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Reposted by Alix Mortimer

Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 21h

Barely a squeak from the usual suspects on the free-speech right, of course, but this amounts to the most serious assault on free speech in living memory. We cannot accept a situation where hundreds of non-violent demonstrators are being arrested every weekend.

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Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 1d

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

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Frédéric Moreau @goodclimate.bsky.social · 1d

This lurid headline is about British tourists no longer getting away with overstaying in Schengen. Or being 'illegals', as it's often called in the UK.

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Phoenix Calida @phoenixcalida.bsky.social · 1d

Genocide isn't just killing people, it's also killing their social customs and religious rituals

And death rituals are among the most important rituals in almost every culture

To deny burials and death rituals isn't just cruel. it's a strategic snd demoralizing part of a genocidal campaign

Queer Satanic @queersatanic.bsky.social · 1d

“post-mortem detention” is far from the worst atrocity the Israeli state commits, but it’s so cartoonishly and needlessly awful, you want to think it couldn’t actually be true

and yet it is

Queer Satanic @queersatanic.bsky.social · May 5

> [Palestinian prisoner and martyr Walid Daqqa] entered prison as a young man of 24, exited it at 62. His body is currently in postmortem detention, a refrigerator. It will remain there until his false sentence is completed, in eight months’ time.

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 2d

This whole obsession with "too many people going to uni" is such a classic example of the parochialism of UK policymaking. No one bothers to ask why the % here is lower than in most other developed countries or whether that might be relevant.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

…should have counted in and didn’t, I am ignorant about how that maps onto modern day Spanish politics. But even NI has colonialism in the mix, ofc certain persuasions in the US might claim similar but only as a pose. Yugo the closest in terms of how you could insert a culture war into it now.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

Yes and that’s the point really - plenty of conflict and volatility across Europe in the 20C (!), very little of it cognate with the US civil war (and in most cases not called a “civil war”) in a way that you could map a present day culture war onto the sides. I think Spain is the one I genuinely…

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Harry Turtledove @hntdove.bsky.social · 3d

Hell of a thing to put next to a statue of Joan of Arc. (h/t David Pilling)

Fire extinguisher next to a statue of Joan of Arc

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

“Look we tried to import US-style authoritarianism, it was all a bit embarrassing, but long story short Cornwall is a sovereign nation now”

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

But what you cannot have, I *think*, is a direct mapping across of “head of state sends in army to x city” because that is just not how anything works in any history more recent than the 16/17C. Although unexpected narratives here for the various separatists of Europe I guess.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

Very reasonable. As in “it doesn’t have to make sense” basically?

There may also be popular culture inputs I’m not considering. Games maybe? I’ve no idea.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

The exception obviously would be the Balkans but there I am hopeful that nobody in the US-brained Turning Point universe is ever going to understand them enough to pull the levers effectively.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

My hope here is still that this can’t play out in the UK nor most if Europe in the same way, we mostly don’t have the same folk memories of recentish civil wars or the same freedom/identity associations that a culture war could map onto. Doesn’t mean things couldn’t get nasty in some other way.

Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 2d

And a UK and EU debate that is always 3 months behind the curve when it comes to discourse trends in the US that will influence the European Far Right means many are missing how trends there have shifted from focus on migrant deportation to a wider hankering after "cleansing" civil war

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 2d

It is remarkable bordering on shocking how UK political debate still obsesses over small boats and other issues that will not be all that significant in the broad arc of history even as the basic foundations of the global system unravel

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 3d

We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 3d

Really long time ago obviously but I guess I remember it because it was disappointing. Just immediately thinking nah the offspring is correct. You didn’t so often get those feet of clay moments pre mass internet.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 3d

Ahh so one of the last things I read by him c1998 was a column on arguing with his student offspring who was studying archaeology, and DA was broadly arguing for what we would now call conspiracy theory archaeology because stuffy academics something something. So I think maybe yes :(

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LeithMotive @leithmotive.bsky.social · 4d

Social media has turned her into a terrible and radicalised human being, somebody should refer her to Prevent. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Tories to pledge to create immigration taskforce modelled on Trump’s Ice

Proposed ‘removals force’ will be tasked with deporting 150,000 people a year in bid to tackle illegal immigration

www.theguardian.com

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Frank Vehafric @fvehafric.bsky.social · 4d

One of the things I took away from the 60s and Richard Nixon, first mentioned by Hunter Thompson, but I believe to be true, is the fact that we believed, at time, that all our protesting, marching and sign waving was futile and pointless when in fact, it drove Richard Nixon to alcohol fueled madness

Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 4d

Everyone is trying to have a normal Saturday night and the president's top advisor is on X announcing that civil war is necessary

@StephenM on X: Legal insurrection. The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life. (There are more local law enforcement officers in Oregon than there are guns and badges in the FBI nationwide). This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.

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Helene von Bismarck @helenebismarck.bsky.social · 3d

Well it has happened.
The leadership of the Conservative&Unionist Party is advocating leaving the ECHR. Not reforming it, or working with other members to alter any rules.
Leave it. Like Putin’s Russia.
I can’t help wondering what those Tories who are rightly proud of 🇬🇧’s support for 🇺🇦 are thinking.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 5d

Again genuine question, are we underpricing Trump eventually moving on to Europe with the same schtick?

Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 5d

1. This is one of the most insane statements ever delivered by a presidential spokesperson in U.S. history. Totally disconnected from reality.

2. There is either going to be a civil war or abject Democratic surrender to autocracy. They are telling this you, to your face, in explicit terms.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 5d

Leavitt: "President Trump will end the radical left's reign of terror in Portland once and for all. The president has directed Secretary Hegseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland."

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 5d

Fittingly for the wild weather, my veg box parsnips this week are funny little spindly ghosts @hookland.bsky.social

Five thin curly parsnips on a marble surface. The wind howls outside (not visible in picture but implied.)

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Dr Rob @robheighton.bsky.social · 20d

Enjoying the two guys on this year's Bake Off who look like they could be rival chieftains in Iron Age Gaul

Toby from Bake Off; he has a distinctive moustache with slight handlebars

Iain from Bake Off; he has a light mustache and a mullet without the curls

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 7d

Congratulations Gabe!

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Hazel Southwell @hazelsouthwell.bsky.social · 7d

this is actually extraordinary and a lot of it's been done just by asking people to drive basically any car produced since 2007. almost no cars later than that (and some earlier) comply with ULEZ - it's not forcing everyone into a Tesla, it's incredibly basic improvements

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan @london.gov.uk · 7d

For the first time ever, London has met legal limits for nitrogen dioxide.

When I became Mayor, we were told it would take 193 years. We did it 184 years earlier than expected.

Cleaner air means a healthier city and big savings for the NHS.

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Kate Jeffery @katejj.bsky.social · 7d

The University of Glasgow groundspeople are going to be quite annoyed when they come in to work tomorrow...

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