Britain

Israeli men aged 21 and 22 have been arrested by police in Cyprus for attempted murder. One of the men allegedly stabbed a Cypriot man — as well as two security guards who tried to stop the attack. The attempted murders happened in Ayia Napa, leaving one of the guards in critical condition after emergency surgery.

When police arrived to intervene, the attacker spewed insults at them. Both Israelis had to be subdued, leaving one injured from a blow to the head.

UK news blackout when it concerns Israeli crimes

No UK media or politicians appear to have mentioned the attack. Reports of violent and arrogant behaviour from Israelis in other countries abound — and not just from Israel’s notorious football thugs. Israel’s attempts to buy up land and properties in Cyprus as a bolthole to flee to when Israel’s victims retaliate have also raised tensions.

Regardless of context, there is simply no way UK media and politicians would ignore an attack on Israelis the same way they have this and other attacks by Israelis.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Senior criminal law barrister Dominic D’Souza acted for one of the Ukrainians accused — and acquitted this week — of setting fire to properties belonging to Keir Starmer. The defendants were allegedly ‘rent boys’ — a factor largely ignored by UK ‘mainstream’ media. And D’Souza says that he was astonished — his word was ‘pickled’ — by how much of what went on was ignored or even buried by prosecution and judge in the case.

Two men were convicted in the case. D’Souza’s client Petro Pochynok was acquitted. But when D’Souza read journalist Crispin Flintoff’s X post about the BBC’s unmerited rush to broadcast a programme claiming Russia was behind the attack, he quickly responded that his head was still “pickled” over how much was kept hidden:

I was leading defence counsel for Pochynok who was acquitted. Having come across your vid I remember seeing you in the public gallery every day! Even as the defence barrister in the trial itself, I still find my head pickled over what real underlying truths were never expposed

— Dominic D’Souza (@dsouzabarrister) June 16, 2026

D’Souza was far from the only one to notice. Former UK ambassador Craig Murray pointed out that the alleged figure behind the attack spoke Ukrainian, but that the media very suspiciously ignored this to focus on him also knowing how to speak Russian:

The BBC report that the man who organised the arson of Starmer related property was “Russian speaking”.
They fail to report the evidence was he also spoke Ukrainian.
Almost every Ukrainian can speak Russian.
Very few Russians can speak Ukrainian.

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) June 16, 2026

Starmer — “Wholly irrelevant”?

Grayzonejournalists Kit Klarenberg and Max Blumenthal noted that the trial judge had forbidden information on the shadowy, Ukrainian-speaking instigator of the attacks from being entered into evidence:

As expected, the truth behind the Ukrainian rent boy attacks will be withheld from the British public https://t.co/pepep43coc

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) June 16, 2026

And Russian is almost universally spoken in Ukraine, a former part of the Soviet Union, while the converse is not true:

The ‘Russia’ link is extremely tenuous

EL spoke Russian and Ukrainian

Ukrainian is not a language widely spoken in Russia,

whereas almost every Ukrainian can speak Russian

— Donahue Rogers (@DonahueRogers) June 16, 2026

In the run-up to the trial, Skwawkbox asked why ‘mainstream’ media — with no court restrictions on reporting — were not asking questions about why the attacks were committed. The defendants were not charged under terror laws as would have been expected. That leaves open the question of a personal dimension to the motives for the arson, or some form of organised crime, something with which the nazi-riddled Ukrainian regime is hardly unfamiliar.

Flintoff is right. The BBC’s haste to lay the blame at Russia’s door — based on the most tenuous of connections — raised more questions than it is clearly meant to put to bed.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

One person was killed and two injured in the latest ‘narco’ boat strike in the eastern Pacific on 17 June. While all eyes are on US-Iran peace talks, US president Donald Trump’s administration is still terrorising Latin America.

The US has killed over 200 people in the Caribbean and Pacific under the guise of stopping ‘narco-terrorist’ boats. The US military’s southern command posted on X:

On June 16, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known… pic.twitter.com/UGBRt9Mbdm

— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) June 17, 2026

Trump’s shadow war has been raging throughout 2026. The most aggressive phase was the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro on 3 January. Maduro is still being held in New York awaiting trial.

Trump’s strategy for an American empire

French paper Le Monde pointed to Trump’s ambitions for a subservient Latin America as a matter of US policy:

We want a hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels and other transnational criminal organizations (…) we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations.

The new drug war, like the old one, is fundamentally a neocolonial project. As US-based Latin America Studies professor Michelle D. Paranzino pointed out on 11 June:

The history of that war on drugs, however, especially during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, shows that the narco-terrorism label has always been politicized.

Adding:

Then, as now, this collaboration appears to be aimed at the leftist and communist governments in the Western Hemisphere.

In many cases, the drug framing is an explicit rationale for action.

The US has been remarkably aggressive

Bolivia is the latest country to sign up to US ‘anti-drug’ plans. The BBC reported on 17 June:

The foreign ministry said that under the agreement, the US would provide up to $20m (£15m) to train and equip Bolivian forces as part of a joint fight against drug smuggling.

Bolivia recently enlisted Trump’s centrepiece colonialist alliance:

Under a new centrist president, Rodrigo Paz, Bolivia has joined the Shield of the Americas, the US-led security initiative in the Western Hemisphere.

NPR interviewed left-wing historian of the Americas Greg Grandin on Trump’s remaking of the hemisphere. Grandin warned the new US strategy was “remarkable in its aggression”:

It’s remarkable in the sense that it feels no need to legitimate itself in terms of any kind of moral or normative justification. In Latin America and the Western Hemisphere, you have quite a remarkable, cohesive and, I would say, efficient application of all of the different applications of hard power – of U.S. hard power – to Latin America under the rubric of the war on drugs.

Adding:

I would say that, maybe with the exception of Uruguay, Washington is meddling in Latin American politics to different degrees of intensity in almost every Latin American nation.

Trump seemed poised to push harder against Latin American resistance before he blundered into a war with Iran in February. He lost that war. But with global attention on new peace talks, it is easy to forget that the dirty war in the western hemisphere is still underway.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

The Makerfield by-election has got people around the country talking about Andy Burnham again. And a new poll has shown that, with increasing scrutiny, he’s become a lot less popular. We reckon that’s because he represents the same kind of fence-sitting, corporate politics that gave the UK Keir Starmer.

Unsurprising popularity dive

Voters tend to view most politicians unfavourably, overall. But Andy Burnham was a rare case before the by-election campaign. Because there were actually more people who viewed him favourably. That has quickly changed in recent weeks, though, with YouGov reporting that his:

favourability has declined markedly over the past two months

Even 2024 Labour voters see him more negatively, with an extra 8% feeling this way. But in Makerfield specifically, he’s still more popular than his party is. And that could potentially allow him to win the by-election.

YouGov quotes one voter in the North West as saying:

Andy Burnham typifies modern politicians who put style and personality over belief in what they stand for.

Burnham’s history of corporate funding and U-turns backs that up. And it’s also the story we’ve seen in the Makerfield by-election campaign. Because Burnham has:

• Failed to meet the Green promise to back public ownership of utilities, making some weak half-promises instead.
• Refused to speak out clearly against Israel’s genocide, unlike his Green opponent.
• Made some vague noises about electoral reform but said that any change would first need to “be in a manifesto and endorsed at a general election” (which Labour is unlikely to win outright ever again).
• Pledged to cut welfare and increase defence spending.
• Suggested he will look for private funds to help finish off the highly controversial HS2 rail project.
• Claimed to want “less factionalism” while refusing to entertain the idea of readmitting Jeremy Corbyn into the Labour Party.

Burnham may still win in Makerfield, but there would be little cause for celebration

Makerfield never seemed like prime Green territory. And it seems unlikely that the Green Party candidate will be a real challenger in the election. But voices inside and outside the party calling for unity behind Burnham as an anti-Reform candidate seem to have the dangerously false impression that he’s an antidote to Reform advances.

Challenging Burnham from the left in this by-election is primarily because he has consistently failed to make firm promises. The Greens may possibly have stepped aside if he had clearly committed to electoral reform before the next election, but he didn’t — even though party members back it. As Green leader Zack Polanski said:

Anyone committed to proper democratic renewal in this country must commit to bringing in fair and genuine proportional representation at the earliest possible opportunity… We also need to get big money out of politics, stop disinformation, and scrap the archaic and undemocratic House of Lords. We’ve heard lots of promises and warm words from many Labour figures – but when it comes to it, we see inaction, U-turns and half-measures.

Reform, meanwhile, may have been awful enough by itself to tank its chances of winning. Suggesting it would back notorious child abuser Jimmy Savile, being generally misogynistic, and getting tetchy with others on the far right could all contribute to Reform losing.

Because Andy Burnham has promised little apart from ‘more of the same’, though, a victory for him wouldn’t be cause for celebration. And that’s probably why the increase in scrutiny has reduced his popularity in recent weeks.

Keir Starmer’s government has set a low bar, so Burnham may stretch slightly over that if he becomes Labour leader. But he alone is too much of a corporate lackey to bring any meaningful change to our political system. For that, only consistent organising and pressure from ordinary people will really make a difference.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Recent disturbing revelations connected to BBC favourite Ashley Cain prove that the UK and its institutions have a serious misogyny problem.

Moreover, the volume of evidence showing extremely bigoted, abusive rhetoric to diminish, demean and attack women shows how little sexualised abuse seems to matter to the state broadcaster.

When Cain’s rhetoric glorifies violence against women, it ceases to be mere opinion and becomes part of a culture that puts women and girls at risk. The damage is real, and so are the consequences.

Thus, the BBC has serious questions to answer. They did not merely tolerate this rhetoric — they helped amplify it. In doing so, they lent credibility to attitudes that women and girls across the country are already forced to confront every day.

Like typical offenders trying to hide the evidence of their abuse, Cain appears to have deleted his X account over the last week.

