Seka

Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings..

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

Last week we found that key claims Jason Arday made, which became central to media attacks on him, appeared to be true.

Now we show how the characterisation of Arday as a serial and unrepentant plagiarist simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Full piece below:

[Peter Jukes @peterjukes]

Who would have thought a motley array of phone hackers, Cambridge Analytica defenders, Russian apologists and Brexit maniacs would come out to defend the British media’s unprecedented and deadly attack on a rare black Cambridge academic. But then again, that’s the British media

[Lowkey @Lowkey0nline]

“How dangerous is Iran?”

Sacha Baron Cohen, who lobbied TikTok for Israel during the Gaza genocide, uses his Ali G film to perpetuate the idea that the only effective state actor facing Israel is “dangerous.”

[Twunk in Training 🇵🇸 @AceHainley]

keep her name out of your mouth

[Mukhtar @I_amMukhtar]

Tommy Robinson hasn't tweeted about his mate James English, who has been found guilty of domestic abuse, nor have the other far-right figures who pretend to care about protecting women and girls.

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

This image of a football match in Gaza was removed from a sports photography festival in France, following Israeli pressure.

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

Dolly Parton didn’t spend her dollars on space travel or a trip to the titanic because she was writing checks to put 150 million books in the hands of children.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Gordon Brown's call for "like-minded countries [to] stand together" in support of international law and human rights captures the myopia of his generation of centre left leaders.

Gaza has destroyed forever this moral conceit. They just don't see it.
https://t.co/V3reZW0nnc

[Gillian Mathys @MathysGill18843]

We have written a statement in support of Ghent Uni's decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. We resist attempts to frame this as a punishment for "whistleblowing" or censorship of "controversial research". Please sign if you support our message.

https://t.co/oPj5FAm57I

[Nels Abbey @nelsabbey]

"I, of course, stand for academic freedom. But - be under no illusion - I do not stand for nor with the ardent white supremacist and eugenicist, Nathan Cofnas" was also an option. Yet, so many academics - most British - chose to support Cofnas- in the immediate aftermath of the hounding to death of Prof Arday nonetheless.

The media that went mad claiming Professor Arday said something about white privilege to one allegedly aggrieved student (which I don't believe BTW), are silent on hundreds of academics outing themselves as racists or, at least, proud apologists for a white supremacist eugenicist.

Where is the concern for Black and Brown students studying at these institutions?

[☀️👀 @zei_squirrel]

reporter to Malcolm X: "Do you feel however that we're making progress in this country and worldwide?"

[𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓻𝓵𝓸𝓽𝓽𝓮 @charlotteukcity]

This made me cry. Sudan is one of the world’s most afflicted countries. Nasser Hamid fled & found safety in the UK. Arriving with no English, he’s now passed GCSE English & Grade 4 Maths. We shouldn’t demonise refugees - we should celebrate them finding peace & hope ❤️

[BlackhandMedia Mk II @Hanley40]

Imagine calling someone a grifter then after they die you find out they were innocent of the allegations. Not only that but one of the far right organizations who hounded him to his death(The Free Speech Union) was one you personally endorsed adding your race for authenticity I would not want to be @TrevorPTweets Right now...

[Alonso Gurmendi @Alonso_GD]

My problem with the letter is the way I see it the one who launched an attack on academic freedom in the first place was Cofnas. He launched it through Arday, who was a "useful" target, but the objective was to get Black people off academia and "DEI"-related topics shut down

[Bad Writing Takes 🖊️🏳️‍🌈 @BadWritingTakes]

I think we really need to reckon with the fact that evil does exist and that if we don't create a society where people like this are not able to hold power they will destroy everything left that's decent about this world.

[Richard Sudan @richardsudan]

Jason Arday was telling the truth.

The media lied.

There was never a ‘public interest story’.

Only a network of eugenicists using DEI as a Trojan horse to attack Black people.

That should be the story.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

It’s crazy this even needs to be said, but if you are a westerner your ONLY job is to oppose the abuses of the western empire. Not Iran. Not China. Not Russia, Cuba or North Korea.

If you live in the US or one of its allied nations, then you live under the single most tyrannical and murderous power structure on earth, and that’s where your focus belongs. You do not have any legitimacy in squandering any of your energy and attention criticizing human rights abuses in empire-targeted nations while living under a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by a nonstop river of human blood. It is not okay for you to use your western privilege to attack the nations your own government is working to help absorb into the power structure you live under.

Whenever I say this online I’ll get some Trotskyist or anarchist babbling about the need to express “solidarity” with Iranian political prisoners or whatever, but whenever I press them on what actual, material benefit those expressions of “solidarity” bring to the people they’re meant to help, they can’t point to anything solid. Whereas I can point to some very obvious ways in which contributing to an imperial war propaganda campaign can help grease the wheels for real material actions which hurt actual Iranians.

If you’re a westerner, you have an obligation to use your voice responsibly. If you are feeding into the latest “the people in the empire-targeted nation need liberation from their evil tyrannical government” war propaganda narrative with your expressions of “solidarity” and your blind insistence on treating all bad things as equally bad, then you are using your western voice irresponsibly, and you are morally culpable for the mass slaughter you help facilitate with your recklessness.

It’s not okay to be a citizen of the western empire and act like human rights abuses in an empire-targeted nation are of equal or comparable concern to the far more egregious abuses of your own leaders and their allies. It’s also not okay to be a fully grown adult and believe the use of force in empire-targeted governments is happening separately from their targeting by the empire, as though Iran would look the way it looks today if the US and Israel had not been working to collapse and control it for generations.

Iran has only survived the latest imperial onslaught because Tehran tightly controls what happens in that country. The only reason we didn’t see Xinjiang absorbed into the western power umbrella with the help of CIA-backed separatists is because Beijing waged a sweeping crackdown on the extremist factions who’d been launching attacks in the province. The only reason North Korea has gone relatively unmolested by the western empire in recent years is because its government obtained nuclear weapons. It’s baby-brained analysis to pretend such things happen independently of the US and its allies working to take control of unabsorbed nations and force them into compliance with Washington’s capitalist world order.

The western empire therefore makes the world a crueler and more abusive place not only by its direct acts of cruelty and abuse, but by the way it forces its targets to choose between (A) annihilation and (B) using extreme amounts of force to retain their sovereignty. The empire we live under is responsible for the vast majority of the dysfunction and misery in our world, and yet you as a westerner want to spend your time yelling at Iran? Fuck off, man.

[Richard Sudan @richardsudan]

The accusations aimed at Jason Arday were lies.

The media outlets who repeated them could have established this. They didn’t bother.

Now they continue to recycle them. With barely a critical word on Cofnas. I wonder why.

[Martha Lincoln @heavyredaction]

Many who were decrying Arday’s scholarship two weeks ago in the name of “academic standards” are apparently actually in favor of a form of diversity and inclusion that *sacrifices* academic standards in order to make room for the crudest scientific racism

[JewishVoiceForLiberation @JVoiceLiberatio]

Appointments to Professor at Cambridge and every university are made not on a PhD or a record of community engagement but on a body of published research

If any of those who hounded #JasonArday had bothered to look they would have found an impressive publication record of widely cited work in leading ruthlessly reviewed journals and books

https://t.co/pYdHg4qDNK