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Reposted by Marisa McVey

Human Rights First @humanrightsfirst.org · 14/07/2026

In Northern Ireland, lawyers, community workers, & advocates who support migrants are being targeted by far-right groups. Our new report out today, “Locals Only,” details these threats. @cdsherrard.bsky.social @amanda.ie @finucanecentre.bsky.social www.humanrightsfirst.org/library/new-...

humanrightsfirst.org

New Report from Northern Ireland Details Far-Right Targeting Migrants and Their Supporters

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Women's Resource and Development Agency @wrda-team.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Our thoughts are with the victims in this case, who have been incredibly brave to bring this forward, to give evidence and to face down their abuser in court. We wish them the very best in their recovery and with their future. Read the full statement here www.wrda.net/blog/stateme...

WRDA welcomes the conviction today of Jeffrey Donaldson on a number of sexual offences against two children, as we welcome the conviction of any person who has committed such offences. We thank the jury, the court, the PPS and the PSNI for their diligent work on this case.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

"A group of literally hundreds of people has sprung into action, coordinating, donating, providing lifts for families to get somewhere safe for the night, bringing food to those who don’t want to leave the house, offering shelter, car seats, toys..." www.opendemocracy.net/far-right-vi...

opendemocracy.net

Far-right chaos won’t define Northern Ireland – solidarity will

While extremists grabbed headlines, hundreds of ordinary people mobilised to protect our neighbours

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Stephen Frost @sfrost.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

This is how communities show up for each other. Do read this by Nicola Browne from Act Now👇

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A group of literally hundreds of people has sprung into action, coordinating, donating, providing lifts for families to get somewhere safe for the night, bringing food to those who don’t want to leave the house, offering shelter, car seats, toys and arts supplies for children. Ordinary people from every background, community and colour are carrying out thousands of acts of care and repair, looking after people they do not know, and showing clearly that none of this is in their name.

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Alan Woke 2 @mrpostsgood.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Pro-Palestine marches will openly be called "hate marches" in the press, but these arsonist pogroms, illustrated by a burned-out bus, are simply "disorder"

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Lee Savage @leesavage.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

If your main concern is not upsetting a single South African billionaire rather than the safety and security of the country you're supposed to lead, then you're unfit for the job. Shameful weakness

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UCU @ QUB @ucuatqub.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

*Statement in regard to recent racist protests in Northern Ireland* We are shocked and appalled at the racist carnage that took place in pockets of Belfast last night, as well as in other towns and cities across Northern Ireland.

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Colin Murray @colinmurray.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

We can't look away from the images of families fleeing burning houses without calling this out as a pogrom, whipped up by influential actors who care nothing for the people of Belfast: www.irishnews.com/news/norther...

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Marisa McVey @marisamcv.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

To add to this, a grassroots food hub East Belfast had to close early today worried for the safety of its members. The people inciting hatred and violence on the streets do not care about community. Wild to see white supremacy treated so lightly by media and (some of) our elected representatives

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 26/05/2026

‘The truth is that both ministers and vice-chancellors are locked into a financial model whose premise is misconceived and whose side effects are profoundly damaging for higher education.’ Stefan Collini on the UK’s university problems, online now from the next issue. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Stefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs

The problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...

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Paolo Sandro @paolosandro.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

A quick fire comment: the UKCS decision in Dillon is woeful. So much so, that together with For Women Scotland will define the 'legacy' of the Reed court. I'll mention only the Windsor Framework ground of appeal: the Supreme Court denies direct effect to s2(1) of the WF because the rights in the /1

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Sherpa @asso-sherpa.org · 13/04/2026

⚖️ A landmark ruling: the Paris Criminal Court has convicted Lafarge and four former executives of financing terrorist organisations and violating international sanctions. Read our press release 👉 www.asso-sherpa.org/lafarge-conv...

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

The debt burden of UK students is one of those things where, the more you look into the details, the more insane and predatory it is. So I tried my best to explain the numbers involved without making my, or your, head explode.

The Conservatives are, after all, well placed to know a lot about this morass, since they introduced it. In 2012, the coalition government launched the Plan 2 system of student loans and raised university fees across Britain to £9,000 per annum. To put Plan 2 in simple terms, loan repayments were laid out via a seemingly innocuous series of calculations. The first to consider is the threshold at which repayments begin. If you left education with, say, £27,000 worth of debt, you would only start paying it back once you met a predetermined salary. On its face, this might not seem like a particularly onerous demand. “Low-earning” graduates would avoid being saddled with repayments before they were financially able to begin making them, while their “high earning” peers could start chipping away at their debt, and provide an income stream for the state.