How the hell does Ashley Cain have a job at the BBC? I have never read such a timeline of concentrated and appalling misogyny https://t.co/pa63Dhf2mE

— Colleen Murrell (@ivorytowerjourn) June 17, 2026

Cain made ‘jokes’ about hitting women — then hired by the BBC

According to the Guardian, as now his X account is no longer there to refer to, Cain has had no qualms in keeping a long track record of abuse visible to the wider public, with disgusting sexist and abusive comments remaining from across the last decade.

As the exclusive report makes clear, this history was hardly buried. A basic search appears to have been enough to uncover it. Yet the BBC not only platformed him but reportedly held him up as an example of “what BBC Three was about“. That raises serious questions about the broadcaster’s judgement and its ability to decide who they deem as a positive role model to young men.

There are many disgusting things quoted by the Guardian, such as making jokes about hitting women whilst watching Jessica Hayes on Love Island in 2015 saying he “would have to choke slam” her “real quick”.

He didn’t stop there, however, with a later post shamefully saying he wanted to:

dick fuck her and her big mouth, spit in her face and then fuck her off.

The UK is afraid of Muslims? This guy is unhinged yet the BBC has lauded Ashley Cain for his appeal to young male audiences… All part of the same problem.https://t.co/I0u9GMStRa pic.twitter.com/6WIzWuQhMD

— Sidney Cotton (@Steph36Seaton) June 17, 2026

Disrespectful, derogatory rhetoric towards women

Prior to this, back in 2011, he also attempted to blur the lines of consent, arguably adding momentum to a growing rape culture amongst Western men. Apparently, Cain finds the idea of extreme sex acts against women — who he called a “bitch” — funny as if it’s a bit of lighthearted humour.

“No harm no foul” is likely the defence of those who might wish to shut this down, but as many women and girls know, this misogyny spreads especially when modelled to younger boys. As far too many will relate to, this can have deeply traumatic results for the UK’s female population.

He has also made comments which highlight exactly why women are scared of the threat posed by Farage and Reform UK in regard to reproductive rights as he posted:

eating bad food at weekends is like when a girl says, ‘Don’t cum in me’, but you do it anyway, then think ‘shit’.

Another post from Cain highlights the toxic male culture surrounding sex:

A girl bangs 100 guys = Slag

A guy bangs 100 girls = Ledge.

Banning social media whilst platforming dangerous influencers

Starmer announced this week that the Labour government will be imposing a ban on young people across popular social media platforms, stating it was necessary for their safety.

Yes, they’re a cesspit of misogynistic rubbish, and the damage they cause to young people is real. But that’s exactly why people should be trying to fix the problem — not acting as though abuse, harassment and sexism are somehow inevitable.

The answer isn’t to throw our hands up and say, “that’s just the internet”. The answer is to tackle the danger, hold platforms to account and stop treating toxic behaviour as normal.

A recent report published by children’s charity Barnardo’s underscored this very real issue facing the younger generations — who will be the adult abusers or victims of tomorrow. Boys are increasingly pressured to join in with sexist “banter”, while girls are forced to put up with degrading abuse at school, online, at work and in public. Anyone paying attention can see the problem is getting worse, not better.

That’s why it is so infuriating to watch the government sit on its hands. Instead of cracking down on abuse and forcing social media companies to clean up their platforms, ministers have chosen inaction. The result? Misogynists, predators and creeps continue to get free rein online, while women and girls are left to deal with the consequences.

Instead, the government chooses to restrict powerless, vulnerable and impressionable children.

"A source at the BBC said the corporation had been unaware of Cain’s social media posts".
Due diligence? What's that? https://t.co/PlHdundaos

— Briefcase Michael (@BriefcaseMike) June 17, 2026

Do those with influence even care about sexual abuse and misogyny?

This Guardian revelation is disturbing enough on its own. What makes it worse is that the BBC either didn’t bother doing proper due diligence or did and simply shrugged at his rhetoric. Either way, it exposes how normalised misogyny has become and how deeply its harmful attitudes remain woven into British society.

When violence against women and girls is rising exponentially year on year, it is getting harder and harder not to see a level of complicity for the government and the BBC in the endured trauma of young girls and women who will have undoubtedly suffered the consequences of influencers encouraging abusive attitudes and behaviours.

The social media ban will not protect children — it will simply push their use underground and increase the likelihood that they will suffer abuse in silence. After all, they’re told they are not allowed on highly addictive platforms so they will fear potential reprisal from their parents or adults if they speak up.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the ban is the chilling effect it could have on vulnerable children. If a child experiences abuse on a platform they are technically banned from using, they may think twice before telling a parent, teacher or guardian.

The fear of being blamed, punished or hit with an “I told you so” could push many to suffer in silence. That doesn’t protect children — it risks making abuse harder to spot, harder to report and easier for predators to hide.

#UzairQadeer #MattBrittin @BBC I'm really curious to know what your hiring criteria is for on screen talent? Presumably misogyny, obscenity, and the promotion of violence and sexual assault against women are high on the list? https://t.co/Tkple11aWT

— Sue Traynor (@TraynorSue) June 17, 2026

BBC — Will we ever protect women and girls from abusive men?

On the other hand, these platforms are crucial for a sense of connection and understanding for many young people. Society is overwhelming, isolating, and there are few opportunities for young people to talk to others and have a sense of community.

Even if that community is online, it has value for young people, as it does for older generations.

But we have a serious problem in the UK with sinister, harmful misogynistic attitudes amongst Western men — and now we know the government and the BBC have little interest in tackling that issue head on.

No, they platform them for their ‘success’ and they do whatever they can to appease abusive men rather than hold them accountable and make the behaviour expensive.

Featured image via the Canary

By Maddison Wheeldon

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

On 15 June, the government announced a social media ban for under-16s. Since then, many groups and experts have spoken out, including Save the Children:

This announcement reflects legitimate concerns about children's safety online, but a ban of this scale would change how children access and experience the digital world. The UK Government must ensure that any decisions are informed by children themselves and by independent… https://t.co/HbwviVkGvt pic.twitter.com/m655lWUo2y

— Save the Children UK (@savechildrenuk) June 15, 2026

Save the Children

The above response reads:

This announcement reflects legitimate concerns about children’s safety online, but a ban of this scale would change how children access and experience the digital world. The UK Government must ensure that any decisions are informed by children themselves and by independent experts.

We are concerned that a blanket ban may look protective on paper, but instead pushes children into less regulated spaces, where they are less likely to seek help when something goes wrong. Children growing up in poverty are likely to be among those most affected.

If young people use sites like Facebook or TikTok, there are things we can do to push these companies to better regulate. After all, these are businesses, and if they want access to the UK market, they need to play by our rules. If young people instead start congregating on dodgy message boards, there is pretty much nothing we can do besides playing whack-a-mole and banning them as they pop up.

Some of these sites host far, far worse than anything you’ll see on Instagram, by the way, and we can’t regulate them via Ofcom, because they’re not hosted here:

We've fined 4chan £450,000 for not having age checks in place to prevent children seeing porn on its site.

The Online Safety Act is concerned with protecting people in the UK. It doesn't require platforms to restrict what people in other countries see.

https://t.co/m2QUapVHjv pic.twitter.com/9rba57bHiq

— Ofcom (@Ofcom) March 19, 2026

Oh, and let’s not forget we could also create a national social media option which isn’t operating a profit-at-any-cost model. As whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed at a US Senate hearing:

I’m here today because I believe Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy. The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.

Back to Save the Children, they finished:

If ministers want to make the online world safer, the answer is not simply keeping children off platforms. The focus must be on providing better support for parents by making platforms safer by design, tackling addictive and high-risk features such as stranger contact, live streaming, nudification tools and unsafe AI systems, so that children are not exposed to harm online.

Tech company failures

The Canary’s Maddison Wheeldon also reported on this topic, writing:

Don’t get me wrong: stronger restrictions on social media use by young people have become increasingly necessary given how toxic, abusive, and harmful many platforms have proven to be. But the repeated failure of tech companies to address these problems meaningfully means the dangers will not simply disappear because a ban is introduced.

All these dangers will still be there waiting for young people when they come of age. And it’s not like 18-year-olds aren’t vulnerable to abuse and harm. So really, all we’re doing is kicking the problem down the road.

Wheeldon also wrote:

Harmful content, disinformation, and online radicalisation will continue to exist, and young people will often find ways around restrictions. It is important to note, this policy has not been successful in Australia – a whopping 70% of parents in Australia have reported that their children are still on banned platforms – which hardly suggests this will have any impact on children’s safety.

In other words, the plan won’t address the underlying issue and it won’t even keep children out of harm’s way. So ‘save the children’ it will not.

Ulterior motives

The purpose of the ban seems to be twofold:

• Giving the impression that something is being done without inconveniencing the social media companies which are responsible for the problem.
• Introducing Digital ID by stealth.

In response, we all need to demand that the government grows a spine and regulates social media companies now.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Jeremy Corbyn has slammed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s new National Security (State Threats) Bill, branding it an “alarming expansion of state power” that poses a “grave risk” to civil liberties.

The Bill is being fast-tracked through all three readings in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

The Bill would amend the National Security Act 2023 to introduce a power for the Home Secretary to designate bodies involved in “foreign power threat activity” by regulation, if they believe it is necessary for the safety or interests of the UK.

The National Security (State Threats) Bill is an alarming expansion of state power, and an escalation of the government’s chilling assault on the right to protest. pic.twitter.com/3izNLrvTL5

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) June 17, 2026

Mahmood’s new bill is already at second reading in the House of Commons as of Wednesday afternoon.

Mahmood insisted there is a “need for speed” following recent events and “the threats the country faces”.

According to the policy paper on the bill:

Jonathan Hall KC’s report, published in May 2025, highlighted the limitations of the terrorism proscription regime in applying to state bodies and how the National Security Act 2023, as drafted, is less effective at disrupting proxies than foreign intelligence services.

This culminated in Jonathan Hall KC’s recommendation for the Government to introduce a ‘State Threats Proscription-like Power’, equivalent to terrorism proscription, which this power reflects.

Hall, as the Canary has previously reported, is the government’s terrorism tsar and has links to Israel. His father-in-law, Lord Dyson, is a patron of UK Lawyers for Israel.

