Deborah

One thing on the McSweeney mobile saga. As I wrote, I contacted the Met to ask if any efforts had been made to locate the phone or the messages contained on it. They told me twice they wouldn't look into it unless I provided details of the theft, including a crime number. This is one of the biggest international political scandals for a generation. The British people have a right to transparency. And the police and the government are doing everything possible to keep that transparency to a minimum.

"There is pressure from management to downgrade these incidents" Regulation of the water industry has been a catastrophic failure. Right now, water regulator Ofwat and this government are seriously considering signing off on years of regulatory exemption for Thames Water. Thames Water want free rein to pollute for profit. Don't let them get away with it. Take 2 mins to write to your MP now: vist.ly/4vbfz

Excuse me?

Malek Shinbari Nov 9, 2025 "On the road from Gaza to Khan Yunis, a little girl named Sama sat beside me in the taxi. She was in her mother’s arms, pointing with her tiny hand toward the window. I understood she wanted to see the sea. I rolled down the glass and lifted her into my lap. A smile spread across her face like someone remembering that life once had another shape. I laughed softly and said, “Wow, I didn’t realize you’ve been signaling me all this time. Why didn’t you just call me, Uncle?” Her mother replied, “She used to talk a lot. But after what happened to her two years ago, she stopped speaking. Now she only communicates with gestures.” I fell silent for a moment. Inside me stirred an old desire I both hate and cannot restrain, the urge to ask. I hesitated, knowing I was about to sin curiosity once again. On December 7, 2023, they were trapped in Musqat School on Yafa Street. Three hundred civilians were waiting for evacuation. The soldiers ordered the men to leave first. They lied to them and executed four of them in front of their wives and children. Sama’s father was one of them. Half an hour later, her older sister came out trying to pull his body away. They shot her, too. She bled for nine hours on the ground, and by God’s mercy, she survived. The occupying army ordered the women to flee west after detaining the remaining men, the first of them her eldest brother. On the way, the mother realized her daughter was not with them. That moment alone could age the soul by centuries. For three days, she returned to the school, now turned into a military post, begging the soldiers to let her search. On the third day, she was allowed in. She walked among the rubble, the charred walls, the torn little bags, and the silenced voices until she found her. Sitting under a wall, in filthy clothes, staring into nothingness for three days without food or water. That girl was Sama. Since that day, not a single word has passed her lips. She did not cry, she did not scream, she did not speak. She only gestured to ask for things, tapping her plate for food, her cup for water. I looked at Sama laughing at the sea. I wanted to say something, anything, but it was useless. Merely hearing her story had robbed me of speech. How do you comfort a child who has endured all that, who has lost her voice, her father, whose sister was wounded, and whose childhood was stolen? I cursed my curiosity, and I cursed this despicable world that smiles in the faces of killers, the world that decorates its screens with talk of peace. This genocide will not end, and it will not leave us. Even if the planet itself blooms with apologies, it will never be enough for Sama." This is just one voice among many I’ve translated in my book If We Must Die. It’s 198 pages of raw stories from Gazans during the genocide. Some of the people who wrote these stories were killed. Some of the stories are mine. Click here to buy the book patreon.com/posts/153169326

@barkmeta To keep everyone up to date... Are we all clear, now? #Panicans

Men who pretend to be women should not be leading female healthcare organisations. There is a conflict of interest in that many will fetishise female physiology. Lawrence, A., "Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies: Narratives of Autoynephilic Transsexualism" (Springer, 2013) p. 110:

An International Criminal Court judge describes how basic financial transactions are blocked because of Trump's sanctions, simply because the judge uphold arrest warrants for Israeli officials. EU governments should condemn this obstruction of justice. x.com/MiddleEastEye/…

$1.5 BILLION. Let me say it again - a $1.5 BILLION BET. Bigger than any futures purchases made at the time. 5 minutes before Trump's post. Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer? This is corruption. Mind blowing corruption.

Well done @LibDems defending national interest vs US spy-tech company Palantir @libdemdaisy says contract would = "huge error of judgment" @MartinWrigley "We should be developing our own industries" NO NEW PALANTIR CONTRACTS, build capacity in house/UK theguardian.com/technology/202…

Palantir has just been handed a three-month trial contract with the Financial Conduct Authority. The FCA's data lake contains fraud investigations, money laundering cases, insider trading files, emails, phone records and social media material tied to live investigations into 42,000 regulated businesses. Palantir will now analyse all of it. This is the same company that: — Met the Prime Minister informally, without minutes, in Washington — Holds a £240m MoD contract awarded without competitive tender — Has a £330m NHS data contract — Now has £500m+ in UK public sector contracts Critics call it "land and expand" — start small, become impossible to remove. The government said last week it wants to reduce dependency on US tech vendors. And now it hands Palantir the keys to Britain's financial crime intelligence. Full investigation: theverifiedreceipts.substack.com/p/how-palantir…

