Novelist. Love my family, friends, cocker spaniels and the Cornish Roseland. https://nitter.cf/t.co/SdVpSXTE1O…
London, UK
Joined March 2009
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Isabel Wolff retweeted
I’m furious. Blindingly furious. In fact, blindingly furious doesn’t cover it.
On Wednesday, the Islamic Republic of Iran was elected to the United Nations’ Committee for Programme and Coordination, the 34-member body that oversees how the UN delivers its programmes, from human rights and women’s rights to counterterrorism.
Yes, really. The world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism now has a hand in reviewing the UN’s counterterrorism operations, and a regime that hangs dissidents from cranes will help to scrutinise its work on human rights.
America, Canada and Australia explicitly voted against the move. “The committee should not seat a regime that silences dissent and fuels regional instability,” said Canada’s foreign minister, Anita Anand. Australia’s Penny Wong said Iran’s conduct “undermines multilateralism”.
Ed Miliband, by contrast, had already approved Iran’s candidacy back in April. According to the Foreign Office, its hands were tied. Iran had been put forward by the UN’s Asia-Pacific group, alongside India, Japan and Pakistan, and Hamish Falconer, the Middle East minister, described the nomination as an “automaticity”. Chris Elmore, another minister, insisted that Britain could not have blocked it.
Really? Then how did the Americans, Canadians and Australians manage to stand up and be counted? Nobody was asking Britain to perform a miracle. We were being asked to do the bare minimum: to say, out loud, that a regime which has spent the past four years trying to murder people on British soil has no business sitting in judgement on anybody’s counterterrorism programme. The Foreign Office couldn’t even manage that.
Let’s consider what Tehran has been up to...
New post. Link in first reply
Isabel Wolff retweeted
🇪🇺 I spent ten years with the Greens and three decades in progressive politics and civil society. What made me speak out against gender identity policies were the extreme demands and the vicious campaigns against those who dared to question them. As a politician, I felt I had the responsibility and the opportunity to make a difference.
Isabel Wolff retweeted
Unbelievably, Iran (yes, Iran) has just been elected to the UN Committee that sets the priorities for women’s rights, counter-terrorism and peacekeeping. This, the country with an almost uniquely violent record of brutalising women, executing peaceful female protesters and of course sponsoring very widespread terrorism.
Equally unbelievably, the UK nominated Iran and although the voting is secret, we must assume it subsequently voted for Iran in the General Assembly. This is the same UK that is nominally run by PM Andy Burnham who declared only a few weeks ago that “we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them.”
If the young women of Iran who dare to remove their headscarves, or sing, or engage in peaceful protest to press for basic democracy aren’t the underdog in their battle with a vicious and murderous regime… who then is an underdog?
I can’t exaggerate how ashamed I am of my country. I’m sickened and repulsed by what it has become. I barely recognise it. Burnham should hang his head in utter shame.
And as for the UN, it has come to embody institutional corruption and gaslighting on a global scale.
It put China, Qatar and Cuba in charge of the body charged with protecting human rights worldwide.
It put China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan (all of which crush/ban NGOs in their own countries) in charge of the body that decides which civil-society groups and NGOs get UN accreditation and access.
It put Syria (under Assad) in charge the body that promotes education, culture, and press freedom.
How long must this continue? The UN has no credibility whatsoever and should be stripped back to the basics- a debating chamber for the big global issues of the day. And nothing more.
How can anyone defend this?
Isabel Wolff retweeted
A bride leaving her recently bombed home to get married in London, November 1940.
Her name was Ena Squire-Brown, a dancer famous for her “Dove Dance,” and that morning she was on her way to St. George’s Church in Forest Hill to marry a young Royal Air Force officer, J.C. Martin. London was in the middle of the Blitz, with German bombers attacking the city night after night, and her home had just been hit. Behind her, the windows are shattered, the roof has been torn open, and the front garden is buried under twisted metal and rubble.
By the end of the Blitz, more than a million London homes had been damaged or destroyed. Hers was one of them, and still she walked out of it in her wedding dress, smiling, as if nothing in the world could spoil that day for her...
Isabel Wolff retweeted
The face of Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband when they’re destroyed in the commons by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch. She is on another level to these clowns.
