Graham
@graybabes.bsky.social
Retired biologist living in Mallorca. Woke af. LUFC supporter for my sins. Love SF&F, cooking and history.
Reposted by Graham
This serves as advertisement for Alex Gibney’s documentary, Musk, opening October 9. Pass it on.
The Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ (Exclusive)
YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all turned down the trailer for the Oct. 9 doc, citing “political” content. X won't even take Bleecker Street's calls. The distributor is appealing.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
September 26, 2026 at 2:15 PM
This serves as advertisement for Alex Gibney’s documentary, Musk, opening October 9. Pass it on.
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Consider it from the perspective of an up-and-coming Establishment dickhead in 2008. The Thatcherite consensus - your whole professional life - just went Kaboom. The Iraq and Afghan wars made you and your mates look a right pack of clueless wankers, at very, very best. Everyone thinks you’re a cunt.
March 16, 2026 at 8:49 PM
Consider it from the perspective of an up-and-coming Establishment dickhead in 2008. The Thatcherite consensus - your whole professional life - just went Kaboom. The Iraq and Afghan wars made you and your mates look a right pack of clueless wankers, at very, very best. Everyone thinks you’re a cunt.
Erm... what happened to Denmark's Social Democrats?
A party that is resolutely anti-bourgeois while being staffed and supported by the bourgeoisie is an intriguing and inevitably impossible strategy.
Anyway good luck attracting those Reform voters who hate you.
Anyway good luck attracting those Reform voters who hate you.
March 1, 2026 at 6:18 PM
Erm... what happened to Denmark's Social Democrats?
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[throwing my 'the ecoterrorist monsters want to turn your daughter into a drug-addicted prostitute' placard in the bin as I enter the pub] Thank god for our progressive alliance, right lads?
February 27, 2026 at 9:54 AM
[throwing my 'the ecoterrorist monsters want to turn your daughter into a drug-addicted prostitute' placard in the bin as I enter the pub] Thank god for our progressive alliance, right lads?
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Dislike Old Jezza and Boris Johnson all you want, but there was a chunk of the public who liked those guys and would always pull the lever for them. That just isn’t true of Big Bungs, War And Migrant Crackdowns Labour: it’s not that people hate that more, it’s that *almost nobody wants it*.
February 27, 2026 at 12:17 PM
Dislike Old Jezza and Boris Johnson all you want, but there was a chunk of the public who liked those guys and would always pull the lever for them. That just isn’t true of Big Bungs, War And Migrant Crackdowns Labour: it’s not that people hate that more, it’s that *almost nobody wants it*.
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Just so: they don’t *have to* relentlessly insult their own voters and chase the good opinion of racist pensioners. They do it because *they want to do that*, because racist pensioners are the people you have to win over if you want to govern based on crackdowns and flag-fucking. Which they do.
It might look confusing that Starmer would continue relying on a guy who's poltical strategic advice has made him the most unpopular PM ever & destroyed the Labour party. But this apparent conundrum is solved easily enough the sec you recognise he's telling Starmer to do stuff Starmer *wants* to do
How Morgan McSweeney's '0% strategy' failed to win over Reform voters while haemorrhaging Labour's own support base to the Greens
www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/morgan-mcs...
www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/morgan-mcs...
January 24, 2026 at 10:36 AM
Just so: they don’t *have to* relentlessly insult their own voters and chase the good opinion of racist pensioners. They do it because *they want to do that*, because racist pensioners are the people you have to win over if you want to govern based on crackdowns and flag-fucking. Which they do.
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The thing to understand is: our whole ruling class bet absolutely everything decades ago on America or Bust, hammering everyone who advised against. “Bust” means the ground giving way beneath all of their feet, sweeping away their power, status and clout. Which leaves only one option, doesn’t it.
January 21, 2026 at 11:48 AM
The thing to understand is: our whole ruling class bet absolutely everything decades ago on America or Bust, hammering everyone who advised against. “Bust” means the ground giving way beneath all of their feet, sweeping away their power, status and clout. Which leaves only one option, doesn’t it.
