Exiled Manc, I teach and write about US politics at Uni of Leicester, demoralised remainer, love doggies and MCFC. Views completely personal
Joined September 2020
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Alex Waddan retweeted
It isn't 'left wing' to destroy the public realm. These aren't just 'old buildings'. They belong to the whole community, often built through their collective resources and certainly maintained by them.
Socialism, at least my tradition, is in part about conserving and strengthening the public realm for the common good. It is not about destruction.
It shows appreciation for civic beauty and pride, a sense of history, connection with those before us, duty for those after us, the importance of place and belonging. The things that make life worth living, being available as widely as possible.
Individualists destroy. Selfish utilitarians have no concern for such things. Anarchy breeds inequality, as those with means will shut themselves away and the rest are left to suffer.
Alex Waddan retweeted
At the Nordhausen concentration camp, an American soldier named Lee Davis found a prisoner so thin that he could not lift his head. The man blinked, barely alive. Davis knelt down, broke off a piece of his chocolate ration, and gently stuffed it into his mouth.
The man burst into tears, unable to chew, but holding the chocolate as if it were gold. "He hadn't spoken in weeks," another soldier said, "but he whispered 'thank you,' in English." Private Davis remained by his side all night. The man survived. For years, he wrote to Davis, calling him "the man who brought flavor back to the world."
It's always good to be good.
Alex Waddan retweeted
I doubt a council that struggles to issue a parking permit is really up to solving the most intractable crisis in the Middle East. xitter.cf/hoffman_noa/status/211…
Anyone who has been around Brixton station of late will be aware that the area is covered in litter. Bins are overflowing, there is a severe homelessness issue and it's crackhead/anti-social behaviour galore. So, shall we check in on what Lambeth Council will be spending time discussing at its meeting this evening?
Well! Tonight Lambeth Council, led by a Green-Lib Dem coalition is due to discuss Motion 3 (Green Group): Palestine – End the Genocide, Complicity and Impunity. "This motion condemns Israel's actions in Gaza, calls for an immediate ceasefire, humanitarian aid, and the release of hostages. It also calls on the UK Government to halt arms exports, impose economic sanctions, and provide evidence to the International Criminal Court. It further proposes that the Council review its contracts and investments to divest from companies complicit in violations of international law."
Note they haven't even been bothered to update the language still referencing hostages...
This is Lambeth Council's priority while some of the worst crime and antisocial behaviour in London is happening as we speak within its boundaries.
Alex Waddan retweeted
What a Democratic Congress could and couldn’t do to stop Trump’s agenda and roll back his legacy by @Dr_Clodagh and @AlexWaddan blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/20…
Alex Waddan retweeted
Today we remember the victims of the October 7 massacre – the killing of innocent Israeli people, the torture, mutilation, rape and kidnapping, parading of the dead, the wanton cruelty and the depraved celebrations of murder, the gleeful delight in brutality, the degeneracy of its perpetrators and supporters. It is a day that stands out for its unparalleled sadism and nihilism.
The scale of the killing of people of all sorts, all races, Jewish and Arab and others, is unequalled in a single day in modern times.
It was the greatest murder of Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Its cruelty and barbarism seem to belong to cruel times long ago – this was a lurch back to the raids and slaughters of the Mongols or the Huns - but it is unique too in its 21stcentury hi-tech modernity: it was filmed live by its perpetrators and other cameras and so unlike any other atrocity in all of human history, its details are beyond question.
It is the most documented butchery and sadism ever perpetrated – and therefore the reactions to it are simply the clearest and most unequalled test of humanity available to us, reactions that will be remembered in the future.
It was also a crime against peace: its effects were utterly destructive for Israelis but also for Palestinians and the innocent people across the whole region who perished in the wars it unleashed.
More than that, it was an atrocity against humanity itself - and the humanist values that mark all decent people, the values of liberal, free, kind societies and communities everywhere.
Its effects were utterly destructive for Israelis but also for the Palestinians and the rest of the region.
Today we remember those who died, those who were wounded, those who were kidnapped, tortured, raped and killed in the tunnels of Gaza, those who lost friends and compatriots.
It was a crime of annihilation to launch the liquidation of an entire people and nation, to kill and torture Israelis and Jews.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Alex Waddan retweeted
The big Manchester City scandal is that they were secretly losing money and spending too much on salaries?
Does not seem like the worst corporate behavior in notify.
Alex Waddan retweeted
Huge congrats @JKennethWhite & Matthew Kerbel on the publication of ‘Democracy on the Edge.’ Great to chat re the book ànd state of the nation with JKW & @AlexWaddan 🇺🇸 📕 🤩
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcas…
Alex Waddan retweeted
Another murder of an innocent young person in Iran and another day of deafening silence by the mainstream Western media. Actually, not a complete silence -- there is the sound of outlets practically cheering Iranian success in the Trump's botched war. Don't do this. Don't let your dislike of Trump or the war blind you to the dangers and horrors of the Islamic Republic's terrorist regime.
Islamic Republic in Iran hangs 24-Year-old woman who defended herself from sexual assault
Yesterday the regime executed Marziyeh Neyri yesterday, a young woman who was forced into marriage at age 17 and hanged for fighting back against her attacker.
