Philip McAleenan

Award winning innovator in workplace safety.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

IN PRAISE OF FRANCESCA ALBANESE

There is a question that visits me in the small hours, when sleep will not come and the mind turns over old stones. The question is this: “What would I have done in the 1930s, on the morning after Kristallnacht?"

Not what I say I would have done. Not what I hope I would have done. But what would I actually have done—when the trains began to run, when the neighbours grew quiet, when the cost of decency became the loss of everything?

Most of us, I think, would have done little. Not from malice. From fear. From the soft, creeping conviction that someone else will speak, that the situation is complex, that we must be 'reasonable'. Lest we forget, the ordinary is the extraordinary's alibi. And how we have clung to that alibi! How we still cling to it!

And then, every once in a terrible while, someone appears who does not cling. Someone who steps forward when others step back. Someone who speaks the name of the thing when everyone else is busy naming something else.

Francesca Albanese is that someone.

She stands before the world—alone, unarmed, armed only with law and language and a rare courage—and she says what the centrists will not say, what the foreign ministries will not say, what the editorial boards will not say. She says: "This is a genocide. And we are watching it happen."

Do not tell me that is hyperbole. Do not tell me the term is contested. She has not used it lightly. She has used it as a physician arrives scientifically at a diagnosis—not to wound, but to warn. Not to inflame, but to name.

And for that, they have come for her. Oh, how they have come for her. Smears. Investigations. Vicious editorials. Frozen bank accounts. Dispossession of the only apartment she had ever owned. The machinery of the respectable turned to crush her. Because the respectable cannot abide what she represents: a mirror held up to their complicity.

Let us, once again, travel back to the 1930s. Back to the few who stood up when the trains began to run laden with Jewish people.

There was Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese consul in Bordeaux. He defied his own government. He signed thousands of visas, by hand, for hours, until his fingers bled. He saved more lives than Schindler. And he died penniless, disgraced, erased.

There was a German officer in Warsaw named Wilm Hosenfeld. He hid a Jewish pianist in the rubble. He did not save thousands. He saved one. But that one—Władysław Szpilman—carried the memory. And memory is "the only haven from which we cannot be expelled."

There was Raoul Wallenberg. There were the villagers of Le Chambon. There were the anonymous, the quiet, the furious few who said: “Not on my watch.”

Francesca Albanese is their heir. Not because she carries a gun. Not because she hides refugees in her basement. But because she does something equally dangerous in a world that has perfected the art of not seeing. She sees. And she speaks.

She does not speak as a diplomat. Thank Goodness she doesn't! Diplomats have given us the language of "there are arguments on both sides" and "restraint" and "proportionality." Diplomatic language is the perfumed grave of moral clarity. No, she speaks as a jurist. As a human being. As a woman who has looked into the abyss and refused to call it a "complex geopolitical landscape".

Edna O'Brien once described a character who "had the recklessness of those who have already lost everything worth losing." Francesca Albanese has not lost everything. She has her dignity, her office, her voice, her family. But she has calculated the cost of speaking truth to power. And she has decided that that cost is infinitely less than the cost of silence.

What is that cost? Let us name it. She has been called antisemitic—she, who stands on the ground of international law forged in the ashes of Auschwitz and the fires of Nuremberg. She has been called a conspiracy theorist—she, who cites every source, every footnote, every UN resolution. She has been called naive—she, who understands better than most the machinery of realpolitik.

These accusations are not arguments. They are the spittle of the threatened. Because Francesca Albanese threatens something very precious to the powerful: the right to commit atrocity without being named.

Friends, the 1930s did not arrive with jackboots and pogroms on day one. They arrived in small increments. With "reasonable" restrictions. With "proportional" measures. With the silence of the respectable.

We tell ourselves that we would have been different. That we would have been Sousa Mendes. That we would have been Wallenberg. But most of us, I fear, would have been the neighbours who later said, "I didn't know."

Francesca Albanese knows. And she refuses to pretend otherwise.

So let us praise her. Not with statues or awards she does not seek. But with something harder: with our own refusal to look away. With our own voices, raised in places that are safe for us but dangerous for her. With our own bodies, if it comes to that.

A brave woman, who was injured while demonstrating outside a US nuclear military base in 1982, the infamous Greenham Common, had told me that "the heart is a hunter for what it cannot have." But I say the heart is a hunter for what it will not lose. And what we will not lose is the memory of those who stood up when standing up cost everything.

Francesca Albanese is standing up now. In our time. In our name. Under our indifferent sky.

Let us stand with her.

