Jacob Bard-Rosenberg
@Prolapsarian
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Writer/Theorist. Teach CSM MRes Art: Philosophy and Theory. PhD 2021 on Adorno and Benjamin. Support my work:
Edinburgh / London
Joined July 2009
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I recorded a version of the guest lecture I gave to art students at Edinburgh last week. I hope you all enjoy it. Includes all sorts of fun stuff about rats, Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, arte povera, Otto Rene Castillo, and more!
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Trying to explain what's going on in Britain to a friend abroad: we have a fake lockdown where everyone still goes out and half the country are still going to work; we had a silent triage where they let the vulnerable die without taking them to hospitals; they built fake new
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People don’t get it: I work in the City of London. My office is surrounded by huge investment banks, law firms, management consultants. None of them are going back to work in their buildings. The wealthy realise COVID is bad and are avoiding it. Meanwhile the government is
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THREAD: What is happening in UK universities is astonishing. Right now about quarter of universities are laying off staff. Almost all universities expect to make a loss this year. And the entire thing is happening in an effort to deceive the population about migration statistics.
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Found on a bus stop. What an amazing idea. Gonna go home and make some of my own about my own life and put some up round my area. Imagine if everyone starts doing this - every bus stop in the country plastered with 100 stories of how the Tories have screwed our lives.
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sending the rest of us back to work, back to school, back to university, back to get sick. I can’t tell you what a ghost town the financial district is. Most of the shops and food places have closed, probably for good. But the question is why one rule for them and another for us?
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To “go back to normal” and “get the economy going again” - how about this: let’s all go back to work when it’s deemed safe enough for the investment bankers, the corporate lawyers, and the management consultants. Perhaps that would speed up the efforts to actually care for us.
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Everyone should have the privileges that the wealthy and powerful have, not to get sick. You want to know why lockdown ended? Because they figured out people who would go back to work after had expendable lives. Same for all the people who were made to work through lockdown.
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Same with track and trace - it is shit because they literally do not give the slightest shit about us, and they know that the wealthy are looking after themselves and not getting exposed to the virus. So yeah, this is the context in which posh people in the Telegraph tell us
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hospitals which only had gear for respiratory health and didn't realise COVID-19 affects other parts of the body like renal system so the new hospitals couldn't be used; they are letting people back to work on the basis of negative test results even though the tests have a 30%
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Most lax lockdown (and no shutdown of all non-essential businesses) everyone is behaving like we have the most hardcore lockdown, nobody understands why there are so many deaths, and lots of people think the government is doing an amazing job, or that positive thinking and blitz
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This isn't a story about normal British incompetence. Boris Johnson isn't David Brent. It's a story about a government of opportunists and eugenicists that has hamstrung the health service, a government who decided old people and disabled people weren't worth saving (or who
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Wow this blew up. To add, as a minimum the UK must follow WHO advice on treating COVID. That means “test, trace, and isolate” at speed and not the “test, track and trace” the government has proposed; and follow WHO’s 6 recommendations on lifting lockdowns, not the government’s 5.
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false negative rate. They are only testing symptomatic cases even they know pre-symptomatic people are most infectious, and they could get to them if they traced contacts; the infection rate is pretty much stable. About 700 people die every day (according to government stats
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spirit will solve everything. Nobody seems to understand that the reason lockdowns are lifting elsewhere is because other places have the disease under control, with few new infections, while we still have huge community spread and effectively no knowledge of where the virus is
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spreading and how. It is absolutely insane. I tried to describe this, and remain in total disbelief of how awful it is.
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I first met Wes in 2004 when he was on £25k as an officer of Cambridge University Students Union. Since then he’s had a string of professional salaries as a career politician. His adult life has been committed to leaving the working class, while selling off services they need.
"It wasn't until I became an MP that I felt financial security for the first time in my life"
@wesstreeting
MP tells
@krishgm
about growing up in poverty and how this experience from his life now informs his work in politics, in this week's Ways to Change the World podcast.
