Olaf Corry

Teach/research international politics, climate, science 'n societies. City and University of Leeds, Kingdom of Denmark - not all rotten. @olafcorry.bsky.social

[Olaf Corry @TOClimates]

My own contribution to this very special Special Issue is on the meta-politics of climate change. It combines, finally, my climate intervention & governance-object sides, & offers a novel distinction between gov objects that can just b protected, versus more 'malleable' ones🧵👇

[Alejandro Esguerra @Alej_Esguerra]

🥁Special Forum on Objects of Expertise🥁 Explore articles on the political dynamics of knowledge production by @jrodehaun Laura Pantzerhielm @TOClimates Anna Leander @c_bueger @AnnabelleLittoz Thomas Müller. Thanks for great comments @bentleyballan O-J Sending, @AudreyAlejand

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

It would be bad for public confidence if there was a suspicion that large corporate interests are buying access to the Government via the Tony Blair Institute.

My letter to the cabinet office. 👇🏼

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🚨Israel killed 51 people in Lebanon in 24 hours on Saturday as the Israeli army continued its attacks despite the so-called ceasefire.

The toll since the beginning of March has surged past 2,846 killed and 8,693 injured, the Ministry of Public Health announced today.

[Olaf Corry @TOClimates]

I didn't realise a prosecution of Quakers for preaching outside the Church of England played a part in establishing the right of juries to reject judicial interference:

Rajiv Menon: "the facts, and the verdicts you return having considered the facts, are solely for you".

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

One of my most popular articles ever included a long extract from a powerful closing speech by barrister Rajiv Menon during a Palestine Action trial in January. In the end, the jury refused to convict the six defendants.

Menon is now on trial for that closing speech – for reminding the jury that they had a 350-year-old right in law to follow their conscience in reaching a verdict, even if it meant defying a direction from the judge to convict.

Paradoxically, Menon joked in his speech that, because of that earlier legal principle, the judge, unlike his counterpart in 1670, could not lock them, the jurors, up were they to choose to follow their consciences.

Instead, the judge is seeking to lock up the barrister. Does 2026 qualify as an improvement on 1670?

It is believed that this is the first time a barrister has been tried for comments made to a jury in his closing speech. That should serve as a potent reminder of just us how authoritarian the current political moment is, and of how quickly long-established legal rights are being dismantled to protect British collusion in genocide.

Read my article – and the part of the speech for which Menon is being tried – here: https://t.co/RyDHG3Iz81

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🚨 Saudi Arabia and Kuwait Both Cut U.S. Base Access, Forcing Pause of Project Freedom

Trump’s abrupt pause of “Project Freedom” came after backlash from key Gulf allies led by Saudi Arabia, for being blindsided by the operation’s announcement, according to NBC News. Drop Site’s Ryan Grim later reported that a U.S. administration official confirmed Kuwait also cut off access, basing, and overflight “ABO” access.

NBC reports Saudi Arabia suspended U.S. access to Prince Sultan Airbase and Saudi airspace after Trump announced the operation without properly coordinating with Gulf allies. A call between Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly failed to resolve the dispute. Qatar was contacted only after the operation had already begun, while Oman was not coordinated with until after Trump’s announcement.

Without Saudi and Kuwaiti airspace, U.S. aircraft could not provide the defensive umbrella needed to protect ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, making the pause effectively unavoidable.

Sources: NBC News, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim (@ryangrim)

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

There is no annexation “by law,” it’s literally illegal. The words you’re looking for are land theft and occupation.

[troovus @troovus]

Martin Forde’s report commissioned by Starmer’s leadership said there was a hierarchy of racism operating within Labour

Labour buried the report and their lawyers sent Forde a threatening letter to try to stop him from talking about it

This is relevant context to current events

[Peter Oborne @OborneTweets]

Here is an article I wrote several years ago about Trevor Phillips, Islamophobia and the different rules of discourse applied to British Muslims:

https://t.co/aCoNsqEngd

[Mouin Rabbani @MouinRabbani]

There seems to be some misunderstanding regarding Israeli attacks on Christians.

Some of this violence and abuse, particularly when directed against clerics and others wearing identifiably Christian attire, is indeed motivated by specifically anti-Christian religious bigotry.

As messianic religious extremism becomes more widespread and gains increasing power within Israeli Jewish society and Israel's government, attacks directed at Christians specifically because they are Christian have indeed been on the rise.

But the majority of such attacks are not directed at Christians as such. Rather, the primary motive for such attacks is that these Christians are like their Muslim compatriots Arabs and, as in the case of Armenians, part of Palestinian society.

