🇪🇺Alwin 🇺🇦

For the love of all that is good can we please just stop all the bullshit, start the process of rejoining the EU, tell the right wingers & Trump sycophants to go fuck themselves, put the last decade of clusterfucks behind us, & start to improve people’s lives & finance again.

@pookiepolls @MonkeySuitMan Please read ‘Getting hold of a gun is easy’. Many of the things you mention feature in my novel. lulu.com/spotlight/Alwi…

A whole generation of South Africans would be shocked to read this, especially when they look at where the country is today. Before 1994, South Africa built capabilities that few countries in the world could claim. It developed nuclear weapons, a rocket programme, large-scale synthetic fuel production, a globally respected defence industry, and medical breakthroughs that made world history. At the southern tip of Africa, one country achieved all of this before the Cold War had even ended. Today, Africa is often spoken about as if it is still waiting to industrialise, still dependent, still trying to build what others already mastered long ago. That is what makes this history so striking. While South Africa was enriching uranium at Pelindaba, testing rockets at Overberg, producing fuel from coal at Secunda, and carrying out the world’s first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur, much of the rest of Africa was being pulled in a very different direction. Instead of industrial self-reliance, many newly independent states were sold ideology. Instead of building durable technical capacity, they were pushed toward socialist models that too often ended in weak institutions, dependency, and collapse. The pattern repeated itself across the continent. South Africa, by contrast, built real strategic capability under sanctions and international pressure. It developed its own uranium enrichment process, built six nuclear weapons, and then voluntarily dismantled them before the democratic transition, opening its programme to international inspection. No other nuclear state has done that in the same way. It also built a serious rocket programme. Vehicles in the RSA series were designed and tested, and the country came close to having its own orbital launch capability. That programme was not simply paused. It was dismantled. Sasol achieved something equally remarkable: turning coal into fuel on a huge scale. When South Africa could not secure enough oil, it used chemistry and engineering to produce its own supply. That was not theory. It was functioning industrial independence. The defence sector was another pillar of that capability. South Africa designed and produced advanced artillery, armoured vehicles, aircraft projects, and attack helicopters. Some of these systems went on to influence military designs far beyond its borders. Then there was medicine. In 1967, Christiaan Barnard and his team performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant in Cape Town. That was not an isolated achievement. It reflected a wider culture of scientific and medical excellence. So the uncomfortable question is this: if all of this is documented, why is so little of it widely remembered? The answer may be that it does not fit neatly into the version of history most people are taught. Pre-1994 South Africa is rightly remembered for apartheid and injustice, but that is not the whole story. It was also the most technologically advanced state Africa had produced, and acknowledging that forces people to confront how much capability existed, and how much has since been lost. South Africa did not inherit these achievements. It built them under pressure, under sanctions, and largely on its own. That is not nostalgia. It is history. And the fact that so many people barely know it happened says a great deal about how history is told.

@jonburkeUK @KathrynPorter26 Independent energy consultant does not equal intelligent energy consultant.

@KathrynPorter26 Statoil was 100% publicly-owned by the people of Norway until it was listed in 2001. Its successor, Equinor, is 67% owned by the people of Norway. The people of Norway also own direct stakes in 48 producing oil and gas fields. You must think your followers are idiots.

This Tory MP’s Party privatised North Sea oil & gas in the 1980s & spent the money halving Income Tax for the rich. Norway, however, used publicly-owned Statoil to build the world’s largest Sovereign Wealth Fund. Tories plundered our birthright & are trying to re-write history.

As a former academic, it is physically painful to watch the "Gold Standard" of scientific publishing turn into a rubber-stamp factory for narrative-driven garbage. A recent paper published by Springer Nature on CO2 "toxicity" is the perfect case study in why institutional science is losing all credibility. The paper claims that rising atmospheric CO2 is on the verge of poisoning human blood and causing a "toxic threat" within decades. It sounds scary... until you apply five minutes of basic biological and historical literacy. 1. The Evolutionary Reality Check Mammals evolved roughly 225 million years ago. During that era, atmospheric CO2 wasn't just "high"—it was astronomical, estimated at 2,000 to 4,000 ppm. That is nearly 10X higher than current levels. If the human (mammalian) blood-gas exchange system were as fragile as these authors claim, our entire lineage would have been extinguished in the Triassic. We are the descendants of organisms that thrived in high CO2. 2. The Military "Living Laboratory" We don't have to guess how humans react to high CO2. The U.S. Navy and NASA have decades of data. Submariners routinely live and work in environments with CO2 levels maintained between 2,000 and 5,000 ppm for months at a time. If the "science" in this paper were remotely accurate, every nuclear sub crew in history would have been neurologically incapacitated. They aren't. They perform highly complex technical tasks at CO2 levels the authors of this paper would find "apocalyptic." 3. The Peer Review Scandal How does a paper that ignores the fossil record and existing physiological data get past the "gatekeepers"? When "Science" ignores the laws of biology and decades of human data to push a scary headline, it is no longer science... it is ideology. This is why the public is tuning out. When you trade your intellectual honesty for a "fashionable" conclusion, you don't just lose the argument; you lose the trust of the people. The "reproducibility crisis" was just the beginning; we are now facing a full-blown crisis of basic competence. When prestigious publishers like Springer Nature swap rigorous physiological data for "fashionable" alarmism, they aren't just publishing bad papers... they are actively dismantling the public's trust in the scientific method itself. Academia is burning its own house down, and until there is a reckoning with this institutional rot, nobody should blame the public for looking elsewhere for the truth. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

From Private Eye

This you hun?