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which routinely underreport by 50-100%.) They keep going on about "keeping the R below 1" even though the R needs to fall significantly below 1 for sickness and death rate to decline any time soon, or it will carry on with hundreds and hundreds of deaths a day. There is zero
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advice about how to quarantine within a home, or how to treat people at home. They are yet to even tell the population to watch out for blood clotting issues/thrombosis symptoms if you had the virus. And yet despite having the highest number of deaths in Europe as a result of the
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Foreign students are a straightforward benefit to the UK economy. Each international student brings in tens of thousands of pounds. Broadly, these people are consumers not just of education, but also of all sorts of other goods and services. More specifically, you can imagine
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It's true that migration to the UK is high right now. We have a government with a headline policy of reducing immigration. But the only way they have found to do it is to try to discourage international students from taking up places in UK universities. Why this makes no sense:
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Let me get this right: JK Rowling writes a book under a male pseudonym in order to whip up dangerous prejudices against trans women, suggesting that it is them, not her, who are pretending to be people they are not in order to harm women?
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education as an export. We have a good education system with great infrastructure. People from around the world pay us more for education than it costs us to provide. It is something we are good at, and which people from other countries want to buy. We have a superb higher
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For fuck's sake -
@bbclaurak
already talking about "when will lockdown be lifted?" and not "when will we have an adequate response to the virus?" This sort of journalism has got so many people killed in the last year.
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Completely appalled by Jürgen Habermas’s statement on the war in Gaza (). The belief that supporting whatever the Israeli regime and army do will protect Germany from its past is itself antisemitic. Saying that the mass slaughter of Palestinians and the 1/
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Feeling so sad about the death of Fredric Jameson. Really one of the greats.
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ducation workforce. In fact we have a whole lot more people wanting to work in the sector than can get jobs. It is a sector of the economy that could easily be expanded, and such expansion would be economically beneficial to the UK. You would think that this is precisely the sort
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British people do not seem to understand how different our government's response has been to COVID-19 compared to pretty much all other countries. Now we are opening up because they are, except their outbreaks are controlled and ours isn't. Everyone should look at these graphs.
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of thing a rational government might invest in. Instead, we are seeing huge cuts that will lose lots of the best, most talented, most committed, and most experienced faculty. Those who can will likely take jobs abroad. Others will just leave the sector. Even within the sector,
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Thread on anti-Semitism and the Labour Party: As a Jew it is clear to me that people like
@wesstreeting
are a far greater danger to me than people like
@jeremycorbyn
. Streeting and his ilk have consistently argued that criticism of Israel and Israeli policy are inherently
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international students subsidise both the education of domestic students and research undertaken by academics. Basically everyone agrees that international students are an economic benefit. However, we go back to the immigration statistics. Since the government can't control
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I don’t really get why
@jeremycorbyn
doesn’t just play hardball and threatens to run in
@Keir_Starmer
’s constituency next door if he’s told he can’t run in Islington North.
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easy answer is: the UK's competitors in the global higher education market. But then, it looks good on the government immigration stats. So it will be this way.
The current statistics suggest international enrolments have dropped by 44% this year. This is why there are lay offs
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to all the local economies near universities that benefit hugely from international student spending. There will be damage to domestic student education as staffing is reduced. And there will be the loss of a highly experienced workforce.
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professional with a great first degree wants to get a masters degree from UCL in London. They offer her a place but she has a five year old child. She can't take up the offer because the child will not be able to get a visa. Does this sound sensible? Who gains from this? The
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everywhere. The government will say it makes economic sense. But really it is just a stupid, damaging game aimed to lie to the population. Yes, it will look like immigration has gone down. But then there will be economic damage not only to the higher education sector but also
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How about instead of having an argument about "vaccine passports" we talk about how half of the world won't have access to any vaccines for another year, simply because of intellectual property and patent laws, which will grant profits to a few companies instead of global health.
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THREAD: 1/ There is a deep antisemitism in the assumption that all Jews must support Israel, that we want the same answers, and that we collectively share a set of political beliefs. There is more antisemitism in the idea of appeasing "the Jews" than in most of the supposed
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immigration in any other way, they have the idea that it can be reduced by putting in international student numbers year on year.