Mahmood — Groups raise alarm

The backlash is not confined to Corbyn.

The International Development Committee, chaired by Labour MP Sarah Champion, has formally written to Mahmood expressing “serious concerns” that the Bill could have catastrophic unintended consequences for UK-funded humanitarian aid.

Grees4Palestine also posted on X, urging Green MPs, who have not spoken out against it, to do so.

Every MP, at every level should be opposing this authoritarian power grab @AdrianRamsay @carla_denyer @sianberry https://t.co/hFs3I4eKWr

— Greens4Palestine (@Greens4P) June 17, 2026

Ashok Kumar, Green Party member and  lecturer, said:

Iran is the only country in the world that is materially supporting any resistance to Israeli terrorism – from Lebanon to Palestine to Yemen. They’ve just been the victim of 4 months of imperial terrorism and 50 years of economic terrorism. The only reason they’re being proscribed is because they are the only counterweight to Israel.

The only purpose of this law is to support more war crimes against the Iranian people and to round up anyone here who opposes those war crimes under the charge of terrorism.

He also lamented the lack of Green voices against the bill.

As the Bill hurtles towards its final Commons vote tonight — and likely enactment — it will mark a major authoritarian shift in British law.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Tomorrow, 18 June, the Makerfield by-election could open a path for Andy Burnham — current mayor of Greater Manchester — to make a bid for the leadership of the Labour Party.

However, given that Labour has lost most of its voters to left-wing, pro-Palestinian parties, it’s worth taking another look at Burnham’s stance on Gaza.

(Spoiler alert: it’s not great)

Labour losing votes on Palestine

Labour’s strategy whilst in government has lent heavily on tacking to the right in a vain attempt to appeal to Reform voters. However, the party actually lost four times as many voters to the Greens at the local elections. In fact, just 46% of Labour’s previous backers remained loyal at the ballot box.

Recent polling from Opinium revealed that a great deal of that shift was down to Labour’s political and material support for Israel, fuelling the genocide in Gaza.

Of the former Labour voters who switched to centrist or left-wing parties, 53% cited the PLP’s stance on Palestine as a factor. Likewise, a massive 74% said that their:

opinion of Labour would improve if the next leader were to adopt a strong position on Palestine, such as imposing sanctions on Israel. 

As such, Burnham could potentially win back a not-insignificant voting bloc if he were to steer the Labour Party toward an anti-genocide stance. This would also have the added bonus of bringing the UK into compliance with its duty to prevent genocide, per the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Burnham — ‘Not a gift but a right’

Of course, it would be remiss of us not to mention the context of Burnham’s abysmal record in West Asia. Back in 2003, as Labour MP for Leigh, he voted for Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq — in spite of his criticisms of the ‘War on Terror’. In the aftermath, he also voted consistently against launching investigations into the Iraq war.

Regarding Palestine, Burnham visited the occupied West Bank back in 2012, in the company of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. At the time, he called Palestinian statehood:

not a gift to be given but a right to be recognised.

In 2015, Burnham voiced his support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. To this end, he also reiterated the call for recognition of the Palestinian state, telling the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that:

the appalling loss of life that occurred in Gaza last summer – with 2,131 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of them civilians, and seven Israeli civilians killed by rocket attacks from Gaza, makes the task of achieving a lasting and just peace all the more urgent.

Labour is clear that only a negotiated peace deal will bring the justice and security both sides deserve. That is why the international community must now take concrete steps to strengthen moderate Palestinian opinion. We are clear that Palestinian recognition at the UN would be such a step.

Gee, do we think maybe the lack of ‘moderate’ Palestinian opinion might be related to the 2,000+ mostly-civilian deaths?

Burnham: Friend of Israel

However, Burnham has also been a member of the Labour Friends of Israel since 2015, and called boycott campaigns against the occupying state “spiteful”. Al Jazeeraalso reported that Israel was at the top of Burnham’s list to visit, had he won his 2015 leadership bid. He described Israel as a:

democracy that has a long history of protecting minorities and promoting civil rights.

When Israel redoubled its war on Palestine in 2023, Burnham — alongside Sadiq Khan and Anas Sarwar — was one of the earlier senior Labour figures to call for a ceasefire “from all sides” (deeply equivocal language again there).

However, he also supported Israel’s ‘right’ to carry out “targeted action within international law”. This ‘targeted action’ was, of course, very clearly far from the actual genocidal actions of the occupying forces.

In July 2025, he issued a plea for Mancunians to donate to UKMed, a charity supporting medical access in Gaza. In a video address, he described the suffering of Palestinians as “beyond words”, adding:

We stand with people in times of need, it’s who we are.

And the genocide?

However, standing with the Palestinians apparently doesn’t extend to recognising the war crimes being carried out against them. In a 4 June Guardianinterview, Burnham specifically declined to describe Israel’s actions as genocidal:

I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester. But I do have concerns about the disproportionate nature of what has happened in terms of the destruction, and there has to be a full process of investigation and accountability.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory had issued a report stating that Israel was committing genocide 9 months prior to Burnham’s statement.

In May 2026, Your Party’s Jeremy Corbyn wrote to Burnham, urging him to state publicly that he would back an inquiry. The Manchester mayor did not respond. Corbyn also later launched a petition to pressure Burnham into making a statement to that same effect.

Likewise, when the Palestine Solidarity Campaign asked the Makerfield candidates what they would do to “uphold the rights of Palestinian people”, Burnham stayed silent. Meanwhile, his Green Party counterpart, Sarah Wakefield, was quick to respond:

I unequivocally accept the findings of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry and numerous other expert bodies that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. I additionally accept the 2024 ICJ ruling that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid against Palestinians.

I fully support a total ban on trade with Israel’s illegal settlements and all other trade that aids or assists Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory. I also support comprehensive sanctions on Israel, including a full arms embargo. Without doubt, I support reversing the authoritarian use of public order and anti-terror legislation to suppress protest in support of Palestinian rights.

‘Both sides’ is the wrong side

As the Canaryhas repeatedly reported, Burnham has consistently failed to voice a credible plan or any real opinions in his Makerfield candidacy. Instead, he’s echoed a distinctly centrist, Starmerite call for non-specific “change”.

However, as we’ve seen quite clearly through Burnham’s pitiful equivocation on Palestine, paying lip-service to both sides too often boils down to tacit support for the wrong side.

If the Labour hopeful cannot learn that lesson, he’ll follow his predecessor into meaningless oblivion — and the UK’s complicity in Israel’s genocide will continue unabated.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

The world’s richest man’s new company — SpaceX — may have counted many a chicken before they hatched.

China’s chokehold on solar cells and equipment, tungsten, indium, yttrium, and other critical materials should cast doubt on the prowess of American industry, defence and SpaceX alike.

The Washington Post’s recent report on the stalled SpaceX-Suzhou Maxwell negotiations shows that all is not well behind the showmanship of American industrial power under Trump and Musk.

China is quietly expanding its export control regime against the U.S. and American allies, reaching beyond rare earth minerals to pinch choke points that affect key U.S. industries, according to investors, business leaders and supply chain analysts. https://t.co/sq1VJE8LUD

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 17, 2026

In March 2026, Chinese authorities told Suzhou Maxwell, one of the world’s most advanced producers of solar cell manufacturing equipment, to pause negotiations with Musk’s companies and not to sell them machinery according to the Post.

This is a spectacular roadblock for the company that wants to deploy 100 gigawatts of solar-powered artificial-intelligence data centers into orbit every 12 months by 2030.

Nevertheless, SpaceX’s valuation rose as high as $2.97tn on Tuesday, eclipsing the market value of Amazon and Microsoft of $2.64tn and $2.93tn, according to the Financial Times (FT).

The initial public offering (IPO) of the rocket and AI company has made Musk, who owns just over 40 per cent of it and has a large stake in Tesla, the world’s first trillionaire.

According to Bloomberg:

China dominates the large-scale manufacture of key technologies, including gallium and solar polysilicon, which could be a problem for SpaceX given its contracts with the US military and the strategic logic driving the rise of satellite mega-constellations.

Jim Chanos, the founder of the investment firm Chanos and Company, who predicted the 2001 collapse of Enron, said:

It really does feel very much a ‘don’t look at the man behind the curtain’ situation

It is, isn’t it? A $2.97 trillion valuation built on a supply chain that China controls — and a company that cannot admit it, because to do so would be to admit that the American space age rests on China’s permission.

SpaceX and the US military — Same story

One of the reasons that tungsten prices are soaring currently, according to Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank funded by arms companies among others, is because of the US war on Iran.

She told the former UK intelligence chief Richard Dearlove, in an interview recently that there was a “crucial shortage” of tungsten in the USA, a key raw material for the US military following use of munitions during the war on Iran.

According to Reuters, China dominates the global tungsten ⁠market. It imposed new export restrictions on tungsten in 2025 and cut mining ​quotas for that year. In December 2025, China said only 15 firms ​would be allowed to export tungsten in 2026–2027.

The U.S. has fired more than 1,000 long-range Tomahawk missiles since the war with Iran began Feb. 28, as well as 1,500 to 2,000 air-defense missiles, including THAAD, Patriot and Standard Missile interceptors, according to U.S. officials cited by the Wall Street Journal.

Completely replacing those stockpiles could take up to six years, officials told the WSJ.

The same bottlenecks are affecting yttrium, which is needed for aircraft engines, and indium, which is needed for lasers and AI data centers.

US strategy mirrors the British Empire

The threat of China is bringing out the worst imperial tendencies of the United States.

Writing in Le Monde, Evgeny Morozov notes that without mentioning the Bengal famine or Plassey, Trump cronies are now boasting about modeling U.S. agencies on the British Empire.

George Kollitides II, the Pentagon’s principal advisor on economic competition, said the quiet part out loud at the Milken Institute conference in May 2026:

The British Empire really modelled it,” pointing to “privatised companies like the East India Company, which were really public-private, government-driven organisations largely built around commerce and economics.

