PaulBra

Himalayan trekking, RTW cyclist. Retired medic & beek. अहिंस @flysay.bsky.social

[PaulBra @birdsay]

An e-petition for safer cycling and HGV restrictions on Histon Road. Good idea? Please sign. https://t.co/T6drLBybFX #HistonRoad @camcycle @SmarterCam

[Normal Island News @NormalIslandNws]

The Nobel Committee has been condemned by genocide supporters, after awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to South African jurist Navi Pillay. As a result of this outrage, war between Israel and Norway looks imminent.
Pillay was guilty of a blood libel when she told the truth about Israel in a September 2025 UN Report. The report concluded that Israel had committed four of the five acts of genocide against Palestinians. Not once did it mention that the land was promised to Jews 3,000 years ago. It was more focused on “genocidal intent” and specifically named Herzog, Netanyahu, and Gallant.
Pillay used their own words, that they said on camera, to the world, over and over again, as evidence against them. I can’t believe she swallowed Hamas propaganda like that. She said inaction by the international community amounts to complicity, but thankfully, she didn’t mention Starmer arming Israel.
Pillay urges sanctions and an arms embargo against Israel, meaning she supports BDS against the world’s only Jewish state… that happens to be committing genocide. She describes the occupation as the “root of the problem” and compares Israeli policy to apartheid.
I don’t think anyone should be overlooking Pillay’s obvious bias here. She has a history of anti-apartheid racism and was the first non-white woman to become a High Court judge in South Africa. Her legal career involved defending anti-white extremists, such as Nelson Mandela who served 27 years in prison.
Mandela was the guy who thought black people deserved “equal rights” in South Africa. He believed in a “one-state solution” that denied the colonisers self-determination. Let’s not forget that he was on the US terror watch list until 2008, so defending him is just as bad as defending Hamas.
Pillay not only thinks she’s an expert on apartheid, but also on genocide—just because she served on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. She’s the one who established that rape and sexual violence count as acts of genocide. What was this if not a pre-emptive attack on IDF soldiers?
Despite her extreme views, she has served as a judge at the International Criminal Court and as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She has long focused on accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and sexual violence, even when Israel is the perpetrator.
Clearly, Israel has every right to defend itself from this woman—and from the Nobel Committee. Thankfully, Israel has identified terror tunnels under the Nobel Institute and is planning to drop 2,000lb dumb bombs on Oslo. It’s also planning to take out Pillay’s neighbourhood because its AI system calculated that a casualty rate of 300-1 would be acceptable to stop this woman.

[PaulBra @birdsay]

It has broken us all.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

I never asked to know what a dismembered child looks like. Israel imposed that knowledge upon me.

I never wanted to know what it looks like when military explosives blow an infant's head off. I only know it because Israel forced me to know it.

The reason the Gaza holocaust hit westerners so hard is because it punched through our shitbrained western supremacist narcissism and our vapid mainstream culture and shook us violently awake to something real and terrifying.

All of a sudden the idea that our bombs are killing people in the middle east was no longer a vague abstraction sitting in the periphery of our awareness. It was a reality hitting us right in the guts in the middle of the day while we casually scrolled our phones, forcing us to run to the toilet to vomit up our lunch.

It made it personal. We were being kicked in the stomach over and over again by the state of Israel with the backing of our own western governments. The abuse of the Palestinians wasn't something that was happening exclusively to the Palestinians; to a much smaller degree, it was also something that was happening to everyone who witnessed it.

Westerners aren't accustomed to such confrontations. We are accustomed to bustling around in our mind-controlled dystopia with our first world problems and our neuroses and distractions, our attention going into treats and screens and our consumerist preferences and the petty dramas playing out in our respective social circles. Then all of a sudden we find ourselves in the bathroom puking up our sushi because our phone had just shown us the most unimaginably horrific thing we have ever seen.

And we were at all times aware that all the nausea and horror and rage and disgust we experienced when witnessing the Gaza holocaust happened because of the real material actions of real material people. The Israelis were deliberately causing as much devastation as possible to advance their longstanding goal of forcibly transferring all Palestinians out of Gaza. Our leaders were deliberately stalling and equivocating from behind their podiums to buy Israel enough time to make Gaza uninhabitable. We all understood that the waking nightmare we were witnessing was not some natural disaster that was passively occurring; it was being actively inflicted by people who were fully aware of what they were doing.

