david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini

🇨🇭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🕷spouse of 1, father of 3, gramps of 7. @drdjmath.bsky.social

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

Our newest little darling: Luna, born 22 March 2024. A little sister for Alba, a new daughter for Lucia and Ben, a new granddaughter for Catherine, Luz, Lorenzo and me. I can’t wait to meet her.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The year is 8500 BC. You are an aurochs, six feet at the shoulder, and very little alive frightens you. Some people on the upper Euphrates have built a pen. About 80 of your mothers and sisters walk into it, and every cow that will ever live walks out. The bargain is simple. They keep the wolves off. You let them near the calf. It seems, on the day, like a fair exchange, and you keep your side of it for ten thousand years.

The year is 4000 BC. There is a beam across your neck and a pointed stick dragging behind. You lean into it because the man beside you is leaning too, and he talks to you the whole length of the furrow. He has given you a name. When you die his children will cry, and he will not eat that week. Every field on earth for the next six thousand years is opened this way, by the two of you.

The year is 2500 BC. In a temple in Sumer they carve you into the wall in white limestone: the priests milking you, the churn rocking, the butter poured into jars. You are washed every morning and counted every night. You are the most valuable thing the city owns and you are treated like it. Nobody carves the barley.

The year is 1200. You haul stone up the hill at Laon, a load at a time, for a cathedral you will never be let inside. When the towers are finished the masons carve sixteen of you, life-size, and set you at the very top, looking out over France. The bishop gets a slab in the floor. Somebody remembered who did the lifting.

The year is 1750. You come down off the Alp in September with flowers woven round your horns and a bell the size of a bucket, and the whole village is standing in the street in its best clothes to watch you pass. The finest milker walks at the front. She knows it.

The year is 1852. You are one of six in front of a wagon in Missouri, with a family's whole life behind you and two thousand miles ahead. The children ride on the tailboard, and by Nebraska the youngest has named all of you. When the grass fails you are fed last and you pull anyway. A country is walked into existence at two miles an hour, which is your pace.

The year is 1922. In Toronto a boy of 14 is dying of diabetes. He weighs 65 pounds and has days left. They inject him with an extract of your pancreas and he gets up and goes home. For the next sixty years every diabetic alive is alive because of you. Not one of them ever learns which of you it was.

The year is 1946. Britain has just weighed and measured its children for a war and seen what the ones without you looked like. A bottle of your milk goes on every school desk in the country, by Act of Parliament.

That is where you stand in 1946. You are named, garlanded, carved on cathedrals and written into law. Hold that thought.

The year is 2006. A report comes out of Rome with your shadow on the cover. It says that you, stood in a field, are doing more harm to the sky than every car, lorry, ship and aeroplane on earth. The sum counted everything about you from the fertiliser to the fridge, and only the exhaust pipe of the car. The authors admit as much. By then the sentence is on a billion screens.

The year is 2019. Thirty-seven experts publish the diet that will save the planet. Your share is a quarter of an ounce a day, one small burger a fortnight. A child comes home from school and asks her grandfather, who has got up at five to milk you for fifty years, why he is hurting the world.

The year is 2023. The Dutch government is paying farmers to be rid of you for good, on condition they never keep you again. A paper on a minister's desk in Dublin costs out the removal of 200,000 of you from Ireland, the island that counted its kings' wealth in your heads.

The year is 2026. Denmark has passed a law to tax your breath. There is a powder in your feed to stop you belching. A carton of oat water in the fridge says it is like your milk but made for humans. In a steel tank in California they are growing the thing that is meant to finish you off, and they feed it on corn.

You ploughed every field they ever sowed. You hauled their cathedrals and carried their children across a continent. You fed their orphans and kept their diabetics breathing. In return you asked for grass and somebody to watch for wolves.

You are still giving all of it. This morning, in the rain, on ground no plough could use, you gave it to people who have been taught to be ashamed of taking it.

You know none of this. You know the gate, the voice, and the hand on your flank at five in the morning.

He has read the report. He came anyway.

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@revpaulwhite One must also learn what the impact was of the Russian interference. Was it so minor as to be ignored or was it such as to render the vote invalid? If the latter, what to do now?

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@benjaminmatheso Well done! 👏 Do send me a link when it appears.

[Joe Hardy 🇺🇦 🇪🇺♿️🐟 #RightToLove 💙 @BlokeOnWheels]

If it were possible, I would swap my life for yours quite easily. We would start with a two week trial period. Just to check you were comfortable with somebody having to lift you on and off the toilet and perform associated cleaning duties every time you needed a pooh. Also, be warned that you'll only be able to use a one typing finger, or two on an extremely good day, but don't worry because you can easily learn the joys of speech recognition software. It definitely never fucks up on a monumental scale.

