Eddie Crust

History Teacher, Lead Practitioner, Assistant Head, Cynical Idealist

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

So Israeli settlers attack a Palestinian village, throw gasoline through a window onto a baby, nearly burning the young child alive, and beat a pregnant woman with stones.

Zero Western media coverage.

The complicity runs so deep...

[Jolyon Rubinstein @JolyonRubs]

National treasure

[Jess Barnard @JessicaLBarnard]

A lot of excitement and commentary on Burnham embracing video comms, but the real trick is *substance*

Mamdani is popular and effective because he delivers transformative policies and knows how to communicate it.

You need both!

[David Edgerton @DEHEdgerton]

@chakrabortty nails it - the party is the problem. https://t.co/EvSz3BGQEO

[Aydin Dikerdem @AydinDikerdem]

It’s wild how Gaza is being erased from the narrative surrounding Starmer’s unpopularity. Over 50% of Labour switchers at the locals said it influenced them. It came up on the doorstep over & over again. It’s one of the greatest moral stains of our era. And yet media silence.

[Faiza Shaheen @faizashaheen]

Starmer’s Labour spent its time and energy in the lead up to the 2024 election harassing people like me and destroying the left in the party rather than focusing on policy and a clear vision for change. This is the consequence of that immoral and factional project.

I hope for all of us that whatever comes now finally moves this country - and the Labour Party - in the right direction. Otherwise that Reform/ Reform-Tory coalition gov is inevitable.

[Despotic Inroad @DespoticInroad]

Can Burnham reverse Labour's electoral fortunes? Maybe

Can he deliver a new political economy? Possible but unlikely

Could Keir Starmer have done either? Absolutely not. A 0% chance.

[James B @piercepenniless]

Get ahead of the game and listen to Mathew preview some of the arguments on the productive state in this conversation, the latest episode of the @LRB's ON POLITICS: https://t.co/3V5HgBIpr8

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany needed compliant judges to provide a legal veneer to their darkest crimes.

Judge Johnson joins their wretched company. He overturned a jury's conviction of four anti-genocide activists for criminal damage and sentenced them as terrorists instead.

As one their barristers pointed out, the four defendants were initially arrested by police on suspicion of involvement in an act of terrorism. But the prosecution decided not to charge them with terrorism offences because it knew no jury would ever convict them based on the evidence.

Instead the Crown held two trials: a sham one for the jury, and the real one conducted in secret by the judge. That is not justice. It is a show trial worthy of the worst tyrannical regimes.

[Mouin Rabbani @MouinRabbani]

The award-winning historian Elizabeth Thompson, interviewed by @BeirutCalling :

"My first hypothesis is that the investigation of why the Arab world lacks democracy today must start with the extension of European colonization after World War I, not Islamic culture or the behavior of particular dictators since independence.

Second, a related takeaway is to ask new questions about the rise of authoritarian, violent, and religiously radical movements in the region. My current research explores the ways in which such movements were empowered after the violent destruction of democratic movements after World War I. This puts modern Middle Eastern political history in the same analytical frame of studies examining the rise of anti-liberal, anti-democratic movements in Europe during the same period."

Overall, a rich and fascinating interview.
https://t.co/wm9Doy1W98

[FUTA @futaspor]

🇭🇹 🇵🇱 Haiti Milli Takımı, Dünya Kupası’nda giyeceği resmi formalarına Polonya bayrağını ekledi.

Bu bir tasarım hatası değil, iki halk arasında yüzyıllardır süren dostluğun sembolü.

1802 yılında Napolyon, Polonya Lejyonları’ndan binlerce askeri Haiti’deki köle ayaklanmasını bastırmak için adaya gönderdi. Ancak birçok Polonyalı asker, özgürlük mücadelesi veren Haitililere karşı savaşmayı reddederek onların safına geçti ve Fransız ordusuna karşı birlikte mücadele etti.

Haiti’nin 1804’te bağımsızlığını kazanmasının ardından ülkenin ilk lideri Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Polonyalılara vatandaşlık verdi ve onları anayasında “Avrupa’nın Siyahları” olarak tanımlayarak büyük bir onur gösterdi.

Aradan 200 yılı aşkın süre geçmesine rağmen Haiti, Polonyalıların dayanışmasını unutmadı. Bugün futbolcular formalarında taşıdıkları Polonya bayrağıyla, özgürlük uğruna verilen ortak mücadelenin hatırasını yaşatıyor.

[The Athletic | Football @TheAthleticFC]

“My relationship with my club began the same way it does for most football fans: before I was old enough to understand what I was getting myself into. When I was nine, my uncle introduced me to a team with a cannon on its shirt, a grizzled captain named Tony Adams, and players like Nwankwo Kanu who had been born in Africa but now lived somewhere else, just like me. Arsenal felt familiar before I even understood why.

“And then there was the manager, a man who I initially thought had been named after the club and then believed that somehow the club must have been named after him. Arsene Wenger may have struggled with his raincoat, but rarely with his orchestra. The football his teams played sang.

“But what was once the nostalgia of the past has become the beauty of the present.

“We won. We are champions of England. And we are just one game away from being crowned champions of Europe too.”

@ZohranKMamdani, mayor of New York City, writes for The Athletic on what Arsenal means to him.

FREE READ 🔗 https://t.co/ge64qWmVuz

[Africa Is a Country @africasacountry]

Under Arsène Wenger, Arsenal FC transformed English football’s relationship to African players, becoming a symbol of diaspora identity, Black internationalism, and global modernity. https://t.co/cJM55VOMJf

[Zohran Kwame Mamdani @ZohranKMamdani]

we both up now

[The Green Party @TheGreenParty]

Wes Streeting, the member for Palantir North.

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

This will be the highest stakes by-election in U.K history.

If Burnham wins, he becomes PM, and does so with proof Reform can be beaten.

If he loses, Labour become a lame duck government. If Labour's most popular politician can't hold back Reform, no others can claim to.

[Jeremy Gilbert @jemgilbert]

Cannot be said enough times that Starmer has consistently conducted himself with a degree of duplicity and nakedly self-serving hypocrisy that would have genuinely disgusted previous generations of politicians from across the political spectrum. Calling him ‘decent’ is moronic.

[James Heale @JAHeale]

Andy Burnham arriving at Euston station, 2026:

[Jeremy Gilbert @jemgilbert]

Spot on from @jon_trickett in @tribunemagazine: https://t.co/h6661AJta6

[James B @piercepenniless]

Wrote about the local elections for the new edition of the paper, which went to press last night (!):