daragh bailey

Regional Manager in Irish Probation Service; Systemic Psychotherapist; Social Worker; all views my own

[Daragh Cassidy @DaraghCassidy]

This lad has been trying to steal every second bike in Temple Bar. Not a bother on him lol. He’ll probably get lucky eventually though and some poor sod will return to find they’ve to fork out yet more money for another bike.

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

“Israel treated us terribly. It denied people essential medicine. One night, yesterday night, we were shouting that someone was possibly having a heart attack. They didn’t come. They didn’t care. They gave us food that was infested with insects. They subjected some people to torture.”

Novara Media’s @kieran_andrieu, who joined the Global Sumud Flotilla, said he took part to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and described the harsh conditions passengers faced.

“This is how Israel behaves towards Europeans. You can only imagine how it treats Palestinians every single day.”

[Paul Murphy 🇵🇸 @paulmurphy_TD]

Workplace walkouts on Oct 16 that’s the next step for our movement. Follow the 2M Italians who struck, the Greek dockers who downed their tools, the Spanish workers calling action. For Gaza, take the fight where our class has power.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Since October 7, torture against Palestinian prisoners has become widespread and systematic. Both male and female detainees have been subjected to sexual violence, including rape. The documented gang rape at #SdeTeiman is not an isolated case—it’s part of a pattern. This is not just cruelty: inflicting severe physical or mental harm on members of a group 'as such' is a constitutive element of genocide.
How much more evidence do people need to understand what is happening?

[Neena Jha @DrNeenaJha]

Nothing but unconditional love and respect for this incredible woman

You give us all hope

We will never let them silence you

The world stands with you @FranceskAlbs now and always…

[KNEECAP @KNEECAPCEOL]

Today small children in Gaza are dying of starvation.

Just a mile away hundreds of trucks sit full of food.

The IDF blocking them entering.

This is the face of the Israeli regime - evil beyond comprehension.

[A Psychiatrist @APsychiatrist2]

Phil Mollon's list of some areas of trauma and anxiety to be considered in the self identity aspects of ADHD.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

American surgeon in Gaza:

“There was an 8-year-old boy gasping with blood foaming at the nose and the mouth. Next to him was a 6-year-old girl, her head was open with her brains exposed, her intestines were falling out…all I could do was tell their family just hold their hands”

This whole interview is horrifying. But if you’re an American you should listen to every word, our tax dollars are funding it.

[Karim Wafa-Al Hussaini @DrKarimWafa]

I don’t think people realise how dystopian this is.

[Jeff Fine-Thomas @jefffinethomas]

"To the extent that one has access to and acceptance of one's personal dynamics, one can have a compassionate, respectful appreciation for those of others." - Nancy McWilliams

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

Listening non-judgmentally is not something therapists learn from a book or class. It takes years of work

We can listen without judgment because we have examined the dark corners of our own souls in personal psychotherapy. What you think shocking, we know to be simply human

Therapists who have not done the hard work of in-depth personal psychotherapy over an extended time do not and cannot listen non-judgmentally

They can tell themselves they do, they can play the role, they may even believe it—but it is performative and at some level, patients feel it

Without knowing it, they subtly recoil from areas of the patient’s inner life, subtly signal approval and disapproval, and so close off entire territories to exploration

We cannot face another’s demons with equanimity, curiosity, and acceptance until we have learned to to face our own. We cannot accompany our patients places we ourselves have not traveled

This is one more reason in-depth personal psychotherapy for the therapist is non-negotiable, if we mean to offer in-depth therapy to our patients

Everyone is looking for a bypass around the honest hard work. But there is no bypass

[Embassy of the State of Palestine to Ireland @IrePalestine]

Dr Morgan McMonagle from Waterford is a hero in Gaza saving lives.

He continues despite his surgical dept being targeted by Israel + their blocking of aid into Gaza.

We pray he & his team remain safe in Nasser Hospital, Khan Yunis.

While they risk their lives to save lives, the rest of the world enables the war crimes being carried out against their hospital and others.

https://t.co/jlDFjlQqUF

[Craig Mokhiber @CraigMokhiber]

Darkness is falling across the globe. In my four decades in the international human rights movement, I have seen much cruelty in all corners of this world. But I have never witnessed the kind of unmitigated evil demonstrated today by political Zionism. Adherents of this ruthless, hateful, deeply racist, & fundamentally violent ideology are now in power in the lawless U.S. government (and that of other Western governments), putting us all at risk. They are not only torturing, raping, & slaughtering innocents in Palestine, bombing & occupying several countries, corrupting governments across the West, arresting and deporting human rights defenders and students in the U.S., harassing those who dare to speak up, and dismantling our democratic institutions, but they are tearing down international law and the very principles of human morality itself. No malign force since the Nazism of the 1930s has represented such a grave threat to the world. Either we will defeat it, or it will destroy us. Thankfully, Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists and others around the globe are standing up in record numbers to fight this evil, and that is the light that we must work to spread.

