France has raided the home of and arrested Imane Maarifi, a French nurse who returned from working in Gaza and has been speaking out at protests and the media about the situation there. She's supposedly charged with the crime of making public insults in relation to an Israeli investment and real estate fair being held in Paris this weekend.

UK anti-terror police & intelligence services detained journalist Richard Medhurst recently and have now arrested Palestine activist and Gaza linked journalist on terrorism charges.

She gave the details of her impossible to abide by bail conditions in an interview someone else had to set up as she's forbidden from travelling, touching any electronic device.

I've had to remove the link entirely. The female journalist in question Sarah Wilkinson. Her Twitter account seems to be being run by a friend or her son now and you can search out the couple of interviews she's given so far

~~Sorry for the rubbish links. Xcancel just 403s for me and none of the four Hexbear recommended YouTube link alternatives work. All either don't work at all or are not allowing new users / posts. If the links are too tricky or you don't have time to watch the 30-45min interview here's the key points.~~

• First thing in the morning her home was raised by anti-terror police who wouldn't identify themselves, some even wearing balaclavas to hide their identities
• They claimed a warrant exists but would not show it or tell her what was contained in it as anti-terror legislation says they don't have to
• She wasn't allowed to dress, call anyone, or get her medication (she suffers from Crohn's disease).
• The tightness of the cuffs caused injuries to her hands but weren't loosened
• They ransacked her house and physically restrained her son, including throwing him up against the wall.
• They confiscated any and all electronic items, phones, and computers, as well as files, address books and more. These are the items that were on the official itemized list they provided her.
• They also stole money, personal items, and her passport, taking them without listing them.
• Taking her passport without itemising it guarantees she cannot meet the terms of her bail as she is required to turn it in on a future date. Her bail conditions also stop her applying for a replacement. The penalty for not being able to hand it in is likely to be 5 years in prison without a trial or legal representation.
• She also cannot travel, including buying any form of train or bus ticket despite living in a rural village, seeming including to her required 'check ins' on future dates.
• They deliberately desecrated her parents' ashes, spreading them so she couldn't retrieve them all, and damaged the urn.
• They loaded her into an unmarked black van, cuffed but unsecured and gave her a rough ride.
• They deliberately drove 45 minutes in the wrong direction, away from the police station they said they were taking her to. At this point she seriously considered that she might be being kidnapped as they still hadn't shown her a warrant or verifiable ID and were hiding their identities.
• While being held, they denied her any medication meaning that she also couldn't eat, essentially denying her food or drink.
• They eventually brought her a cup of tea and said she could have her meds as soon as she'd drank it. When she did, they then denied her meds again in an apparent attempt to make her ill.
• When she demanded to see a doctor they eventually sent in someone they claimed was a nurse. However, she seemed to have little to no medical knowledge, didn't seem to actually know anything about Crohn's disease despoite claiming to and couldn't even spell it when asked to. She did not appear to be a qualified medical professional and wouldn't give any details of her qualifications.
• They tried to deny her access to a lawyer, claiming she didn't have that right until she repeatedly demonstrated that she knew she did under Section 12 of the law. They eventually relented for the interrogation.
• She gave a no comment interview, but the questions they asked over several hours were apparently very interesting. They were riddled with racist comments and questions that implied Palestinian's weren't human, they repeatedly asked her "why she would value Palestinians over people like us" which she took to mean white and/or Zionist.
• She also says that her interrogators frequently used talking points, language, and tactics that organisations like the IDF and Shin-Bet do.
• Most notable was their interrogation and demand that she give details of the people in Gaza that she works with via a charity that digs wells and provides water. They wanted names, locations, contact details, phone numbers etc. Naturally she refused as she suspects they would be then given to Israel to use for targeting purposes.

NYT on Crooks' motive...

"When the F.B.I. was able to finally access Mr. Crooks’s cellphones and other electronic devices, agents could see that he had searched for images of Mr. Trump as well as President Biden, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and even F.B.I. Director Christopher A. Wray.

Mr. Crooks also had at typed in “major depressive disorder” and searched for dates and places for appearances for both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.

One of Mr. Trump’s planned appearances happened to be about 50 miles from Mr. Crooks’s house in Bethel Park, Pa."

Motive might have just been that Trump was a shorter drive than Biden or others.

Extremely American.

In a bid to increase productivity in its economy (now mostly owned by Northern Europe after the financial crisis) and 'fill gaps in skilled work' Greece is now moving to a 6 Day Work Week in many sectors.

Congratulations European technocrats, you've managed to roll back hard won progress by almost 200 years.

Not surprising, but a revealing moment of police culture regarding the protests here.

For those that can't see the Twitter video...

Police are violently arresting protestors on the bridge. Batons out. Often five or sex different officers tackling individuals, kneeling on them, getting licks in.

One officer in a riot helmet and drawn baton is stood to one side, watching, but not wanting to get stuck in with the other five or six officers with a protester already on the ground.

A much larger superior comes over to him aggressively, getting in his face, and yells *"Let's go! Let's go! You're the police! Let's go! Don't be a fucking traitor!"

Not only is this very clearly gang shit, but the idea that he could be a 'traitor' clearly shows that the police view this as a war against the protesters.

Again, this won't be surprising to anyone. But it's laid out so perfectly in this five seconds or so of footage.