Last year, they announced that international students can't get visas for dependents. Let's imagine a scenario this applies to. A 30 year old
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Here’s a thread on why
@Keir_Starmer
is so terrible on Black Lives Matter: Before Sir Keir was an MP he was the Director of Public Prosecutions and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (I.e some kind of supercop.) When police gunned down Mark Duggan, an unarmed black man in
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An end of year COVID thread:
Sometimes a view of a complex world requires radical simplification. In the UK all public health measures have failed. This year we have seen as many deaths and as much sickness per head of population as states that did not intervene at all. While
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A friend of mine just posted this on Facebook. This is all you need to know. What a hero!
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I was so inspired by the sign I found yesterday that I made my own about my own life and put them up around my area. Everyone should do this. It only takes a few minutes!
#ToryStory
Tell your story or those of loved ones. We need the Tories out.
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THREAD: Let's talk about that Wes Streeting speech. I first met Wes in 2004, as my student union president. That year, Cambridge planned to shut down its architecture department. Radical students and the academics union mounted a campaign and kept it open. Once victory was...
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I just feel utterly sick the whole time about how many people have died, and how many people are dying, utterly needlessly. For a while the BBC told us about their names, showed us their pictures, said a few words about their lives. That soon stopped. Politicians say things about
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The Antisemitism of Sir
@Keir_Starmer
: A Thread
1) Jewish fear of antisemitism is real. Jews often have experienced antisemitism, and have good reason to fear it. But what if there was a situation in which Jews were convinced there was a threat of antisemitism, which didn't
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@wesstreeting
@jeremycorbyn
anti-Semitic. This is for the most part made possible from the comfortable position of a gentile. Actually, as a Jew I don’t want to be associated with Israel’s racist and colonial politics. And the idea that I have something to do with them because I am Jewish is itself racist.
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The best thing about the
@britishlibrary
cafe (where a sandwich costs £7 or you can get a plate of salad for £10) is the mice!
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Destruction of Gaza is “justified in principle” is bad enough. But to claim to do so “in solidarity with … Jews” is horrific. It silences the voices of Jews who have dissented from this terrible violence. It attempts to make them morally culpable. Meanwhile, not a thought is 2/
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Only one way for Labour to win. Despite losing the election Labour should implement free broadband across the country. There are three reasons to do this: firstly, in five years time you can say “we gave you all free broadband, and if you don’t vote for us we’re turning it off”
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End of the year COVID thread (take 2):
Ok, you got the message about the failure of public health. Now let's talk about COVID in the coming year and the big story that is gonna kill enormous amounts of people, and which the press is still not reporting on.
Finally we have
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"Red wall swing voter" is just how a posh bloke from Surrey imagines the working class: crude, white, angry Northern men, who hate immigrants and love national pride. Thing is, immigrant-hating in the UK is most prominent among wealthy professionals living in villages in Surrey.
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One question more people should be asking is, “who benefitted?” Everyone is now saying the war in Afghanistan was pointless. But that’s not the case if you spent the last 20 years profiting from the misery of perpetual war. That’s investment banks as well as arms manufacturers.
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Zadie Smith doesn’t know what a shibboleth is. When I say ‘Free Palestine’ it isn’t to mark me as one of the people who says that against the people who don’t. It is an invitation to everyone to say it too. It is a demand for a movement of everyone that achieves that freedom.
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I passed my PhD (after a million years)! Now I’m going to order a 20 inch pizza to celebrate.
