🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭

Scottish libcom Wobbly. Fan of railways and revolutions, two articles in @standrewsfish, he/him

[Clare Hinchcliffe @Subversivite]

Zoe is acquitted of all charges, but there is no joy in this home tonight.

My thoughts on the outcome of the Filton retrial as Zoe's mum... 🧵
1/

[Charlotte England @CharlottEngland]

UPDATE: Israel's Ashkelon magistrates court just extended Thiago Avila and Saif Abukeshek's detention by SIX more days.

That means the eight-hour interrogations, beatings, solitary confinement and death threats - torture, essentially - will continue until Sunday.

No formal charges have been filed against either activist, and lawyers have not been allowed to see the 'secret evidence' against them that Israel claims to hold.

[Caio Almendra @CaioAlmendra]

Israel sent Thiago Ávila photos of his family's locations to threaten him. His family includes his wife, a toddler, and a tetraplegic mother with a severe degenerative disease.

He has been held in a windowless, lightless room for days, while asking about the flotila.

Torture.

[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)

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

@BrendanMorgan10 @jrschlosberg Not necessarily. There's maybe places where that is the case, but it could be people becoming unsure/won't, away from Lab, and Reform picking up Tories and non-voters. Same happened in 2017. UKIP vote dropped as Labour rose, but Corbyn brought in non-voters, not so much UKIP ones

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

@flightlesshorse @catholicguilter He was in a similar film called The Rewrite that basically did this premise with Marisa Tomei. Not a fantastic film by any means, but not awful. Heard from a few people that it's quite... realistic... shall we say

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

What if Hind Rajab had been a 6-year-old Israeli girl, killed - along with her family, along with her rescuers - by Hamas militants.

The airwaves would be filled with condemnations of the evil barbarism of Hamas.

But they were Palestinians, killed by the IDF.

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Just imagine we had the recording of a 6 year old Israeli girl, desperately ringing the emergency services after Hamas militants slaughtered her relatives in a car, including 3 other kids.

Imagine we also had a prior recording of her 15 year old cousin, desperately pleading for help, before you hear her being violently murdered by Hamas gunfire.

Imagine then an Israeli ambulance sent to rescue this little girl was then blown up by Hamas militants, killing both paramedics.

What would be the response?

You know what the response would be.

It would be offered up as evidence of the supreme evil and barbarism of Hamas.

We would be told it showed they’re worse than the Nazis.

It would also be offered up as justification for the need to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.

Every politician in the West would issue statements dripping with grief and righteous fury.

None of that has happened here.

Instead, the West continue to arm and back Israel’s mass slaughter, with occasional handwringing which its politicians know has zero impact on the behaviour of Israel.

Even as Israel commits some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century - live streamed for the world to see - these Western powers refuse to describe a single act of Israel as a war crime.

Two things.

Firstly, none of this is to downgrade the value of Israeli civilian life. The value attacked to Israel innocent civilians’ lives is correct.

It is just transparently not applied to Palestinian life.

Indeed, secondly, it is nauseating that I even have to indulge in these
“imagine if!” scenarios.

It becomes necessary because Palestinian life has been stripped of nearly all value.

In South Africa’s submission to the ICJ, this horror was described as the world’s first live streamed genocide.

I think even more than that, it’s the live streaming of the suicide of the West.

Much of the world already regarded the West’s claims of moral superiority with contempt.

Well, contempt doesn’t even begin to describe those sentiments now.

I don’t think it’s remotely appreciated how much fury at Western power - which has shrunk with every major conflict involving Muslim nations in the 21st century - is being whipped up.

Finally, this nauseating episode has answered a question I’ve always been haunted by when studying the atrocities of the past.

How did so many people who regarded themselves as humane, moderate, “normal” become so willingly complicit in self evident evil, either by not speaking out or actively cheering it on?

Well, think of the badly decomposing remains of Hind and her family, and the incinerated remains of the paramedics sent to save her, and there’s your answer.

There’s your answer!

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

@JPattPattycake @MikeWasThere @VK_HM It does make it genre defining for me, but in the weirder category of pre-apocalypse societal decline films with the likes of Children of Men and Surf Nazis Must Die

[MSF International @MSF]

🔴BREAKING:

Israel has given Al Awda Hospital just two hours to evacuate. Our staff are still treating patients.

We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza.

We are trying to protect our staff and patients.

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

It's true that it's always been useless. But it seems especially pathetic now. At least in the 90s they'd make gestures by sending in the peacekeepers. But now they can't even do that after their own offices are attacked

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

@Gargano1982 @DuncanHotchkiss There was another getting shared around a few months back too, maybe at an Old Firm Derby, where possibly the same group had the totenkampf and a Mussolini quote

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

I thought the Ed Sheeran suits and the backlash to the Dark Horse and Levitating cases might finally have put an end to these spurious accusations but apparently not

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

Welcome to all 2000s pop-punk, and all the Disney Channel "edgy" tracks that copied their style, and now all the songs nostalgic for that sound. It's a limited genre, and even in it these don't sound anything alike really. A vaguely similar chord progression on one line...

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

This evil prick deserves fuck all. I've read the court documents. Frankly the fact it wasn't taken to a criminal trial is a miscarriage of justice

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

Just like me for real

[The Hard Times @REALpunknews]

Liberal Boomer Constantly Checking to Make Sure John Fogerty Not Suddenly Right Wing https://t.co/UQh2hNwHsx

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

Finally reading The Jakarta Method. Genuinely brilliant stuff. A well told history through multiple perspectives that genuinely just made me almost boke

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

Lot of people rightfully criticising the death ofvforums and highlighting how Reddit was part of that. But that now means getting lost in that sea of slop before finding the niche forums that hold the answers. And from experience most are far less intuitive to the AVG user

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

The takeover of searches by disguised ads, content farms and SEO bait garbage left Reddit as pretty much a necessary part of any technical search through major search engines. Cringe site, but there's no other site like it for finding the answers in one easily searchable place

[🏴Finlay | BLM1312☭ @ancomfin]

Typical non-Scottish Rangers fan