Saturday 5 September

23 new followers on Bluesky overnight, mostly American. I spent an average of 1 min each checking their profiles and following back (apart from two who haven’t posted yet). Dunno what I’ve done to prompt this surge but it’s certainly a record 🤔

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz passed a bill banning the use of Al to generate nude images of minors. Elon Musk sued to block the bill – he lost!

Campaigning lawyers have threatened to sue HM Revenue and Customs over complicity in illegal Israeli settlement trade. Settlement imports are subject to tariffs, while Israeli products get preferential tax treatment. HMRC are accused of a failure to determine the true origin of the imports following a four-year investigation. Via Morning Star Online

The United Nations has approved a new world map projection called Equal Earth to more accurately depict continents’ size. The only dissenter was the USA, because it appears larger in relation to Africa than it actually is on the Mercator Projection.

 I remember during the 1984 miners’ strike, my mum – who didn’t speak English – watched the television and turned to me and said, pointing at Arthur Scargill, ‘he’s a good man, he cares about ordinary people, they’re like us, it’s really bad what’s happening to them. Go and knock on the aunties’ doors and say I said we’ve got to give food for the miners’. So, even people who didn’t have English as a language had a political language.

 Asad Rehman, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth

Sunday 6 September

Richard Burgon, MP for East Leeds, has tabled an early day motion in parliament to support a moratorium on datacentres, 21 MPs have signed it in support. This is a cross party motion with Independent MPs like Jeremy Corbyn, Green MPs like Hannah Spencer and Labour MPs like Diane Abbott having all signed it.

My day has been ruined by a host of people jumping on me for sharing this petition: Require all car park operators to build green roof and solar panel parking shelters which could reduce the need to use farmland for solar farms and support biodiversity. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/775429 If they don’t want to sign it that’s their choice, I’m not interested in the whys and wherefores! There have also been a lot of more positive responses (>500 reposts), but the negatives have put me off promoting the petition any further as I had intended. It’s good to promote discussion, but it’s very stressful if you’re in the middle of it!

Tuesday 8 September

After a period without much news to report, it starts flooding in.

Skyral, a company whose co-founder and current executive chair is Tony Blair’s son Nick, has teamed up with British privatiser Capita and a US arms giant to win a £2 billion contract to outsource a big slice of British army training, substituting “virtual reality” for physical drills.

Nigel Farage is blaming Andy Burnham for the violent disturbances at Dover and Portsmouth and demanding a ban on face coverings when he’s the one inciting violence! One person on X posted photographs and names of two lifeboat volunteers putting their lives and those of their families in danger.

Ed Miliband has finally called out Israeli settlements as ethnic cleansing and imposed sanctions but still won’t use the ‘G’ word’. He’s come under fire from left and right and I might have more to say in a separate blog, but I suspect all that needs to be said will have already been said by the time I get around to it. The Israeli government rightly blames the influence of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement and has retaliated by closing the UK Consulate and expelling UK Military Police who have been training the IDF. Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon and all Green MPs are banned from entering the country, although I can’t imagine why they would want to. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckleberry has accused Miliband, a Jew, of ‘Jew Hatred’ 🙄

A Workers Party member has put his name forward to contest the Holborn & St Pancras unless Zack Polanski explicitly adopts an anti-Zionist policy. Neither he nor Zack dictates Green Party policy, that’s decided at conference where a motion to that effect was rejected, but it’s possible to be anti-Zionist without explicitly saying so. This candidate, even if he’s selected, won’t win; but he could split the vote sufficiently to allow Labour to retain the seat (depending on who they stand as a candidate). Andrew Feinstein, the local candidate who gave Starmer a run for his money last time, won’t be running this time and is supporting Zack.

Thursday 10 September

The Israeli press has published three reports about the Gaza holocaust, confirming what we already knew or suspected:

• Benjamin Netanyahu concealed advanced knowledge of the Hamas attack on October 7

• Israel rejected a Hamas offer to unconditionally release all civilian hostages immediately after October 7

• The Israeli military was intentionally firing on civilians throughout Gaza during its operations in the Palestinian territory.

Here’s my blog from 28 October 2023: October 7 2023 Who is telling the truth? https://thephilosophicalmuse.blog/2023/10/28/october-7-2023-who-is-telling-the-truth/

I’ve had a fall. Not hurt but had to call on neighbours to get me up. Personal alarm didn’t trigger automatically but worked when I pressed the buttons.