Not tomorrow. Not when it is safe. Now.

[Extract from a speech in Athens on Sunday 3rd May 2026]

[Jacobin @jacobin]

Happy International Workers’ Day!

To kick it off, here’s a thread of #MayDay posters from around the world.

Let's start in Austria, with this poster from 1891.

[Pheebs @galpalpheebs]

“Do you want to die alone? or with your family?”

Journalist Radwan Mortada recounted the story of 62-year-old martyr Ahmad Tormos from the town of Tallousa, south Lebanon, who was killed yesterday after receiving a direct call from the Israeli occupation army giving him an impossible choice: die alone, or die with those around him.

Without hesitation, Ahmad chose to die alone and save his family. He drove away from them so the strike would not hit their home. Moments later, an Israeli drone fired two missiles at his car, killing him.

Mortada noted that similar “death calls” have reportedly been made to others in southern Lebanon, where men chose to walk toward death alone rather than allow their loved ones to be targeted.

Ahmad had previously lost his son Hassan, who was martyred two years earlier.

[Philip McAleenan @expertease428]

@Palestinedaily1 .

[Ryan Rozbiani @RyanRozbiani]

Powerful Message from UN's Francesca Albanese to Protestors

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

❗️ALERT❗️I just got report of @gbsumudflotilla surrounded by 20 vessels as they reached 70 nautical miles off Gaza coast.

[Ounka @OunkaOnX]

Your visibility is the only guarantee of the Flotilla’s safety. Keep watching — you are their hope and protection

[Tehran Tadhg @TadhgHickey]

Craven Western leaders. I know you're so racist & captured you're happy to let Palestinians be murdered. But now your own citizens are under attack. Will you still stay silent?

[Philip McAleenan @expertease428]

Ndlovu Youth Choir - Bohemian Rhapsody (Official Music Video) isiZulu ve... https://t.co/LVsWwzPfLN via @YouTube

[Tehran Tadhg @TadhgHickey]

The @gbsumudflotilla sets sail tomorrow with a strong Irish contingent 🇮🇪 It also includes a legal suppprt boat filled with human rights lawyers from Ireland, South Africa, Canada & Britain. The boat is named after eminent 🇵🇸 journalist, Shireen Abu Ahkleh who was assassinated by the occupation. Wish us well. Humanity united 💚

[Suppressed News. @SuppressedNws]

⚡️🇺🇳JUST IN: All 15 members of the UN Security Council, except for the US, issued a joint statement that included the following points.

The statement comes as Trump is holding talks today alongside Tony Blair and Jared Kushner for the "post-war Gaza plan".

Joint statement:
—
We express our deep concern about the presence of famine in Gaza Governorate.

We call on "israel" to immediately reverse its decision to expand its operation in Gaza.

Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately and international law respected.

The use of starvation as a weapon of war is prohibited under international law.

Approximately 41,000 children are at risk of death due to malnutrition in Gaza.

We call for an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

We call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas.

[Luke Devlin @geopoetic]

Paul Laverty's post-release statement shows his legal training and deep humanity. He must have run rings around them in the police station. Not a hint of terrorism, violent intent or antisemitism on display here. Surely the charge cannot stand.

[Tehran Tadhg @TadhgHickey]

GLOBAL STRIKE — 21 AUGUST 2025
Amr Waked @amrwaked has put his career, safety, and freedom on the line to back Gaza. If he can risk everything, what’s your excuse?

🔴This is not symbolic. This is a worldwide stoppage. No work. No trade. No business as usual.

[Philip McAleenan @expertease428]

@yousef_ki1 .

[Philip McAleenan @expertease428]

@yousef_ki1 .

[Philip McAleenan @expertease428]

@yousef_ki1 .

[Philip McAleenan @expertease428]

@ns123abc That’s one perspective, another is that Amazon plans to take 3.5 billion from 14000 families.
Amazon, if it was a country would be in the top ten wealthiest in the world.
Companies have an obligation to act in the interests of ALL their stakeholders.
https://t.co/AsxjlOlNLD

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

Apparently Fairytale of New York by The Pogues with the wonderful Kirsty MacColl isn't well known outside of Ireland and the UK (not even in New York!)
If you're one of my international friends who doesn't know it, you're in for a treat for the next four minutes:

[Philip McAleenan @expertease428]

@bridrua It’s really taking off Brid. A great transformation

[Philip McAleenan @expertease428]

@st1139 @ni_pictures @MagnumPhotos Dr Jonathan Barton. From his 1982 book , A History of Belfast