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Claire Kumar

@clairekumar.bsky.social
750 followers 1.2K following 60 posts

Working with ODI Europe and ODI Global on migration policies

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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Aidan O’Brien @aidanobrien.bsky.social · 9h
It appears that the US government pressured the Canadian and Lithuanian governments (as well as the EEAS) to pull their support and representives from the @disinfo.eu conference in Vilnius. This decision happened at the absolute last minute.
The EU disinfo lab 2026 sponsors. Three names have been tapped over CU you can see the Canada sign has been tapped over.
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Paul Price @swimsure.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"On a per capita basis, Ireland is subsidising fossil fuels at a rate up to 5 times the EU average." "The total fossil fuel subsidy figure for 2026 may well now be more than €6 billion." Compare: the new Children’s Hospital cost €2.24 billion & the total Education Budget for 2026 is €13.5 billion.
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Claire Kumar @clairekumar.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Definitely overlooked. An issue for a number of countries sadly. My colleague wrote about that here: odi.org/en/insights/...
odi.org
Smugglers or refugees? The growing prosecution of refugees in Europe
Europe’s asylum agenda and its treatment of asylum-seekers has faced heavy criticism by human rights organisations and UN agencies.
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
David Roberts @volts.wtf · 27/09/2026
I love this paper so much. If I had my way every single journalist, pundit, analyst, and politician in the US would read it & then read it again. I want to quote all of it. www.frontiersin.org/journals/soc...
frontiersin.org
Frontiers | The problem with polarization research in an age of extremism
"I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block i...
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Cas Mudde @casmudde.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
My broader take on all three German state elections and why focusing only on the success of the far right is both incomplete and self-defeating.
theguardian.com
Look again – there’s more to Germany’s election trends than far-right success | Cas Mudde
Defeatist narratives abound. Yet Germany’s latest elections suggest voter dissatisfaction is benefiting the left as well as the right, says the political scientist Cas Mudde
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Federica Genovese @fgenovese.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I am used to terrifying stories of human trauma from the central Med migratory route but very rarely there is such a level of close aggressive contact between locals and migrants. This is despicable and cruel and it should never be tolerated.
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Not a dicky bird about thugs trying to sink a dinghy with a rescue worker on board or their claims to be "forming an army". Two boats of people seeking safety land and bingo bango they're the ones portrayed as the issue. Labour is complict in the rise of the far right. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Home Secretary hits out at 'unacceptable' migrant landings in Kent
Usually brought ashore by Border Security Command or the RNLI, these are the first uncontrolled landings since 2025.
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Alastair Harper @alastairharper.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Thomas Edison in 1910. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves on this net zero business, lads
Someday some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire.
I'll do the trick myself if someone doesn't get at it....
This scheme of combustion in order to get power makes me sick to think of—it is so wasteful.... We should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy. Do we use them? Oh no; we burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel.
We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property. There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it cannot be destroyed.
Now, I am not sure but that my new storage battery is the thing. 167
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The BBC news report simply says Mr Thomas broadcast a livestream. This seems highly inadequate in quite a lengthy report, leaving out such key details: what he did; the French stating the behaviour was unlawful www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Dozens of migrants taken to Dover after more than 30 hours at sea
Protesters had earlier gathered in Gosport after an initial report that the small boat would be brought further west.
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Chris Grey @chrisgrey.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A picture of post-Brexit Britain. New post on my Brexit & Brexitism Blog on a fortnight of ugly political scenes, why a government-led counter-narrative on asylum is needed, and why these domestic political events are a national security issue: chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-pi...
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Claire Kumar @clairekumar.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
This thread is horrifying. Far right lunatics are chasing boats in the channel, knifing a dinghy to try to drown (murder) asylum seekers and endangering RNLI rescue teams. I am definitely now out of words. I hate this shitty country. If there are not prosecutions for this the rule of law is lost.
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Emma Yeomans @yeomans.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
6. As far as we can see, the rescuer was okay - though this is bordering on attempted murder. RNLI then headed towards the Solent, AIS off and chased by the far-right. Authorities in Portsmouth likely were warned that people would be offloaded and processed at Gosport, so Thomas rallied activists.
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Emma Yeomans @yeomans.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
5. After around 30 hours at sea, the dinghy was intercepted by the RNLI and those on board transferred to two lifeboats. Two lifeboat personnel tried to secure the empty dinghy. Thomas yelled abuse and knifed the dinghy to deflate it - with a rescuer still on board.
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Claire Kumar @clairekumar.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Amazing reporting. Thank god some are making the effort. These stories are disgusting. Pure evil www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
Banished to alien lands: Trump’s secret deportation deals
After a plane journey in shackles, an Iranian woman found herself in the middle of Africa in a country she did not know existed. She is one of thousands deported from the US on the back of shadowy dea...