Marziyeh was 18 years old when her husband's associate attempted to sexually assault her in her own home, in front of her husband. She grabbed a kitchen knife to defend herself. Her husband died in the struggle.
She told the court she had been repeatedly assaulted by her husband's associates before that day. Iran's courts didn't care.
The regime rejected her self-defense claim. Her attacker, who survived, took the stand and called her a murderer. The court believed him over her.
She was sentenced to death.
No clemency. No mercy. The sentence was carried out at Chubindar Prison in Qazvin.
Marziyeh Neyri never had a chance. Forced into marriage as a child under Iran's Islamic laws, she spent the few years of her adult life in a courtroom, fighting for her life after defending it.
She lost.
This is the Sharia Laws in Islamic Republic of Iran where a woman can be hanged for surviving.
💔
Alex Waddan retweeted
A woman was hanged in Iran yesterday who had endured repeated physical and sexual abuse by her husband who also allowed his ‘associates/friends’ to assault her.
To put this in context, Ruth Ellis was the last woman executed in the UK in 1955. She was granted a posthumous pardon by King Charles III in July 2026.
Her death sentence now acknowledges the profound historic injustice of her hanging and recognizing the severe domestic abuse she suffered.
Executed at age 28 after a 20-minute jury verdict, Ellis's original trial did not account for the impact of prolonged intimate partner violence and abuse on her mental state. Her case became a major catalyst in the eventual abolition of capital punishment in the UK.
Not a such consideration by the barbaric Islamic regime in Iran ⬇️
Islamic Republic in Iran hangs 24-Year-old woman who defended herself from sexual assault
Yesterday the regime executed Marziyeh Neyri yesterday, a young woman who was forced into marriage at age 17 and hanged for fighting back against her attacker.
Marziyeh was 18 years old when her husband's associate attempted to sexually assault her in her own home, in front of her husband. She grabbed a kitchen knife to defend herself. Her husband died in the struggle.
She told the court she had been repeatedly assaulted by her husband's associates before that day. Iran's courts didn't care.
The regime rejected her self-defense claim. Her attacker, who survived, took the stand and called her a murderer. The court believed him over her.
She was sentenced to death.
No clemency. No mercy. The sentence was carried out at Chubindar Prison in Qazvin.
Marziyeh Neyri never had a chance. Forced into marriage as a child under Iran's Islamic laws, she spent the few years of her adult life in a courtroom, fighting for her life after defending it.
She lost.
This is the Sharia Laws in Islamic Republic of Iran where a woman can be hanged for surviving.
💔
Alex Waddan retweeted
A note to my progressive colleagues and to the organized Jewish community about criticizing Israel without feeding antisemitism:
Sharp criticism of the Israeli government is not inherently antisemitic. Criticizing the devastation in Gaza, opposing US military assistance or condemning Netanyahu’s policies are all legitimate arguments. Treating every such criticism as antisemitism is wrong, alienating and ultimately makes it harder to identify the real thing.
But progressives also need to recognize that certain arguments can reinforce antisemitic ideas even when that is not the speaker’s intention.
Criticize the $3.3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel. But don’t claim that Israel is the reason Americans lack healthcare or affordable housing. That isn’t true and to the average voter who doesn't parse words as carefully it can easily become a story about Jews or Israel diverting money from ordinary Americans through their control of government.
Criticize Netanyahu for urging Trump to attack Iran. But don’t call it “Israel’s war.” Trump is the Commander in Chief. He made the decision previous presidents refused to make. Blaming Israel shifts responsibility away from the American president and feeds the idea that Israel secretly manipulates America into fighting its wars.
I want my progressive colleagues to take my concerns seriously when I say a particular argument comes dangerously close to reinforcing antisemitic ideas, even if that wasn't the speaker's intention.
But if I expect that respect, I must extend the same courtesy in return. I have to distinguish between criticism of Israel that I simply disagree with and rhetoric that genuinely crosses into antisemitism.
If we can listen more carefully, criticize more precisely and assume better faith from one another, we might discover that there is more room for honest disagreement than our politics currently allows.
jstreetdotorg.substack.com/p…
Alex Waddan retweeted
The Iranian despotate are now on a killing spree executing a series of (truly) brave young people who protested against Khamenei in January.
They are hanged from cranes - craneocide being a special ritual of the Islamic Republic.
Surely this is impossible to ignore, impossible not to protest.
One of the moral tests of our time.
@UN
@andyburnham @Ed_Miliband
🆘📢🆘📢🆘📢🆘📢🆘📢🆘📢🆘📢
The youth of Iran in the line for execution!
1. Ahmadreza Saeedi. 2. Navid Elyasi
3. Abolfazl Dadgostar. 4. Omid Mansouri
5. Hamed Mehralian. 6. Mehdi Asadi
7. Milad Boyeri. 8. Mehrdad Boyeri
9. Ali Boyeri. 10. Romina Rahimi
11. Taraneh Rahimi. 12. Setayesh Saedi
13. Mehdi Jafari. 14. Armin Gholami
15. Sajjad Abedi Shapourabadi.
These are the young people from the #Shohada_Square, Isfahan case who have been sentenced to death with injustice, and their sentences could be carried out at any moment.