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A little thread on tories, exams, and universities: everyone is upset at the manifest unfairness with which teenagers have been treated in the last week. But behind what has happened is not just incompetence. Those at the centre of government have spent a decade promoting a
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that “the pro-semitism in Germany after Hitler - insofar as it exists - is folkloric in character and as such antisemitism continues within it.” Habermas could have learned a thing from his old teacher. The difference now is that this supposed pro-semitism becomes a danger for 6/
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80 years ago, it can never do so with Palestinian blood. Meanwhile Jews are once again transformed into some bizarre talisman for German civil society as opposed to citizens and with their own interests and opinions. Adorno was quite right, when, in a late notebook he wrote 5/
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Offered to Palestinian victims of the invasion. Or rather one thought is offered with a sentence that begins, “Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however…”. And this is from the German academy’s apparently foremost thinker of ethics. Such 3/
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thought that there might even be benefits to killing them off.) It's a story about private contracts for the old boys club while public health and the NHS are frozen out. It's a story about banal and glib hatred of poor people. It is about a government who became convinced that
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they should ignore the pandemic and persistently try to open the economy at the earliest possible moment. After 100,000 deaths nobody wants to hear about how the Prime Minister will take responsibility. He won't. This lot need clearing out. The entire government should resign.
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With the suspensions of Moshe Machover and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi (following suspending at least one other Jewish member for questioning the IHRA definitions, and another being put under investigation), it’s clear
@Keir_Starmer
’s Labour are profiling and going after Jews.
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But far worse than this is that for people like
@wesstreeting
the sole point of being “anti-racist” seems to be to bash your enemies rather than to actually stop racism. I’m far happier being around people who might occasionally fuck up and take some responsibility for it than
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As beasts and as saints at the same time. Not only can the dissenting opinions of Jews not be heard but the crimes of other Jews cannot be questioned. How about, with all your ethics you treated us for once like human beings. And perhaps then you might start to treat 8/
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Formulations continue to dehumanise Palestinians, fail to speak out against the destruction of humanity in this war, and make Jews around the world less safe too, while claiming to act on their behalf. If Germany wants to assuage its guilt for what it did to the Jews of Europe 4/
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All of us Jews because the Germans take away our right to dissent in the name of their democracy, which just as 80 years ago trumps our agency. Meanwhile the sacrificial deaths of Palestinians that prop up this “democracy” are imagined as mere collateral for Jews imagined both 7/
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the next time you hear Wes make that same speech about growing up poor in that council house, remember that class isn't about where you come from: it's about your material interests. And Wes knows all too well that his own material interests are the opposite of the working class.
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250,000 stitches later this big silk shetland shawl is finally done. Took a long time, since I took a year long break in the middle, but I still have some skills I think.
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@clintballinger
Net loss. As in their outgoings exceed their incomings. Most universities expecting net loss of £10-20m this year. Some more, some less.
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And if they don't resign then people should be forcibly removed, and replaced by a government that will look after the people's health. How dare they say they did all they could. I'll tell you what they did: They opened the universities and the schools, forced people back into
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@wesstreeting
@jeremycorbyn
It does put me in danger for people to think I am responsible for the atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank because I am Jewish. It does put me in danger that I am not supposed to be allowed to have an opinion on the history of the Israeli state.
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On the joys of being married to Anne Boyer: today we completed building a library/seminar room. We are not ashamed that we chose this over a living room.
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unsafe workplaces, took sick and infectious people into care homes, all while cutting deals to line the pockets of their mates. They pursued a herd-immunity strategy by stealth. And then they had the brass neck to blame the people for the catastrophe that ensued. None of this
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And if people like
@wesstreeting
, the gentile who deigns to speak on my behalf, were really serious about anti-racism he would spend more time condemning those conditions - and in particular right-wing nationalism and religious fundamentalism - that has been central to Israeli
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I finally finished my PhD, and I'm submitting it tomorrow. God knows what the examiners will think of it. Something tells me it won't be acceptable, but at least, after about a decade, it is off my desk. Some thoughts: 1) Here is the contents. If anyone wants to read it let 1/x
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#LabourNEC
has announced that if we allow them to take
@jeremycorbyn
off the ballot they will give £350m a week to the NHS.
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While this is getting attention,
@britishlibrary
nobody cares about the mice - but please provide £1 coffee and cheap sandwiches in your cafe. Lots of your readers are poor (myself included) and can’t afford a fancy bourgeois lunch full of mouse droppings.
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Here’s a story about existential threats to Jews: back in 2011 the
@JewishChron
ran a piece on me, which also included mention of my parents and their politics, and my childhood and education, none of which had any bearing whatsoever on the story. One of the consequences of them
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prejudice and hatred which may be conscious or unconscious, and must start from a critical rather than dogmatic point of view. Racism isn’t ended by abolishing racists but by abolishing the conditions in which racism can flourish.
