gio de biase

[George Tsakraklides @99blackbaloons]

“This absurd  civilization has become nothing but a cult of self-destruction. It is made up of people forced to do jobs they don’t like, told to buy things they don’t need, emit carbon from forests they never saw, and genocide people whom they’ve never met”

From my book THE BIOLOGY OF COLLAPSE

[Georgina Hollifield 💚 @sp4rkl3jumpr0p3]

We need a shorter work week so people have more time to take care of themselves

I honestly think this is quite patronising and doesn't really address the real reasons people are not moving their bodies regularly

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Swiss farmers planted flowers between their crops and watched pest damage drop by over half. The UK is now running the same trial across 15 farms. The reason this works is embarrassingly simple.

A Swiss study on winter wheat found that fields with wildflower strips had 40 to 53% fewer leaf beetle pests than fields without. Crop damage dropped 61%.

The mechanism is simple. Wildflowers feed hoverflies, lacewings, parasitic wasps, ladybugs, and ground beetles. Those insects eat the aphids, beetle larvae, and caterpillars that farmers would otherwise spray for. A few meters of wildflowers hosts an unpaid pest control crew that would jump at the chance to whoop some aphid ass.

In apple orchards where no insecticides had been used for five years, plots with wildflower alleyways had 9.2% damaged fruit. Control plots without flowers had 32.5%.

The UK is now running a five-year trial across 15 farms placing 6-meter flower strips through the middle of fields, not just at the edges, because the beneficial insects can't reach the center of a large field otherwise.

This works the same way in a backyard vegetable garden as it does on a commercial farm. Plant native flowering species near your tomatoes, beans, and squash. The pests still show up, but the predators show up too.

Study doi: 20151369

[Atlanta Rey 📚 @areyoflight]

Neoliberalism breaks human bodies and minds. It is also wrecking the planet.

Humans are treated like objects, not people, under this system. The planet treated like an endless resource.

Humans are deemed useless if we’re not breaking our bodies to make money for the system.

[Prof Zenkus @anthonyzenkus]

The problem with Jeff Bezos' ideology is that it's based on a false premise. The idea that "six thousand years ago someone invented the plow" is based on a faulty belief that ancient humans functioned as individuals. They did not.

Ancient humans were collectivist. The likelihood that one individual invented anything is slim to none.

This is the myth of the genius.

Archeological evidence demonstrates that for hundreds of thousands of years, early humans congregated around communal gathering places, like the fire, and engaged in problem solving and passing on of shared learning down through generations.

Additionally, the plow (and tools like it) were developed by humans in Mesopotamia, Europe, Egypt, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa as well as other places - not in one place by one person. This is known as parallel development.

Believing that the plow was invented by one genius is like believing language was invented by one person. It is a silly myth and represents the projection of current moral standards onto past events.

This is called 'presentism' and it is both an uncritical and ignorant way to view history.

Social learning was the main driver of human evolution. Collectivism is how we both survived and progressed as a species.

The myth of the genius is an example of uncritical analysis and a flawed lens used to justify the grotesque hoarding of wealth and obscene inequality that is currently tearing at the social fabric our species.

It needs to be thrown on the trash heap of history.

[Ikkyu Sojun @ConciousLabRat]

RAND, Atlantic Council, and others openly blueprint the breakup of Russia into “democratic” vassal states, ripe for the same looting Western capital enjoyed in the 1990s.

Ukraine is the bloody dress rehearsal.

The empire doesn’t want a strong, sovereign Russia controlling those vast resources but it wants manageable fragments it can plunder at will.

Sad, cynical, and increasingly obvious to anyone paying attention.

[Rakesh Kumar @Rakeshhkumaar]

After Guatemala (1954), Iran (1953), Congo (1961), Chile (1973), and Venezuela (2026), any socialist who thinks the West will allow socialism through liberal democracy is dreaming.

The West loves democracy until people vote against the interests of capital.

Then come the coups, sanctions, and “humanitarian” lies.

And they still ask, “Why don’t socialists come to power democratically?”

