Can't eat - or even contemplate - an orange without thinking of this poem by Brian Patten. RIP. 🍊💔 🍊

Israeli forces kill 17 people overnight in Gaza - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israeli-forces-kill-17-people-overnight-gaza

New statement from the flotilla says that the Italian navy is about to offer participants the "opportunity" to abandon ship and return to shore. The volunteers are accusing them of attempting to sabotage the humanitarian mission and demoralize the participants.

#Afghanistan: The Taliban’s nationwide internet blackout is an alarming escalation in its assault on free expression. PEN International calls for the immediate reversal of the shutdown. Read our full statement ⬇️ www.pen-international.org/news/afghani...

ICE is out of control. They must be reined in.

Why is it that the livelihoods of federal workers or the healthcare of millions of people always end up on the chopping block, but never the trillions in tax cuts handed out to billionaires and massive corporations?

All eyes on the Freedom Flotilla

Hotels housing migrants are now YouTube content farms. Outrage = clicks. Clicks = cash. Division is the business model. And it's lucrative. Owen Sennitt reports.

Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are pushing us towards a government shutdown. We demand a budget that puts American families over billionaires. Join us TONIGHT to call for a fair tax system and a budget that actually invests in working families: actionnetwork.org/events/healt...

In a sane country with competent leadership, the 50 highest-ranking Democrats would call a press conference to denounce what just happened as a threat to the republic and demand Trump's immediate impeachment and removal from office. I don't know he could make his intentions more clear.

The Prime Minister could not bring himself to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza during his one-hour conference speech. We know why: if he did, he would be admitting his government's complicity in the greatest crime of our time. End all military cooperation with Israel, now.

If any other president in all of history said the military should use American cities as a training ground he would be removed from office that same day. The hardest thing to tolerate in all this is how relatively silent elected democrats are. It’s ridiculous.

UK media freedom update 👇

I hope it's clear to everyone now that Trump really is going for it - he's trying to become a dictator. I don't know if he'll succeed, but he's working to install himself as an autocrat unaccountable to voters. And he's weaponizing the military against Americans who oppose him as part of that effort

The president just gathered the highest ranking officers in the military to tell them that he may order them to kill American citizens -- and that they better follow his orders. All in response to a series of crises that have no basis in reality. I don't know how to yell any louder.

Support principle of Palestinians governing Palestine, says China - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/support-principle-palestinians-governing-palestine-says-china

‘So the rumours are true … time to ask some serious questions about Reform and Russia’ My column on Nathan Gill, former leader of Reform in Wales, admitting taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia while a member of the European Parliament www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...

What has Yvette Cooper’s proscription of Palestine Action done to this country? Beyond absurd. It’s extreme authoritarianism. These police should be arresting rapists & crooks, not neglecting those duties to spend time arresting citizens standing against genocide. It undermines police and the law.

"Instead of having a grown-up conversation about the situation, we have a subtle message that helps us to keep pretending that this country could somehow manage without migration at all..... Britain as a country has almost never been self-sufficient."

The NHS is routinely described as 'unsustainable'. But that adjective never gets applied to arms spending, bank bail-outs or tax dodging by the rich.

Rachel Reeves: "We do need a welfare system that is based on the principle of contribution" What happened to a welfare system based on the principle of need? Or the principle of universalism? Haven't contributed for whatever reason? Tough.

Unfortunately there is also bad news: there are another 40 students with funded places in Gaza, including two women PhDs with dependents, who were offered places in the first evacuation, but had to turn them down because the Home Office wouldn't let them bring their young children.

Anti-trans hate group Genspect is formally calling for trans people to be repathologized. This is most certainly to set the stage for mandated conversion therapy and potentially forced institutionalization. archive.ph/yA2Wh

Er... remind me which party spent 14 years systematically destroying the criminal justice system through budget cuts.

Just wait until you see what Satan has planned for us www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/tony-blair...

Nathan Gill is no fringe politician. He was the leader of the Reform Party and before that UKIP in Wales. A Brexit Party MEP. A friend and ally of Nigel Farage, who in 2016 called him: "terrific," and "as honest as the day is long." This is a MASSIVE story www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

As for many poets uneasy in their class consciousness, Tony Harrison’s brilliant controversial long poem V. (1985) blew me away when I first read it. But his short lyrics were sharp, wise, and deeply moving, too, cut from lived life. Saddened to hear the great man has passed. RIP.

Starmer asks Conservative peer to write planning bill to block judicial reviews

Saturday's death toll in Gaza rises to 51: Al Jazeera - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/saturdays-death-toll-gaza-rises-51-al-jazeera

"Life cannot be lived without hope."

Can't argue with a single word of this. (Smart of the SNP to put this out without the usual "...and that's why we need independence". It allows people like me to endorse it.)

We should all ask the question: Where is Keir Starmer?

Vichy Labour. Deliberately and repeatedly affirming and amplifying the inflammatory far right *lie* of "uncontrolled migration".

i know this is hardly an original point, but it is astonishing that a government this focused on growth or whatever is just… doing anything it can to kill the two really big industries (higher education and creative industries) this country still has?

Keir Starmer's aides are reportedly telling him not to go to the COP30 climate conference, because Reform would attack him for it. Yes, they might. And he should wear it as a badge of honour. Standing up for humanity, for science and a habitable planet. Where's the hazard in that?

Let’s also set up infrastructure that a far-right populist party might abuse should they win an election.

A Israeli academic asked his followers on X which sanction would really convince ordinary Israelis that they are isolated internationally. "Expulsion from football tournaments" was the most popular answer, followed by "ending visa-free travel to Europe"

There's a reason they seem to be mostly targeting women to beat up, and we all know what it is.

Palestine will never be erased. Listen to Omar Harami in the ruins of Lifta, a Palestinian village destroyed by Zionist militia in the 1948 Nakba.

I can't say for sure that with Musk, Thiel and Ellison making their moves that Britain is being treated as a potential MAGA/Broligarch colony for their experiments in data harvesting and algorithmic capture - but it sure looks like it

The right says the country needs to “turn down the temperature.” Then they call us slurs, suggest banning us from owning guns, and smear us after shootings. Is it any wonder trans women in places like Seattle are being hunted in the street?

This regime with its masked agents terrorizing whole communities is the problem, not “Democrats.”

Gaza doctor Abu Safiya subjected to violence in Israeli jail, rights body says - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/gaza-doctor-abu-safiya-subjected-violence-israeli-jail-rights-body-says

Before Labour Friends of Israel removed its webpage, we found 73 of Labour’s 197 MPs were parliamentary supporters or officers of the group Dozens of MPs have been funded by LFI. But it refuses to disclose its donors. For how much longer can this go on❓ www.declassifieduk.org/who-funds-la...

Exclusive: Aerospace firm Moog in Wolverhampton was targeted by pro-Palestine activists in August. We can now reveal the company has been exporting aircraft components to Israel’s ministry of defence👇 www.declassifieduk.org/who-funds-la...

"This slide from political grievance into a nihilistic rage is a critical symptom of a society in the grip of a leaden age. It signals a shift beyond targeted political acts to a broader contempt for society itself, a desire not just to win a political battle, but to watch the entire system burn."

Actions now being taken by Trump and his regime may seem far-removed from your daily life or the lives of people you care about. But they’re not. I don't want to alarm you, but I do want you to be prepared. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/warning-to-you-and-your-loved-ones

We have people in power making broad claims around certain drugs and autism that have been continuously disproven.