Be their voice before it is too late!
#StopExecutionsInIran
#IranMassacre
Alex Waddan retweeted
On This Day — August 2, 1943
Jewish prisoners in Treblinka rose up and set the death camp on fire.
Nearly 900,000 Jews had already been murdered there. Almost no one lived more than a few hours after arrival. By the summer 1943, only about 840 prisoners remained. They were forced to sort the clothes of the dead and burn the bodies. They knew they were next.
So they planned the impossible.
They forged a key to the SS armory. Stole rifles, pistols, and grenades. The password was “Death!” answered by “Life!”
That afternoon the signal came. They attacked the guards, ignited the barracks and fuel tanks, and stormed the fences. For a brief moment, the camp built solely to erase them burned by Jewish hands.
200–300 men broke into the forests. Most were hunted down and killed in the days that followed. Only about 70 lived to see the end of the war.
They did not liberate Treblinka.
They did not stop the Holocaust.
But in a place designed for their total annihilation, they chose to fight back and seek freedom.
A handful survived to tell the world exactly what this place was.
Alex Waddan retweeted
and of course we can expect lots of student marches, encampments and demos, right?
Gibt es wirklich kein einziges deutsches Medium, das über die Hinrichtungen von gestern Abend oder heute Nacht im Iran berichtet?
Tausende Menschen gingen gestern Nacht in Isfahan auf die Straße, um die Hinrichtungen zu verhindern. Berichten zufolge wurde dabei eine junge Frau erschossen. Drei Protestierende von Januar 2026 wurden öffentlich hingerichtet!
Und in Deutschland?
Ich habe bislang kein großes deutsches Medium gesehen, das darüber berichtet.
Alex Waddan retweeted
Can somebody ask @NYCMayor Zohran Mamdani why he isn’t plannning to arrest Pezeshkian, the president of the Islamic Republic, who is attending the same UN conference as Netanyahu in September?
Tens of thousands of Iranians murdered in two days.
The worst massacre of our time.
No speech?
No arrest?
No performance?
Alex Waddan retweeted
While the world watches the war, the Islamic Republic of Iran hanged a 19-year-old boy today.
His name is Erfan Esfandiari and he was his parents' only child.
He did not kill anyone. He did not carry a weapon. His crime, according to the Islamic Republic, was opening a door. Sheltering protesters who were running from security forces. That was enough to send him to the gallows.
Erfan was one of 12 young men in the Alikhani Square case in Isfahan, arrested during the January 2026 uprising. Yesterday, all 12 were moved to quarantine. Today, the Islamic Republic hanged him.
This is a government that is so terrified of a generation that refuses to be silent, that it executes teenagers for the act of compassion.
Say his name. Because the regime is already trying to erase him. Because his mother and father are left with nothing, not even the right to grieve loudly.
Alex Waddan retweeted
At a pro-Palestinian demonstration in London, a protester wore a uniform resembling that of Nazi concentration camp prisoners, marked with Hamas’s inverted red triangle symbol.
The exploitation of Holocaust imagery in this manner is deeply offensive and profoundly disturbing.
Trivialising the suffering of Holocaust victims while displaying symbols associated with a terrorist organisation is not legitimate political expression.
Such actions distort history and contribute to the normalization of antisemitism.
Alex Waddan retweeted
The Jew-baiters continue to pursue Maureen Lipman.
The accusation that Ms Lipman puts Israel ‘first’ draws on a longstanding antisemitic trope: the claim that Jews are more loyal to global Jewry or Israel than their own country. It is a clear breach of the International Definition of Antisemitism.
We see through discrimination masquerading as political expression.
Beyond the likely copyright infringement and defamation here, portraying a Jew with devil’s horns is a longstanding antisemitic trope.
It is shameful, but these sorts of Jew-baiting agitators are far past feeling shame at their actions.
Discrimination against Jewish people has become normalised in the arts: it‘s now simply part of doing business as a Jewish creative in modern Britain.
The only consolation is that Maureen Lipman knows that she enjoys the support of the Jewish community and is beloved across the country, regardless of what vocal Jew-baiting activists might say.
Alex Waddan retweeted
The UAE does not tolerate terrorists; it deletes them from the equation.Iraq is now arresting members of the Islamic regime. Lebanon has normalized relations with Israel and is pushing Hezbollah out.Meanwhile, in the EU, the UK, and across the West, Muslim Brotherhood terrorists get upgraded to “activists,” the IRGC plays street politics, and antisemitism is treated like a fashionable opinion instead of a crime. That is not tolerance. That is political cowardice wearing a human-rights costume.
Alex Waddan retweeted
"Dementia is the elephant in the room, the biggest killer and the thing the public worry about the most." 💬
We agree.
This week’s Casey Commission evidence session with the Health and Social Care Select Committee rightly put #dementia in the spotlight. Now recognition must become action: ongoing support after diagnosis, for everyone who needs it.
No one should face dementia alone. 💙
Alex Waddan retweeted
The last 15 seconds. Utterly disgraceful
