Breaking🚨: Medical sources at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah have confirmed to Al-Jazeera that an 18-month-old girl has died of malnutrition inside the hospital wards. People are fainting in the streets and arrive in influxes as they fall from fatigue and hunger.

In recent weeks I’ve seen some very open racism in the street. When you see this it’s a sign that things are getting bad. Yes it’s dispiriting - but we have overcome it before and will do again. We need to rebuild a culture of solidarity. That entails overcoming demoralisation.

We live under a state which takes people like this into custody for “terrorism,” while it arms and participates in a genocide. No words adequately capture the mendacity and moral weakness of those in power.

In the week that John Swinney reveals his new strategy for independence, it transpires his government failed to ensure Scotland received a penny from £350 million worth of Ferry contracts. This from a government who claim to have a ‘Green Industrial Strategy’.

When COP26 came to Glasgow, Greta Thunberg went straight to the picket line in support of striking cleansing workers. “AOC” went for a “hilarious” Irn-Bru based photo-op with Nicola Sturgeon. One had principles then and one has principles now.

I remember my first political public meeting. It was on the run up to the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005. Tariq Ali spoke and made a simple point: “Judge people by what they do, not by what they say.” Stuck with me ever since, and recalled it watching David Lammy today.

Well said.

Scottish politics, democracy & indy are at a low ebb. No one should pretend otherwise. Some salutary home truths from Jonathon Shafi including the need to challenge the inertia of the SNP, call time on Yes & stop pretending indy is just round the corner. thenational.scot/politics/25330…

Packed Glasgow Stop the War meeting tonight with speakers including Andrew Feinstein and the great Stephen Kapos. A real determination in the room to redouble our solidarity efforts with Gaza and to defend civil liberties at home.

Brendan O’Neill and Spiked are the last making what they see as an “intellectual” defence of the genocide. They are so far down the culture war rabbit hole that they will defend mass murder if it means they are differentiated from a certain section of “the left.” It’s pathetic.

We’re now into a second summer where violent disorder by racists is being glossed over and excused whilst peaceful protests are stigmatised and criminalised.

Insanity.

Still not read a comprehensive or convincing analysis of what exactly is going on with the United States. When you package the various elements together it is looks to be in a state of serious breakdown. Almost as if this is too big a historical development to properly digest.

The Isle of Eigg is a Scottish island owned by the people who live there as a result of a community buyout in 1997. An inspiring exercise in democracy, it has now chosen to stand in full solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Guardian finally calls it what it is.

After just 24 hours a quarter of a million people have signed up to a yet to be named left party. This already supersedes Reform. There are huge numbers of people looking for ways to effectively advance socialist politics - and a collective responsibility to ensure we do so.

Downing Street now. End the siege!

What lies behind the US-EU trade deal is not “bad negotiation” on the European side as such. It is the jointly agreed arrangement of longterm and fixed American hegemonic control of the Western hemisphere as the world system transitions from unipolarity to multipolarity.

Really important meeting in Glasgow this evening on defending civil liberties and protest rights. Such a determined movement across the country. It is not going away, and that’s never a given. Too many lines have been crossed for too many people.

The First Minister finally used the term genocide to describe what is happening in Gaza. This should be followed up with meaningful action: a Scottish Government boycott of Israel. International pressure to stop the daily crimes against humanity must become insurmountable.