Olivia
Online
Paul Egan
@roscelt
Father to two wee tornadoes, high tech geek (Science & IT), Rossie ...
Ireland
Joined June 2009
201 Following
46 Followers
1.7K Posts
Pinned Tweet
https://t.co/An60zCjTWX Compliments to The Washington Post for an excellent online article with visual illustrations clearly explaining the benefits of social distancing #socialdistance #COVID19 #WeApplaud #HSE
The question “Does Israel have the right to exist?” is meant as a trap – and one directed at what the media like to call the “hard” or “far” left (very much in scare quotes). It requires that the interviewee concede at the start of the conversation the very ground they are trying to challenge.
This is what the BBC’s Nick Robinson was up to in demanding that Zack Polanski affirm “Israel’s right to exist” in an interview with the Green party leader last week. It was a classic of the genre. Note Robinson’s heavy framing of the question:
“What we’re talking about is whether a state created by the United Nations, in the aftermath of pogroms and Holocaust, the worst act of racism in the history of the planet, has a right to exist or not. This is a question you have always dodged.”
That’s very much in the “How many times a day do you beat your wife?” tradition of interviewing. In a post on X, Robinson again challenged Polanski: “Why is this a difficult question to answer?”
Both, let us note in passing, are Jewish. But only one is assumed to accrue moral standing in the exchange from their views about Israel.
We could easily turn the question around against Robinson:
“Do you think the state of Israel – as a state illegally occupying and oppressing Palestinians for decades and committing the crime of apartheid, as determined by the world's highest court, and one deemed to be committing genocide according to a consensus of legal and human rights authorities as well as genocide scholars – has a right to exist?
“Did apartheid South Africa have a right exist?”
The answer to Robinson’s question is very simple. States come and go. They don’t have a right to exist, peoples do. And importantly, according to international law, people enjoy the same, universal rights. Which is exactly why Israel as a state committing the crime of apartheid – as ruled by the International Court of Justice in 2024 – has no right to exist as it is currently constituted.
Polanski responded with the entirely reasonable assertion: “Israelis and Palestinians should have equal rights in a democracy.” Which was the solution accepted by the international community for black and white South Africans, post-apartheid.
And yet Robinson keeps interrupting Polanski, treating his sensible, moral position – one in line with his party’s new official policy that “Zionism is racism”, as determined by its members – as though it is proof of extremism, of antisemitism. As if Polanski is being slippery by refusing to accept what is, in fact, Robinson’s extreme premise.
Robinson is arguing that, even after Israel has been judged to be an apartheid state by the world’s highest court and to be committing genocide according to leading authorities on the subject, it should have an inviolable right to carry on exactly as it is.
Robinson’s implied position is that Palestinians and their supporters should simply shut up and live with the fact that Israel has been slaughtering and maiming hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s people. Nothing to see here, is Robinson’s message.
So who is the real extremist, who the real racist: Zack Polanski or Nick Robinson?
This is an extract from my latest article How the BBC sets a trap to make sure leftwing politicians never get a fair hearing. Find a link to the rest in the reply post ⬇️
It took a little longer than expected, but we have finished the Gaza Geolocation Map. Every clip in the archive whose location we know is placed on a map of Gaza, so you can see where the footage was filmed.
It includes:
35,200+ videos and photos placed on the map.
Sources and the original post for every clip
Node map links & suggested leads
Our built-in AI iris can navigate the map
Fully searchable index
Filters by area, date, type of attack and precision
UN satellite damage survey layer (UNOSAT)
Built-in reverse image search links for each node
Downloadable dataset (CSV, GeoJSON and Google Earth)
It can be accessed here: https://t.co/4irNy85XQW
Please re-share and help us break out of the algorithm prison.
We will keep placing more of the footage as our researchers work through the rest of the archive.
Thank you to https://t.co/c8bmQF2iME, GeoConfirmed, @AbuLocation and @NemoAnno, whose geolocation work is credited on the map.
God bless all those who sacrificed their lives to get this footage out.
Join our telegram:
https://t.co/T128rcARCl
Follow our backup accounts:
@ZionismExposedx
&
@IsraelExposedAr
CNN will never show you this : An Israeli settler pointing a gun at a Palestinian farmer.
"This land is mine now. Get out. Never come back"
The farmer's family worked that land for generations.
The settler flew in from Eastern Europe.
The father of Shani Louk, who was murdered at the Nova Festival on October 7th, alleges that the Likud knew about the attack already at 4:45 AM (officially no one knew until 6:29) and that one of the ministers, Miri Regev, had her daughter rescued and left everyone else to die.
@EwanMacKenna @FAIreland We couldn’t agree more with you.
Out team represents the 🇮🇪 people…
Not the the corrupt FIFA & UEFA organisations they pander to.
Let them be haunted for ever more. @hotpress #freepalestine
THIS IS NUCLEAR 🚨🇮🇱
Netanyahu JUST announced Israel will REVOKE citizenship from Israelis who expose IDF crimes abroad.
He cited the leaked video of IDF soldiers caught r*ping Palestinians with dogs and the latest documentary of IDF whistleblowers exposing crimes in Gaza.
¿Cómo reaccionarias tu si los colonos sionistas vinieran a tu casa para pegarte y robartela?