Massive respect to Szabolcs Panyi for uncovering what we all suspected: the Orbán regime isn’t just "Russia-friendly"—it’s an active subcontractor for Putin’s interference in European democracy. This leaked transcript from 2020 is a disgrace. It shows Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó literally begging Sergey Lavrov to help the Slovak "Social Democrats" (Smer) win their election. While pretending to be "conservatives," they’d rather back a nominal leftist in Bratislava as long as he bows to the Kremlin. It’s a coordinated assault on Central European stability. If you still believe Orbán fights for "Hungarian interests”, you’re missing the fact that those interests now seem to be dictated from Moscow. Share this. Don’t let them bury the truth. 🇭🇺🇪🇺 Transcript: “14.02.2020 PS: Hello Sergey, Peter here. Thank you for talking to me. As I understand you are in Munich, at the conference, right? SL: Yes, I am in Munich. PS: I don’t want to bother you but the Prime Minister asked me to do it, because we have kinda big plea for you. As you know then there are elections coming up in Slovakia 29.02 and it is of key importance to us that the coalition there would continue. I understand it may sound strange coming from Hungarian conservatives but we are hoping for social democrats since they are the only rational force in Slovak political landscape and the only ones who are acting without foreign interference. All others are basically funded by Soros. If the opposition wins then it would be a tragedy for the Central European cooperation. It is also important that the speaker Danko’s Slovak National Party would cross the 5% threshold. We hope they manage it but the only hope for the coalition to continue is when the ruling party wins elections. The prime minister Pellegrini was here yesterday and he told us that if your prime minister would host him even for half an hour it would be of great help for winning the elections. He told us it is way more important for their society than a visit to Washington. So he asked us to ask you, and we also want to ask it ourselves, if such thing could be organized that your PM would host Slovak PM in Moscow somewhere in February... SL: It’s quite a plea but I’ll pass it on to PM. PS: I understand. It would be great if you’d manage to organize it. Pellegrini asked for our help in that regard since he knows we have good relations and that our presidents also have good personal relations. And he trusted us in this matter. SL: Peter, I will pass this plea on today and will be in contact as soon as I have any updates. PS: Thank you. And let me emphasize it once more how important it is for us that the coalition in Slovakia continues. If they can’t continue then there is no hope for pragmatic cooperation in Central Europe and we would lose a lot. SL: I understand. PS: You have no idea how grateful I am that we are having this conversation. It is a sign of friendship. SL: Any time, my friend. All the best.”

What kind of depraved criminals torture a baby to break a father. #EndOccupation #EndApartheid #EndGenocide

4 and a half thousand Palestinian hostages held by Israel. No one says a word. 84 hostages including one child have died in Israeli detention. No one says a word.

No one knows for certain how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago. Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again. The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in the United States as a “blunder,” or even a “colossal mistake.” It was a crime. From the archives: @sinanantoon reflects on the cost of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, 23 years ago. jadaliyya.com/Details/36364/…

Let me explain what just happened 👇 5 minutes before the President announced a halt to attacks on Iran… someone placed a $1.5 BILLION bet on stocks going up and dumped $192 million in oil. 5 minutes… These trades were 4 to 6 times larger than anything else in the entire market. Whoever did this wasn’t guessing. You don’t risk $1.5 billion on a hunch. There was zero public indication this announcement was coming. No leaks. No press. Nothing. The only people who knew were in the room when the decision was made. Someone in that room picked up a phone. And within minutes they made more money than most Americans will earn in a thousand lifetimes. In a single trade. On a war that cost you $4+ a gallon gas and $16 billion in tax dollars. American citizens funded this war. Politicians are profiting from it. This is not the first time. Every major announcement from this administration has had massive suspicious trades right before it dropped. Tariff reversals. Policy shifts. War decisions. This is the most blatant insider trading operation in the history of American politics. It’s not even close. And it’s happening over and over in broad daylight. You would go to federal prison for trading on a tip from your cousin. These people are front running war decisions with billion dollar bets and nobody will ever ask a single question. Nobody will be investigated. Nobody will be charged. By tomorrow this will be buried under the next satisfying headline. Just like last time. And the time before that. The game is rigged. And they’re not even trying to hide it anymore… @barkmeta

🇺🇸 | How the Trump family turned the last presidency into their personal ATM. Five minutes before Trump announced a halt to attacks on Iran, someone in his circle bought $1.5 billion in stocks and sold $192 million in oil. Five minutes. Not hours. Not days. Five minutes. They knew what the President would say before he even said it - and made a fortune. And they don’t even have to hide anymore. Today, they answer to no one.

Dear Twitter followers: my friend and colleague @panyiszabolcs is under attack by Viktor Orban’s camp for exposing how Hungary’s foreign minister conspires with Sergei Lavrov to promote pro-Russian politics not just in Hungary but other countries in Europe. Szabolcs brings receipts in the form of transcribed phone calls (see below). This comes at a pivotal time, with Hungary facing a national election in less than two weeks and Orban trailing far behind @magyarpeterMP. Support Szabolc’s journalism here: buymeacoffee.com/szabolcspanyi/…

Distinguished Columbia Univ. Prof. Jeff Sachs on war in Iran: “This is a war of naked aggression by two mentally unstable individuals… this is not a war where people debate what happened. It is very clearly understood that this is a war without any justification whatsoever.”

This is Adam Mockler explaining to a MAGA panel how NATO actually works. The woman is furious. America is fighting in the Strait of Hormuz and the allies won’t show up. “What’s the point of an alliance if they won’t help us?” she asks. Mockler explains, with the patience of a man teaching long division to a golden retriever, that NATO is a defensive alliance. Article 5 is not a blank check. It does not activate because one member decided, unilaterally, to go to war in someone else’s waterway. Europe does not scramble its navies because Washington picked a fight and then expected company. The face she makes says everything. This is the real cost of ideological illiteracy in a nuclear-armed democracy. When the people advising power have never bothered to understand how the world is actually assembled, every institution becomes a betrayal. Every ally becomes a coward. Every rule becomes an obstacle. They spent years calling Europe freeloaders. Then started a war. Then got angry that the freeloaders wouldn’t come. The confusion is genuine. That’s the part that should keep you up at night. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

One year ago today, Israel murdered 15 aid workers in a clearly-marked medical convoy in cold blood. They fired almost 1,000 bullets. At the time, they called that 'human error'.