Michael Marsden

Free speech. Politically disorientated. Liverpool FC.

[Boaz Arad 博雅 @aradboaz]

הפאקפארייד הוא הגרסה הברלינאית האלטרנטיבית למצעד האהבה: מסיבת רחוב הרבה פחות נוצצת, עם משאיות שמפגיזות טקנו אגרסיבי במיוחד, שמושכת אליה פאנקיסטים, אנרכיסטים ועוד. וזה מה שהיה למארגנים שלה להגיד בתגובה לתהייה של אחד המשתתפים מדוע אין דגלי פלסטין במצעד

[Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins]

The University of Cambridge can boast 126 Nobel Prizes. That’s more than any other university in the world except Harvard, and it does it on an endowment that is one twentieth the endowment of Harvard. In the Nobel ranking, Cambridge beats MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Oxford, and Yale (in that order). Cambridge, the university of Newton, Hawking, Russell, Wittgenstein, Moore, Keynes, Crick, Sanger, Kendrew, Perutz, Rutherford, Chadwick, Turing, Maxwell, Brenner, the list goes on and on, Cambridge is beyond question one of the very greatest universities in the world. The list of immense distinction continues to the present day. It is tragic, and deeply unfair, that the reputation of this truly great university should suffer at the hands one unfortunate anomaly, the Department of Education.

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Antisemitism on here (and other platforms) seems to get worse every day. Today has been a bad one. The emptiest vessels make the most noise.

Love to my diaspora Jewish friends (the Israeli ones have F-35s, they’re fine). You’re not in this alone.

[Ben Green @BenGreenJeru]

Incredible from Werder Bremen.

The Bundesliga side paid homage to murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin today. On the second Hebrew anniversary of his death.

Werder Bremen’s support for the Israeli hostages held in Gaza remains hugely impressive.

🙌🇮🇱

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

For more than a generation, Hamas’s indoctrination of Gaza’s children has been kept to the margins of discussion. This video shows the voices that debate too often excludes: Gazans themselves, interviewed in recent weeks, describing their own experiences.

They speak of discovering that Hamas had lied to them. They explain how children are drawn into the organisation through money and false promises, with armed coercion never far behind. Young lives are expendable to Hamas.

Their testimony exposes the direct relationship between disarmament and deradicalisation. Armed Hamas control protects the teachers and preachers who sustain its recruitment system. Gaza’s children cannot receive an education that prepares them for life beyond Hamas while Hamas's recruitment machinery remains protected by guns.

Disarming Hamas is a civilian necessity. Gaza’s future depends on dismantling a system that recruits its children, teaches them hatred and sacrifices them for the survival of the organisation.

[Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins]

I am bewildered, and not very impressed, by the visceral, naked, irrational hatred spat out by some defenders of Jason Arday. If a Cambridge professor is accused of being an unqualified charlatan, the accusation might be racially motivated. On the other hand it might not, depending on the evidence. The correct question to ask is not, ”What is the colour of his skin” but “Is it in fact true that he is an unqualified charlatan?” Please examine the evidence before leaping to the assumption of racism.
As for the idea that journalists “piled in on him” and “hounded him to his death”, most attacks were against Cambridge University. Jason himself was widely regarded as an unfortunate victim of foolish promotion way beyond his ability to cope. In appointing him to a professorship for which he was manifestly unqualified – in ludicrously describing him as “the best in the world” – certain senior members of the university showed a level of patronising condescension towards black people that could fairly be described as racism, while at the same time making him tragically vulnerable to such attacks as came his way.

[OurFightUk @OurFightUk]

🕯️ For nearly three years—since 7 October—hundreds of us have been protesting and counter-protesting across the country: outside town halls, courts, embassies, Downing Street, Parliament, and more besides.

Look at the photos from many of those events and you will see looking back at you the unmistakable presence of Elliott Franks, an incredible photographer, and a wonderful human being.

And sadly, a man who we learned last week has recently passed.

You won't see Elliott's face in these photos because it was Elliott who was behind the camera.

But you will see his indelible imprint in every smile, cheer, and clenched fist. When activists were being asked to turn out yet again because there had been another murder, another firebomb, another hostage released or returned dead, another boycott, Elliott had a unique way of injecting the spark necessary to make them feel that it was worth their time.

That they were not fighting and losing.

That though small in number, they were making a difference.

Each smile in these pictures is a smile that you brought out, dear Elliott.

And each person in these pictures is truly honoured to have known you.

For all of us in these pictures, and many, many more, your memory is truly a blessing.

Pictures: Elliott Franks
Picture of Elliott: IG: JavidClicksLondon

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

This. ⬇️

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

This is what making peace looks like.

In 1973, Golda Meir was prime minister when Anwar Sadat launched the Yom Kippur War against Israel.

Four years later, the two sat face-to-face in Jerusalem… and laughed.

She smiled: “You always called me an old lady.”

Then she softened: “As a grandmother to a grandfather,” and handed him a gift for his newborn granddaughter.

By then, Meir was out of office. Menachem Begin was prime minister and would later sign the treaty.

But this was the first time the woman who had led Israel through that war and the man who had launched it sat together as human beings.

Two leaders who had commanded armies against each other.
Decades of blood, rejection, and vows to destroy Israel.
And here they were, bonding over their grandchildren.

The peace that followed was far from perfect.
But there has been no further war between the two countries.

Enemies can choose: no more war.
History is not destiny.

[Josh Howie @joshxhowie]

If we cease to be able to take the piss out of Islam, or any religion, this country will no longer be this country.

A brave man going about his day, now finding himself fighting for Britain.

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Before 7th October, Hamas and their allied groups had roughly the same number of troops as the British Army.

[Omid Djalili @omid9]

In years to come movies will be made about those awful nights in January and the aftermath. Such mass atrocities can never be covered in one documentary. Non-Iranians will not believe that a government could do such a thing to its own people. But the evidence is overwhelming ⬇️

[James Pearce @JamesPearceLFC]

Ten years ago!

[Hadley Freeman @HadleyFreeman]

Suicide should spark sympathy. But the implication that it will guarantee absolution and quasi deification is a really dangerous message to send

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

Søren Kierkegaard on the Importance of Walking

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

The death of reading puts the world in a perilous place

https://t.co/jfpRpfBm7s

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

The repellent sight of Jewish terrorists attacking Palestinian families - as i have been saying over the last 5 yrs - is not only a crime but a degradation of the Israeli state itself.

US ambassador accuses Israeli settlers of terrorism in rare rebuke

https://t.co/m50bs4eK6w

[leekern @leekern13]

Bit of fun

Israel 🇮🇱
Ireland 🇮🇪

[The Away Fans @theawayfans]

Peter Crouch on an awkward moment after joining Liverpool in 2005:

"When I first arrived, I spent my first week in a hotel. I told the lads in training, 'Honestly, she's beautiful. I think I've got a chance.'

Jamie Carragher called the other players over and said, 'Tell them, Crouchie.'

So I did. I told them I'd spent all day thinking about her...

That's when they told me the receptionist was Xabi Alonso's wife, my new teammate."

What a way to introduce yourself to your new teammates. 😭

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

Years ago I wrote that so-called progressivism, though partially descended from liberalism, is an enormous threat to it. To the point of patricide.
I rest my case.