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BBC On Gaza-Israel: One Story, Double Standards

The most comprehensive analysis of the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza reveals a systematic pattern: the minimisation of Palestinian suffering and perspectives and the amplification of Israeli narratives, victimisation and emotive stories. The study, conducted by the Centre for Media Monitoring, analysed 3,873 articles and 32,092 broadcast segments from 7 October 2023 to 6 October 2024, alongside comparative analysis of 7,748 articles on the Ukraine conflict. During the analysis period, 42,010 Palestinians and 1,246 Israelis were killed – a 34:1 ratio that provides crucial context for assessing the impartiality of the BBC’s coverage. It also used extensive case studies extending into 2025. The report reveals a systematic omission of key historical and contemporary context that has acquired an institutional quality at the BBC. Whether this be overlooking the genocidal rhetoric of Israeli leaders – now referenced in war crimes charges against them – or properly scrutinising Israeli claims and denials in the face of ethnic cleansing and other war crimes, the BBC have simply underreported what is now overwhelmingly being seen as a ‘live-streamed genocide’ and crimes against humanity.

16 June 2025

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Love stories like this

this just warmed my heart. This representation has always been missing tbh. Seeing long-term Black gay, bi, etc  male couples

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is it good, though? from the article:

Bondi says Abrego Garcia will face trial in the U.S. on these charges and, if found guilty, will serve time in a U.S. prison before being deported back to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia's attorney said they're going to keep fighting to get him a fair trial. "Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they're bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him. This shows that they were playing games with the court all along," Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told NPR. "Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you're punished, not after. This is an abuse of power, not justice."

Some good news!

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Yet again, more proof that capitalism was never about "freedom" or "small government".

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i found another one

2025 pride seems to be the year of the brick

My partner had the idea to make a trans brick sticker earlier this year, and it's like he knew the theme early.

You can get a brick sticker here. We also have a pro-trans zine in time for pride :)

you can get a digital copy for free, or pay us to give you a print copy via mail. (x)

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Actor Jonathan Joss was just murdered for being gay and married to a trans man. On the first day of pride 2025. He was best known for playing John Redcorn on King of the Hill.

I had no idea he was gay but he was married to a man named Tristan Kern de Gonzales (on valentines day 2025!)

They lived in San Antonio Texas where his family is from and he grew up. He was 59.

In Janurary 2025 his home was burned down which made news. It killed some of his beloved dogs. He didnt elaborate beyond he believed it was arson (gofundme is still up and i suggest donating to help his funeral costs and his husband

Update: de Gonzales says hes fine he just wants justice but i still think its nice)

Now we know he and his husband had been threatened by several neighbors for being queer. They told pigs, pigs being pigs did nothing before or after it happened.

Yesterday Joss and his husband went to check their mailbox wherein they found one of their dogs skulls (statement from his husband

)

As they weeped and mourned in shock, a neighbor, Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja, came out and aimed at de Gonzales…but Joss jumped in front of the bullet and was instantly killed.

Ceja, homophobia murdering coward, tried to take off but de Gonzales had called pigs who vaguely tried to do something. He was arrested and his bail set for $200k. Or as my sister said who the fuck sets bail for a murderer?

San Antonio.

De Gonzales is clearly mourning, posting pics on Hoss’ fb page. This one really struck me

This is why we need pride people, and not rainbow capitalism. Please donate to the gofundme and let san antonio cops knows what you think. De Gonzales said multiple neighbors had threatened them…id like to see those people investigated for arson.

Go into pride with rage and knowing. Have joy, kiss puppies, dont bow to homophobes. And maybe enjoy a little king of the hill.

UPDATE

Jonathan Joss’ husband Tristan kern de Gonzales identifies as trans on his facebook page.

Which explains the ramp up of hate and why the murderer shot at de Gonzales (Joss pushed him out of the way). So this is also a transphobia related murder

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2025 pride seems to be the year of the brick

My partner had the idea to make a trans brick sticker earlier this year, and it's like he knew the theme early.

You can get a brick sticker here. We also have a pro-trans zine in time for pride :)

you can get a digital copy for free, or pay us to give you a print copy via mail. (x)

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do not forget the patron saint of these weeks that we celebrate ourselves proudly and openly in the streets

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

thank you, Marsha. we remember you.

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The Vancouver Police Department's longest-serving sergeant was demoted and suspended Tuesday after admitting to sexually harassing five women, including two fellow officers and three students at the universities where he taught. Former provincial court chief judge Carole Baird Ellan also ordered the VPD to adopt new sexual harassment policies, considering impact statements given by colleagues who said Keiron McConnell's unwelcome sexualized messages left them feeling degraded and anxious.

Continue reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

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Aaa!

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Blind people gesture (and why that’s kind of a big deal)

People who are blind from birth will gesture when they speak. I always like pointing out this fact when I teach classes on gesture, because it gives us an an interesting perspective on how we learn and use gestures. Until now I’ve mostly cited a 1998 paper from Jana Iverson and Susan Goldin-Meadow that analysed the gestures and speech of young blind people. Not only do blind people gesture, but the frequency and types of gestures they use does not appear to differ greatly from how sighted people gesture. If people learn gesture without ever seeing a gesture (and, most likely, never being shown), then there must be something about learning a language that means you get gestures as a bonus.

Blind people will even gesture when talking to other blind people, and sighted people will gesture when speaking on the phone - so we know that people don’t only gesture when they speak to someone who can see their gestures.

Earlier this year a new paper came out that adds to this story. Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow looked at the gestures of blind speakers of Turkish and English, to see if the *way* they gestured was different to sighted speakers of those languages. Some of the sighted speakers were blindfolded and others left able to see their conversation partner.

Turkish and English were chosen, because it has already been established that speakers of those languages consistently gesture differently when talking about videos of items moving. English speakers will be more likely to show the manner (e.g. ‘rolling’ or bouncing’) and trajectory (e.g. ‘left to right’, ‘downwards’) together in one gesture, and Turkish speakers will show these features as two separate gestures. This reflects the fact that English ‘roll down’ is one verbal clause, while in Turkish the equivalent would be yuvarlanarak iniyor, which translates as two verbs ‘rolling descending’.

Since we know that blind people do gesture, Özçalışkan’s team wanted to figure out if they gestured like other speakers of their language. Did the blind Turkish speakers separate the manner and trajectory of their gestures like their verbs? Did English speakers combine them? Of course, the standard methodology of showing videos wouldn’t work with blind participants, so the researchers built three dimensional models of events for people to feel before they discussed them.

The results showed that blind Turkish speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts, and the same for English speakers. All Turkish speakers gestured significantly differently from all English speakers, regardless of sightedness. This means that these particular gestural patterns are something that’s deeply linked to the grammatical properties of a language, and not something that we learn from looking at other speakers.

References

Jana M. Iverson & Susan Goldin-Meadow. 1998. Why people gesture when they speak. Nature, 396(6708), 228-228.

Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow. 2016. Is Seeing Gesture Necessary to Gesture Like a Native Speaker? Psychological Science 27(5) 737–747.

Asli Ozyurek & Sotaro Kita. 1999. Expressing manner and path in English and Turkish: Differences in speech, gesture, and conceptualization. In Twenty-first Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 507-512). Erlbaum.

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