Yes, @mehdirhasan, we should ignore them. Each one failed to apply the legal standards as required. Amnesty: “However, its [ICJ] rulings on inferring intent can be read extremely narrowly, in a manner that would potentially preclude a state from having genocidal intent alongside one or more additional motives or goals in relation to the conduct of its military operations. As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict.” B’tselem: “This report relies on a broader analytical framework…” The UN Commission of Inquiry did not assess reasonable alternative explanations. The only mention of Hamas’ tunnel infrastructure was to discount the tunnel under the European hospital that Mohammed Sinwar was killed in (and where he directed acts harmful to the “enemy” [e.g. Israel]). The International Association of Genocide Scholars (of which I’m a dues paying member) did not assess reasonable alternative explanations and discount them (which would defeat the only reasonable inference test). Human Rights Watch did not actually assess genocide, it said that they concluded acts of genocide without any assessment. And important to note: Amos Goldberg and Omer Bartov are historians who are not qualified to assess the legal elements of the crime of genocide. Citing to them is a logical fallacy of an appeal to authority that makes zero sense. Not a single accuser assesses the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, particularly GCIV 19 & 28, and API 51(7). Without understanding the implications of these articles one cannot conclude that the only reasonable inference is genocide. If each accuser refuses to apply the jurisprudence as it stands today to make their conclusion, the problem is that they have a predetermined conclusion, and that they are fitting an analysis to that conclusion. This is fundamentally flawed. So, yes, we should ignore all of them. If you must rely on a confirmation bias with fundamentally flawed analyses that are devoid of the legal analysis that is required today, without being honest about the shift in the jurisprudence that they all require, the problem here is you. I can state that Israel hasn’t committed genocide under the jurisprudence because I can measure alternative reasonable explanations for Israel’s conduct. None of your citations attempted to do this required analysis. Genocide is not what you want it to be to convict the Jewish state who had its people taken hostage and Hamas, PIJ, and even Palestinian civilians going door to door slaughtering innocent people because of their membership in either the Israeli or Jewish groups. The more we do this the more we excuse Hamas for its crimes (including genocide), hostage taking, sexual violence, etc. that it committed against the Israeli people, but also its crimes it has committed against the Palestinian people that purposefully inflicted higher incidental harm to them (human shielding, diversion, torture, persecution, murder, etc.). Mehdi so badly wants Israel to be guilty of the crime Hamas committed that he will excuse Hamas from culpability for its crimes against Palestinians that would fundamentally negate genocidal intent for Israel (as confirmed by a UN report this last week, by the way). Mehdi is an evil person, as are all those who portend to care about Palestinians while ignoring Hamas just so they can blame Israel.

REWILD THE HILLS! Here's why: If we cleared every cow and sheep off the British uplands to save the planet, we would liberate two-thirds of the nation's farmland for a brighter, greener future. Experts have calculated that within just 5 years, that reclaimed land could deliver: - Millions of acres of premium bracken (toxic, but very photogenic) - A booming tick population, up several thousand percent - The total departure of every ground-nesting bird, freeing them at last from the terrible burden of nesting - One (1) consultant's report recommending we put the animals back And best of all, the beef and lamb those animals used to produce will simply be shipped in from Brazil instead, so we get the exact same meat, now with the bonus of a 6,000-mile voyage and a freshly cleared rainforest thrown in at no extra charge. A hollower countryside for a healthier planet. That's why we must remove the livestock. NOW.

Never mind under-16s, fucking politicians need to be banned from using disappearing messages.

Announcing £4,500 million for cyclists the day after saying there’s no money to defend the nation is magnificent And rally says it all

This week the most advanced AI model on the planet got switched off by a foreign government. British researchers were studying it. British companies were testing it. British hospitals were piloting it. Not any more. This isn't an AI story. It's the story of every industry we used to lead. Britain has some of the best AI talent in the world. DeepMind was built here. Our AI Safety Institute writes the rules other countries follow. We have the researchers, the universities, the standards. What we don't have is the power stations to run the data centres, the planning system to build them, or the industrial base to make the chips. So the work happens here and the value lands somewhere else. We invent. Others build. Others decide. Then we read about it on Saturday morning. Same story as the kit our soldiers don't have. Same story as the factories we used to. I spent nine months in government making this argument inside the room. I'll make it louder from outside.

How disorder followed an attempted beheading on the streets of Belfast. Will mass immigration result in a new round of troubles? This week’s Brazier. With @ColinBrazierTV Only on @OutpostStudios

Musk has injected the equivalent of what would be around 10% of UK GDP into the US economy in the space of 5 years! Anyone arguing to tax the rich or higher taxation should reflect on why Britain doesnt have a Musk, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Huang, Pichai etc

