clarkycat

Hospitalised for approaching perfection

[Alaa From Gaza @alaafromgaza92]

I no longer get angry when I see people glorifying October 7 and calling it a great victory. These days, I just laugh, sometimes bitterly, and remember an old Arab saying: “The one being beaten with the stick is not the same as the one counting the blows.”

And for those who took my previous posts to mean that I condemned October 7 simply because of the suffering it brought upon Gaza, or because it failed to achieve its intended goals, let me be clear: My objection is not merely to the consequences. It is also to the actions themselves.

I believe wholeheartedly in the justice of the Palestinian cause and our people’s right to freedom and self-determination. But a just cause does not make every means of pursuing it justifiable. War crimes do not become acceptable simply because they are committed in the name of liberation.

The justice of our cause should never be used to excuse injustice committed in its name.

[toomas hendrik ilves @IlvesToomas]

A public execution live-streamed.

I can't find words to describe this Medieval era meets the 21st Century tech age, but that aside from that:

From a counter-terrorism perspective, has anyone thought how this will inflame thousands of future terrorists?

It will be re-played over and over, radicalizing far more people than any on-line mullah ever could.
https://t.co/jKfysTAoyj

[Máiría Cahill @cahillbooks]

I hope in the interests of balance, that a @RTELateLateShow invite has been extended to @little_pengelly as well as Michelle O'Neill, who has already been on several times.

I also hope that, rather than a propaganda exercise from @PatricKielty , that the latter is asked fair questions about why protesters were bussed in to Garvaghy from republican clubs in west Belfast before a court had even ruled, why they were directed through megaphone by a former IRA man Martin Lynch, why groups sang IRA songs like My Old Mans a Provo, and how we ever sort this place out and tell citizens not to break the law when the most senior politician here says it's ok to do it if you think it's right.

It is so febrile that a deliberate soft soap propaganda exercise now, would be irresponsible broadcasting. Let's see.

[Damien Echols @damienechols]

I’ve had a lot of people asking me about the botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, as well as the upcoming execution by firing squad that’s supposed to be livestreamed. Having spent nearly 20 years on death row, my thoughts and feelings about these things are so vast that I sometimes struggle to find a place to begin. I became close friends with a man who had committed murder. He was like a brother to me. I once watched him break down crying, trembling as he told me he wished he was as evil as the world believed him to be, because then he wouldn’t have to care about what he’d done. Fifteen years later, he was still having nightmares about it. I know in my soul that he would never hurt another person again. But I’ve also watched a man being stabbed to death in prison. I cried for days afterward, and something inside me was changed forever. I learned that some people are capable of extraordinary transformation, while others remain capable of terrible violence even behind prison walls. There are no simple answers here. No slogans or political arguments that can adequately address the complexity of human beings, guilt, punishment, and suffering.

But there is one thing I want to say about the upcoming execution by firing squad. Don’t watch it. Whatever you believe about the death penalty, even if you think the person being executed deserves to die, don’t watch it. You cannot witness a human being being killed and simply walk away unchanged. What you see becomes part of you. It follows you into places you never expected it to reach. There are things I witnessed in prison that I would give anything to forget, things that still cast a shadow over my life decades later. There’s a difference between understanding that terrible things happen in the world and deliberately making yourself a spectator to them. I don’t have all the answers about justice, punishment, or forgiveness. But I do know that killing another human being should never become so ordinary that we turn it into something to watch from the comfort of our living rooms.

[Paul Rees. ex Rucksack. @HannahIamthest1]

Look what someone has left by that statue of Joan of Arc. Well, it's what she would have wanted.

🤣🤣

[Rachel Moiselle @RachelMoiselle]

A truly excellent article by the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Yoni Wieder, in the Irish Times today. It is a lament of what could have been with the Ireland/Israel fixture; the conversations between two peoples it could have started, the minds it could have opened.

‘It might have been naïve, but when the draw was made, I was hopeful. I marked the date of the Dublin match in my calendar. Thousands of Israelis would surely have travelled here, and I looked forward to them experiencing Ireland through the everyday encounters you have in a country where so many people are happy to strike up a warm conversation with a stranger, rather than through political point-scoring or angry headlines.’