Friday 11 September

It’s official! Zack Polanski is the Green Party candidate for Holborn & St Pancras.

In 1985 Bruce Springsteen personally donated $20,000 to the Durham Miners Support Group, which at the time was a great sum of money & helped many families going through hardship. This year a local Springsteen tribute act ‘The NE Street Band’ will perform at Redhills Miners Hall on Saturday 10 October.

Saturday 12 September

Following attacks on Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) rescuers for bringing small-boat migrants ashore last weekend in Dover and Portsmouth, Poole MP Neil Duncan-Jordan has tabled a parliamentary motion in solidarity for the RNLI staff and volunteers.

Morning Star Online

Monday 14 September

I’m hearing that Ed Sheeran has dropped Macklemore from his under pressure from the Israel lobby. This doesn’t bode well for Sheeran’s career!

Tuesday 15 September

I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say. “Free Palestine.” But if those words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I’ve ever been on.

Macklemore

Ed Sheeran just lost two more artists from his tour! They withdrew because ‘Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed’.

Donald Trump is reported to be furious because Nashville want to rename their airport Dolly Parton International Airport.

More than 130 lawyers, former judges and legal academics, including ex-Lord Justice Sir Alan Moses and Michael Mansfield KC, have told the PM that the UK’s new curbs on Israeli settlements fall short of what international law requires. Via Ethan Shone on X

Wednesday 16 September

66 MPs spoke at packed Westminster Hall debate on a petition calling for a referendum on public ownership of our water sector, the majority in favour.

They debated for nearly 3 hours, if you have the time you can watch the debate here https://www.youtube.com/live/mDW9Ja5Zexo?is=SlqhcMl1_rNKeyz5

A non-binding debate does not in itself change anything, but it indicates a turning of the tide. We need to keep pressing, but with greater degree of optimism about what we can achieve.

All of Ed Sheeran’s support acts have now quit his tour, as well as his backing band!

Money doesn’t give you the right to own the conversation. Nobody’s bank balance should decide who gets to speak or which suffering we’re allowed to acknowledge.

Lukas Graham

Ed will be mighty lonely for the remainder of his tour. He may have the stadiums, but can he fill them?

I saw a clip of Macklemore’s speech at the New Jersey concert and the applause of the audience suggests Ed Sheeran will get a very different reception at future concerts (assuming that he’s not playing to an empty stadium).

I’ve just read an article about victims of domestic abuse, mostly women, being arrested for assaulting an emergency worker. When I did a Google search for an image to accompany the article when I shared it, I was shocked that the focus was on male victims of domestic abuse and male perpetrators being arrested, not female victims.

George Galloway has announced that he is to contest the Holborn and St Pancras by-election as the candidate of the Workers Party, although has been living outside the country since he and his wife were detained by security services at Gatwick airport a year ago and has demanded government guarantees against further harassment before returning.

He wrote on X: “Obviously my campaign would be more effective in person. But I cannot return without an assurance of an end of the political persecution suffered by me and my family.” Via Morning Star Online

If he does stand he’ll lose, so he might as well stay where he is and save himself the embarrassment.

Thursday 17 September

Delegates at TUC Congress have passed an historic motion to back the Palestinian-led BDS campaign and called on the government to impose “wide-ranging sanctions on Israel until it complies with international law.” Andy Burnham’s government remains complicit in genocide they said.

The motion also called on ministers to “commit to freedom of speech and end attempts to censor artists and art organisations expressing solidarity with Palestine” after rapper Macklemore was removed from an Ed Sheeran concert tour for his speech in support of Palestine. Via Morning Star Online

Ticket sales for Ed Sheeran’s Tour have dropped off so dramatically that scalpers are now selling tickets for lower than purchase price just to try and get rid of them.

Macklemore will be donating the entire $1 million of his net earnings from the to six organizations working directly to support the Palestinian people and invites billionaire stadium owner Robert Kraft to match his donation.

Macklemore’s Statement

It’s not enough to say you stand in solidarity with Macklemore. It’s not even enough to drop out of a tour in support of him and Gaza. You have to call out the Zionist control of our institutions, otherwise this problem just isn’t going away.

Ricky, Council Estate Media

Trump’s latest narcissistic, demented plan is to demolish the Kennedy Centre unless he gets his name on it. The centre is currently closed awaiting renovations for which Congress has already approved the funding, Trump is holding up the work and could even be causing more damage.

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