Morozov documents U.S. activities that include:

• The Pentagon taking equity stakes in private mining firms like MP Materials and Vulcan Elements
• The Development Finance Corporation investing in Congolese copper and cobalt, and Angola’s Lobito rail corridor
• The Export-Import Bank locking allied producers into U.S.-centered supply chains through guaranteed offtake contracts
• Project Vault building a $12 billion strategic stockpile of 60 critical minerals with fixed purchase prices
• Conditional loans and health aid used as leverage to extract mineral access from countries like Zambia

He says:

The East India Company took its dividends in cotton, opium and tea. This one takes them, principally, in tokens generated, prompts served, models fine-tuned on someone else’s data. Behind the inference sits the older ledger – copper and cobalt out of Congo, genomic sequences signed away in Zambian clinics in exchange for tuberculosis drugs that may or may not arrive, aquifers drained to cool data centres.

From the Beverly Hilton, none of this is visible. From East India House on London’s Leadenhall Street, in 1770, the Bengal famine was not visible either. Blame it on the architecture.

Writing in Phenomenal World, scholars Ilias Alami and Thea Riofrancos point to the same imperial logic playing out elsewhere. They note the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Maduro to control its oil industry, the blockade of Cuba, the threats against Greenland, and the war on Iran.

The U.S. is also clamping down on the ability of countries like Zambia to pursue polyalignment the strategy of courting investment from both US and China while refusing to align with either.

This “my way or the highway” strategy is not benign. Venezuela, which holds significant deposits of gold, bauxite, and coltan — all critical minerals, was invaded and its president abducted, with the explicit aim of controlling its oil industry for the benefit of U.S. fossil fuel corporations.

The message to any resource-rich country contemplating polyalignment is unmistakable: defiance invites regime change.

Arsonists playing as firefighters

Both Morozov and Alami and Riofrancos highlight a deeper rot: the people now running U.S. industrial policy are the same ones who profited from its decline. 

Morozov traces that the Pentagon’s Economic Defense Unit is staffed by alumni of Cerberus, Apollo, and Cantor Fitzgerald, private equity firms that built empires on the ruins of American manufacturing. For instance, Cerberus ran Chrysler into the ground.

Cantor Fitzgerald, run by Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s sons, backed USA Rare Earths, a company with no proven track record. Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital invested in Vulcan Elements months before it secured a $620 million Pentagon loan.

Alami and Riofrancos add that this private equity mindset focuses on low-hanging fruit and quick wins, not the long-term planning necessary to rebuild industries in secular decline.

SpaceX cannot build its orbital data centers without Chinese solar equipment. The Pentagon cannot replenish its munitions without Chinese tungsten. The people trying to solve these problems are private equity hacks, boasting about being the East India Company, subjugating the global South again, and using the China bogeyman to justify it all.

Featured image via the Canary

By Nandita Lal

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Ex-defence minister Al Carns has condemned the waste and inefficiency of the British war machine. The former commando wants more to be spent on war. He’s wrong, but his latest interview does expose certain grim truths about the UK war machine.

Carns resigned his cabinet post as a junior defence minister on 11 June, citing Starmer’s failings on the so-called Defence Investment Plan (DIP):

We owe those who serve the UK the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it's done. We are failing on both.

I’ve spent my whole time in government making that case. Number 10 will not listen, so I am resigning as Minister for the Armed Forces.

Letter to the PM… pic.twitter.com/HDCIOcVsA5

— Al Carns (@AlistairCarns) June 11, 2026

Al Carns resigned hours after his boss defence secretary John Healey threw in the towel. Both men were pro-war Starmer loyalists from the right-wing of the Labour Party.

Like many such people, Carns likes to externalise the UK’s problems onto, for example, Russia:

Moscow is probably rubbing its belly. I think it looks at the social division that we’re having in the UK and the amplification through social media as success for its propaganda campaign.

Carns, who has been touted to replace Starmer, is a militarist who wants more money for war. But hidden in his latest Guardian interview are some important truths about the racket we know as the military-industrial complex.

Carns told the Guardian how defence projects are deeply inefficient:

It is unbelievable. You turn a stone over and get another shock – how has that been allowed to go on?

And:

you turn another stone over, and it is just layers of bureaucracy which now cost us more than the product you’re getting itself. I can’t describe the level of inefficiency in the system that we’ve been left with and we’re trying to unpeel. But it’s actually exceptionally difficult to do.

Al Carns is half-right, we do need reform

This is a pretty typical rant about bureaucracy. These sentiments are hardly uncommon among conservative-minded ex-soldiers. And on waste in the war machine, Carns makes some good points:

Take tanks for example – 100 to 200 tanks isn’t the most useful way of spending our money. They were ordered ages ago, and if you cancel them now, that’s sunk cost … that’s cost us £700m.

Adding:

Well, I think these are the difficult discussions we have to make – the cost of running them is in the hundreds of millions, and so I would rather take that chunk of money … and put it into those innovative systems that we need to buy.

Al Carns called for root and branch reform:

We have the fifth biggest defence budget in the world. Do you think we get a good bang for buck? We need to completely and utterly overhaul our procurement.

Adding:

We need to make sure a large proportion of the resource and money is spent this side of 2030, to make sure that if we get caught in a geographical confrontation, we’re ready.

Carns is half-right. We do need a massive overhaul and reallocation of war spending. But Carns would allocate cash towards things like AI. In reality, we need to stop handing bags of cash to arms firms full stop, and build actual human security: jobs, healthcare, education, green technology and so on. Carns, a career military officer, might not be able to see that. But we can.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Green leader Zack Polanski has called for ‘immediate escalation’ from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan over clearly “unlawful activity” at the Great Israeli Real Estate event. Jewish anti-Zionists had joined protests outside the London event on 14 June to oppose its attempts to sell land in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

Polanski: ‘No impunity for hosts of deplorable Great Israeli Real Estate event’

In a letter to Khan, Polanski insisted that there had already been “substantial evidence ahead of the event” suggesting wrongdoing, and that authorities should have never allowed it to take place. But following the event, he stressed:

It has since come to light that materials handed out at the ‘Great Israeli Real Estate’ event included properties in Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Zeev in the West Bank and Ramat Eshkol and Givat HaMatos in East Jerusalem. [1] These settlements are illegal under international law.

He added that this is something the UK government itself accepts, saying:

The UK Government has repeatedly affirmed that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice clarified that:

Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal

There is now clear evidence that the Great Israeli Real Estate event had unlawful activity at it.

I've written to the Mayor of London to ask what he intends to do about it.

This needs to be escalated immediately. pic.twitter.com/dnFhkP4XXt

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) June 16, 2026

Edgware United Synagogue hosted the invite-only event. But activists managed to gain access, and they shared images with the media that show the marketing of property in illegal Zionist settlements in Palestine.

REVEALED: Jewish activists @JAZA_UK have shown us material from inside an Israeli property event in London yesterday, which shows that illegal settlements on Palestinian land were on sale in the UK.

Activists gained access to the event, spoke to numerous developers about the… pic.twitter.com/WsJ1hC1GlZ

— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) June 16, 2026

Looks like the Board Of Deputies should apologize for this denial below and the fake ‘refutation’. https://t.co/lbB5h4r0fe https://t.co/5p3PpL7Xme pic.twitter.com/IojypnmbZP

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) June 16, 2026

Utterly disgraceful: yet again the government of @Keir_Starmer ignores International Law and the @ICJ_org and sides with the oppressor & occupier against the subjugated & occupied https://t.co/kU4yQRU0Uv

— William Dalrymple (@DalrympleWill) June 15, 2026

Considering the increase in Zionist settler terror against Palestinians since Israel’s genocide escalated in 2023, Polanski argued that:

With horrific settler violence against Palestinians on the rise, it’s more important than ever that those involved in hosting this deplorable event in our city are not allowed to act with impunity.

Others agreed that there must be consequences:

There’s a serious case to be made that selling or facilitating sales of property in West Bank settlements amounts to aiding & abetting a war crime (transferring population to an occupied territory), punishable in UK law (ICC Act 2001)@SadiqKhan can’t just shrug this off https://t.co/DLvWNTAKsj

— North Herts Palestine Solidarity Campaign (@NHertsPsc) June 16, 2026

And Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer wondered if Khan would have been so permissive if the event had been selling Ukrainian land under Russian occupation:

Imagine for a second that a real estate conference took place in London where Russian occupiers sold stolen Ukrainian land and property.

You have to imagine, because that rightly wouldn't have been allowed. If it's stolen Palestinian land though, that's apparently totally fine. https://t.co/ooPmInhuzu

— Ross Greer (@Ross_Greer) June 16, 2026

Colonialism continues with “Anglo-communities” in Palestine

A Jewish Anti-Zionist Action member who got into the event told Al Jazeera that she’d heard no mention of Palestinians. When real estate agents mentioned illegally occupied Palestinian territory, meanwhile, there was talk of:

“Anglo-communities” where English-speaking people from the United States, the UK and South Africa could relocate to.

Amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza and violent rampage throughout the Middle East, she said a “popular selling point” was that real estate prices had fallen and buyers might get a discount.

As Polanski pointed out to Khan:

The Proceeds of Crime Act makes it illegal for promoters and estate agents operating in the UK to facilitate the sale of land acquired through illegal conduct.

He added that:

This needs to be escalated to the Metropolitan Police Service immediately, anything less fails to reflect the seriousness of the situation.

He also pushed Khan on whether police:

will be investigating the unlawful activities that took place on Sunday.

And considering the new evidence of illegality, he asked:

what action will you now take?

Khan had previously expressed his concern about the event. But now, as Polanski argued, Khan must go beyond words and take firm action.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

The town of Deir Dibwan, east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, has long suffered from settler attacks. And since 7 October 2023, these have been occurring on a weekly or sometimes even daily basis.

Settlers attempt to burn Palestinian worshippers alive at the mosque

Around 8pm on 14 June, a group of around 40 to 50 illegal settlers  set fires in several areas of Deir Dibwan. When they entered the Al-Marah area, near the western entrance, they set alight residents’ vehicles. Flames engulfed parked cars and spread to nearby roadside areas, and across large areas of agricultural land. Two vehicles were burned and two others damaged in the attack.

