my own bedroom. She declares it. She pays tax on it."

Activist: "At least the farm's safe."

Farmer: "If she doesn't divorce. Her husband gets half a farm he's never calved on and the lawyers get the Land Rover. And if she doesn't go bust in a bad lambing, because it's hers now and so is the overdraft."

Activist: "You're inventing problems."

Farmer: "I'm reading my solicitor's letter. There's one more line. If I need a care home in year five, the council can say I gave the farm away to dodge the fees and come for it anyway."

Activist: "So what's the plan?"

Farmer: "Die at 76, healthy, in somebody else's house, having paid rent on my own bed, with my daughter still married. That's the loophole. Businesses in London plan for growth. I plan for a tidy death."

[Tom London @TomLondon6]

May your family Rest in Peace

May the guilty who murdered them - and those who provided the weapons - face justice

May the comfortable British “liberal-types” who have spent 3 years ignoring or obfuscating or justifying or denying the Gaza GENOCIDE face their own justice

All solidarity @AlnaouqA

[Palestine Daily News✌️🇵🇸✌️ @Palestinedaily1]

Famine strikes northern Gaza again, but this time without any trending topics or media attention!
For those concerned... A third wave of famine threatens the Gaza Strip!
Talk about hunger...
Before all the people of Gaza die of starvation...
Don't stop talking!

[Red 'til I'm Dead @suziegeewizz]

Been teaching for 18 years. I have seen, heard, & heard of, instances of sexism, homophobia, & racism against PoC at work. But I have never seen, heard, or even heard about a single instance of antisemitism. In 18 years. This is now industrial strength gas lighting. Madness.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The more children Israel kills, the more unpopular it becomes. The more unpopular Israel becomes, the more violently we are throat-fucked with the narrative that "antisemitism" is a major problem in our society.

The UK's Department for Education has released a 107-page review which asserts that much more needs to be done to protect Jewish students in England from discrimination. Which in and of itself sounds reasonable, until you look at the actual document.

The review, led by Sir David Bell, mentions the word "political" or "geopolitical" no fewer than 125 times. It mentions the word "Israel" or "Israeli" 60 times and the word "Palestine" or "Palestinian" 35 times.

So, as always, it is clear that this isn't actually about protecting a religious minority from persecution.

The Bell review lists 27 recommendations for dealing with "antisemitism" in English schools, which the government has reportedly accepted in their entirety. The first recommendation is adopting the hotly disputed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism which lists common criticisms of the state of Israel as hateful toward Jews.

Under the IHRA definition, you are guilty of antisemitism if you compare the modern state of Israel to Nazi Germany, or if you say that Israel exists as a racist endeavor. This framing effectively brands anyone a hateful bigot who agrees with the unanimous consensus of international human rights groups that Israel is a genocidal apartheid state.

"Anti-Israel attitudes have distinctly increased over time," the review says. "In 2020, 23% agreed with the statement 'Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews', which increased to 45% in 2025. The prevalence of beliefs such as these, which could be regarded as antisemitic according to the IHRA definition, demonstrate the difficulty faced by schools and colleges in tackling antisemitism."

Under the section titled "Political expression and pupil wellbeing in schools," the review scorned the use of "political identifiers" in schools such as "badges, flags, or other political symbols and slogans such as ‘Free Palestine’, including staff displaying Palestinian flags in their classrooms without relevance to the lesson."

"It is the view of this review that political identifiers do not have a place in our schools," the report reads, while stopping short of saying such expression should be banned in all instances.

"Political expression by staff can create a learning environment in which some learners feel distressed, excluded, or unable to engage fully with their education," the review asserts. "In such circumstances, colleges may be justified in placing proportionate restrictions on lawful political expression where this is necessary to ensure learners' education and fulfil the college’s wider duties."

"In practice, antisemitism is frequently intertwined with political views about a nation state or political ideology. This means that challenging antisemitism often requires teachers to address or correct political claims or misinformation, which can appear to conflict with impartiality duties," the review says.

This uncritical assertion that "antisemitism is frequently intertwined with political views about a nation state or political ideology" tells you everything you need to know about what this review is really designed to accomplish. This is about stomping out political speech that is critical of Israel, and nothing else.

The review of course also attempts to conflate antizionism with antisemitism, saying, "Antizionists can express views that include a deep hatred for the existence of Israel and of those who believe in its right to exist as a Jewish homeland. Such views may be antisemitic, in certain contexts. There are also examples where Zionism is used as a synonym for ‘Jewish’ to hide antiJewish hatred within lawful political expression."

I am so fucking sick of this shit. People who live in Israel's western allied states are getting bludgeoned and bludgeoned and bludgeoned by these ham-fisted psychological operations by state and non-state actors with more and more aggression the more Israel's popularity rating goes down the tubes, and it's not even working. The way these freaks keep trying to stick their rapey fingers into our minds and manipulate the thoughts we think about a genocidal apartheid state is fucking disgusting. It's only making everyone hate Israel more.

[Matthew Payne @Matthew82069336]

Andy Burnham saying the £108 standing charge on gas bills could be removed. If we can afford 3 billion quid for Ukrainian coke head Zelensky there shouldn't be any could about it.