@CalWellstead @A1an_M @Tezzaisme @RachelReevesMP @Bruegel_org Putting the UK first would be to ensure we were able to influence. We need laws to prevent traitors from representing us. Fartage never attended committees which reduced our influence in the EU.

@A1an_M @Tezzaisme @RachelReevesMP @Bruegel_org You are far from alone! I certainly do NOT want to be knifed in the back by a sneak back into a failing Europe either! What I really want is a politician who puts Britain first, puts the British people first, ahead of their personal wants - enough! REFORM UK 🇬🇧

The future of our economy, security, resilience and defence is bound with Europe. Closer alignment isn't about choosing sides - it's about geography. Good to speak to @Bruegel_org about investing in our collective security and driving growth.

Urgent message.

I seem to have upset the @SuellaBraverman fan club - so let me be clear. This women sows hate, lies and division. She is wrong. She does not represent the vast majority of Britons. RT if you agree P.s. multiculturalism is great.

Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come.  This is one of them.

Can we get 5,000 people to reply “I stand with Macron 🇫🇷”? Yes or No?

I made the error of tuning in to watch Trump join the White House Press Briefing today. Two full hours later, I emerged mentally battered, trying to blink away the haze of rage, shame, and sorrow at what we’ve allowed to happen to America. For a full 90 minutes, before taking questions, Trump mumble-slurped his way through stacks of regime propaganda, and a massive list of his “accomplishments” which had been prepared in advance for his one year anniversary. When he was bored with something he’d been given, he would just throw it on the ground for one of his handmaidens to pick up. He seemed remarkably oblivious to the catastrophe he has set in motion with his attempt to steal Greenland from a NATO ally—and to his own incoherence. In between fits of verbal incontinence, more crying about his long-lost Nobel, and spewing vile racism, he was incredibly boring. He would just stand there for long stretches, sort of staring blankly at the papers he was given. By now he’s on Air Force One, traveling to give a speech at Davos about “affordability”—which I’m sure will be perfectly normal and cool and not at all a humiliating, historic disaster. In the meantime, some Democrats are negotiating with Republicans on more funding for ICE—despite the continuous stream of reporting of constitutional violations, citizens being arrested, detained and harassed—and protests being violently suppressed in Minneapolis. This is unacceptable. Everything is on the table now. The enemy has shown their cards. The die is cast. Pick your metaphor. There is no more negotiating. The majority find ourselves under attack by a deviant cult that wants permanent power over half the planet, and is willing to destroy the existing world order to get it. If you’re still playing politics in this scenario, you don’t get to be on the team anymore. Sorry. American citizens should primary every Democrat that voted for a Trump nominee, still talks about “bipartisanship,” took money from AIPAC, is unable to say “Abolish ICE”—or promotes AI, crypto, or fucking “abundance.” They need to pick a side or get out. The time for appeasing, compromising, or negotiating with Republicans and oligarchs is over. The tolerance for ignorance about the techno-fascist threat must be zero. Politics and institutional democracy has been rendered inoperable. Everything is on the table now. America is a failed state and Democrats let it happen. They must either offer something different than what got us here, or get out of the way. Prosecute everyone who committed crimes in the Trump regime. Abolish DHS. Shut down the GOP. Tax billionaires out of existence. Clean out SCOTUS and rebuild it. Nationalize social media and AI. Deliver actual universal health care. Cut the military budget in half. Save the planet. Timidity, incrementalism, and compromise are cancer in this environment. The enemy has jailbroken America, hacked its operating system, and turned it into an attack zombie against its own people and allies. With a lot of effort and sacrifice, we may get one more chance to swing the pendulum back—and if we do, it needs to swing back very, very hard. It’s not the same America anymore. Everything is on the table now. It’s time for everyone who claims to care—to act like it.

A real shame if this photo went viral again today.

@rsbehbehani @mjfree I came here to say that. On the other hand, a polar bear meeting him would have a great outcome.

@mjfree Penguins don’t live in Greenland BTW

BREAKING!!! Trump has arrived in Greenland

Grok says Elon Musk is the number one disinformation spreader on X, followed by Donald Trump. If you see this, please repost. I have the strong feeling that X's algorithm will try to suppress this information.

@ChaponaBike123 20mph means nothing without enforcement. Road policing needs far more resources than it currently has.

What is it about certain motorists, that think they've got to get ahead of cyclists, at ALL costs? What's going through their heads? "Sorry mate, you'll have to get out of my way and let me through, as I'm trying to overtake a cyclist" Despite getting effing nowhere, and overtook them again at the next junction anyway.

Raise your hand if you agree!✋️

Drop a 🤡 if you think this bozo is UNFIT to be anywhere near the Oval Office! 🤡