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ag-land.mp4

92-year-old Yaser Saeed was inside Deir Dibwan’s Al Marah mosque near the entrance of the town. He was waiting for evening prayers when he heard a noise and looked out of the mosque window. He saw a settler, who then sprayed both the window and Saeed’s right side and face with petrol, then set it on fire. Saeed says he moved back just in time, and narrowly escaped being set alight.

West Bank — Two mosques in the same evening

Residents were quick on the scene, and helped extinguish the fires. Others helped evacuate families from homes where smoke had entered rooms. Volunteers from nearby villages, including Beitin and Rammun, also arrived to help.

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/fire.mp4

While Deir Dibwan was still dealing with the aftermath, a second arson attack was reported in nearby Burqa. The village lies within the same network of villages and agricultural land affected by surrounding settlement outposts and roads.

Settlers entered Burqa and set fire to a vehicle parked near Al-Nour Mosque. They then broke down the mosque doors, and attempted to set fire to its entrance. Fortunately, residents moved quickly to contain the blaze.

Residents said the fire damaged the mosque entrance before being extinguished. The building itself was not destroyed. Worshippers were inside at the time, but the fire was brought under control by residents before it could spread further inside the mosque.

Protests over new settler outpost leads to tear-gassing Palestinians, injuring several journalists

Earlier the same day, Palestinians from the village of Deir Abu Mashal, northwest of Ramallah, were also attacked by settlers. They had rocks thrown at them as they attempted to access their land. According to the head of the village council, Jamil Musa, Israeli occupation forces provided protection for these illegal settlers.

Two days previously, settlers erected a tent on Palestinian-owned land in the village. On 16 June, when protests broke out about this new illegal outpost, Israeli occupation forces used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse Palestinians. Several journalists were injured by the occupation’s attack.

Several journalists were injured by Israeli forces' live ammunition in the Palestinian village of Deir Abu Mash'al, occupied West Bank.
Press was covering local protests led by Palestinians against a newly established settler outpost, which has cut access to agricultural land. pic.twitter.com/GEMWX1KVuM

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) June 16, 2026

Settler attacks in the West Bank are aimed at “forcibly displacing Palestinians”

On 17 June, two more arson attacks on mosques took place, this time North of Ramallah in the Central West Bank. Settlers set fire and caused damage to the main mosque in the village of Jiljiliya, and also in Mazra’a al-Nubani. They also sprayed racist slogans on the walls, in Hebrew, which read “revenge” and “Hi, from the Hilltop Youth.”

Wafa News Agency reports that the Ministry of Religious Endowments and Affairs released a statement. It said: “This serious attack targeting places of worship violates all international laws and conventions that guarantee the protection of holy sites.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement after the settler rampage on Deir Dibwan, stating that it “strongly condemns the terrorist attack and acts of arson.” It said this violence “forms part of Israel’s systematic policy of organized settler violence and terror aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinians and undermining their steadfastness on their land.”.

Settler terror attacks against Palestinians continue to increase. In 2025, at least seven Palestinians were killed and 832 Palestinians were injured. This marks a 130 per cent increase in killings and injuries over the year 2024. This trend continues in 2026 with attacks carried out on a daily basis.

Pace of settler attacks in 2026 is highest on record

On 11 June, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that since January 2026 settler attacks resulting in casualties, property damage or both, totalled more than 1,000. These affected more than 230 communities across all parts of the West Bank. This averages six incidents every day — a rate higher than in any other year on record.

Oxfam has recently analysed UN figures. It found 1,036 Palestinians, including 225 children, had been killed by Israeli occupation forces or settlers from 2006 to the end of 2022. But from 2023 to the end of 2025, 1,244 Palestinians, including 268 children, have been killed.

Since 2020, Israeli occupation authorities have not prosecuted anyone for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Out of over 1,100 Palestinian fatalities caused by Israeli soldiers and settlers this decade, no one has been charged or sentenced.

Featured image via Al Jarmaq

By Charlie Jaay

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Starmer “intends to fight” any potential leadership challenge, could he bribe his way out of it instead?

Plus: A holidaying English couple are startled by live-fire from a Russian warship off the coast of the Isle of Wight.

The French want to build their own AI and we speak to a Tech CEO who built a SimCity, then let Grok loose with a box of matches.

With Michael Walker, Aaron Bastani & Satya Nitta.

From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.

Rather than win the debate regarding raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 from the current 10 years old, unionist parties have abused a veto power to stymie a bill’s progression at Stormont.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) used Stormont’s Petition of Concern (PoC) mechanism during a debate on the Justice Bill on Monday, 15 June.

The SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole reacted furiously to the legislation’s debate being sabotaged, saying:

It is an utter farce and a travesty of democracy. Once again, these institutions are being dragged into disrepute by parties that cannot accept democracy and the fact that we are allowed to debate issues here.

Challenging the use of a measure intended for use on issues that are of particular significance to nationalist or unionist communities, O’Toole said:

To be clear, [the MACR amendment] does not contain anything that relates to the vital interests of one community or another. I am not aware that it mentions unionists, nationalists or core constitutional issues at all. It does not threaten core issues of identity.

Non-aligned parties frozen out by Stormont veto abuse

Alliance Justice Minister Naomi Long accused the unionists of being:

…a minority abusing a petition that is there to protect minority rights and using it to impose their will on the majority.

She said the move perpetuated the public’s perception of Stormont being “farcical”. Long rightly complained of feeling “disenfranchised”. The votes of non-aligned MLAs such as those of Alliance, People Before Profit and independents effectively carry less weight once a PoC has been triggered.

The Good Friday Agreement introduced PoCs as a means of minority rights protection. Once triggered, it means the legislation in question needs cross-community support to pass. That is, 60% of all MLAs, including at least 40% of each unionist and nationalist bloc.

On Tuesday, UUP leader Jon Burrows defended his decision to use the Stormont veto, saying:

I used a legitimate tool to protect the most vulnerable in our society.

In Monday’s debate, Burrows entertained himself for 90 minutes with the sound of his own voice, referencing victims and the vulnerable without ever entirely rebutting opposition arguments on how they are currently failed.

His strongest point was perhaps that the north of Ireland’s approach to youth offenders does place an emphasis on methods like restorative justice, rather than custodial sentences. Observers abroad have praised the approach. That kind of method, in the words of restorative justice facilitator Northern Ireland Alternatives:

…addresses the problems of low-level crime and anti-social behaviour by attempting to fix the broken relationships between the victim, the offender and the community.

Essentially, Burrows was saying that it’s ok to continue treating 10 year olds as criminals, so long as the police and prosecution service continue to be flexible in how they deal with offenders.

Criminalising children for being poor

Sian Mulholland of Alliance had given the more convincing counter-argument earlier in the day. Mulholland was arguing in favour of her party’s proposal to raise MACR age to 14. She showed that, for the young people who are placed in custody, 49.5% reoffend.

Hardly a good way to serve the victims Burrows claimed to be so concerned about. By taking the criminalisation option off the table for all those under 14, it would enable greater use of options integrating health and social services. They would be more inclined to look at what led a child to offend in the first place. Mulholland said methods of this kind show far lower reoffending rates.

Referring to the recent Belfast pogroms, Mulholland said:

I want to know why a 12-year-old is out on the street burning down a house. If adults are grooming, threatening, coercing or using children to commit offences, the answer is not to punish those children more quickly so that adults will not take advantage of them. The answer is to identify exploitation. The answer is to protect the child and disrupt the adults…

Mulholland cited the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, which followed “4,300 young people”. The North Antrim MLA said it showed that:

…serious offending is linked to wider vulnerabilities and social adversity; that early police contact and formal processing can predict later persistent offending;

So criminalising kids is essentially punishing them for being poor. Doing so traumatises them, and inclines them towards seeing themselves as a criminal, potentially leading to further offending.

10 year olds know right from wrong? It’s more complicated

As for the argument of Burrows and various DUP MPs that a 10 year old “knows the difference between right and wrong”, Mulholland led with the science that shows this is a simplistic assessment. She said:

Developmental research is clear that the parts of the brain that are responsible for judgement, impulse control, risk assessment and self-regulation are still developing right through adolescence and into early adulthood.

A major review commissioned by the Scottish Sentencing Council found that the brain does not fully mature until at least the mid-20s, with systems linked to self-regulation developing much later.

We don’t let 10 year olds vote, because we don’t think their brains have the capacity yet for sound decision making. Following this logic, they also shouldn’t be locked up for errors of judgement.

Ultimately, Burrows and co showed they don’t care greatly about logic, or the knowledge produced from hours of sincere debate. In the end, they were happy to anti-democratically override all that through their cynical abuse of veto powers.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

On Monday, a Court of Appeal overturned the High Court’s previous judgement on the proscription of Palestine Action, deciding that a terrorism ban on the direct-action group was indeed lawful — according to the five appeal judges, anyway.

Undeterred and unafraid, co-founder of Palestine Action Huda Ammori expressed her disappointment to the Guardian but defiantly stated:

I‘m certain that legally we are correct that this ban is disproportionate to free speech and the right to protest. I think that’s really clear.

We just need to get to the right court that’s going to recognise that and we’ll take it all the way up to the European court of human rights [ECHR], if needs be.

Nevertheless, with Reform UK and a growing chorus of right-wing politicians seeking to undermine the ECHR’s authority, Ammori will need to act swiftly if she hopes to obtain justice before those very protections are weakened.

“The way that we respond to this is by fighting even harder, that every struggle has its setbacks. But we are going to win in the end. We can’t give in. We can’t be deterred”

My interview with the Guardian on the Court of Appeal ruling on Palestine Actionhttps://t.co/KsIug2BLXO

— Huda Ammori (@HudaAmmori) June 16, 2026

Principled defiance continues unafraid of repression

The proscription of Palestine Action (PA) triggered outrage across Britain, marking the first time a direct-action group had been branded a terrorist organisation. Since the Starmer government imposed the ban, police have now arrested more than 3,000 people in a rapidly expanding campaign of civil disobedience.