The violence and abuse, the dispossession and expulsions, should first and foremost be understood in the broader context of Zionism and Israel’s determination to establish a Jewish supremacist state in which the Jewish community maintains demographic, territorial, political, and economic hegemony.

Most prominently, the vast majority of Christians in the territory that became the state of Israel were expelled in 1948 as part of the Nakba. Not because they were Christian, but because they were like their Muslim neighbors not Jewish. Because they are Arabs. It is for this reason that they have been denied and deprived of the right to return to their homeland or reclaim their stolen properties.

Since 1967 vast amounts of Christian land and property in the occupied territories have been expropriated by Israel. Not because it is specifically Christian, but because it is not Jewish and because it is Arab.

Similarly, the regular pogroms against Christian villages and communities in the West Bank today are indistinguishable from those being launched by Israel, its military, and settler vanguards against Muslim villages.

The motive is Israel’s insatiable appetite for Palestinian land and property, not the Christian identity of its legitimate owners.

Israel’s campaign against churches and their properties also largely falls within this framework. The various churches have established extensive land and property holdings over the centuries.

Property rights, it might be added, that were with few aberrations not only respected but upheld by successive Muslim authorities. That's why they still exist.

That has all now changed. Israel is introducing a variety of tax measures, and engaging in a range of other gimmicks, the purpose of which is to seize these properties from the churches, transfer their ownership to the state or settlement groups, and reserve them for exclusively Jewish use. Again, and on the whole, not specifically because they are Christian, but because like their Muslim counterparts they are not Jewish.

Needless to say, if the roles were reversed this would be immediately denounced across the globe for what it transparently is.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Extraordinary. Not just the media, but also the police are simply erasing the knifeman's first victim, who was a Muslim.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Weird that even the police, in their tweet, though not in the full statement itself, are just airbrushing the fact that he’s being charged with three attempted murders, not two, the third person being a Muslim man he stabbed earlier in the day

[Tom Mills @ta_mills]

From BBC reporting seems clear the whole political-media establishment wants to respond to a hate crime by repressing protests against genocide & occupation.

[Peter Oborne @OborneTweets]

Stench of a cover-up. As Speaker Hoyle has confirmed, we need a full enquiry into Labour Together and APCO.

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

@KimJohnsonMP It's OK because the mainstream media are investigating the 'operations of Labour Together'....oh hang on,maybe not.. Well, they're reporting the books and articles that have been written about Labour Together...oh hang on, maybe not.

[Mouin Rabbani @MouinRabbani]

I think the US, supported by the international community, should demand iron-clad guarantees from Tehran that Iran will not be the first state to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.
This should be a non-negotiable precondition for the repeal of sanctions.

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

The reasons for rejecting potential ICC judgements are being prepared.

[Elvis Buñuelo @Mr_Considerate]

This piece on Gaza by Eyal Weizman of Forensic Architecture has already been widely circulated, and is almost unbearable to read. The very first paragraph lays out in inarguable terms why Gaza was, and is, a genocide. https://t.co/GXFFm1euBZ

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Israel killed two UNICEF drivers trying to get WATER to families in Gaza. Is this story going to get any coverage?

Or is the ongoing genocide not newsworthy?

[Mike Gardner @mikegardner_wb]

BREAKING NEWS: “Starmer denies knowing he was Prime Minister”

Sir Kier Starmer has revealed that no one told him until last Tuesday he won the 2024 election and had become PM.

He told Beth Rigby “I was totally kept in the dark by my officials. I’m really angry about it.”

[Olaf Corry @TOClimates]

"Understand" - AKA: "probably bs but suits me to present as fact without indicating source".

[Pippa Crerar @PippaCrerar]

BREAKING: Top foreign office civil servant Sir Olly Robbins is leaving his post.

Understand that Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper have lost confidence in him after he failed to tell PM & No 10 that Peter Mandelson failed security vetting.

[The Fraud @StarmertheFraud]

Hard to know what to believe in relation to the Mandelson revelations tonight.

But one aspect being ignored is that Starmer must not have asked to personally see the results of the Developed Vetting that Mandelson is said to have failed - SIX MONTHS after the scandal first broke.

To repeat: if Starmer is genuinely just finding out now, it means he had never, not once, asked to see the actual vetting report himself, about a scandal bringing down his government - for SIX MONTHS.

He's been repeatedly blindsided, on his version, about information he could have asked for and seen at any time. Information most people would want to see, even out of sheer self-preservation, to make sure no more skeletons were due to come out.

Is he simply the most incurious person in the world? How was he ever DPP?