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If this sounds like “the lesser races are a cancer that is eating away at the Reich, here’s how men of will will eradicate this disease” then that’s because that’s what it is. Chuck in a bit of encirclement, decadent art, historical grievance and Bolshevik intellectual menace, and it’s 1934.
January 17, 2026 at 2:50 PM
If this sounds like “the lesser races are a cancer that is eating away at the Reich, here’s how men of will will eradicate this disease” then that’s because that’s what it is. Chuck in a bit of encirclement, decadent art, historical grievance and Bolshevik intellectual menace, and it’s 1934.
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It’s hard to explain quite how many chickens have come home to roost in just this one story for the entire post Cold War order, which has now exploded in the most disastrous, embarrassing and undeniable way possible, yet somehow without anyone admitting that any bit of it might be their fault.
Maybe think of this next time, before you give the peace prize to a very obviously bent fash crank baying for America to invade her country, depose its government and put her in charge
January 16, 2026 at 11:52 AM
It’s hard to explain quite how many chickens have come home to roost in just this one story for the entire post Cold War order, which has now exploded in the most disastrous, embarrassing and undeniable way possible, yet somehow without anyone admitting that any bit of it might be their fault.
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We can laugh at the extreme redaction in the Epstein files but if that was Britain it’d have been burned, the PM would’ve denied its existence, everyone who saw it would’ve been euthanised by MI5 and the Sun and the Mail would be in year 16 of the most ruthless hate campaign humanity has ever seen.
December 19, 2025 at 11:28 PM
We can laugh at the extreme redaction in the Epstein files but if that was Britain it’d have been burned, the PM would’ve denied its existence, everyone who saw it would’ve been euthanised by MI5 and the Sun and the Mail would be in year 16 of the most ruthless hate campaign humanity has ever seen.
The older I get, the more my politics mature from childish, naïve beliefs like "if we engage in the democratic process we can make the world better" to more serious, adult principles like "let's burn this fucker to the ground and then nuke it from space".
The older I get, the more my politics mature from childish, naïve beliefs like "the world is complicated and leaders have to make hard decisions" to more serious, adult principles like "hurting people is bad and helping people is good."
December 17, 2025 at 8:37 PM
The older I get, the more my politics mature from childish, naïve beliefs like "if we engage in the democratic process we can make the world better" to more serious, adult principles like "let's burn this fucker to the ground and then nuke it from space".
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Like I say: the bottom line is that the genocide is not negotiable and cannot even be debated, and that everything else in Britain will have to warp and buckle to accommodate it and our complicity in it, forever, because this is what the Americans want. And we are Atlanticists.
December 17, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Like I say: the bottom line is that the genocide is not negotiable and cannot even be debated, and that everything else in Britain will have to warp and buckle to accommodate it and our complicity in it, forever, because this is what the Americans want. And we are Atlanticists.
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Governments and administrations plan in years; states plan in decades. And the obvious planned model for the UK, Europe, USA and others is 'Israel Everywhere': fortress states secured by militarised borders where 'intruders at the gates' can be murderously laid waste because not-people, not-life.
On both sides of the Altantic, within and without bodies like the UN, EU and NATO, developed countries are eager to return to Hobbes's State of Nature as pretext for their response to climate crisis, and Israel is useful for establishing the worst of what states can get away with in that paradigm.
This is only a failure if you assume the purpose was to prevent genocide and uphold the international legal framework. If instead the purpose all along was to give America whatever it demands with a minimum of domestic political damage, then I’d say it’s been at least a partial success.
November 21, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Governments and administrations plan in years; states plan in decades. And the obvious planned model for the UK, Europe, USA and others is 'Israel Everywhere': fortress states secured by militarised borders where 'intruders at the gates' can be murderously laid waste because not-people, not-life.