Month after month, the British public has watched officers arrest pensioners and peaceful protesters simply for holding placards in support of PA. Images of mothers, fathers and grandparents being carried away by police have become pretty emblematic of this Orwellian crackdown on our civil liberties. Moreover, there have also been a considerable number of quite aggressive arrests which have undoubtedly caused injury.

This is what terrorism now looks like in the UK.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal accepted the Government's appeal and ruled that the Home Secretary's proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was lawful.

Amnesty International is deeply disappointed by this… pic.twitter.com/BOOil6ADWh

— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) June 16, 2026

On Monday, for instance, Met Police arrested another 117 people outside the Court of Appeal. Since then, footage shared across social media has only sharpened criticism of the ban, as the government’s actions have turned the very meaning of “terrorism” on its head.

Some have pointed out how, despite even the Judge referring to the Suffragettes, Palestine Action have been significantly more peaceful than the then-hated but now widely praised women’s rights movement at the turn of the 20th century:

This is absolutely insane.

The suffragettes used far more extreme tactics than Palestine Action.

They planted bombs, burned down private homes and smashed up art galleries.

They killed five people!

Her outrageous judgement is based on absurd historical ignorance. https://t.co/RvWslkZ4PF

— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) June 15, 2026

Palestine Action — People are being arrested, in their thousands, for saying just four words

Needless to say, of course, this proscription has turned common-sense on its head. According to international law, citizens and leaders have a legal responsibility to take action to stop a genocide.

Last week, the state branded four PA activists as terrorists and secured their sentencing, even though terrorism was never discussed during the jury trial. This dangerous precedent strikes at the heart of civil liberties. Juries are meant to restrain abuses of power and protect the right to a fair trial; when their role is diminished, those protections begin to unravel

However, if judges — acting under obvious and undue political pressure — can unilaterally apply terrorism charges, Britain moves ever closer to an era defined by political prisoners.

Testimony from the PA activists underscores how they took action for one reason only: to stop the production and transfer of bombs and military supplies to Zionist Israel. Therefore, it is clear their actions were driven by the urgent need to stop what human rights organisations, the International Court of Justice and most Holocaust scholars recognise as a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

However, due to the lucrative donations and lobbying efforts by pro-Zionist groups, it is now illegal to even state verbal support for PA — as Owen Jones highlighted on Jeremy Vine yesterday:

"You can't now say I support Palestine Action, thats an illegal offence. You can't now say I support Palestine Action with all my heart.. I'm saying its illegal to say I support Palestine Action.."@owenjonesjourno on #JeremyVine pic.twitter.com/gfVzcSFiHW

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) June 16, 2026

Palestine Action — Corrupted politicians show lack of moral conscience

Nonetheless, whilst people have stepped forward in solidarity for the suffering and mass-murder of Palestinians — and now Lebanese — by the settler-colonialist state, the powerful have done precious little but choose to repress the freedoms and rights of British citizens instead.

It isn’t hard to evidence our government’s complicity in Israel’s expansionist and bloodthirsty campaigns in the Middle East. David Lammy, then foreign secretary, awarded 90% of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s entire annual budget to a propaganda report which sought to justify the genocide by ‘finding’ that Hamas used sexual violence as a weapon of war on October 7th, 2023.

Many have disputed — and disproved — this sinister claim and pointed to the stark reality that the military force which has in fact used rape and sexual abuse to dehumanise, demoralise and destroy a population of innocent people is the IOF and Israeli government officials.

Despite this lack of principled leadership and increasingly draconian political moves to silence law-abiding citizens, Ammori insists the authoritarianism must be resisted, telling the Guardian:

This case is completely political, and the way we are going to win this is on the streets.

Everyone who sacrificed and stood up against this, all of that is bringing us closer and closer to the day when we are victorious.

Repression will breed resistance — not compliance

In addition, Ammori spoke about how she feels the terrorism charges levelled against the PA activists were a deliberate ploy to force through the proscription of PA. This signals a serious abuse of our democracy in the UK:

It feels like that this whole thing has been orchestrated to ensure convictions and show people can be sentenced as terrorists to then justify the ban on Palestine Action.

Nevertheless, solidarity and defence of the sovereign right of Palestinians to their own homeland continues, as Ammori insists we must remember why we continue to take to the streets:

Remember, who we are acting in solidarity with, which is the Palestinian people, who, despite all of the setbacks and challenges they face, including being labelled as terrorists, are continuing to resist for their freedom.

And [remember] that we are acting in solidarity with them and we can take strength from the Palestinian people and that whenever there is repression, there is more resistance.

Featured image via the Canary

By Maddison Wheeldon

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Amnesty International has published a new investigation. It has accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing against Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities in the occupied West Bank. It claims the occupation’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Area C is “state-sanctioned, state-driven, and state-implemented.”

Settler violence — the goal is ethnic cleansing

The report is titled Erasing Anything Palestinian: Israel’s ethnic cleansing of West Bank Bedouin and herding communities. It documents how entire communities have been driven from their land. This has been carried out through a combination of settler violence, home demolitions, land seizures and settlement expansion. Restrictions on access to water and grazing areas also play an important role in this displacement.

Area C of the occupied West Bank is fully controlled by the Israeli occupation.

Amnesty says the forced displacement of Palestinians in Area C amounts to the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer, and the crime against humanity of forcible transfer or deportation.

Israeli officials and most of the western media make it seem as though the settler attacks are the actions of a violent fringe operating beyond government control. But Amnesty presents settler violence as a key mechanism for removing Palestinians from strategic areas of the occupied territory.

Palestinian families described repeated raids on their homes and villages, consisting of physical assaults, death threats, theft of livestock and vandalism. Vital infrastructure was also destroyed, and water tanks were smashed. Electricity supplies were cut. Grazing land was fenced off. Many people who fled and later attempted to return found their communities destroyed. Others faced new attacks that forced them out again.

Ethnic cleansing since 1967 but dramatically increased under Netanyahu

The violence and displacement have been ongoing since 1967, but have escalated since December 2022. Netanyahu’s Likud party formed a coalition government with the far-right Jewish Power and Religious Zionism parties. This government openly embraced the settler movement’s vision — the vision of a “Greater Israel” stretching across the occupied Palestinian territories.

In September 2025, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich set out plans to annex more than 80 percent of the West Bank. He said the guiding principle should be “maximum land, minimum Arab population.

While national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for Israeli “sovereignty” across the occupied territories.

Because this is our land, and because we need to tell the whole world: ‘this is ours forever and ever’… Sovereignty, and also encouraging [Palestinian] voluntary emigration, which we should do also in Judea and Samaria.

These words by politicians have been matched by actions on the ground.

Between 2023 and 2025, Israeli occupation authorities advanced plans for more than 50,000 settlement housing units. Nearly 28,000 were approved in 2025 alone, the highest annual figure on record. Across the occupied West Bank, new settler outposts have also appeared at a rate never seen before. By April 2026, more than half of all existing outposts had been established during the current government’s time in office.

Illegal settlements at record rate while Palestinian development blocked

Along with settlement growth comes the rapid development of settler-only infrastructure, including roads and security systems. This continues to isolate Palestinian communities and restricts their movement.

But while settlement expansion continues at unprecedented speed, Palestinian development has effectively been frozen. No Palestinian housing plans were approved in Area C during  2023 and 2024. And only a handful of building permits were issued.

Thousands of demolition orders have been carried out against Palestinian homes, schools, animal shelters and water systems. Between January 2023 and April 2026, Israeli authorities destroyed more than 3,400 Palestinian homes and structures. Almost 3,000 Palestinians were displaced.

The report raises serious questions about the role Israeli occupation authorities play in enabling and protecting the violence. Amnesty documents Israeli occupation soldiers being present during settler attacks. And also being directly involved in incidents of harassment, intimidation or violence against Palestinians. Witnesses described them standing by while settlers assaulted residents, destroyed property and drove shepherds from grazing land. In other cases, “Israeli” soldiers arrived alongside settlers, coordinating with them during the violence.

Without accountability, violence towards Palestinians increases exponentially

Following 7 October 2023, Israeli occupation authorities dramatically expanded firearm licensing and distributed weapons to illegal settlers.  Many settlers began wearing military uniforms. It became difficult for Palestinians to know whether the people entering their communities were occupation soldiers or settlers. This has further increased the risks faced by Palestinian communities.

Ein Samia is a Bedouin community in the central occupied West Bank. Residents faced increased intimidation, harassment and violence before leaving the area in 2023. Ayman Suleiman, a Palestinian man displaced from Ein Samia, described to Amnesty how the situation changed.

For almost a year, I didn’t cross the highway [Allon Road]. They [settlers] used to harass me and other shepherds, and we’d try to avoid them, but then the army started showing up and protecting them, shooting in the air.

The report argues that the atmosphere of near total impunity has led to an exponential increase in the violence. Between 2005 and 2025, only three percent of investigations into crimes by these illegal colonists against Palestinians resulted in partial or full convictions. Many Palestinians interviewed said they no longer report attacks because they see little chance of justice. Others told researchers they were the ones questioned, detained or fined after reporting violence carried out against them.

You cannot separate settler violence from political aspirations

Amnesty argues settler violence cannot be separated from the wider political goal of expanding Israeli control across the West Bank. A deliberate campaign is taking place in Area C to permanently reshape the demographic reality of the occupied West Bank. This is, of course, at the expense of the Palestinians who have lived there for generations. The aim is to remove them from their land, to create space for further settlement expansion.

The legal framework which the Israeli occupation uses to govern the West Bank strengthens this system of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. Since 1967, “Israel” has used military orders to control the lives of Palestinians in the territory, although under international law an occupying power can act only as a temporary administrator. Palestinian lives have been reshaped into tightly controlled enclaves, especially in Area C, where the occupation maintains full control.

A system designed to entrench the Israeli occupation’s dominance

Some Bedouin and herding communities in the occupied West Bank have been emptied, the residents forcibly displaced after sustained attacks and demolitions. Others remain under constant threat, surrounded by expanding illegal settlements and outposts which continue to tighten control over surrounding Palestinian land.