These unserious politicians are both out of their depth, as is the whole of this incompetent Labour government.
Isabel Wolff retweeted
The students marching on October 7th to celebrate the pogrom that happened in Israel three years ago are not progressives. They are descendants of Oswald Mosley. They’re blackshirts. The Hitler Youth of today.
They glory in the death of Jews. So call them what they really are.
Isabel Wolff retweeted
Truly despicable. A disgrace to the once-majestic French nation.
A firefighter set on fire by the very people France imported.
Isabel Wolff retweeted
Sir Simon Schama on Ed Miliband: “Any foreign secretary who went out of his way to shake the hand of the foreign minister of the Republic of Iran, whose regime murdered 40,000 people, has not got the authority to sermonise about anything, ever again!”
jewishnews.co.uk/miliband-ha…
Isabel Wolff retweeted
🇮🇳 REMEMBER THIS MAN: CAPTAIN SMIT MACHCHHAR.
An Indian captain flying hundreds of people from Dubai to Tel Aviv was stabbed in his own cockpit.
Wounded, bleeding, with the aircraft plunging thousands of feet, he fought back.
Then passengers and crew did something extraordinary:
They stormed the cockpit.
They restrained the attacker.
Other pilots took control.
And that plane LANDED.
Hundreds of families got their loved ones back today because ordinary people refused to freeze when everything went wrong.
Captain Smit Machchhar — India and the whole WORLD should be proud of you. 🇮🇳
And to the passengers and crew who ran toward the danger instead of away from it:
Heroes. Every single one of you.
This is what courage looks like.
Isabel Wolff retweeted
Had this man not found the courage to fight back after being repeatedly attacked with an axe capable of cutting through metal—while bleeding profusely—and had the presence mind to trigger the hijack/emergency code, initiate the emergency response and open the cockpit door to allow passengers to assist him, the aircraft’s subsequent dive could have had catastrophic consequences.
Had that aircraft not been recovered, the geopolitical consequences for the Middle East could have been profound and potentially irreversible.
Sometimes history turns on the courage, resilience and presence of mind of one person.
Yes. One Indian man.
Isabel Wolff retweeted
Oh @IrelandFootball, high praise indeed from the murderous monsters of Tehran. You must be sooooo proud.
Isabel Wolff retweeted
I'm sorry but WHHHAAAAT?
Five men arrested near RAF Fairford to be released on bail, head of UK counter-terror police says bbc.in/4yue09h
Isabel Wolff retweeted
While the Netherlands bans goods from Israel, they remain stunningly silent about the Christian Nigerians being murdered daily!
#CHRISTIANOPHOBIC
Isabel Wolff retweeted
Almost 23,000 Christians have been slaughtered in Nigeria.
Where are the protests for them?
Isabel Wolff retweeted
Pity he's an old white male
The BBC's unwritten agenda won't allow that
Andrew Neil was outstanding. The BBC should fire the useless Biased Fiona Bruce & employ Andrew Neil as the new Host. His knowledge on all Politics is incredible & he would not stand for all the Bullshit that all the Guest’s talk. @afneil 👏👏
Isabel Wolff retweeted
🚨WES STREETING HUMILIATED AS TERROR SQUAD EVACUATES HOMES NEAR RAF FAIRFORD OVER IRAN LINK
In July Defence Secretary Wes Streeting smirked on breakfast television and dismissed Iranian threats against RAF Fairford as mere sabre rattling.
Today five suspects near RAF Fairford were arrested for preparing a terrorist act under the Explosives Act!
The bomb squad has swarmed the area, 85 British households have been evacuated from their homes, and counter terror police are actively investigating a direct Iranian connection.
While Wes Streeting was busy playing the tough guy on morning television and plotting the surrender of the Chagos Islands, hostile foreign threats were creeping right up to our key military bases.
How is that harmless sabre rattling working out for you now, Wes?
Labour ministers are dangerously out of their depth, treating national defence like a PR game while ordinary British citizens face bomb evacuations on their own doorsteps.
Retweet this immediately to expose Wes Streeting and hold this incompetent government to account. 🇬🇧🔥