As any of my fellow literature or history graduates will tell you, however, the devil is in the details. For one thing, the threshold at which someone becomes a high earner was never particularly high and, following years of inflation, is now preposterously low. Rachel Reeves’ announcement that the government are freezing the threshold at April 2026 levels (£29,385) for a further three years only makes this worse. The real living wage for London is currently calculated at £28,860, which means that any London-based graduate making just £40 more per month than the minimum needed to live there will automatically begin paying their debt. In real terms, this means practically any graduate in any form of full-time work will be paying as much as 9 per cent of their income to the state, and for a very, very long time. Worse still, the amount owed by those graduates below the threshold does not remain static – it accrues interest, year on year, whether you’re working for low wages, volunteering, taking a career break or on maternity leave, ensuring that if you do pass the threshold some time later, you will be returning to find your original £27,000 much enlarged.

If the state’s attitude to what constitutes “high earnings” makes you think it’s oblivious to the concept of inflation, let me put your mind at ease. When it comes to the calculation of student loan interest, they are very conscious of inflation indeed. Each year, the interest charged on student loans is calculated by two components. The first is the Retail Price Index (RPI), which generally records a higher number than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Governments prefer the latter, lower figure for many of their other calculations, just not when it comes to adding extra debt to every graduate in the country. To this is added a second component, a percentage tied to each graduate’s earnings, meaning that as your salary increases so too does the interest you’re paying on the loan you took out. If you think this seems like a predatory and punitive way to bilk students for as much money, and over as long a period of time, as possible, then you’re just about up to speed on this scandal, which amounts to a regressive stealth tax on every graduate in the UK. One which, it’s calculated, you would need to be earning £66,000 per year to pay off in anything like a timely fashion.

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Rosaleen Duffy @rosaleenduffy.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

This ought to be a huge national news story. But the quiet dismantling of a key sector barely registers outside HE. Maybe someone will care when the local economies that Unis sustain start to go bust too. Important story from @patrickjack.bsky.social & @timeshighered.bsky.social

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Seána @grantsana.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

The state shot &killed people in the uk for decades, colluded with citizens to kill & has frustrated justice in uk courts ever since. Sean Browns widow awaits her day in the Supreme Court. THAT has been a warning siren ringing for decades - the colonial attitude of us being lesser stops them hearing

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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Mamdani: For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty

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Hanno Hauenstein @hahauenstein.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Just empire doing empire things

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Naoise Dolan @naoisedolan.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Letting hunger strikers die, arresting Greta Thunberg — this is not incompetence or even indifference. The UK state is deliberately making examples of people to ramp up the crushing of basic civil liberties and silence opposition to genocide

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Trócaire @trocaire.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

As Minister Peter Burke heads to the final #CSDDD trilogue negotiation, @irishtimes.com has published shocking revelations on the corporate campaign to lobby for EU deregulation, undermine democracy and weaken vital protections for people and the planet: www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

irishtimes.com

‘Catch remaining targets’: Leaked Teneo files pull back curtain on corporate lobbying

Internal Teneo documents reveal exactly how oil firms and other big multinationals pushed to dilute EU supply chain rules

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Marisa McVey @marisamcv.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

My article comparing the EU and UK’s approach to implementing the UNGPs, post-Brexit is out now in the Modern Law Review. Against a backdrop of escalating corporate influence over human rights, I contrast the EU’s (contested) preventative regulation with the UK’s reliance on a minimalist framework.

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Marina Veličković @marinavelickovic.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

‘Risk exiting the market’ what a way to package the complete collapse of higher education

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Natalie Sedacca @nataliesedacca.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Sheffield Hallam University complied with Beijing demand to halt research about human rights abuses in China, leading to a major project on supply chains and forced labour being dropped. It was reinstated after threat of legal action but chilling effect remains www.theguardian.com/education/20...

theguardian.com

UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China

Exclusive: Leading professor at Sheffield Hallam was told to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China after demands from authorities

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Marisa McVey @marisamcv.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

🇪🇺 📣 Is everyone bored of Brexit yet? 📣 🇪🇺 📖 If not, I have a forthcoming article in the Modern Law Review on the divergent approaches to implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights post-Brexit.