Amnesty’s report argues that there is a deeply entrenched culture of impunity. Even if courts issue rulings in favour of Palestinian residents, including orders allowing displaced families to return to their villages, enforcement often does not take place. The Israeli occupation’s police and military often fail to implement court decisions, leaving families without any meaningful protection or solution.

Amnesty International concludes that the displacement of Palestinians in Area C is part of a structured system of control. This is designed to entrench the Israeli occupation’s dominance over Palestinian land while reducing Palestinian presence. For the Bedouin and herding communities of Area C, this means emptied villages, shrinking grazing land, destroyed livelihoods, and families scattered from the places they have lived for generations.

Featured image via the Canary

By Charlie Jaay

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

The Israeli occupation’s Supreme Court has rejected Dr Hussam Abu Safiya’s appeal against the extension of his detention. No criminal charges have been brought against him.

Dr Abu Safiya has spent more than 500 days under arbitrary detention

Dr Abu Safiya is a Palestinian paediatrician and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, in Beit Lahia, Northern Gaza. He was intentionally targeted by the occupation. He was a key source of information on the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system, consistently providing updates on medical conditions in North Gaza. This was especially true after Israeli occupation forces imposed a siege on the governorate in October 2024.

Despite the loss of his son in October 2024, Dr Abu Safiya continued his work, caring for injured children and documenting the realities faced by healthcare workers and patients in the area. He has been arbitrarily detained since December 2024, when he was abducted by Israeli occupation forces along with other medical staff while on duty, after refusing to abandon his patients.

Israeli occupation tortures Gaza paediatrician

Abu Safiya has suffered ongoing torture and neglect since being detained, and by January 2026, he had lost 40kg because of prolonged food deprivation.

Today, according to his lawyer, Nasser Odeh, Dr Abu Safiya is held in solitary confinement in Nafha Prison. Conditions are degrading and harsh, and his health is deteriorating. He is suffering torture and is showing signs of scabies — a highly contagious skin disease. But he continues to be denied the necessary medical care since his arrest, and his detention files remain secret.

The first image of Abu Safiya since his illegal imprisonment by the Israeli occupation emerged on 10 June. He appeared in Jerusalem’s Supreme Court, via video link. He was shackled and handcuffed, and appeared exhausted, with visible signs of mistreatment and torture.

After his hearing, on 10 June, Abu Safiya said:

I am a paediatrician. I provide medical service and care to patients, the injured, and the vulnerable in the Gaza Strip. I carried out my work in accordance with international law and humanitarian standards. My arrest is unjust and arbitrary, and I demand that the court release me immediately.

Dr Abu Safiya’s continued detention “A profound moral and legal failure”

Abu Safiya remains imprisoned under the “Unlawful Combatant’s Law”, which grants the Israeli occupation’s military sweeping powers. They can detain anyone from Gaza they claim to suspect of engagement in hostilities against “Israel” or who pose a threat to state “security”. Detention is for indefinitely renewable detention periods and no evidence needs to be produced to back up the claims.

The decision to continue his detention has been condemned by a multitude of human rights organisations.

Naji Abbas, Director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel has called Abu Safiya’s continued detention a “profound moral and legal failure.” He said:

 Dr Abu Safiya’s case is not an isolated one. It illustrates how judicial review proceedings for Palestinian detainees from Gaza have, in practice, become little more than a procedural formality. Every month, hundreds of detention review hearings take place, yet to the best of our knowledge, they have not resulted in the meaningful reconsideration or revocation of detention orders.

‘Israel’s’ treatment of Gaza’s medical workers is illegal under international law

The Palestinian Centre for Prisoners Advocacy is calling for Dr Safiya’s immediate release, and an end to the arbitrary detention of medical and humanitarian personnel by “Israel”. The organisation says it holds the Israeli occupation authorities “fully responsible” for his life and safety.

 Doctors and medical personnel have legally binding protections under the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law. These rules state that medical professionals must be protected in all circumstances. They must also be allowed to treat anyone without discrimination, and never punished for following medical ethics.

Gaza’s healthcare system has been intentionally destroyed by the Israeli occupation, and is at the point of collapse. And the continued detention of Gaza’s doctors such as Abu Safiya, who have no formal charges, prevents any steps towards recovery.

Not unusual — ‘Israel’ has detained and killed scores of medical workers

Since 7 October, 2023, the Israeli occupation forces have:

• killed more than 1570 healthcare workers
• More than 445 healthcare workers have been unlawfully detained
• killed 6 healthcare workers while in detention, and their bodies are being withheld.

5 healthcare workers have also disappeared since 7 October 2023.

Featured image via Amnesty

By Charlie Jaay

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Lionel Messi has spent two decades bending World Cups to his will, but in Kansas he delivered something special even by his standards: a first World Cup hat-trick, a place alongside Miroslav Klose on 16 all‑time tournament goals, and a performance that felt like a personal highlight reel stitched into Argentina’s opening win. At 38, he is still untouchable. Argentina’s 3-0 victory over Algeria was dominant, but the night belonged entirely to their star No 10.

A masterclass from minute one

Argentina settled instantly, with Enzo Fernández, Alexis Mac Allister and Rodrigo De Paul snapping into midfield control. But everything revolved around Messi, who drifted, dictated and destroyed. His first goal arrived after 17 minutes, shaped beautifully beyond Luca Zidane after De Paul sliced Algeria open with a cutting pass. It was the kind of finish that looked inevitable the moment the ball reached him.

There was controversy soon after. Messi escaped punishment for a clumsy rake down Aïssa Mandi’s calf, a moment that could have changed the tone of the night. Referee Szymon Marciniak gave a foul but no card; VAR didn’t intervene. Algeria protested, but the game rolled on, and Messi rolled with it.

Second-half surge

Argentina tightened their grip after the break. Alexei Mac Allister’s low strike forced a parry, and Messi reacted first, steering home with his right foot, the weaker one, supposedly, to double the lead on 60 minutes. By then, Algeria were stretched, chasing shadows, and Messi was operating in full flow.

His third was the pick of the bunch: a curling, bending, low strike from the edge of the box that kissed the inside of the post. A hat-trick completed in style, a stadium on its feet, and a moment that felt like a closing chapter written by the greatest to ever do it.

He was substituted soon after to a standing ovation from a crowd overwhelmingly draped in sky blue and white. Even Algerian fans applauded. You don’t witness history every day.

The goals came exactly 20 years after Messi’s World Cup debut against Serbia and Montenegro, a match he also scored in. Two decades later, he is still rewriting the record books. He is now the oldest player to score multiple times in a World Cup match, surpassing Roger Milla’s long‑standing mark.

Should he have seen red?

The debate will linger. IFAB rules state a player should be sent off for a tackle that endangers an opponent. Messi’s challenge on Mandi was clumsy and high, but Marciniak judged it careless rather than reckless. VAR did not intervene. Messi stayed on, and the rest is history.

Argentina begin their title defence with authority. Messi begins his final World Cup with a statement. With three goals in game one, the race for the Golden Boot  is officially on. The one major World Cup award he has never won.

Messi took six shots, had the joint-most touches in the Algerian box, and still found time to graft. Only De Paul and Fernández made more tackles. He won duels, threaded passes, and worked like a player half his age.

His 200th international cap became a celebration of longevity, brilliance and a footballer still capable of elevating a team and a tournament. If this is the last dance, he’s starting it with fireworks.

A perfect start

Argentina leave Kansas with three points, three goals, and a reminder that their captain remains the sport’s defining force. Algeria were game but outmatched. Messi was simply too much.

A hat-trick, a record equalled, a legend still expanding. The World Cup has its storylines, but it appears Messi is continuing to write his own.

Featured image via Al Jazeera

By Faz Ali

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

As the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since the so-called “ceasefire” reaches more than 1,000 and Israel’s military bombardment intensifies, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) warns that Palestinians continue to be killed, starved and driven into ever-shrinking pockets of land.

With the majority of aid crossings closed amid an ongoing malnutrition crisis, today’s grim milestone marks a catastrophic escalation of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Nine months after the ceasefire came into effect, Gaza still does not have a single fully functioning hospital, while doctors are increasingly forced to treat patients without access to basic diagnostic tools, equipment, and medicines.

Since the “ceasefire” came into effect on 10 October 2025, Israeli forces have committed more than 3,000 violations, killed at least 1,005 Palestinians and injured 3,157 others, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Heath in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military has pushed the “Yellow Line” westward, consolidating control over an estimated 60% of Gaza, well beyond the agreed ceasefire boundaries.

On Friday 12 June, dozens of families in eastern Gaza City were forced to flee after Israeli forces marked a further expansion of the so-called “Yellow Line” by placing yellow cement blocks deeper into the area.

Ceasefire in name only

The failure to enforce the agreement, to hold Israel to account for these violations, has had a devastating human cost to the lives of over two million Palestinians.

Fikr Shalltoot, Gaza director at MAP, said

We mourn as Gaza reaches yet another tragic milestone – a thousand people killed since leaders announced an end to the violence in October. Thousands more people who were told the worst was over are still burying their loved ones.

Since October, what we have witnessed cannot in any way be called a ceasefire. As the bombs continued to fall and Gaza remained under a near-total siege, global leaders convinced themselves a piece of paper could substitute for accountability, for a lifted blockade, for medicine reaching the people who needed it.

And even now, as access into Gaza remains heavily restricted, and aid is weaponised against a starving population, their silence continues.

The “ceasefire” was supposed to offer an opportunity to begin rebuilding Gaza’s health system, which has been left in ruins following two years of systematic destruction. But only 20 of 37 hospitals remain partially functional, and there is not a single fully functioning hospital left.

More than 1,825 health facilities have been damaged or destroyed. 62% of primary healthcare medications were out of stock in April, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded 22 attacks on healthcare facilities in the early months of 2026 alone.

Diagnostic services have also collapsed, with only around two functioning CT scanners serving Gaza’s entire population and many cancer screening and laboratory services no longer available. According to MAP’s team in Gaza, patients are increasingly dying from otherwise treatable conditions because of delays in diagnosis and the lack of essential medical infrastructure.

