Victoria Frausin

Artist, Scholar and Activist. Passionate about waste. Instigator of Sew&Sow Libraries, Textile Dynamics Lab and Part of Sewing Café Lancaster.

[Victoria Frausin @VictoriaFrausin]

My favorite graph of the waste hierarchy. I have added the notes on the right.
Reproduction of Information in the Waste Recovery Park in Farington. (2023). We all have a role to play [Plaque mounted on the wall inside the park]. Waste Recovery Park, Farington, Lancashire.)

[Victoria Frausin @VictoriaFrausin]

RT @yanisvaroufakis: Good News: The neocons, forever-warriors & genocide-enablers running the Biden-Harris gvt were defeated
Terrible News:…

[Mouin Rabbani @MouinRabbani]

For the first time in modern American history contempt and disdain for Arabs, and demonization of Palestinians, has proven to be a losing rather than winning electoral strategy.

[Naomi Klein @NaomiAKlein]

Confused about the endless ceasefire negotiations that never seem to go anywhere?

That's by design: The endless talk is the smokescreen that covers the the land grabs. The ethnic cleaning. The genocide.

With @mehdirhasan, we get Unshocked about Israel and Washington's "talk and bomb" strategy.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

Why does the Biden administration support the Israeli genocide and war crimes even in the face of virtually universal condemnation, at massive expense, and to the point of totally debasing the rules-based international order? Why do it?

People fall back on narratives about the power of AIPAC in US elections etc, which is real but also doesn't capture the whole story. The truth is that US capitalism depends on it, and the US ruling class broadly understands this fact.

The key thing to understand is that capitalist growth and accumulation in the imperial core (the US, Britain, Germany etc) relies heavily on the appropriation of cheap inputs and resources from the periphery and semi-periphery of the world economy (broadly, the global South). They need the South remain a subordinated supplier within global commodity chains.

In order to maintain this arrangement, it is imperative for them to suppress sovereign economic development in the South. Because the "problem" with development is it means Southerners begin to produce for themselves and consume their own resources. This makes resources and inputs more expensive for the core, which constrains consumption and profits.

Economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core. To avoid this, the core states constantly intervene to prevent or crush any movement or government in the periphery that seeks national liberation and economic sovereignty.

The US started to support the Zionist project in the 1960s, and invested heavily in the Israeli arms industry, with the explicit intention of using Israel as a staging ground—a massive military base—for counter-revolutionary interventions against rising Arab socialist and national liberation struggles in North Africa and the Middle East. The US could not accept the prospect of sovereign development in that region: liberation movements had to be crushed or destabilized and they used Israel to help them do it. Israel is not an "ally" in the conventional sense. It is a proxy.

They support Israel for the exact same reasons that they have backed assassinations or coups against liberation leaders across the global South: Mosaddegh, Lumumba, Nkrumah, Allende, Arbenz, Sukarno, Sankara...

Israel assassinates movement leaders in the Middle East and interferes in regional political processes, all in concert with the US, but it also constantly bombs the frontline states, destabilizing their societies and economies and forcing them to divert resources toward defensive spending rather than industrial development. The Zionist project is intolerable not only because it is murderously hell-bent on ethnically cleansing Palestine, but because it creates chaos and instability across the whole region.

The core states used South Africa in the very same way. The key reason that Western powers supported the apartheid regime in South Africa – against overwhelming international condemnation – was because it served as a highly militarized Western colonial outpost that was geared up to run counter-insurgency operations not only within South Africa, but also in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, the DRC, etc., leaving immense violence and chaos in its wake.

The vast majority of the world—and international law itself—supports Palestinian liberation, but Palestinian liberation would constrain Israeli power and open the way to regional liberation movements, and this is strongly antithetical to the interests of Western capital. So this is the situation we are in. The Western ruling classes are willing to back obscene violence in Gaza, and shred the liberal values they claim to believe in, because they want to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation and geopolitical hegemony.

You cannot appeal to imperial power in moral terms. The only way the US will stop propping up the Zionist regime is when it becomes too costly for them to do so. This will come down to the strength of the resistance and regional political and military opposition, but also the extent to which people can coordinate boycotts, divestment and sanctions, and punitive measures under international law.