🤣

The BBC Has Ruled. Brexit Damaged The Economy. No Further Debate Required. The BBC's editorial complaints unit has decided that the negative economic impact of Brexit is now a settled fact. Not a contested judgement. Not one side of a live debate. A fact, in the same category as man-made climate change, requiring no balancing view. The ruling followed a Radio 4 Today programme segment featuring Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, alongside Liam Byrne and Sir John Gieve, both long-standing advocates of closer EU alignment. All three agreed Brexit had damaged growth. The presenter, Katya Adler, did not challenge the premise or introduce a dissenting voice. A complaint followed. The ECU's response is the revealing part. It acknowledged the segment failed to "acknowledge the alternative case" for pursuing opportunities outside the EU rather than realignment with it. That part of the complaint was upheld. But the central complaint, that three pro-EU voices agreeing with each other on air is not balance, was dismissed. The reasoning given was that this reflected "the consensus among economists" and there was no "significant body of economic opinion" on the other side. This is worth pausing on. The BBC is not claiming it found balance. It is claiming balance was unnecessary because one side of the argument does not meaningfully exist. The institution that is legally required to be impartial has ruled itself the arbiter of which questions are still open and which are closed, and Brexit has just been moved into the closed file. The economics itself does not support the certainty on display. The headline figure driving much of this narrative, an 8 per cent hit to GDP since 2016, comes from an NBER paper built on a "synthetic control" model that constructs a hypothetical non-Brexit Britain from a basket of comparator countries. The largest weighting in that basket, over 60 per cent, is the United States, a country currently riding an AI investment boom and a separate fiscal stimulus. The model also weights Estonia and Greece more heavily than France or Germany. On a straightforward per capita basis against France and Germany, the actual comparators, Britain's performance since 2016 sits roughly in line with both. An 8 per cent gap simply isn't visible. This is a model producing a number that then gets reported as "the consensus," which the BBC then cites as the reason no alternative view is required. That loop, model produces number, number becomes consensus, consensus becomes fact, fact requires no balance, is the mechanism. It does not require a conspiracy. It requires an institution that has decided which conclusions are respectable and which are not, and which then treats its own prior decision as evidence. The same posture has been on display all week. A government department can decide its diversity targets are lawful without seeking legal advice to check. A police force can decide a book about dismantling "inner white supremacy" is leadership training. A broadcaster can decide an economic question is closed and that deciding so does not breach its own impartiality rules. In each case, the institution marks its own homework, and the mark is always a pass. None of this requires Brexit to have been a triumph. Britain's economy has genuine problems, most of them unrelated to single market membership. But a state broadcaster, funded by compulsory licence fee under threat of prosecution, has now formally placed one of the most consequential political decisions in modern British history beyond the reach of its own impartiality obligations. Reform's Lee Anderson called it being "blinkered by groupthink." The more precise description is an institution that has stopped being able to tell the difference between its own assumptions and the facts. "The BBC is not claiming it found balance. It is claiming balance was unnecessary because one side of the argument does not meaningfully exist."

Most of the obituaries and tributes to David Hockney will, I imagine, focus primarily on his extraordinary craft and brilliance as an artist. Perhaps they might also mention his brilliance as a communicator (he was such a fine writer and speaker). But there was something else rather unique about him too. He was also strikingly honest about the tricks/techniques artists use and used to paint. His book Secret Knowledge is a rather wonderful detective work into how renaissance and Dutch golden age painters used glass and mirrors to help them master perspective. It's a pretty compelling case (see this video clip from a BBC doc he made alongside the book👇) though I'm sure some art historians will raise their eyebrows. Many will be aghast at the notion that greats like Vermeer might have been using lenses and camera obscuras to help them draw and paint. As if it were in some way "cheating". But Hockney was so self-evidently brilliant he was one of the few people who could document this without anyone gainsaying his own talent. There are very few artists, living or dead, who have this degree of self-confidence. Not just to know their craft, but to be bracingly honest about how it works. One other who comes to mind is Paul Simon: not just an extraordinary musician but is also an extraordinary communicator about the tricks and techniques of how to write and perform music. For many great artists, the temptation is to cloak their crafts in mystery, like a member of the magic circle. Hockney wasn't having any of it. So yes, he was a legend in all the obvious ways. But also in a few other less obvious ways as well. RIP.

Let’s pause net zero for a decade and see who cares about putting defence above Ed Miliband’s expensive energy obsessions.

10 years ago Guy Wallace absolutely nailed it, and here we are... Do look up The End of The Game.

A new favourite entry in my list of "strange accidents of British political history" - the Jackie Weaver Zoom meeting bust-up on Handforth parish council leading to the rise of Reform MP Sarah Pochin

The next question is, can Keir Starmer persuade any minister to be Defence Secretary without reopening the MoD’s settlement, when in Healey’s words it will “reduce the readiness of our forces and increase the risk to personnel”? If he does, will the chiefs resign next?

.@Ed_Miliband is no longer just an energy problem. He is a national security problem. Starmer needs to sack him. Net Zero is now overriding the core duties of government. Defence, energy security and food security all come second to decarbonisation.

What will the Bank of England do about UK interest-rates? notayesmanseconomics.wordpre… via @notayesmansecon

Brilliant.

Excellent from @LordIanAustin on yet ANOTHER debate on the evils of Israel: As he says: ‘Over the last few years, Parliament has discussed Israel more than any other issue, not just any international issue, more than any domestic issue: more than the economy, unemployment, crime, the NHS. ‘The public out there look at Parliament and think this is utterly mad, utterly, utterly mad.’ Lord Ian blames Parliament for helping fuel antisemitism adding: ‘Does Parliament not understand that singling out the world's only Jewish state, holding its standards not applied to anywhere else, falsely accusing Israel of committing these terrible crimes? ‘This is bound to drive hostility towards people who are identified with Israel, which is the vast majority of the Jewish community, and I have to say this is why I believe Parliament is playing a large role in driving the explosion of anti-Semitism that we've seen on the streets of Britain.’