That's the sort of thing that changes you as a person. Changes your whole worldview. Changes your politics. Changes your beliefs. The average westerner needs to do a lot of internal restructuring to truly reckon with the Gaza holocaust and all its implications.

That, I think, has been the biggest reason why the genocide of the Palestinians has gotten so much attention and sympathy. It's because its live-streamed nature caused it to affect us in ways other acts of mass military slaughter usually don't.

Westerners are so propaganda-addled and indoctrinated that we are largely apathetic to what our bombs are doing to human bodies on the other side of the world. It's only when we are given some skin in the game, as in the Vietnam draft, that we start caring in any politically significant way. Gaza gave us skin in the game in the way it entered into our lives through our electronic devices and showed us things that were so jarring it left a permanent mark upon our lives.

Gaza forced us to look, and forced us to see, against all the efforts the propagandists have expended trying to keep us from noticing such things. That's why this thing isn't going away. People are only getting angrier and angrier. The empire has spent three years scrambling around unsuccessfully trying to get us to close our eyes again, and it keeps failing and failing and failing.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

I never asked to know what a dismembered child looks like. Israel imposed that knowledge upon me.

I never wanted to know what it looks like when military explosives blow an infant's head off. I only know it because Israel forced me to know it.

The reason the Gaza holocaust hit westerners so hard is because it punched through our shitbrained western supremacist narcissism and our vapid mainstream culture and shook us violently awake to something real and terrifying.

All of a sudden the idea that our bombs are killing people in the middle east was no longer a vague abstraction sitting in the periphery of our awareness. It was a reality hitting us right in the guts in the middle of the day while we casually scrolled our phones, forcing us to run to the toilet to vomit up our lunch.

It made it personal. We were being kicked in the stomach over and over again by the state of Israel with the backing of our own western governments. The abuse of the Palestinians wasn't something that was happening exclusively to the Palestinians; to a much smaller degree, it was also something that was happening to everyone who witnessed it.

Westerners aren't accustomed to such confrontations. We are accustomed to bustling around in our mind-controlled dystopia with our first world problems and our neuroses and distractions, our attention going into treats and screens and our consumerist preferences and the petty dramas playing out in our respective social circles. Then all of a sudden we find ourselves in the bathroom puking up our sushi because our phone had just shown us the most unimaginably horrific thing we have ever seen.

And we were at all times aware that all the nausea and horror and rage and disgust we experienced when witnessing the Gaza holocaust happened because of the real material actions of real material people. The Israelis were deliberately causing as much devastation as possible to advance their longstanding goal of forcibly transferring all Palestinians out of Gaza. Our leaders were deliberately stalling and equivocating from behind their podiums to buy Israel enough time to make Gaza uninhabitable. We all understood that the waking nightmare we were witnessing was not some natural disaster that was passively occurring; it was being actively inflicted by people who were fully aware of what they were doing.

That's the sort of thing that changes you as a person. Changes your whole worldview. Changes your politics. Changes your beliefs. The average westerner needs to do a lot of internal restructuring to truly reckon with the Gaza holocaust and all its implications.

That, I think, has been the biggest reason why the genocide of the Palestinians has gotten so much attention and sympathy. It's because its live-streamed nature caused it to affect us in ways other acts of mass military slaughter usually don't.

Westerners are so propaganda-addled and indoctrinated that we are largely apathetic to what our bombs are doing to human bodies on the other side of the world. It's only when we are given some skin in the game, as in the Vietnam draft, that we start caring in any politically significant way. Gaza gave us skin in the game in the way it entered into our lives through our electronic devices and showed us things that were so jarring it left a permanent mark upon our lives.

Gaza forced us to look, and forced us to see, against all the efforts the propagandists have expended trying to keep us from noticing such things. That's why this thing isn't going away. People are only getting angrier and angrier. The empire has spent three years scrambling around unsuccessfully trying to get us to close our eyes again, and it keeps failing and failing and failing.

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

Three Years of Genocide

[PaulBra @birdsay]

The issue which now defines our time.

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Opposing the mass slaughter of children is not hateful extremism.

Yet that is what this moral disgrace of an article argues.

Let's go through what it argues - and the reality of the crimes committed by the Israeli army against Palestinian kids.

