Ben Abraham || AfterClimate

Dr. Ben Abraham is a researcher and consultant working to help the games industry become sustainable.

[Ben Abraham || AfterClimate @afterclimate]

Hey here’s my new(ish) job and a little of what I’ve been up to this year! Very excited to get to work on this. Full steam ahead to a sustainable games industry.

https://t.co/9eo0MXjcSJ

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Not sure the magnitude of this is fully understood: Israel has wiped out 2,700 families in Gaza, leaving 6,000+ people as the sole survivors of entire bloodlines. This is the result of deliberate policy, pursued with full knowledge of its effects. This is not war. It is genocide.

[Priyamvada Gopal © @PriyamvadaGopal]

A reminder that more substantial housing is sitting on trucks outside Gaza and not being allowed in by the Israelis.

[Adam Johnson @adamjohnsonCHI]

I know it doesn’t matter at this point but it’s important to make clear there is nothing illegal or “black market” about Venezuela shipping oil to Cuba. It is only illegal to one country on earth, the US, which cannot unilaterally determine what trade is and isn’t illegal.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

BREAKING: A new UN report finds that Israel’s assault on Gaza - with the destruction of health care, education, infrastructure, even the banking system - has erased 69 years of human development, marking the worst economic collapse ever recorded.
This is not war: it is genocide.

[James🔻 @GoodVibePolitik]

Starvation is the goal - this was always the plan.

[jeremy poxon @JeremyPoxon]

their target for a 26 week employment outcome for job seekers forced into this bullshit is so low (15%) and they can never, ever hit it. No matter how much they hit participants

[jeremy poxon @JeremyPoxon]

DEWR tabled their annual report yesterday: https://t.co/dtmU7b8bjS

Once again, Workforce Australia failed in it's basic performance measure to Get People Jobs.

Mutual Obligations is:
-wasting billions of dollars
-not getting people into work
-and punishing them unlawfully 👇

[Nathan Grayson @Vahn16]

spoke to @afterclimate about the sustainable games standard, a means of tracking emissions now publicly available for use by the entire games industry. a lot of thought went into this thing

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

nearly 30% of the population of Amsterdam, an estimated quarter of a million people, flood the streets of the city wearing red in solidarity with Palestine.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

An illegally abducted Jew is languishing in a desert prison. While only one of several abductees held illegally, this man is especially targeted by his captors for being a Jew. Though a US citizen, no US Senator, Congresswoman or man, has lifted their little finger, or even said a word, to secure his safe release.

His name is David Adler, a colleague, dear friend, a member of our extended family. The notorious prison he is languishing in is called Ketziot and is in the Negev desert. His captors are the state of Israel whose operatives abducted David in international waters, along with hundreds of others – an act of (legally indisputable) piracy against the crews of the Global Sumud Flotilla who had set course for a land – the so-called Gaza Strip – that the International Court of Justice, on 19thJune 2024, had declared an illegally occupied territory that Israel had to vacate forthwith. Instead, during the past year, Israel reinforced its siege of Gaza and continued its calculated genocide of its people.

Israeli propaganda (always an essential tool for those seeking to whitewash their war crimes) put forward three gigantic lies by which to justify its piracy on the high seas: First, that David Adler and his comrades were recklessly entering a war zone and violating a security zone. Second, that if they were truly interested in delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, they should have given it to Israel’s authorities who would then deliver it to the people of Gaza. Third, that the crews of the flotilla were funded and directed by Hamas.

That these are gigantic lies is ever so easy to demonstrate.

First, David Adler and his comrades were not entering a war zone but a genocide zone. It was Israel that violated international law by declaring a security zone around Gaza to safeguard their genocide inside Gaza, not the crews of the flotilla whose only weapons were baby formula and some grain.

Second, the people of Gaza are starving to death (when not being bombed to smithereens) because Israel, as several of its ministers have proclaimed, has meticulously connived to prevent food, water and medicine to enter Gaza. In this sense, the notion that the flotilla crews should have handed their aid over to Israel (to add to the existing huge stocks they are actively preventing from reaching Gaza) is laughable.

Third, calling David Adler and his colleagues Hamas-enablers or, even worse, instruments of Hamas smacks of the Israeli government’s desperation in seeking to plaster the Hamas logo on the forehead of anyone whom they want to kill, abduct or vilify.
You may ask: Why am I focusing on David Adler in this post? The reason becomes obvious in a post David uploaded before his much anticipated abduction:

“I almost never write ‘as a Jew’. I share the exhaustion of being forced to put Jewish feelings first… But today I felt compelled to write in that register — as one of the only Jews on this mission… If there’s any part of the Torah that I still remember, it is this obligation it bestows upon us: "Justice, justice you shall pursue."… How could we stand by while the State of Israel perverts this holy obligation, overseeing a holocaust of the Palestinian people? I joined this flotilla just like any other delegate — to defend humanity, before it is too late. But on Yom Kippur, I am reminded that I am also here because my Jewish heritage demands it.

