Laura Jones

In 3 years, 67 women died in homeless hotels and bnbs in Scotland. Women are preyed on, abused, and traumatised. We desperately need single-sex emergency accommodation and serious action to fix Scotland's collapsed homelessness system. Thank you @AshReganALBA for raising this!

THEY. TORTURED. A. ONE. YEAR. OLD. BABY. THEY. TORTURED. A. ONE. YEAR. OLD. BABY. THEY. TORTURED. A. ONE. YEAR. OLD. BABY. THEY. TORTURED. A. ONE. YEAR. OLD. BABY.

@realzoestrimpel 🎻

In Margate. My cheeks are red. I am shaking. I popped into an exhibition that turned out to be the insane fever dream of an artist called Matthew Collins: ‘Drawings Against Genocide.’ The exhibition is described as ‘drawings… raising consciousness about hell…. Israel is the pure encapsulation of it. Zionism is this terror state’s ruling ideology.’ Shocked by the use of Nazi imagery - the room is full of the Star of David pasted around figures meant to be Israelis and the Jewish ‘lobby’ spewing blood, to say nothing of blonde yummy mummies wearing ‘globalise the intifada’ shirts, I spoke to the artist to share my reaction as a Jewish person. He was instantly aggressive. As soon as I started to say I was shocked and threatened by what I was seeing because it was Nazi imagery, the artist started yelling at me that I didn’t mean anything I was saying. Anytime I tried to speak (calmly) he said: ‘you don’t mean any of what you said, you’re just repeating ‘hasbarah talking points’ because ‘you’re defending a genocide’. On and on he yelled, in my face. I said: ‘if I was a Black person…’ but couldn’t finish the sentence because: ‘you’re not are you?’ On the Nazi ideology point he said: ‘yeah. Why do you think it’s there. Israel are the Nazis’. His breath was disgusting. The crowd began booing and closing in around me, making to shoe me out. I said: ‘fine, get the Jew out’ and he yelled more across the room at me, ‘repeatedly jeering ‘call the police, go ahead, call the police’. I said I would, and the community security trust, which features as a devil in his exhibition. This was met with even more jeering. ‘Yeah, call the CST’ was the last I heard before leaving. Someone snapped pictures of me while I was being shouted at. Short video shows the artist. The longer video, of our final almost surreally disgusting exchange, didn’t record.

We in Scotland are in exactly the same boat as the foolish deluded Gulf States. The Anglostate has dumped the risk of the nuclear target on us. Maltese ex-Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo, a superb geopolitical analyst, recently said of Malta that all of its 20-odd invasions came while their deep water facilities were occupied by foreign powers. Scotland too is occupied by a foreign power whose constant and apparently unquenchable warmongering instincts Scotland has never shared. It's time the SNP stopped denying this - we are occupied – politically, culturally, economically and militarily. And we are not only in a repressed condition of economic development, but we are also in mortal danger of nuclear attack in a Trumpian and Epsteinian world.

@JohnSwinney No, no John.....It's ok....we're getting our own Scottish publicly owned energy company!! Have you forgotten?? I was there? You were there? On the stage? You applauded? @NicolaSturgeon knows!

Recently, Israeli forces subjected a one-year-old child to abuse to pressure his father into giving confessions east of Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, according to local and family sources. The child's father, Osama Abu Nassar, suffered psychological trauma after the death of a horse he used for income. While taking his child to buy supplies a few days ago, he was caught in gunfire near his home and forced by soldiers to leave his 18-month-old son on the ground and approach the Israeli checkpoint, where he was stripped of his clothes. According to witnesses, the army then took the child and interrogated the father at the checkpoint. The forces tortured the child in front of his father, including burning with cigarettes on his leg, pricking, and inserting a metal nail into his leg, as confirmed by a medical report. The child, Karim, was released after 10 hours and handed over to his family through the International Red Cross, while the father remains in detention. 📷 Osama Al-Kahlout

The first horseman of imperialism appears in Cuba

We need a massive programme of council home building. We also need decent homeless accommodation with wrap-around care and integrated services, including specific accommodation for women and children with families.

Recent STO wins include the restoration of the housing budget when it was slashed by the SNP/Greens and the introduction of a Scottish Awaab's law to protect tenants from damp and mould. We fight against the demolition of public housing for profit and for decent homeless services

Glasgow’s Mary Barbour (1875–1958) saw rents rocket in working-class homes during the First World War while the men were away fighting. The landlords and factors’ reply? Pay up or be evicted anyway. Mary would not sit still. She formed ‘Mrs Barbour’s Army’, organising women to resist evictions by blowing whistles to summon help, physically blocking bailiffs and confronting the rent collectors, even bringing shipyard workers out in support. To see working women and children exploited while their men defended the country is a phenomenon which is impossible to explain. Yet their defiance led to the Rent Restriction Act 1915 protecting tenants. Scottish women have never accepted being sidelined. We never will. #WomenOfScotland #SexBasedRights Image @WWWheesht Govan 2023

Today is mother’s day in the Arab World, yet mothers and motherhood have been under relentless assault from every direction and every direction: States, businesses, criminal enterprises, armed groups, partners and former partners. Thinking of all those robbed of their ability to be mothers, and children robbed of their mothers especially in Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon but also Iran, Mexico, the DRC, Myanmar and every other country on earth. As im preparing my next report to the Human Rights Council next June, i have been reminded of just how undervalued and undermined motherhood and mothers have become in societies, and the grave implications this carries for our humanity, for our future and for our prosperity.

She just won a prestigious journalism award in the US for her photography. She should be alive to accept it.

@ABridgen No, we are not being dragged in to a war with Iran. WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN DRAGGED IN TO A WAR WITH IRAN.

The uk is NOT a country...britain is NOT a country. england has authorised a war. Scotland has not, Wales has not , Northern Ireland has not.

Today saw the departure of the Nicola Sturgeon from the Scottish Parliament. Not that you'd have noticed her being there for the last three years. Since her resignation she has been receiving her pay off from the British establishment in the form of a deal for a book that no one read. She's been doing absolutey nothing for three years and getting paid over £70K for this for her "duties" which she has absented herself from. At the same time the Scottish government keeps crying poverty when it comes to housing issues including the national scandal of the many homeless women and children crammed into deathtrap hotels. There's no money to tackle homelessness but there is money to keep useless politicians paid off as a reward for their services to the British establishment.

Twat

Swinney says he has no power to act as US warplanes use our airports to illegally bomb housing schemes, primary schools, hospitals, mosques and service stations. Yet Scotland controls the police, can instruct air traffic control, & can arrest US pilots, with huge public support.

Scotland is at war, an illegal war of aggression on behalf of a genocidal and expansionist state and a US that can only escalate because it has no clear goals. And our FM says "What can we do?" And the PM says "What can we do?" Fuck this.

“Scots have not given permission for our civilian infrastructure to be used for the United States to carry out this illegal war or any other. We want the US Airforce out of our Airports.” Sophie Johnson of Stop The War Scotland, in the @ScotNational.

An ERA! It was the Era of everything, and the Epoch of nothing. The age of austerity, and abundance of chatter. The time of promise and the delivery of disappointment. The Era of stories and the coffeebreak of gossip.

How powerful SHOULD SCOTLAND BE RIGHT NOW & why isn’t it?