Now, what else is that you need to know? Oh yes, among other things, say goodbye to leaving the house whenever you like, you'll find that you will only be able to go anywhere if there is somebody available to take you and look after your whilst you are there.

Still think I have a good life, "courtesy of the taxpayer"

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Hello everyone, this is a message from inside prison, from a young Iranian woman who is about to be executed. Please help me to amplify her voice before they hang her. 💔

«Remember my name, maybe I will not be able to speak again.»

This is the voice of Najmeh Amini, a 23 year old accounting student, speaking from Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad. In her voice message she says: «Be my voice. I am an innocent girl, a young woman full of hopes and dreams.»

Najmeh is one of the detainees of the January uprising .

She spent months in detention without a verdict, denied access to a lawyer of her choice and pressured during interrogation. In August, her trial was held at the Revolutionary Court of Mashhad on charges of «assembly and collusion» and «insulting sacred values.»

She said in her voice message that her death sentence was issued on September 16, 2026.

In her own words: «People, I only want justice and the chance to defend myself.» And this is her dream: «Before the rope ends my life, let me see my Iran prosperous and free.»

Be her voice and all of political prisoners, especially those at risk of execution.

#NajmehAmini
#StopExecutionsInIran

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@urotoday @wlv_uni @neerajaiims @huntsmancancer @wlv_health @wlv_uni @PCR_News @APCCC_Lugano

[UroToday.com @urotoday]

Patient perspective on radiographic progression-free survival in metastatic #ProstateCancer. @drdjmath @wlv_uni joins @neerajaiims @huntsmancancer to discuss the patient perspective on rPFS as a clinical trial endpoint. Dr. Matheson argues that imaging-based progression is more tangible to patients than PSA because tumor size and location can be shown visually, but stresses that rPFS is only meaningful if quality of life as reported by the patient is preserved. #WatchNow > https://t.co/Rrgkh8MIzp

[Ad van der Flier 🇳🇱🇲🇰🇪🇺🌍👨🏻‍🦳 @Adush_25]

The well-known Soviet and Russian film director and writer EDUARD TOPOL (Edmond Topelberg) has written an open letter to US President Donald Trump.

"Dear Mr. President!

Dear Donald!

As the author of fifty books and a dozen films about Russia, I consider myself entitled to inform you before your meeting with Putin.

You should know that he cannot stop the war with Ukraine, even if you give him your Mar-a-Lago villa on Palm Beach, Trump Tower in New York, and a dozen of your golf clubs.

And not because he does not want to take a break from the war, but because he cannot.

Since he knows Russian history not from a textbook by Medinsky, but from the real one:

The return of Russian troops from Europe to Russia after the victory over Napoleon led to the anti-tsarist uprising of the Decembrists in 1825.

The defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War led to the revolution of 1905.

The escape of a million Russian soldiers from the Russian-German front during World War I led to the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II from the throne and the February Revolution of 1917.

The peace signed by Lenin with Germany allowed the Bolsheviks to shoot the entire royal family.

With the return of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in February 1989, the collapse of the USSR began.

Knowing this, Putin cannot end the war with Ukraine and return his troops home.
Only the possibility of leaving almost its entire army in Europe as occupation troops in May 1945 helped Stalin avoid a post-war coup.

That's why Putin dreams of occupying Ukraine, as well as the Baltics, Finland, Poland, etc., to keep his army away from Moscow.

He remembers how 525 thousand soldiers who returned from Afghanistan in 1989 turned into bandits-afghans, terrorizing the entire population of the USSR.

And he knows what will happen if one and a half million soldiers who are able to professionally kill, rob, and rape return from the Ukrainian front.

The war with Ukraine allowed Putin to get rid of two million of his most active opponents, whom he forced to flee from Russia, and the rest of the young Russian men he either drove to the front or recruited into the punitive services.

Today, any war - with Ukraine, with the Baltics, with NATO - and with anyone else - is the best way to force Russia to submit to Putin and his junta.

Unfortunately, none of your advisors will explain this to you before meeting with Putin, but you can check my arguments with Jack Matlock and Michael McFaul.

I don't want Putin, a gangster, thief, and murderer of millions of people, to continue brazenly fooling you, lying, and deceiving my President.

Of course, I'm not a military expert or a political scientist, but I'm a writer with a good memory.
I remember how Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II managed to bring the price of oil down to $9 a barrel, gave the Afghans "Stingers," and thereby stopped Moscow's capture of Afghanistan and destroyed the USSR.

If you want to stop Putin and imperial ambitions, at least half of the Russian population, you need to do the same thing—lower the price of oil to at least $25 a barrel and give Ukraine the weapons that will help it crush the aggressor.