[Su 🪷 @su_dreams]

The interesting thing about creativity is how often it's mistaken for a resource to be extracted rather than a relationship to be nurtured.

We talk about 'accessing' creativity as if it's a commodity, something to be mined and monetized, rather than a dynamic partnership with the mystery of emergence.

This extractive mindset often leads to exactly the blocks and burnout we're trying to avoid.

What if we approached creativity more like tending a garden than operating a factory?

This would mean honouring its seasons, understanding that resting periods are as essential as harvest times.

It would mean recognizing that our role isn't just in the active doing but in creating conditions that invite the new to emerge - conditions that include rest, play, and purposeless exploration.

The paradox is that when we stop treating creativity as a means to an end - whether that end is productivity, profit, or proof of worth - it often flows more freely.

When we relate to it as a conversation rather than a conquest, a dance rather than a destination, something shifts.

The pressure to produce transforms into the pleasure of participation.

And mysteriously, this is often when our most original work begins to emerge.

[Gaza Behind Scenes @gazabehindscens]

A BDS activist highlight how Sainsbury's mix the Israeli products with those produced in other countries.

[Su 🪷 @su_dreams]

The most profound shift in my relationship with emotions came when I started viewing them less as states to manage and more as visitors to host.

Each feeling arrives with its own intelligence, its own temporal logic, its own way of moving through the body.

Anxiety isn't just worry - it's a highly sophisticated threat-detection system, scanning the environment for subtle patterns my conscious mind might miss.

Grief isn't just sadness - it's a complex process of metabolizing change, of integrating loss into the larger story of who we're becoming.

Even anger, which I spent years trying to smooth over, carries its own wisdom about violated values and crossed boundaries.

There's something liberating about treating these emotional visitors like respected guests rather than intruders to be controlled or eliminated.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

None of these people are even remotely on the left.

The real important story that happened since the Cold War is perhaps best illustrated by this Margaret Thatcher anecdote: in 2002, she was asked for her greatest achievement. She replied: "Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds."

And guess what: she was right, that was indeed her greatest achievement.

That's what happened throughout the West: the ideological takeover of the "left" by "social democrats" who had no substantial difference to their opponents across the aisle. And in order to maintain the pretense that they were different, they decided to focus their platform on cultural and identity issues while abandoning any challenge to economic or imperial power - reducing civil rights struggles to convenient diversions from questions of class and systemic change. It's not the left that's unpopular, it's this sanitized ersatz of it. Voting essentially became a choice between the same product with different packaging, the illusion of choice.

Even more contemptible: candidates who emerged who were actually on the left, who wanted to drive actual substantial and meaningful change, were endlessly demonized with some of the most dishonest and disgusting tactics in politics. Jeremy Corbyn in the UK is a perfect example of this - smeared as a national security threat (and an antisemite) not just for his economic program but for questioning the wisdom of NATO expansion and opposing Western imperialism. In France we're currently seeing much the same playbook being applied on Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

This ties back to the concept of "extreme center" described by thinkers such as Tariq Ali, Pierre Serna or Alain Deneault. A radicalized form of liberalism that presents itself as moderate and reasonable while actually taking extremist positions in defense of the status quo - whether through unwavering support for imperial adventures abroad or the suppression of democratic alternatives at home. This centrism is 'extreme' in how viciously it reacts to any genuine left-wing challenge to the established order, whether through media smear campaigns, lawfare, or the cynical weaponization of identity politics to defend both domestic inequality and imperial power.

The irony and the situation we today find ourselves in is that this "extreme center," in its zealous defense of neoliberal orthodoxy and its refusal to address fundamental economic grievances, ended up creating the very conditions of social instability and political polarization it claims to stand against. And, ultimately, the conditions of its demise as we're currently seeing throughout the West.

The sad result though is that because the actual left has been so thoroughly demonized, legitimate popular anger and resentment largely get directed towards nihilistic movements that, far from solving our fundamental problems, channel these sentiments into scapegoating and division. These movements won't solve our fundamental problems - while they may break with certain aspects of neoliberal orthodoxy, they mostly offer the aesthetic of rebellion while dropping even the pretense of serving the common good.

That's where we are: the victory of the 'extreme center' over the left has proven to be simultaneously absolute and self-defeating. Thatcher's boast about Blair might have been premature - her true legacy may not just have been making the left compatible with neoliberal economics, but creating a world where our only choice is between the plague and cholera.

[Joe Brolly @JoeBrolly1993]

Israeli embassy in Dublin last night.