[Council Estate Media @cem_uk_]

Israel is using today as a propaganda opportunity, so it’s essential we set the record straight.

It’s undeniable that Netanyahu knew October 7 was coming. This has been confirmed by Israeli military probes, leaked intelligence, and reporting by outlets including The New York Times, Haaretz, The Times of Israel, The Guardian, the BBC, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal.

Israeli military intelligence obtained a detailed Hamas blueprint codenamed “Jericho Wall”, over a year before the attack. It described breaching the border fence at multiple points, overrunning bases and communities, and taking hostages. Israeli leaks later confirmed that Israel had other versions of the plan circulating since 2018.

An Israeli officer in Unit 8200 wrote multiple assessments of Hamas drills on simulated IDF outposts. She noted that senior Hamas commanders were observing the drills, the plan was operational, and Israel will likely not get a long warning.

Israeli military intelligence sent Netanyahu several letters between March and July 2023, warning him of the dangers. On top of that, multiple foreign countries warned him—and Mr Security failed to act.

UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Netanyahu in late September 2023 that Yahya Sinwar was planning a major operation. Netanyahu later tried to pressure the UAE into saying that no such warning had been given. Egyptian authorities warned Israel “something big was coming” just three days before the attack.

Despite these warnings, Israeli authorities ignored key signs of an attack on October 6 and 7, including the activation of sim cards and unusual rocket movements. No one raised the alert or attempted to raise security along the border. Military and intelligence chiefs have publicly accepted responsibility for the failure. Netanyahu has not.

Roughly half of the 1,500 troops assigned to the area were away on the morning. Despite this vulnerability, and the detailed warnings, the Nova Festival was not only allowed to go ahead, it was given a one-day extension. That extension made it run into October 7.

Officers in the Gaza Division had initially opposed the extension, due to the lack of security, and they were overruled. As a result, 364 festival goers were killed and dozens were abducted.

It took Israeli forces three and a half hours to respond and they were not directed to the worst hit areas. It took them nearly six hours to reach Nir Oz (after the attackers had already left), nearly six hours to reach Kfar Aza and Sufa, seven hours to reach Nahal Oz, and seven hours to reach Be’eri. Remember Israel is a small place.

When the troops finally arrived, they responded with the Hannibal Directive which involved using force to stop Israelis being taken hostage, even if it meant killing them. Huge numbers of buildings and vehicles were destroyed that day—something Hamas did not have the firepower to achieve.

Hannibal orders were given at multiple sites—the Erez crossing, Re’im base, the Gaza Division headquarters, and the Nahal Oz outpost. At 11:22am, a broader order went out on the division network: “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza.” Units were later told to stop returns to Gaza “at all costs”.

A Southern Command source told Haaretz that everyone knew the vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers, and could not tell who was inside. A house was destroyed by an Israeli tank, even though it contained 14 hostages. Most of them died.

On the evening of October 7, Qatar’s prime minister called the Mossad chief. He said Hamas was ready to release all civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the strip.

Israel rejected the offer and continued to refuse one hostage deal after another, much to the dismay of the families. This led to many avoidable hostage deaths which were caused by Israel’s own bombs.

For the longest time, we were told “release the hostages” and this all stops, but the moment the last hostage was freed, the genocide did not stop. The slogan changed from “release the hostages” to “fuck around and find out” because the violence was never about the hostages.

When Israel tells you that October 7 was an atrocity carried out by Hamas, it’s omitting that Netanyahu funnelled $1 billion to Hamas because he wanted this moment. He wanted the excuse to decimate Gaza and push ahead with the Greater Israel project. Zionists are now bragging about how October 7 accelerated their plans for Gaza by 20 years.

Netanyahu was willing to kill his own people on October 7 as pretext for a genocide. That’s not only terrorism, it’s treason, and it’s yet another reason this man belongs behind bars.

[Andrew Feinstein @andrewfeinstein]

The Greens have an anti-Zionist leader & believe Zionism is racism. They have the support of many anti & non-Zionist Jews, who constitute 1/3 of British Jewry.
Anti-Zionism is a Jewish ideology, developed by Jews, which suggests that Jewish & global safety & security is best served by diverse, vibrant Jewish communities across the world rather than by an ethno-nationalist, racist Jewish state. And if you doubt Israel is a racist apartheid state, remind yourself that it & apartheid SA are the only countries identified as such by the world’s highest court. And that Archbishop Desmond Tutu & Nelson Mandela believed that Israeli apartheid was more brutal than South Africa’s.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

The most immoral army.
The army of the deranged ones. Committing the monstrosity of the century.
Every day, new brushes of horror.