As for your desire to establish American-Russian partnership business relations, not in words, but in practice, this can happen in a hundred years or, in general, never.

If you're interested in why, call me, I'll explain.

Respectfully,

EDWARD TOPOLE, a citizen of the USA and Israel.

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@SamaHoole When the cheetah chases the antelope, both are running for their lives.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Here’s a sentence that should shock anyone who still thinks the Islamic Republic has a justice system.

Arghavan Fallahi is 24 years old. She is sitting in Evin Prison under a death sentence.

She formally asked the judiciary to reopen her case and spare her life.

Today, reports say that request was rejected. Which means she can now be executed at any moment. It just brakes my heart that she did everything to save her life.

And this is the part where the Islamic Republic wants the world to look away and say, “Well, it’s an internal legal matter.”

No. It isn’t.

When a 24-year-old woman can be sentenced to death after a political prosecution, and the same system that arrested her, interrogated her, tried her and condemned her also gets to decide whether she deserves another hearing, that is not justice.

That is the government acting as police, prosecutor, judge and executioner and then calling the whole thing due process.

I wrote about Arghavan before because I did not want the world to learn her name after she was hanged.

She is alive right now. And this is exactly when governments, journalists and human-rights organizations should speak before the execution, not after the obituary.

Stop the execution of Arghavan Fallahi.
#StopExecutionInIran

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

The former British home secretary and buddhist daughter of a Kenyan descendant of Goan Catholics, and a Mauritian Hindu descendent of Tamil, born in Harrow, studied in New York, married to a Jewish South African who lived In Israel says multiculturalism has failed.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Let me introduce you to a brave young woman from my country, Iran.

Her name was Hadis Najafi. She was only 22 years old.

The morality police in Iran killed Mahsa Amini over a few strands of hair. Hadis Najafi responded by taking off her hijab entirely and going into the streets to protest the Islamic Republic.

Before going out to protest, Hadis filmed herself walking in the street. She said:

“I hope that years from now, I can look back and be happy that I went out to protest, because everything changed.”

She never got to see those years.

In September 2022, after Iran’s morality police killed Mahsa Jina Amini because they decided her hijab was “improper,” Hadis went into the streets of Karaj to end this barbaric regime.

She went for Mahsa. She went to demand freedom from a murderous regime.

Hadis was unarmed. Her voice was her only weapon. But Security forces opened fire.

I spoke to her family. They told me how they saw the pellet wounds all over her body her face, her neck, her chest.

Hadis was killed. And killing her was not enough.

The authorities pressured her family to say she died naturally. They withheld her body and tried to silence them.

Her family refused.

Even at her funeral, security forces surrounded them. They could not even mourn their 22-year-old daughter in peace.

Think about this:

First, they killed a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa, over a few strands of hair.

Then they killed another 22-year-old woman, Hadis, for protesting her killing.

They tried to erase Hadis.

Instead, she became a symbol.

Today, more women across Iran walk publicly without compulsory hijab.

Hadis dreamed that one day she would look back and see that everything had changed and Iran will be free from Islamic Republic.

That dream is not dead.

What shocks me is how many young people I meet at universities and colleges across the free world who have never heard her name. They know so many heroes from history, but they don’t know the heroes who are making history right now.

That is why I tell these stories.

[TheBossRoss 🇪🇺 🧶 ❄ 📷 6x💉 @BettinaSRoss1]

If this isn't the best Brexit analogy you've ever heard, I don't know.

James Acaster via pen_circle on Insta.

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@RileyTravels Excellent

[Daractenus @Daractenus]

To put Russia's appetite for more land into the context it deserves by showing what they've done with the apparently insufficient land they already have, I decided to combine all my old and new travel guides through Russia's very posh cities into one colossal final thread.🧵

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@CPeutat @nickreeves9876 I understand that there is no definite article in Ukranian or Russian (just like in Latin). So, whether it is *the* Ukraine or just Ukraine makes no difference in Ukrainian.

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@ProudScot1 @ron_mould I saw it on tv back when it had only recently been in the theatres. I missed it at the Citizens’ but caught it on the BBC. Whether it was subsequently banned, I do not know but it certainly wasn’t banned in whatever year in the mid-70s I watched it.

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@feelgoodtale @RiderLapierre This same tale first appeared on twitter several years ago.

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

@giftty_k This sounds very like a sci-fi story from the 1960s or thereabouts.

[david matheson #FBPE #mahsa_amini @drdjmath]

Surfers Against Sewage are about to meet with the government to discuss the sewage pollution scandal. Sign the petition to show just how many of us demand change. Over 270k have signed - now let's get this to a number Starmer can't ignore. https://t.co/N36WaWuLcv via @38degrees