Sally Saleh, MAP’s head of emergency in Gaza, said:

The consequences of these shortages extend beyond oncology. Even routine conditions such as fractures or postpartum haemorrhage are becoming life-threatening due to delayed diagnosis, lack of imaging, and inadequate laboratory support.

Infections that could normally be diagnosed and treated appropriately are instead managed without proper identification, increasing complications and avoidable harm.

Overall mortality and morbidity rates are rising, including from conditions that would normally be treatable. Many patients are presenting too late or are unable to receive timely diagnosis or appropriate treatment due to the absence of essential medical infrastructure.

The toll on Gaza’s health workers continues to grow. On 15 June, Mohammed Mousa Al Habil, an emergency room nurse at Shifa Hospital, and his six-year-old son Mousa were killed in an Israeli strike while refilling water tanks on the roof of their home in Gaza City.

He is believed to be at least the fifth Palestinian healthcare worker killed since the “ceasefire” agreement came into effect. According to the World Health Organisation, at least 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, while a recent UN/EU report found that around 14% of Gaza’s health workforce has been lost.

An overwhelmed healthcare system

Over 43,000 Palestinians are living with life-changing injuries, a quarter of them children, while more than 1,400 people have died waiting for medical evacuation that never came, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. And 18,500 critical patients, including 4,000 children, remain trapped inside Gaza with no way out.

The UN and World Bank estimate that rebuilding the health sector will require $10bn. That rebuilding cannot begin while attacks continue and restrictions on the entry of supplies and equipment remain.

Speaking from inside Shifa, once Gaza’s largest hospital, MAP’s medical supervisor, Alaa Al Shurafa, described how conditions have not improved since the ceasefire came into effect:

The current phase is still marked by severe shortages of essential medicines and medical supplies. Chemotherapy drugs in particular remain scarce, as do infection prevention and control materials and many basic medical tools.

We are also facing critical gaps in anaesthetics and antibiotics. As a result, doctors are often forced to work with whatever is available, rather than what is optimal or best for the patient.

While the situation may appear improved from a distance, the reality on the ground tells a very different story, a disheartening one, nothing has changed.

Throughout all of this, MAP’s teams and partners have continued to deliver lifesaving care across Gaza at scale. In the first three months of 2026 alone, they provided more than 540,000 vital healthcare and humanitarian services to a population under siege.

But while Israel’s military bombardment continues and crossings stay sealed, aid organisations cannot rebuild what is still being destroyed.

MAP says world leaders, including the UK government, must act urgently to:

• Demand a permanent ceasefire and an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
• Guarantee full humanitarian access to restore Gaza’s health system, including the immediate release of detained healthcare workers, safe passage for patients and medical staff, and unrestricted entry of aid, fuel, and medical supplies.
• Suspend all arms sales to Israel immediately, including components for F-35 fighter jets, and end all military cooperation.
• Suspend the UK-Israel trade agreement until Israel’s widespread violations of international law are brought to an end.
• Support international accountability mechanisms, including the International Criminal Court, to investigate attacks on healthcare and other serious violations of international law.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Whilst the world’s attention is focused on stadiums across the United States, Canada and Mexico to follow the 2026 World Cup, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are experiencing a completely different way of watching the biggest football event on earth, amidst an ongoing war that has left widespread destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in its wake.

Despite mass displacement, power cuts and a lack of basic services, the World Cup atmosphere has not been absent from the Strip. With the start of the tournament – which features a record number of Arab teams – Palestinians have found various ways to follow the matches and engage with them, in an attempt to cling to some semblance of normal life amidst a reality dictated by the war in every detail.

More than two million Palestinians live within a narrow coastal strip, most of whom are currently residing in displacement tents or in homes and buildings damaged by the war. This has made following a global event on the scale of the World Cup a daily challenge dependent on the availability of electricity, communications and alternative power sources.

From tents to markets… A passion for football defies the war

In the displacement areas scattered across the south and centre of the Gaza Strip, the tents have been transformed into something resembling small stands. Dozens sit in front of modest television screens or simple projectors to watch the matches, whilst others take turns providing the power needed to run the equipment amid an almost complete power cut.

In refugee camps, World Cup matches have become a daily event eagerly awaited by young and old alike, with neighbours, friends, and families gathering around a single screen to support their favourite teams and discuss match results and the stars’ performances.

These scenes were not confined to tents alone; some local markets and cafés that are still open have also seen crowds gathering to watch the key matches. At the Al-Nuseirat market in the centre of the Strip, dozens of people gathered in front of a screen set up specifically to broadcast the matches, whilst video footage from Khan Younis captured scenes of collective celebration following the Egyptian team’s goal against Belgium, with cheers and applause filling the air in a scene that reflected the depth of the Palestinians’ connection to the Arab teams participating in the tournament.

The owners of some cafés also sought to overcome the electricity crisis by providing alternative solutions to ensure the matches could continue to be shown. Some cafés were equipped with backup power lines and extra batteries, allowing broadcasts to continue even after the fuel-powered generators were switched off during the night, so that fans could still follow the tournament’s matches.

The World Cup: a window of escape from the harsh reality in Gaza

For the people of Gaza, following the World Cup is not merely a sporting interest or a passing form of entertainment; rather, it provides a psychological respite amidst the immense pressures that the war has imposed on all aspects of life.

As daily suffering continues – from the loss of homes and loved ones to the difficulty of obtaining basic necessities – the World Cup matches offer Palestinians a few hours to focus on something else. For ninety minutes, conversations shift from news of bombardments and displacement to team line-ups, tactics, goals and results.

Many Palestinians rely on batteries, solar panels and small generators to power their televisions and set-top boxes, whilst others watch the matches on their mobile phones when internet and network conditions allow.

However, watching the matches is not without risk, as Palestinians are aware that being in public gathering places carries constant concerns given Israel’s bloodthirsty tactics. Despite this, many continue to head to cafés, squares and tents set up to screen the matches, clinging to their right to experience moments of normality, even if only for a few hours. For them, neither fear nor the circumstances around them can dampen their passion for football or prevent them from sharing the tournament’s atmosphere with others.

These scenes reflect sport’s ability to offer people a temporary escape from the harshness of reality. Amidst the rubble and tents, cheers still ring out with every Arab goal, and discussions of the game continue to fill displacement camps and shelters – a testament to the fact that the passion for life remains unbroken, despite all the suffering surrounding the Strip.

Whilst the war continues to impose its challenges on the minutiae of daily life, Palestinians carry on pursuing the joy of the 2026 World Cup in their own way, affirming that football is still capable of bringing people together around moments of hope and joy, even in the most suffering places on earth.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Nigel Farage broke British company law by failing to meet crucial financial deadlines, it has been claimed. 

The Reform UK leader is already being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner after accepting a £5m gift from Thai-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne just weeks before the 2024 election.

It has now emerged that Farage’s personal services company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, failed to file mandatory paperwork, Democracy for Sale reported. 

Thorn in the Side Ltd is used by Farage to receive payments from his various side-hustles, including his stints as a presenter on GB News. He has reportedly earned more than £700,000 working for the rightwing broadcaster since he was elected an MP in July 2024. 

The Clacton MP also owns close to 500,000 shares in GB News through Thorn in the Side Ltd, as well as shares in cryptocurrency firm Stack BTC PLC, according to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The company, for whom Farage is the sole director, missed a 25 May deadline to file a confirmation statement with Companies House.

Failing to file a confirmation statement within 14 days of the deadline is a criminal offence. The firm has also failed to verify Farage’s identity as required by law under the 2023 Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. 

When Democracy for Sale drew attention to Farage’s breaches of company law, a Reform spokesperson said: “This is being rectified immediately.” 

In January the company changed its registered address from Leigh on Sea, Essex to a central London address owned by real estate entrepreneur and Reform fundraiser Nick Candy. 

Green MP Ellie Chowns, the party’s leader in parliament, said: “How could we ever trust someone who can’t even run his own company correctly to run the country responsibly? 

“Nigel ‘nine-jobs’ Farage’s personal company is awash with money from his various side hustles that he clearly prefers to serving his constituents.

“Earlier this year he went eleven weeks without turning up for a single vote in parliament. A majority of the public think that MPs should not have second jobs. Politics should be about public service not lining your pockets.”

From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.

Deluded worldviews are everywhere in the Trump regime – they’re a requirement to be part of it. Few come more twisted than white nationalist and fanatical Zionist US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. So twisted that Huckabee thinks Israel has a ‘right’ to take the whole of west Asia. But Huckabee even – and completely ahistorically – thinks the US wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn’t for Israel:

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Huckabee-Exist-Subbed-hb.mp4

Back to front

Just for the record – and for Trump himself – the US has existed as an independent nation for well over 200 years. Israel was artificially created through ethnic cleansing and massacres in 1948 by Western imperialists – including, among others, the US. To the Palestinian people and anyone with a conscience, this is known as the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe, and an ongoing catastrophe for humanity. To the likes of Huckabee, it’s apparently the salvation of the US.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

JEWISH anti-zionist activists have proved an Israeli real estate fair in London was selling properties in Palestine that the government considers to be on illegal settlements – despite denials from organisers.

Members of Jewish Anti-Zionist Action (Jaza) have published images smuggled from inside the Great Israeli Real Estate event at the Edgware United Synagogue in London last week.

Images obtained proved that several properties being marketed inside were actually inside illegal settlements in the West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem.

From Morning Star via This RSS Feed.

MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes a statistical analysis of how much tax the super-rich pay, and foresees that the demand will flush out their agents

From Morning Star via This RSS Feed.

POLICE destroyed files relating to anti-war campaigners, unions and several individuals ahead of the undercover policing inquiry, it was heard today.

The Metropolitan Police Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) spied on campaigners for decades.

A public inquiry was set up when it was revealed that the SDS spied on the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

It has already heard testimony from victims of the SpyCops, including women activists with whom undercover police officers had relationships with and fathered children without revealing their true identity.

From Morning Star via This RSS Feed.