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

Fantastic clear, and eloquent explanation from @andrewfeinstein as to why Zionism is Racism

[Grace Blakeley @graceblakeley]

This story is about so much more than one man and one company.

It’s about the corruption of our British democracy through the subtle intermingling of the financial and political interests of our political class and the world’s most powerful corporations.
https://t.co/RSi1c8r3Dh

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

The British nurse Lucy Letby was sentenced to life in prison for murdering babies on her ward. Rachel Aviv writes about the recently published findings of a three-year inquiry into the deaths—and the central question that it ignores. https://t.co/BiVwCKNAb4

[Phil Rodgers @PhilRodgers]

This means that just two gains from Labour at May's city council elections would put the Greens level with them on 15 seats. Last year the Greens made six gains from Labour, though the political winds have shifted somewhat since then.

[PaulBra @birdsay]

@MarcoMagarioAI Excellent. Thanks!

[Marco Magario @MarcoMagarioAI]

Er Loop | My most ambitious AI short film.

My take on Plato's Myth of Er, as a dark comedy.

Written, directed, produced and scored entirely by me.

[PaulBra @birdsay]

Fun.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Western liberal democracies are like a narcissistic wife beater who postures as a sensitive he/him feminist on social media. Like a pop star who makes a show of fighting the power and defending the marginalized while supporting Israel.

Our society isn’t what it pretends to be.

Our entire civilization sustains itself through an endless river of blood, sweat and tears from the global south while making movies about fighting for justice and saving the world.

Our pundits wag their fingers at the “tyrannical regimes” in empire-targeted nations while our own rulers murder, starve and terrorize disobedient populations in order to dominate the planet.

In school they teach us that we are lucky to live in a free society where the people command the government with their votes and we have the right to express ourselves in whatever way we choose, when in reality wealthy oligarchs control the entire electoral process and our expression is aggressively manipulated through a complex system of censorship and propaganda.

We have no integrity.

To have integrity as an individual is to be the same sort of person you are at home as when you’re in public. To treat everyone with the same amount of kindness and respect regardless of whether they’re your boss, your child, your subordinate, or your friend. When all your thoughts align fully with all your words, and all your words fully align with all your actions, whether nobody’s watching or everyone’s watching. When the values you claim to hold are the same as the values people see you embodying in the life you actually live.

To cultivate integrity as an individual is to bring all of these factors into alignment, and eliminate all conflicts and contradictions between them in the way you live your life. To cultivate integrity as a society is no different.

And as denizens of the western empire we’ve got a long, hard journey ahead of us if we are to eliminate all the conflicts and contradictions between the type of society we claim to be and the type of society we actually have. In practice we’re about as incongruent with our theoretical values as any civilization could possibly be. We are an empire of frauds.

The fight for a healthy world is largely a fight to move us from fraudulence to integrity. To create a society in which our most noble aspirations and most deeply cherished values are reflected in the way our civilization is actually organized. That is the cause toward which we all strive, when all is said and done.

Gaining integrity as an individual means getting uncompromisingly real with yourself about what you’re actually like as a person. Gaining integrity as a society means opening as many western eyes as possible to the reality that everything we’ve been told about our society and about our world is a complete sham. Only then can we begin striking at the true roots of our problems and move into health and harmony.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

"This is a film about a system. It focuses on orders, policies, and patterns of operation, not deviations from them. The conclusion that we draw from the testimonies is clear: The mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza was not a “tragic byproduct” of a war against Hamas, as it is commonly portrayed in Israel, but a premeditated, calculated, and intentional act." https://t.co/xyU1NGnnkM

[Eurosport.es @Eurosport_ES]

🤬 Matthew Brennan carga en @Eurosport_ES contra la UCI tras correr a 41 grados de media:

"Estoy seguro que están en oficinas a 20º y nosotros dejándonos la piel"

"No me sorprendería que haya gente esta noche que se vaya a casa en ambulancia por un golpe de calor" #LaVuelta26