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ana valdivia @anavaldi.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results: - AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2% - ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1% - ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%

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Colin Murray @colinmurray.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

A day where law and justice feel far apart. But criminal law really struggles to function at 53 years of remove, when so many witnesses are dead. Injustice was assured when it took this long for the state to recognise its wrongdoing and start proceedings: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/courts/...

belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Not guilty: Soldier F cleared in Bloody Sunday murder trial

A former paratrooper has been cleared of two murders during the Bloody Sunday shootings in 1972.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

“In Ireland, data centers consume more than 20 percent of the country’s electricity. In Chile, precious aquifers are in danger of depletion. In South Africa, where blackouts have long been routine, data centers are further taxing the national grid.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/t...

nytimes.com

From Mexico to Ireland, Fury Mounts Over a Global A.I. Frenzy

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Mark Klamberg @klamberg.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

The UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel: Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Absent a court judgment, findings of UN COIs are the most conclusive, thus we should read these findings thoroughly. www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...

ohchr.org

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Eoghan Daltun 🌍 @irishrainforest.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

"Sinn Féin and the DUP have stalled the nutrients action programme over fears of a farmer backlash." The *only* thing they'll unite on: ensuring the largest lake ecosystem in Ireland or Britain, Lough Neagh, continues to die of pollution. What a f**king disgrace. share.google/cazBTwCid9qR...

share.google

‘It’s dying in front of our eyes’: how the UK’s largest lake became an ecological disaster

Signs tout a natural paradise, but pollution from over-farming has left Northern Ireland’s Lough Neagh choked by toxic algae

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End Deportations Belfast @enddbelfast.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

ITV have this headline 100% correct. It was an attempted lynching in broad daylight at a preannounced white supremacist mobilisation. Despite being MLA for the area, the Justice Minister doesn’t engage with victims of white supremacist terror in her own constituency. [1/n]

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Patrick Corrigan @patrick-corrigan.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

For context: Policy Exchange is among the least transparent think tanks in the UK regarding its funding sources. Co-founder and first chairman Michael Gove wrote a pamphlet in 2000 comparing the Good Friday Agreement to the appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s.

Headline from Belfast Telegraph: Claims NI peace deal stops UK leaving ECHR ‘entirely groundless’ – think tank

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Sarah Creighton @saraita101.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

People from Northern Ireland listening to English flag discourse

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Perhaps, one day, schoolkids will study this squalid little chapter in British terror-panic history. When they do, I hope these two headlines from today are printed side by side, with clear annotation of which individual faced more outrage and condemnation.

Headline: BBC under pressure to pull Sally Rooney dramas over vow to fund Palestine Action

Headline: Tory minister Robert Jenrick pictured with former Nazi terror chief at far right protest.

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Elaine Crory @elainecrory.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

The whole article is worth reading!

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Al Jazeera English @aljazeera.com · 11/08/2025

Al Jazeera Media Network condemns the targeted assassination of its correspondents Anas Al Sharif and Mohammeel Qraiqea, along with photographers Ibrahim Al Thaher, and Mohamed Nofal, by Israeli forces. #JournalismIsNotACrime

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Shane Darcy @shanedarcy.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

“The leaked Microsoft files suggest that a large proportion of the unit’s sensitive data may now be sitting in the company’s datacentres in the Netherlands and Ireland.” A deadly serious allegation that requires urgent investigation. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

theguardian.com

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

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Marisa McVey @marisamcv.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Yet another blog on the ICJ's Advisory Opinion on climate change - with a slight twist! Below, myself and Annalisa Savaresi share reflections specifically on the implications for human rights-based corporate responsibility 👇

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Brendan Hark! T'is nearly Halloween. @brendanjharkin.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

A sit down protest by Palestinian solidarity groups has been blocking the road in front of City Hall for 2 hours now

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Jessica Whyte @jessicawhyte.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

“Israel is using starvation as a weapon of genocide in Gaza. The death of one child is not an accident, but the death of many is a crime the world has allowed.” www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza...

middleeasteye.net

Gaza extermination: Hasan should have turned three. Instead, he starved to death

Israel is using starvation as a weapon of genocide in Gaza. The death of one child is not an accident, but the death of many is a crime the world has allowed

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Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

"What we're seeing now is the most horrific stage of Israels starvation campaign... Israel has been using aid as a way to bait civilians & has been killing civilians who have been seeking aid..." Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food

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Adil Haque @adhaque.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

"Four-year old Razan Abu Zaher gave up her fight for life on Sunday." "She died at a hospital in central Gaza from complications brought on by hunger and malnutrition, according to a medical source. Her skeletal body was laid out on a slab of stone."

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 25/06/2025

‘Given the size of Palestine Action and the breadth of support so far expressed for it, proscribing it could lead to a significant proportion of civil society being criminalised, including MPs, journalists and NGOs.’ New on the blog: Daniella Lock on Palestine Action. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

lrb.co.uk

Daniella Lock | Heavy Power

During a parliamentary debate on the Terrorism Bill in 2000, MPs asked whether the legislation could be used to...

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