[AMBULANTE @Ambulante]

✊🏾5 documentales que exploran diversas formas de resistir el avance de los megaproyectos, desde la lucha de las comunidades hasta nuevas perspectivas sobre nuestro entorno.

🧵🧵🧵

[Gustavo Petro @petrogustavo]

Con el carbón colombiano hacen bombas para matar los niños de Palestina

[Hind Hassan @HindHassanNews]

BBC News has now confirmed the resignation of British diplomat Mark Smith over Gaza, they too have now seen the email. Hopefully this is sufficient confirmation for those who cast doubt on the legitimacy of the letter & wanted the story verified by non-Arab journos & news orgs.

[Hind Hassan @HindHassanNews]

Well done @daniaakkad & @MiddleEastEye for chasing this story up & independently finding your own sources to corroborate my reporting that a FCDO diplomat resigned over concerns over UK "complicity in War Crimes". It is the first UK resignation we know of. https://t.co/xWP8FyZ0ve

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

I hope that more diplomats will follow the brave lead of Mark Smith and speak up against the enablers of Israel's atrocities.
#DiplomatsAgainstGenocide

[Karim @Idlibie]

Israel murdered a mother and her newborn twins at home in Gaza whilst the father was going to the registration office to get their birth certificates.

But this ultra-processed garbage is breaking news.

[Nigel Clark @InhumanNigel]

‘What blood runs in your veins? From what clay are you made?'

Too eloquent. No child should ever have to invent a new language or grammar to convey the depths of their suffering. A poetics of unchilding.

[Stand Up To Racism @AntiRacismDay]

UNITY STATEMENT: we’re uniting and mobilising to launch a campaign against the far right. New statement in @DailyMirror by Stand Up to Racism signed by @Palomafaith, @HackneyAbbott, @biminibabes, @jeremycorbyn, @katenash plus over 100 other politicians, music artists, campaigners, trade unionists and anti-racists.

Sign the statement: https://t.co/knmgXUZKi7

Read it in @DailyMirror: https://t.co/KdSgQluAMV

#StandUptoRacism

(1/4)

[Nigel Clark @InhumanNigel]

The cyber kill chain stops here

The North West Cyber Corridor starts at BAE Systems in Barrow, runs through Lancaster Uni, & ends up in the National Cyber Force-BAE Systems compound in Samlesbury

And you stuck a f****** beautiful encampment right smack in the middle of it! 🇵🇸

[Sewing Cafe Lancaster @sewingclancs]

Clothing waste hasn't always been a problem, and it doesn't always have to be!
Join us at SHARING YARNS:
An interactive craft workshop and discussion with @VictoriaFrausin and Shakthi Nataraj

Delicious Arabic food by Misso Lounge.
Free, booking required.

https://t.co/WpOh7tE3Ti

[Sewing Cafe Lancaster @sewingclancs]

Less than a week to go!
Join us for a workshop about cool ways to reduce textile waste with @VictoriaFrausin
Free event, lunch included, booking required.
Book, Share,Join!
https://t.co/hJ7ZKC7Z3b

[Sewing Cafe Lancaster @sewingclancs]

"Camp Crier Roll" made by Sewing Café Lancaster's Watermelon Brigade and students at the encampment.
Designed and coordinated by @VictoriaFrausin

[Sewing Cafe Lancaster @sewingclancs]

Our wonderful banner saw the light.
Beautiful and emotional demo today, and every Saturday at 1pm, market square with @psclancaster
Some bullies threw water bombs at us, that's what Zionism does to people, but love is stronger.

[Nigel Clark @InhumanNigel]

It's a responsibility of universities to help us navigate crisis & uncertainty

Instead universities like mine cower behind security. And leave it up to students -the least empowered & most vulnerable- to take the risks, to improvise, to invent, to put their bodies on the line...

[Victoria Frausin @VictoriaFrausin]

No yoga, singing or a good diet would be enough to make us healthy in a rotten world.
In a world that looks away to the brutal slaughter of entire populations, including children.
Let's stand for a collective wellbeing.
#StopKillingPeopleYouTockingFwats