[Harriet Williamson @harriepw]

Corbyn's spokesperson said: "Keir Starmer ends as he started: with lies.
"Corbyn turned Labour into the largest party in Europe, built and funded by half a million people who believed in social justice and peace.
"Starmer swapped political principles for corporate donors - and leaves behind a legacy of broken pledges, grotesque inequality and complicity in genocide. If that isn’t moral bankruptcy, then what is?"

[Alan Gibbons @mygibbo]

The 'decent man' myth.

Starmer is anything but.

[Andrew Feinstein @andrewfeinstein]

Keir Starmer is gone: the most mendacious, dishonest, authoritarian, warmongering politician of the modern era, & the bar is very low. I hope he soon resigns as our MP too so that we can elect someone who is honest, accountable, democratic & honourable, someone who represents the people of Holborn & St. Pancras rather than his billionaire donors, corporate paymasters, Netanyahu & Trump

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

Spent 2 hours in a small public park in Barcelona. The adults/parents were eating and drinking (in a covered area before you mention the weather!) while the kids were running around a well kept pond and playing on a basketball court and football pitch. Dozens of kids.

The social value generated by an ordinary space like this, over decades, is incalculable: social capital, better physical and mental health, biodiversity.

With the occasional exception we don’t have this stuff in PFI-Serco-Capita Britain. Because of our model, dominant since around 1980, this would either be an empty landbanked shi*thole, or ‘student’ flats.

We can do a lot better. Part of getting there is that the left needs to stop talking just about redistribution and more about how value is created - which includes *infrastructure* like this.

Maximising broader social and economic value for a space like this - over a century - is a very different proposition to flogging everything to a highest bidder at any given moment.

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

They'll call him a "decent man." He is not.

He oversaw one of the most aggressive assaults on British civil liberties in generations, all to protect Israel's genocide and Britain's participation in the crime of all crimes.

He shouldn't be resigning. He should be in The Hague

[mike ☭ 🇵🇸🔻 @__mike91]

the labour party effectively ending online anonymity just before they hand over everything on a silver platter to reform continues the long tradition of liberals working in lockstep with fascists.

[Ikkyu Sojun @ConciousLabRat]

Governments aren’t protecting “teens” but they’re terrified of uncontrolled speech.

The surveillance state grows precisely because the emperor’s naked and the people are noticing.

Parents, not bureaucrats, should raise their kids.

System-level ID checks are the tool of tyrants who’ve lost the argument and now demand to monitor the dissent.

The empire’s grip slips fastest where information flows freely.

This UK thing is about control, not safety.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray, an expert in maritime law, says the UK has engaged in a blatant act of piracy – and a self-sabotaging one at that – in seizing a ship passing through the Strait of Dover.

He adds: "It is astonishing that at this moment, when navigation of the Strait of Hormuz is arguably the single most live question in all of international politics, the UK has decided to abandon the principle of free transit through straits.

"It takes hypocrisy to an entire new level – it truly beggars belief – that the day after closing the Dover Strait to Russian shipping, Starmer issued a joint statement with Germany, France and Italy insisting on 'Freedom of Navigation' in the strait of Hormuz."

More here: https://t.co/YHOGSlvQlh

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

The UK is doing the 73 year old Meme.

Things never change.

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

There’s a clear pattern here: removing trial by jury for a whole layer of cases; blocking Cenk Uyghur and Hasan Piker from entering the country; the Filton 4 being sentenced as terrorists but not charged as terrorists (yes, really); a British citizen in Russia having his citizenship removed without being charged with anything; stuff like this - constantly.

It’s becoming so normal now. There’s a great phrase ‘turnkey tyranny’: you might like the people doing this today, or despise those on the receiving end, but tomorrow it WILL be different. The end point is very obvious. And these tools, and this trajectory, in the wrong hands, is quite a terrifying thought.

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

You created them. Every single one of those NEETs is a product of your former party's choices. The ones you made while you were in Cabinet.

Adult education and apprenticeship spending: 25% lower in 2024-25 than when your former party took office (IFS, Nuffield Foundation).

Publicly funded adult further education courses: fell from 5.4 million in 2004 to 1.7 million by the time you left office. A 70% reduction, the majority of it on your watch (IFS, January 2026).