As a mere adolescent, my grandfather Jacques Adler (pictured) joined the Parisian resistance against the Nazis, putting his life on the line to sabotage their operations even as his friends and family were sent to their deaths in concentration camps. That is the tradition to which I am called, and the definition of “justice” that feels true to my Jewish identity — as the same genocidal rage that targeted my ancestors is now taken up by its principal victims… If Israeli forces intercept us on Yom Kippur, then let them see what true atonement looks like. Not fasting in comfort while starving their neighbors. Not praying in safety while dropping bombs over their heads. Atonement means action. So as the sun sets tonight, and the fasting begins, I hope that fellow Jews will join me in redefining their approach to atonement — together with silent prayer, and toward courageous action to put an end to this horrific genocide. G'mar chatima tova.”

So, THIS is why I am focusing my post on my friend David Adler, without of course neglecting or discounting the sacrifices of our other comrades in Israeli captivity: Because David is the only Jew in the clasps of Israeli war criminals who believe they are perpetrating a genocide on behalf of the Jewish people.

Genocidal maniacs, like Israeli Security Minister Itavar Ben-Gvir, hate an upstanding Jewish man like David Adler more than they hate even Hamas. For it is David Adler’s brave stance that exposes the lie that the Global Sumud Flotilla was an antisemitic fleet of deluded Westerners. For he is a living, breathing reminder (just as his Nazi-resisting grandfather was decades ago) of the error, the criminality, of the ways of those who place a whole people on death row – a splendid example of the Jewish people’s longstanding opposition to orchestrated misanthropy, to pogroms, to genocide.

And this is my reason for fearing for David Adler’s life and limb more than for any of his abducted comrades: because his genocidal abductors feel ever so tiny, ever so small, in the presence of this Jewish man.

[Tom Studans @maximumwelfare]

I propose an independent governing authority to establish schooling programs in the US with the aim of deradicalizing the NYT editorial board

[John Frankensteiner @JFrankensteiner]

I post it every year, Hunter S. Thompson using an ESPN column to write this one week after 9/11

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Unbelievable. The Holocaust museum LA *apologized* for sharing a general anti-genocide post, because it might be “misinterpreted” to include Palestinians.

Palestinians are so dehumanized that they’re excluded from “never again,” apparently their genocide is the exception.

[David Pocock @DavidPocock]

The first term of the Albanese Government was the second most secretive in the last 30 years - more secretive than the Morrison Government.

This has to change in their second term - we need more transparency and respect for the Australian people.
https://t.co/wG1F4NDdPQ

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

If Europeans were paying attention (or being told the truth), they should be beyond appalled by this "deal": https://t.co/ighKahMnIJ

It's nothing more than one of the most expensive imperial tributes in history. Just a massive one-way transfer of wealth with no reciprocal benefits

The "deal" is:
- The EU now gets charged 15% tariffs on its exports to the US when they commit to charging zero tariffs on US imports in the EU
- The EU agrees to invest $600 billion in the US, for no other obvious reason than pleasing "daddy"
- The EU will "purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of American military equipment"
- The EU commits to buying 750 billion dollars worth of very expensive US LNG, specifically $250 billion for each of the next 3 years

In exchange for all these concessions and extraction of their wealth they get... nothing. I'm not even exaggerating, that IS the deal: the EU gets nothing.

This does not even remotely ressemble the type of agreements made by two equal sovereign powers. It rather looks like the type of unequal treaties that colonial powers used to impose in the 19th century - except this time, Europe is on the receiving end.

More worryingly, this sets a dynamic and a precedent: what do you think happens next from here? In the 19th century, were colonial powers content with their first unequal treaty? Of course not - one of the key rules of geopolitics is that weakness only encourages further exploitation.

Again, this is Europe's century of humiliation.

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

More than 20 countries are holding an "emergency summit" in Colombia to declare “concrete measures against Israel’s violations of international law”.

"The Palestinian genocide threatens our entire multilateral system", warned the Colombian government.

The participating countries are: Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Portugal, Spain, Qatar, Turkey, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Palestine.

https://t.co/jKi85RJ4fB

[Sarah Taber @SarahTaber_bww]

Ex-farm worker here.

This whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing?

Not true AT ALL.

Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are.

The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour.

At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.

[Nora Barrows-Friedman @norabf]

This is happening to a pediatrician, a hospital director, for the crime of caring for his patients during a genocide. And the world powers shrug.

[Hon. PolProf of Agile Ceremonies @CeilNoyle]

“I felt unsafe at Glastonbury😔”