Reporting from the ground that one encampment member was taken out on a stretcher. Zionist attackers then threw their fireworks towards it.

Elsewhere...

At Columbia cops threw protestors down a flight of stairs, then denied access to EMS or medical help despite the fact that one was unconcious.

At Washington University St Louis, video has come out of police tackling and beating a professor for filming a police assualt. He's still in hospital multiple broken bones and in the video you can see the bicycle cop deliberately breaking his ribs while he's restrained on the ground.

A Gallup poll the following week revealed nearly 60 percent placed total blame on the students, while only 10 percent blamed the guardsmen (30 percent had no opinion). Means cites multiple uses of the phrase “They should have shot more of them [students]” and similar sentiments.

Amongst the mixture of dread and anticipation of tonight's events grumpy comedy man Dave Anthony's tweet got a laugh out me with a tweet directed at the libs on his timeline:

As i see the mushroom cloud over Los Angeles. "If Trump was president there would be two mushroom clouds."

The BBC refused the air the South African prosecution's case at the ICJ.

It aired Israel's defense live, and in full.

David Katz is one of the best, and most accessible, especially on how the Baltic states have deliberately curated and used it to whitewash their own Nazi pasts and current far-right - mostly because he spent about 25 years living and researching it there (he now lives and teaches in Lithuania).

This a the useful overview article that I posted the other day.

He also collaborated with a number of other academics and historians to create the DefendingHistory website. Here's their archive on double genocide related stuff. There's some background links at the top, then papers by different authors, then related news articles etc.

I feel a little sorry for the Lemm.ee users here that came to make measured, personal posts specific to the annoucement. There's a fair amount of long off-topic arguements happening in bits of the thread now and that probably makes it harder to read and manage.

This is something that's often been pointed to as a pure result of Hexbear users or federation with Hexbear and given rise to accusations of 'brigading here and in the past'. While I don't think every segue into debate has been useful here, and have also told comrades that I didn't think this was the place for specific comments (which they removed) I also think there's some important context to point out - and I hope it helps lemm.ee users wondering about all this traffic not to fall into the trap of assuming the worst based on a couple of comments:

• Hexbear is a very big and very active instance. A very small proportion of users posting in a thread (especially one explicitly about them) can seem like a lot to a lot of instances.
• Hexbear doesn't have downvotes and Hexbear users do not have the ability to downvote posts or comments on other instances. This creates a culture where if people disagree, they tend to reply, not downvote instead. Another reason we're very active.
• This thread has constantly been at the top of people's feeds on Hexbear. if they're not only set to 'local'.
• Finally - and I say this fully acknowledging and appriciating the many ordinary, good faith, pleasant lemm.ee commenters that I've enjoyed reading and talking too even when I totally disagreed with them - a lot of these off-topic arguements and more heated comments do not come from nowhere. While not at all the majority, I do see a pretty shocking amount of actively hostile, hateful, and insulting behaviour here. Sadly, quite a bit of it would be banned under Hexbear's moderation policy against things like slurs and hate speech too.

So try to keep in mind if you see salty Hexbear users replying to people that, just in reading through this thread myself, I've the following instances of abuse or smears against my comrades (and they continue popping up). So I absolutely support them defending themselves (as long as they stay within the rules here):

• Dimissal as the pejorative "tankie" - 4 times (although we actually think this one is pretty funny usually)
• Users stating that Hexbear users are propagandists - 8 times
• Stating that people from Hexbear are specifically paid Russian/Chinese bots/propagandists - 10 times
• Direct equivalences of Hexbear posters to Nazis or just straight up calling us Nazis/fascists - 7 times
• Insults regarding mental health or IQ that would be classed as ablism on Hexbear - 8 times
• Dismissing users as children - 2 times
• Claiming Hexbear users are using vote-manipulation (impossible, as explained above) - 4 times
• Accusations of deliberate brigading rather than just commenting, being active - 11 times

I've tried not to count repeated instances from the same users. But sadly that's not all. Just a handful of the following are comments that have been made against Hexbear users in this thread, without any kind of equal hostility. As far as I can tell they all still remain:

• "You guys are like cancer"
• "Braindead fucking tankies"
• "Get fucked"
• "Asshole" (multiple)
• That our beliefs are "moralistic bullshut"
• That some of our beliefs are "a criminal ideology"
• A comment that simply states "No Russians"
• That we're "evil" (multiple times)
• An elaborate comparison to us "vandalising a Jewish graveyard" and other Nazi equivalences
• And of course a comment that explictly minimised the Nazi death toll with glee, seeming to imply they should have killed more. On the subject of disagreeing with equating the hammer and sickle to the swastika (hidden with spoiler tag, for those who don't want to see it repeated)...
  
  spoiler

  "you are right, it is nor really fair to nazis, who killed measly 17 million people, compared to impressive 100 million killed by communists."

There's also been numerious instances of users misgendering Hexbear users. I'm not going to put all of these down to malice, but at Hexbear we display our pronouns for a reason - we love our trans comrades! You don't have to, but could you please at least respect them and not misgender them?

Again, this isn't the majority, but it's honestly disappointing and worth keeping in mind amongst some of the louder, minority yells of 'brigading' etc.

Liberalism: acceptable to many, desirable to few.