College funding per student: 11% lower in real terms than 2010. Sixth-form funding per student: 23% lower (IFS, January 2025).

Adults taking qualifications at GCSE level and below: down 50%. At A-level equivalent: down 33% (IFS, Nuffield Foundation).

Intermediate apprenticeship starts, the entry-level route for young people without degrees: collapsed from 200,000 in 2010 to fewer than 50,000 by 2020. Your government did that (IFS).

Youth services: cut by 70% since 2010 (Mind, Big Mental Health Report 2025) .

You had 14 years to invest in British young people. You cut adult education by 25%. You cut FE courses by 70%. You cut college funding. You cut sixth-form funding. You cut apprenticeships for the people who needed them most. You cut youth services. Then you left office and started tweeting bollocks about NEETs as though they materialised from thin air.

The £5,000 Reeves is offering is a reimbursement of the Immigration Skills Charge, a levy your own government introduced in 2017 to fund domestic skills training. You created the charge. You collected the money. And you still cut the training budget by 25%.

And these visas are for high-skilled workers: doctors, engineers, specialists in fields where your 14 years of cuts left a workforce gap so deep that British employers cannot fill it domestically. They are not competing with NEETs. They are filling holes your government drilled.

You were Home Secretary. You were Attorney General. You sat in Cabinet while all of this happened. You do not get to set the house on fire and then complain about the smoke.

Sources:
Adult education and apprenticeship spending 25% below 2010 levels: Institute for Fiscal Studies / Nuffield Foundation, October 2022 (https://t.co/ptZIX5c4b8)

Adult FE courses fell from 5.4 million to 1.7 million (70% reduction): Institute for Fiscal Studies, January 2026 (https://t.co/ViEuIX7qIj)

College funding per student 11% lower, sixth-form funding 23% lower: Institute for Fiscal Studies, Annual Report on Education Spending in England, January 2025, cited in House of Commons Library (https://t.co/c6qLKyCyjA)

Adults taking Level 2 qualifications down 50%, Level 3 down 33%: Institute for Fiscal Studies / Nuffield Foundation (https://t.co/1veNy8CJcY)

Intermediate apprenticeship starts collapsed from 200,000 to fewer than 50,000: Institute for Fiscal Studies / Nuffield Foundation, same source as above

Youth services cut by 70% since 2010: Mind, Big Mental Health Report 2025 (https://t.co/zTQbfpIdQq)

Immigration Skills Charge Regulations 2017: (https://t.co/IcciQZPTer)

Skills policy and apprenticeship data: House of Commons Library (https://t.co/trQjEw6FEZ)

Immigration Skills Charge parliamentary debate: Hansard, 21 March 2017 (https://t.co/yD8OvAthBl)

[Waqas🔶️ @m0w4q45]

Belfast, the league table nobody’s torching a bus over:

🔥 West Belfast 1 in 3 children growing up in poverty. Not after one knife attack. Every day, for years.
🔥 NHS waiting lists the worst in the entire UK. Half a million people in the queue. A man waited six years for a new knee.
🔥 45,000 kids’ families docked by the two-child cap while the politicians look the other way.

Now what does Nigel Farage talk about? Not that. Never that.

He talks about the bus stop, the small boat, the bloke who doesn’t look like you. Because while a third of west Belfast’s children go without, Farage has trousered over a million quid in “second jobs” since the last election nearly £1.2m a year from GB News alone, £189k to flog gold bars, fifty grand recording birthday videos on his phone. Highest-earning MP in the Commons. Then he routes it through his own company so he pays corporation tax instead of the income tax the rest of us cough up and still managed to file £380k of it late, 17 times over.

That’s the trick, isn’t it. Point at the poorest man on the street so nobody looks at the richest man on the telly. A hungry child in Ardoyne doesn’t pay his GB News salary. Outrage does.

Real patriots feed the kids in their own constituency. Grifters just sell them someone to blame at two grand an hour.

[Malcolm Reavell @malcolm_reavell]

The media economic narrative is a broken record of soundbites, slogans, and tropes which we are expected and conditioned to accept without question. Policies of austerity are not economic necessity, they are policy choices designed to preserve the wealth and power of the few.