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@Peston
Stop fucking briefing for the government. Do your job and question them on why they are pursuing a murderous path that is a massive international outlier when every other country is trying to suppress the virus.
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@wesstreeting
@jeremycorbyn
finally notice that their positions are actually a danger to people like me. But then I guess it must be nice to be a goy who doesn’t have to give a shit.
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This thread is a list of wrong things the British public believes. For every like I’ll add another thing to the list:
1) Grades are a good measure of education; people with the best grades have got the most out of education.
2) Going to Oxford means you are smart and competent.
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2/ antisemitism that is condemned in the name of appeasing us. The instrumentalisation of accusations of antisemitism for cheap political gain demonstrates how little they actually care for us. There is little more dangerous to Jews than the promotion of the belief that criticism
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Sorry I am in a fury. But it is galling to see this government, who only recognise deaths when the number of them is so impossibly large that it is inconceivable. I am so sorry to everyone who has lost people who are close.
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8/ think US police forces are buying when they get training from the IDF?
So when you propose that I, as a Jew, should want you to be silent on these questions; that I, as a Jew, should want you to silence others on these questions, you engage in the most fearsome antisemitism.
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people who are convinced they are in the right but never actually do anything to stop racist views beyond designating people racists and absolutely condemning them. This isn’t to say that racism or anti-Semitism is ok. But it is to say that anti-racism should aim a rooting out
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murdered tens of thousands of people who are weaker, poorer, and more disadvantaged than them. They have behaved like people's deaths don't matter because the people who died were older or disabled. And still they are lining their pockets. People need to know what has happened.
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If anyone takes an interest in what is meant by “antisemitism”: expelling Jews from an organisation, without explanation, for having differing views of their own oppression is a case in point.
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And for those of you who are worried about the economy, what they have done has destroyed jobs and businesses for no reason. Countries that took a serious approach to COVID saw jobs and industry saved. Here we have enormous new national debts, and an unemployment crisis.
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needed to happen. There was nothing inevitable about it. Boris is only saying he will take responsibility because everyone knows that he won't. And people will clap and cheer as this cabinet of butchers is allowed to carry on. I am done with it. In their refusal to act they have
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12/ completely wrong. I can’t even express how furious I am.
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3/ of violent policies derived from the Israeli policing of Palestinian lives is itself antisemitic.
The treatment of Palestinians, not only in the prison of Gaza, but in the occupied West Bank, in enormous refugee camps across the Middle East, and as second class citizens
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What
@Keir_Starmer
hates more than anything is that, even if he wins power, he will never be as popular as
@jeremycorbyn
. Not only does he know this, but everyone knows it.
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@wesstreeting
The fact is that what we have to hand in terms of tools to transform the world are built out of oppression. So we have to be both critical and self-critical, something which
@jeremycorbyn
has actually shown. If only people like
@wesstreeting
were more self-critical they might
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This has taken off. Everyone do this today! Make signs with your story or stories of what’s happened to your friends and loved ones. Stick them up in your area. Post a photo. Hashtag is
#ToryStory
. If 100 people do it today perhaps 200 tomorrow, perhaps 1000 a day by the weekend.
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4/ within Israel, has been a laboratory of racist and violent social control. The mass murder, displacement, ghettoisation, pogroms, and day to day violence meted out to the Palestinians both by Israeli state forces, and by the unofficial state forces of settler mobs, has been
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Other countries worked out that the economy is can be damaged by a massively deadly infectious disease, while our government sacrificed the national economy for a quick bucks for a few of their mates.
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@clintballinger
We are not talking about profit. It is literally about having enough money to pay wages. Obviously a university cannot just run at a deficit every year. What would you pay staff with? Or do you think we should work for free?
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This is actually pretty terrifying. Jews who are speaking out are being persecuted, all under the kafkaesque idea that they shouldn’t be allowed to speak about the very antisemitism they face. People need to speak out against this.
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