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I think the key to understanding Britain is that JK Rowling’s oddball fantasy about an elite class of special people - far apart from the scum mass of regular humans - being trained by mad, cruel bastards to be weird, unpleasant, superior judgy wankers, is more or less accurate.
I’m getting a sense here that of course the lads want to crack down on the avalanche of racism in our university hate factories, but maybe not if it involves arresting students who go to Oxford, because they are real people who actually matter.
October 15, 2025 at 11:04 PM
I think the key to understanding Britain is that JK Rowling’s oddball fantasy about an elite class of special people - far apart from the scum mass of regular humans - being trained by mad, cruel bastards to be weird, unpleasant, superior judgy wankers, is more or less accurate.
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If you buy an orange juicer and it just sprays shit out of the other end no matter how many oranges you put in it or what buttons you push, then at what point do you have to admit that you didn’t buy an orange juicer at all: you bought a shit machine.
October 5, 2025 at 2:46 PM
If you buy an orange juicer and it just sprays shit out of the other end no matter how many oranges you put in it or what buttons you push, then at what point do you have to admit that you didn’t buy an orange juicer at all: you bought a shit machine.
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Today's British media in 1944:
'Concentration Camps - Are they all bad?'
'We will be joined later by German minister Dr Joseph Goebbels, and a young girl called Anne Frank who is bunking off school at the moment.'
'Concentration Camps - Are they all bad?'
'We will be joined later by German minister Dr Joseph Goebbels, and a young girl called Anne Frank who is bunking off school at the moment.'
September 23, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Today's British media in 1944:
'Concentration Camps - Are they all bad?'
'We will be joined later by German minister Dr Joseph Goebbels, and a young girl called Anne Frank who is bunking off school at the moment.'
'Concentration Camps - Are they all bad?'
'We will be joined later by German minister Dr Joseph Goebbels, and a young girl called Anne Frank who is bunking off school at the moment.'
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September 22, 2025 at 8:27 PM
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The great cycle of British electoral politics: Oh why oh why isn’t the public engaged in politics NO NOT LIKE THAT YOU SCUM MORONS FUCK OFF THAT’S MY CHAIR, THAT’S MY JOB FUCK OFF, OFFICER, HELP OFFICER Why is everyone so apathetic, it’s like people are too lazy to have faith in democracy any more
September 18, 2025 at 9:10 PM
The great cycle of British electoral politics: Oh why oh why isn’t the public engaged in politics NO NOT LIKE THAT YOU SCUM MORONS FUCK OFF THAT’S MY CHAIR, THAT’S MY JOB FUCK OFF, OFFICER, HELP OFFICER Why is everyone so apathetic, it’s like people are too lazy to have faith in democracy any more
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For non-Brits: this isn’t even politics. The UK barely has politics in the sense of public debate, persuasion and consent. What we have instead is this: tiny gaggles of Gollum-like sneaks creeping around in the dark whispering to journalists and knifing each other, all of it off the public record.
I urge people to notice that the vicious dickheads in the leader’s office and the press have been trying to fuck her up for years, often in desperate, slapstick ways. And they just ram away at it constantly until they get what they want.
Angela Rayner bent to just about all of current Labour's demands (derogatory). She has spent five years betraying her old values and making sure she toes the party line. And the party has Corbyn'd her anyway. I hope other leftwing MPs take this as a valuable lesson.
September 5, 2025 at 11:16 AM
For non-Brits: this isn’t even politics. The UK barely has politics in the sense of public debate, persuasion and consent. What we have instead is this: tiny gaggles of Gollum-like sneaks creeping around in the dark whispering to journalists and knifing each other, all of it off the public record.
