Pushback

Unexpected death

Sometimes, disappointment feels like embracing

the unavoidable death you anticipated would come

crashing through the roof of your room,

only to find it had

slipped in

through the door.

W.H. Auden (1907-73)

Epitaph On A Tyrant

Perfection of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And he was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.  

Notes.

Pushback in Minnesota. ‘Terrorist’ label comes unstuck as camera-phone footage goes viral.

Expressing support for Palestine and the opposition of genocide is temporarily decriminalised as the British government admits in a High Court ruling ‘a very small number’ of Palestine Action’s members have ‘committed terrorist acts’ (such as stopping traffic or spray painting walls).  British citizens will (temporarily) continue to have the legal right to protest (while London’s Metropolitan Police films them, feeds them into face-recognition software database and retain the right to act retrospectively).    

Al Jazeera’s live casualty tracker, Israeli attacks continued despite the ceasefire, and the total reported Palestinian deaths reached at least 70,373 people as of December 11, 2025.