¿Y si además, cuando te defiendes, viniese el ejercito de Israel a atacarte con sus armas y apoyar a los colonos?
Pues así nace la resistencia Palestina.
The top 3 tunes on iTunes Ireland right now!!!
W/ @macklemore & Aaron Rowe!
Are ye listening to the people @FAIreland @IrelandFootball ????
STOP THE FUCKING GAMES.
Meet the owner of the stadium that got Macklemore kicked off tour. Those two women were arrested and charged for prostitution for giving Bob a handy and a bj but billionaire Bob walked away Scot free. It’s time everyone was reminded about what Bob got caught doing.
Hi LoveHolidays - why does no human answer your Support chat or phone lines? I have tried for over 1 hour now & I am left on hold by your Support service.
@loveholidays
What is it that Israelis have yo do to stop the boycott?
Roddy Collins: “ They have to stop slaughtering people in Gaza, for a stater ”
I’m loving Roddie 😍
Caroline Lucas of the Green Party reckons that Water needs to be Renationalised.
RT if you know it has to be.
Hey in all fairness, if I was an 80-year-old fat fuck, riddled with dementia, while wearing a leg brace, a piss bag, shoe lifts & a full diaper, I probably wouldn’t be able to walk a straight line either. However, I could easily be an astronaut.
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]
![yanisvaroufakis's tweet photo. 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]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HHsnlr9WIAEr4Cw.jpg)
Brothers & Sisters of The World, must unite against Zionism.
إخوتي وأخواتي في العالم، يجب أن نتوحد ضد الصهيونية.
Brüder und Schwestern der Welt, wir müssen uns gegen den Zionismus vereinen.
Frères et sœurs du monde, nous devons nous unir contre le sionisme.
Hermanos y hermanas del mundo, debemos unirnos contra el sionismo.
Братья и сёстры мира, мы должны объединиться против сионизма.
世界の兄弟姉妹よ、シオニズムに対して団結しなければならない。
世界兄弟姐妹们，必须团结起来反对犹太复国主义。
���계의 형제자매 여러분, 시온주의에 맞서 단결해야 합니다.
برادران و خواهران جهان، باید علیه صهیونیسم متحد شویم.
Dünyanın Kardeşleri ve Kızkardeşleri, Siyonizme karşı birleşmeliyiz.
Hindi: विश्व के भाइयों और बहनों, हमें सियोनवाद के खिलाफ एकजुट होना चाहिए।
🚨 BREAKING NEWS: Putin: "I want the ordinary citizens of Western countries to hear me."
"You are being persistently told that all your current difficulties are the result of hostile actions by vicious Russia, and that you must pay for the fight against a mythical Russian threat out of your own pockets. All of this is a lie."
"The truth is that the problems you are facing now are the result of years of actions by the ruling elites of your own countries... their mistakes, short-sightedness, and ambition. They do not think about how to improve your lives; they are obsessed with their own selfish interests and excessive profits." - Vladimir Putin
Let me know what you think,
and SHARE THIS so that others may too.
THIS NEEDS TO GO VIRAL,
THE WORLD NEEDS TO HEAR THIS!
Zohran on CBS: " I think what we can see is that a democratic socialist politics is one that should be judged on its delivery, like any ideology ... I think that this is a politics that can flourish anywhere because, frankly, there is only one majority in this country — that's the working class and it's time we have a politics that puts them at the heart of what it is that we're pursuing and not as part of the appendix."
I’m receiving a number of press inquiries to defend myself against the “antisemite” smear. I’m not doing any of those.
Anyone who defends a state or its ideology that has enabled its soldiers to gleefully snipe dead thousands of Palestinian children or gang rape Palestinian prisoners to death ALL ON CAMERA should be on trial, not me or anyone who dares speak out. Those who defend this genocide and occupation are worse than the apologists of any monstrous regime or actor in history because these crimes have been filmed for the world to see, and are well documented by every human rights organization in the world. Call me what you want. My family and people’s blood is on your hands, and your tongues will one day testify against you.
Mamdani: When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich
Well, today we're taxing the rich...
Last Seen Users on Sotwe
Most Popular Users
Elon Musk 
@elonmusk
241.5M followers
Barack Obama
@barackobama
118.9M followers
Cristiano Ronaldo
@cristiano
114.6M followers
Donald J. Trump
@realdonaldtrump
111.8M followers
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
107.1M followers
Rihanna
@rihanna
98.7M followers
NASA
@nasa
92.3M followers
Justin Bieber
@justinbieber
91.8M followers
KATY PERRY
@katyperry
90.1M followers
Taylor Swift
@taylorswift13
84M followers
Lady Gaga
@ladygaga
75.5M followers
Virat Kohli
@imvkohli
73.5M followers
Kim Kardashian
@kimkardashian
70.9M followers
YouTube
@youtube
68.8M followers
Neymar Jr
@neymarjr
66.6M followers
Bill Gates
@billgates
65.3M followers
Selena Gomez
@selenagomez
63.1M followers
The Ellen Show
@theellenshow
62.2M followers
CNN
@cnn
61.7M followers
X
@x
60.7M followers
✨
⭐
💫