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Claire Kumar @clairekumar.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Me too
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Holly 🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🇵🇸 @mxhollyclara.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I am still (11 years later) unable to grasp how the images of little Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on a beach wasn’t the final word on treating refugees with compassion and dignity. How we are we having attacks on the RNLI for saving HUMAN lives being encouraged by our media. I weep for our world.
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Lauren Starkey @laurenhstarkey.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The second paragraph is very revealing. It’s unacceptable that young cricketers were “wrongly” targeted because they were “mistaken” for people seeking asylum. The implication of course being that if they actually HAD been asylum seekers, it would have been fine and frankly they’d have had it coming
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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
It's hard to see how this isn't the outcome the far right wanted and achieved by their actions at the weekend. That feeling will be reinforced by the government "clarifying" condemnation by accepting bogus "legitimate concerns" arguments against providing safety. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Two ports denied request to land 120 migrants in RNLI boats
The King's Harbour Master and Southampton Port both declined to allow migrants ashore on Sunday.
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Claire Kumar @clairekumar.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
This isn’t a real article right???
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Adrian Littlejohn @yorksfella59.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I am bloody proud to be an #RNLI supporter and member! These brilliant men and women have quite enough to cope with without being harassed by the scum of the earth. Their only concern is to help people in danger at sea - not check passports first! Which is how it should be. Please RT if you agree🙏
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Northumbria UCU Branch @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
>Cutting Jobs >Fewer staff to teach students >Rising workloads for lower paid staff >But Senior management get pay rises. They don’t teach. They don’t research. What’s the pay rise for ?
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Nick Robinson on Today is literally talking about ‘legitimate concerns’ after second night of organised men dressed in black - sorry ‘protesters’ - mobilising en masse in another littoral town. This is how street fascism is normalised
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Seems the difference between ‘protestors’ and ‘terrorists’ is that protestors wear balaclavas while terrorists hold placards.
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Natalie Bennett @nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
"Water use was commercially confidential." No, that is not acceptable. If you are using a scarce, essential, valuable _public_ resource, you have to be transparent about it, and prepared to justify it www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Revealed: how companies ‘secretly’ use billions of litres of public water in drought-hit England
Exclusive: As millions of people face hosepipe bans, many companies are not required to report, let alone cut, use of public supply
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
While a range of responses to the threat of short-term or long-term disruptions to our food supply is necessary, I've come to believe that government stockpiles, following the Swiss model, are an essential component of resilience. But ministers don't want to know. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Britain's scorched fields mean a food crisis – and the government is ignoring the one measure that would help | George Monbiot
This summer’s extreme weather and wars in Iran and Ukraine have made our need for food stockpiles more pressing than ever, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Of the 661 people it took to create this toothbrush: 'Was there nothing else, looking at all the burning world, that these brilliant and highly trained minds could have done?' Scorching, with Socrates.
ft.com
What would Socrates have done with the new Dyson toothbrush?
No one needs two and a half million photographs of their back molars
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
Alex Says Stuff @alexsaysstuff.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I can't tell if worse might have gone on before in the obscured melee, but the bit where what appears to be an elderly couple brutally yanking this young woman's hair to try and beat her in the face with a crutch is just a genuinely horrific distillation of current UK politics.
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Astra Taylor @astra.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
You know it's a strange political moment when @naomiaklein.bsky.social and I are on the cover of the Financial Times. Our piece explores how climate change is fueling a new form of futureless fascism, and the public investments needed to shift course. Gift link: giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
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Lou Morgan @lmorgan.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
BBC report on the radio makes a point of saying the mood was “intimidating but not hostile” in Dover this morning, right before describing the massed men wearing balaclavas and blocking key infrastructure as shouting “Whose streets? Our streets.” I dunno, lads: sounds intimidating AND hostile to me
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ayowhose.bsky.social @ayowhose.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Police intel is good enough to allow pre-emptive raids on young women in Quaker meeting houses but mysteriously lacking when it comes to balaclava’d thugs blocking transport infrastructure. Funny that. 🙄 news.sky.com/story/ridicu...
news.sky.com
'Ridiculously heavy-handed' Metropolitan Police criticised after raid on Quaker meeting house to arrest protesters
One Quaker was incensed by how the police "flooded" the building - so much so that they pointedly did not offer the officers any cups of tea.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 05/09/2026
A large group of co-ordinated, masked men blockading a piece of significant infrastructure is a security threat and should be dealt with as one. There should also be serious questions about why police/intelligence services didn't pick up on it in advance.
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John Springford @johnspringford.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This is shocking.
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RTÉ News @news.rte.ie · 29/08/2026
A new course is helping people to make their own wind turbine from scratch to ease the uncertainty in the cost of energy and fuels
rte.ie
Wind turbine-making course aims to ease energy costs
A new course is helping people to make their own wind turbine from scratch to ease the uncertainty in the cost of energy and fuels.
