Joe Batten

On Bluesky VFXer. Showreel: IMDb: He/Him

[Joe Batten @JoeBatten]

New Showreel.
https://t.co/2boD9BZTnW

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Keir Starmer could have ended child poverty, homelessness and the grotesque levels of inequality in this country.

Instead, he abandoned those in need, destroyed our civil liberties and facilitated genocide in Gaza.

That is how this Prime Minister will be remembered - and that is the legacy of moral and political bankruptcy he leaves behind.

The crises in our society are not going away. Neither are we - and we will keep fighting for a more equal, peaceful and dignified society for all.

[Mohamed Salah @MoSalah]

Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Rest in peace, David Lynch ♥️

(January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025)

[SARAH SQUIRM @SarahSquirm]

😭😭😭

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

The election of Donald Trump is a dark day for reproductive healthcare, the rights of refugees and the future of our planet.

As we speak, people are being slaughtered in Gaza and Lebanon. Our demands on our governments have not changed: stop enabling genocide and end all arms sales to Israel.

We are a global movement, made up of all faiths and backgrounds, united in our opposition to racism and hatred. We will never abandon hope in a more equal, sustainable and peaceful world.

[Dan Noall 🦑 @DanNoall]

Finally setting up a work account for Fade Out. Give us a follow if you'd like to see what trailers/ socials I've been working on 🎞️

[Fade Out Film @fade_out_films]

We love and care about independent film. Our trailers always strive to capture the unique qualities of each release in the most creative and honest way possible. If you’re a distributor of smaller films looking for exceptional and affordable trailers, we’d love to hear from you.

[Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib @RepRashida]

The rogue Israeli apartheid regime is now burning UN peacekeepers with white phosphorus and our government is doing nothing to stop them. This is a war crime.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Israel is attacking the UN in Lebanon, again. It seems the Biden admin “urging” Israel to stop without any actual consequences was ineffective, again.

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

In years to come, students in university departments around the world will be studying the propaganda embedded in this headline.

As someone who regularly lectures in sociology, journalism and media studies, I could teach an entire lesson on the title alone.

For example:

1. Treating the 4 Israeli soldiers as more important than the 23 Palestinian children (by leading the story with their deaths and just chucking in the others at the end) implies their lives are of higher value.

2. Infantilizing active duty soldiers as "teenagers" while not emphasizing the age of the schoolkids, despite many of them being demonstrably younger.

3. The classic use of the passive voice: Israelis are "killed" while Palestinians merely "die".

4. Putting scare quotes around "23 die" subtly undermines the credibility of that claim. Maybe no one died, and the Palestinians are just lying?

5. Using the word "attack" for Hezbollah actions, but choosing a more neutral, clinical word like "strike" for Israeli aggression.

6. Allowing Israeli sources to dictate the framing of the story ("Israel names teenage soldiers") etc.

7. Actually naming the Israeli soldiers, but not doing the same for the far greater number of Palestinians, again sends the message to the reader that Palestinian lives don't matter nearly as much, if at all.

It's truly incredible how much propaganda has been packed into 16 words. We are swimming in an ocean of propaganda. That's why it is crucial to deconstruct it and critically assess everything you read, see and hear.

[Joe Batten @JoeBatten]

@DanNoall I love that dancing match cut. 🔥

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

If the sight of human beings burning alive won’t stop the UK government supplying arms to Israel, what will?

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

I didn’t think we’d reach a point Netanyahu can tell us, directly, that unless the Lebanese start a civil war against Hezbollah he will make the country suffer like Gaza.

But we reached it yesterday: an open admission of intent toward war crime.

…Zero reaction from the West.

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

Finally

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

These apocalyptic scenes in Lebanon have not led to a televised national address by Keir Starmer.

Keir Starmer reserves his televised national addresses exclusively for damaged tarmac on Israeli airforce runways.

https://t.co/Fg2j32QLxJ

[The Blindboy Podcast @bbboatclub]

Irish people have been peacekeeping in southern Lebanon for so long that the local Lebanese people have full Irish accents

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Israel’s genocidal mayhem has given me a hideous understanding into the great horrors of the past.

How could so many people who regard themselves as decent, humane, ‘moderate’ become complicit in unspeakable atrocities? It’s something I’ve always wondered.

After all, only a tiny proportion of any society are actually sociopaths.

Well, this great crime of our age offers the answers.

The British media and political elites are full of people who aren’t even pretending.

Their worldview is clear. Israelis are “us”. Palestinians are “them”.

Accordingly, every Israeli life has meaning and value - it is inherently precious.

A Palestinian life is worth virtually nothing. It is less than cheap. A bag of rats drowned in a lake is likely to elicit more sympathy.

Violence against a single Israeli life - “us” - is therefore seen as intolerable and unbearable.

Endless violence against countless Palestinians, on the other hand, doesn’t even produce a genuine emotional response.

We’ve seen this tested to destruction.

It doesn’t matter what the atrocity is.

Newborns cooked alive in rubble, or left to suffocate and rot in bombed hospitals.

6 year olds shot in the head by snipers.

Terrified children deliberately blown apart in their families’ cars by tanks, the paramedics sent to save them butchered, too.

Entire family bloodlines exterminated in moments.

Detainees gang raped. Bodies thrown from roofs. Civilians riddled with bullets while trying to get food.

The worst imaginable atrocities committed over and over again, but because the victims are Palestinian, no outrage or horror or anguished demands that this must stop, whatever it takes.

There is, at best, empty handwringing and platitudes, while our government continues to arm the perpetrators.

But when an attack is launched against Israel in which not a single Israeli is killed, then there is wall to wall horror, disgust, outrage from our political and media elites.

So if you’re wondering how so many who regarded themselves as decent, modest, upstanding, morally sophisticated citizens actively made themselves complicit in all the horrors of the past you read about in books - well, now you know.

What mattered to them was who was “us” and who was “them”.

I used to passionately disagree with these elites - I work, after all, in the British media, and have now for 13 years: even hold them in contempt. But it took this genocide to make me realise:

I don’t live in the same moral universe as these people. They now disgust me: I am repulsed by them. It is what it is: my job is to be honest about my opinions, and I could pretend this isn’t how I feel, but for what moral reason?

I’m not telling you because it’s cathartic, even though it is. It’s because what I feel is felt by many others, and that matters - a lot.

Millions of people in every country, on every continent, are feeling this, and it gets stronger with every passing day,

The consequences will be felt for many, many generations.

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

For the past year, millions of us around the world have made repeated, desperate calls for a ceasefire. We demanded an end to the genocide. We warned of a disastrous regional conflict.

We were ignored.

Governments have fuelled the machinery of war. Their indifference to human life has destroyed prospects for peace and endangered us all.

All of this violence was entirely avoidable. Without urgent de-escalation, more unimaginable horror is on the horizon.

It’s time to listen to the voices of ordinary people across the globe calling for peace.

That means ending the root cause of this appalling cycle of violence: the occupation of Palestine.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

This is either a complete and total failure to contain the conflict by the Biden administration -- or this is what the White House wanted and it's the most egregious lie told to the public since WMD.

Either incompetence or duplicity--no 3rd option.
Malevolent in either case.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

What happened to this being a war against Hezbollah?