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A pattern here in white people countries:
- Financial crisis 2008 destroys existing economic model
- Sensible politicians cycle through different guises, like the T-1000 in the molten steel getting more and more melted
- All slowly realise the only form that might survive is “Authoritarian Fascist”
- Financial crisis 2008 destroys existing economic model
- Sensible politicians cycle through different guises, like the T-1000 in the molten steel getting more and more melted
- All slowly realise the only form that might survive is “Authoritarian Fascist”
A political class gasping for breath
France risks becoming ungovernable. Many blame the situation on Macron’s autocratic style. But the problem lies deeper, in the development of the parties and party elites.
www.eurozine.com
September 1, 2025 at 2:40 PM
A pattern here in white people countries:
- Financial crisis 2008 destroys existing economic model
- Sensible politicians cycle through different guises, like the T-1000 in the molten steel getting more and more melted
- All slowly realise the only form that might survive is “Authoritarian Fascist”
- Financial crisis 2008 destroys existing economic model
- Sensible politicians cycle through different guises, like the T-1000 in the molten steel getting more and more melted
- All slowly realise the only form that might survive is “Authoritarian Fascist”
Reposted by Graham
Incredible that there hasn't been a single resignation in front line Britsh politics over UK Gaza policy during the last 22 months. Imagine the sheer depths of the moral rot in Westminster that not one of the horrors we've witnessed constitutes a red line for these people.
Dutch foreign minister resigns over cabinet refusal to sanction Israel flip.it/y_YY_P
Dutch foreign minister resigns over Israel sanctions deadlock
Caspar Veldkamp and other ministers step down after cabinet rejects sanctions, prompting broader political upheaval.
flip.it
August 23, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Incredible that there hasn't been a single resignation in front line Britsh politics over UK Gaza policy during the last 22 months. Imagine the sheer depths of the moral rot in Westminster that not one of the horrors we've witnessed constitutes a red line for these people.
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This is actually quite interesting, because it’s the first to situate our current crisis within British history, alongside political crises in 1914, 1919 and the 1970s, when elite figures began to mutter darkly about Serious Measures required to restore Order. Big caveats here though…
Why are people talking about an English civil war? | Politics with Anoosh Chakelian
Podcast Episode · The New Statesman | UK politics and culture · 20/08/2025 · 33m
podcasts.apple.com
August 21, 2025 at 1:24 PM
This is actually quite interesting, because it’s the first to situate our current crisis within British history, alongside political crises in 1914, 1919 and the 1970s, when elite figures began to mutter darkly about Serious Measures required to restore Order. Big caveats here though…
Reposted by Graham
It’s not that they have a crushing majority but they’re scared to use it. They have a crushing majority and *they are using it to do what they always wanted to do*, and they are confused and pissed off to see the public don’t like it. They will blame the public for their own disastrous fuck up.
August 18, 2025 at 10:10 PM
It’s not that they have a crushing majority but they’re scared to use it. They have a crushing majority and *they are using it to do what they always wanted to do*, and they are confused and pissed off to see the public don’t like it. They will blame the public for their own disastrous fuck up.
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I paid close attention to e.g. the 2006 Lebanon War so I have known for a long time that the Israeli government simply does whatever the fuck it wants, respects no laws or norms of conduct and lies about it as a matter of course; the US agrees and Europe occasionally makes sad faces but does nothing
August 11, 2025 at 4:02 PM
I paid close attention to e.g. the 2006 Lebanon War so I have known for a long time that the Israeli government simply does whatever the fuck it wants, respects no laws or norms of conduct and lies about it as a matter of course; the US agrees and Europe occasionally makes sad faces but does nothing
Reposted by Graham
The replies to this post, even on here, even moreso on X, are so depressing to me. We live in a world where cities have never been safer and a minority of people are denying themselves a lot of delightful experiences because they’ve gone mad online.
Crime and the perception of crime: @jburnmurdoch.ft.com via @stephenkb.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/9623...
August 2, 2025 at 2:17 PM
The replies to this post, even on here, even moreso on X, are so depressing to me. We live in a world where cities have never been safer and a minority of people are denying themselves a lot of delightful experiences because they’ve gone mad online.