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Reposted by Claire Kumar
David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Majority Black Gary, Indiana lost electricity for 2 weeks. @sarahlazare.bsky.social visited the city, finding buildings reeking of rotten food, elderly residents trapped in their homes, & mass chaos. This is what happens when climate disaster meets institutional neglect: prospect.org/2026/08/28/g...
prospect.org
Gary, Indiana, Is America’s Latest Climate Victim - The American Prospect
This community has already faced structural racism and disinvestment. A two-week blackout unleashed a humanitarian disaster.
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
People can "just adapt" to a changing climate, a thousand rightwing voices keep telling us. Either they lack imagination or they don't care. Try "adapting" to this. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
theguardian.com
Nepal flash flood: more than 1,500 missing, mostly tourists, after disaster kills at least 165 at Tibet border
Entire populated areas swept away after glacial collapse causes catastrophic flood in mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims
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Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"We identify how narratives of “pragmatism” are used by politicians to protect a fragile political consensus, to promote incremental rather than transformative change, to defend fossil fuel companies, and to dismiss “extreme” calls for a more rapid climate transition"
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Emma Monk @monkemma.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
One of the first "outrageous" claims I saw as Jason Arday's media hounding unfolded was that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days! Wow! What a thing to claim! And the newspapers all suggested there was no evidence he actually did it. Well, they clearly didn't look very hard 🙄 🧵 1/26
Photo after Jason's final marathon taken from his archived blog showing Jason surrounded by supporters in orange charity t-shirts
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Claire Kumar @clairekumar.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
“Never within the same postcode as plausibility.” Yep. Nice.
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Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
NEW: It was a digital lynching. And the media is never going to hold itself to account for the role it played in Jason Arday’s death. But there are things we can do. This is a practical guide based on my own experience. broligarchy.substack.com/p/a-digital-...
broligarchy.substack.com
A Digital Lynching
A practical guide for individuals and organisations when the mobs gather
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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Normally I just appreciatively read @jamellebouie.net 's columns-sharable video content just isn't my bag. But this is a very, very, very trenchant piece of commentary that captures a lot of how I increasingly understand the disjunction between the commentary environment and on-the-ground politics.
youtube.com
The pundits have completely lost the plot
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
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Claire Kumar @clairekumar.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
That is exactly what I was thinking as I watched it. We had to turn it off (a common occurrence these days)
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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Is “scholar” what we call someone who would suggest such a thing? Is “work” the best word to describe what they produce? Might these details suggest a different overall framing of what happened?
“It was written by a scholar known for work suggesting that Black people were genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than white people.”
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Quite weird to hear BBC News describe Jason Arday as “the black professor accused of plagiarism”. Is every story about a white professor going to include the relevant adjective?
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Mike Jay @mikejay.link · 12/08/2026
Banning disposable BBQs is a good thing. However, this does not address the issue of heatwaves, the health of the public, complete and better funding of emergency services, the stopping of fossil fuel use. What Burnham's COBRA meeting has done, is provided a paracetamol as a cure for brain cancer.
news.sky.com
UK weather latest: Emergency meeting called by PM; he could ban disposable BBQs; fire at nationally important site
Temperatures have climbed north of 30C today and could hit 38C in some places tomorrow. Thousands of homes are without water amid widespread drought conditions and firefighters are battling wildfires....
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Downing Street's press release for Burnham's "emergency" Cobra meeting on the drought didn't even mention climate, with the Prime Minister blaming the growing numbers of wildfires on disposable barbecues. He's since appeared on GB News this afternoon to talk about migrant camps
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Damian Carrington @dpcarrington.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Just 20 of 6,600 staff at England's environment department working on climate adaptation amid drought and wildfires - Nation ‘desperately unprepared’ for effects of #climatecrisis including water shortages and heatwaves @guyshrubsole.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Just 20 of 6,600 Defra staff working on climate adaptation amid drought and wildfires
Exclusive: England ‘desperately unprepared’ for effects of crisis including water shortages and heatwaves
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Alberto Alemanno @alemanno.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Sweden has no Ceuta, no frontline, no bodies washing up on its coast. So it’s cost-free for Kristersson to lecture Spain on “Schengen integrity” while Madrid actually manages the crisis. No direct link exists between regularisation and the border chaos
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Rachel Sylvester @rachelsylvester.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
New Scandinavian wings at Wandsworth and Pentonville jails have seen a 45% fall in assaults, 57% drop in self harm and halving of staff absence rates - fascinating results from trial into a more rehabilitative approach to prisons observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
observer.co.uk
‘Scandi wings’ offering pianos, pool and tea parties coul...
A unit in London’s Wandsworth prison has been transformed using methods from Sweden and Norway that prioritise rehabilitation over retribution
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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
"At points during the study period, more than 100 million people were under heat alerts. But not one segment connected the nearly back-to-back extreme heat events to #climate change, including segments that described the conditions as historic, exceptional, or record-breaking" 🤯 #EndClimateSilence
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