He continues:

‘One of my concerns about the public discourse around Israel in Ireland is how narrow it is. Ordinary Israelis are seldom heard explaining how they see the reality they’ve been living through, the fears and traumas they carry, or the dilemmas they face. Without their voices, it becomes much easier to dehumanise and demonise them.’

The Chief Rabbi concludes with a poignant lament that perhaps this dream of human connection between the Israeli and Irish peoples was an impossible one, because the atmosphere here has become too hostile for it.

A truly excellent and most touching article; one I implore everyone to read. Link below.

[jolene’s holey skull 💀💀💀 @trefinedAura]

public discourse on the death penalty is one of the most demoralizing things I’ve ever seen. it genuinely always ruins my day.

[Pat Leahy @PatLeahyIT]

The south sees Drumcree and thinks: we don’t want that sectarian mindset down here

https://t.co/G162ONqKoK

[g. @GeauxGabrielle]

But there really is no use in arguing it when you realize that people don't want justice. They want vengeance. Blood lust. People HATE when families plead for science backed interventions. For leniency. For second chances. Or when they go against the death penalty.

You only matter as a victim if you are useful to the carceral system and its narratives.

[Charlie Flanagan @CharlieFlanagan]

This is barbaric. There is no room in civilised society for state executions.
https://t.co/1zOS17V6Ny

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

Pope Leo XIV: “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion,’ but says, ‘I’m in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life.”

[David W. Higgins @higginsdavidw]

Austria is one of the strongest supporters of Israel in the EU. The protests aren't against their team, but against our own.

[Stephen McCarthy @smccarthynire]

Nationalism has failed multiple tests in this episode, and they'll only realise the strategic damage they've done to a"New Ireland" in the long run. A new Ireland will have a unionist minority, that we're told will be accommodated. The Garvaghy Road could have accommodated 35 men under a strict determination as a way of demonstrating that future accomodation. No. It's been met with hysteria. "It's dragging us back, an afront to 28 years of peace, it's walking on the graves of those who died 1995-1997" - All this from a party who unapologetically relive the history of the actions committed by their terrorist wing on an annual basis.

Likewise, we're told that a new Ireland will have equality for all, that the rule of law will apply equally to all. The rule of law today, and the determination of the Parades Commission - that republicans have been ok with for the last 28 years because it's delivered their desired outcome - can now be entirely ignored by republicans because it's doing something they don't want. Once again they're opting out of the society they've helped to create over the last 30 years and showing that when the structures they've agreed, the laws they've previously upheld, the equality they've campaigned for, delivers an outcome they don't like, that favours the other side, they can just opt out and go back into their trenches.

I don't think the Drumcree Parade should take place. I have never thought it was a good idea or that the historic route argument is a valid one. But, in this instance the OO and their supports have used entirely legal mechanisms to challenge an incompetent and complacent Parades Commission, and it's led to a legal outcome that we all need to accept if we want to live in a lawlful society where the law applies equally to everyone. I will never support anyone or any group that decides the law only applies when it suits them.

Sinn Fein will get an electoral boost from this - which is really all that matters to them for now - but there are many unionists across NI who have had a fear confirmed that they can expect little generosity in a New Ireland when it comes to contentious cultural events.

[James Lippens @ShamebyJames2]

Lowkey the idea that we spend all our money on the military and have nothing left over for social spending is one of the most effective pieces of propaganda in history. A super majority of federal spending is social spending, trillions upon trillions a year

[The Irish Politics Newsletter @IrishPoliticsNL]

The island of Ireland has lost its fucking mind this weekend.

[Lee ⚓️⛵️ @Kag1878]

Pity he didn't care about Portadown when he left a car bomb on the main street the horrible cunt

[Jonathan Eric Lewis @LewisJonathanE]

Not only has the bullying not worked, but the entire "Stop the Game" campaign backfired spectacularly

For it exposed — for all the world to see — the rancid bigotry and quasi-religious fanaticism that undergirds the antizionist movement in Ireland

It's time to recognize that the loudest and most strident voices did not prevail and that their intimidation tactics blew up in their faces, with many in Ireland now clearly sick of their abuse and moral narcissism

They overplayed their hand

[John McGuirk @john_mcguirk]

If you praise and welcome decisions of the Parades Commission when you agree with them, but block the roads when you disagree with them, why should anyone take you seriously? Why should the other side act any differently, and abide by rulings it opposes?