Last year we reported how Verizon executives happily agreed to be more racist and sexist in exchange for Trump DOJ and FCC approval of their $20 billion merger with telecom giant Frontier Communications. Verizon embarrassingly said they'd cull race and gender equality initiatives, and try harder moving forward to protect downtrodden white people from the scary monster that is diversity.

But California regulators have thrown a few wrinkles into the mix for Verizon. The California CPUC has approved Verizon's merger request after months of discussions, but required that the company engage in a bunch of stuff the Trump administration has derided as "woke," such as (gasp) trying to make sure that the heavily taxpayer subsidized company occasionally offers broadband that's semi-affordable:

"A low-cost Internet plan commitment centers on the Verizon Forward service that offers home Internet for as low as $20 a month. Reynolds said the deal with Verizon "locked in" the $20-per-month plans for low-income consumers for the next 10 years."

Verizon's also being required to (double gasp) actually invest in network upgrades to marginalized neighborhoods these companies generally like to neglect:

"At yesterday's CPUC meeting, Commissioner John Reynolds described Verizon's commitments. Verizon will deploy fiber to 75,000 new locations within five years, prioritizing census blocks with income at or below 90 percent of the county median, he said. For wireless service, Verizon is required to deploy 250 new cell sites with 5G and fixed wireless capability in areas eligible for state broadband grants and areas with high fire threats, he said."

Verizon actually doing any of this will, of course, require constant monitoring by the California PUC, something that hasn't always historically been a strong suit for U.S. regulators. We've reported repeatedly how the Trump administration has been waging total war against not just telecom oversight, but literally any effort to make broadband more affordable to the public.

That has even extended to illegally threatening to withhold billions in already awarded infrastructure subsidies to states that attempt to rein in the bad behavior of unpopular telecom giants like Comcast, Verizon, Charter, and AT&T. It's even involved happily killing popular, bipartisan programs that delivered free Wi-Fi access to schoolchildren, primarily because telecom giants didn't like it.

You know, real "populist" good faith stuff everybody in long-neglected flyover states were begging for.

Keep in mind this basic attempt to hold Verizon accountable only applies to California. And that's, again, assuming California regulators hold Verizon accountable for following through.

Most states approved the merger with absolutely no public interest concessions whatsoever, ensuring that Verizon can leverage its even greater scale to dismantle competition, over bill customers in markets with limited broadband options, ignore low-income minority and marginalized communities, and generally behave like a predatory ass.

Because as we all know, doing absolutely anything to inconvenience America's biggest, shittiest monopolies is woke.

The travesty that is RFK Jr. in charge of American health and what he's done to the CDC's ACIP committee for vaccines continues to be visited upon all of us. It's really important to keep in mind that during his confirmation hearings, Kennedy lied repeatedly about his stance on vaccines. Supposedly serious senators, like Bill Cassidy, claimed they extracted promises from Kennedy that he wouldn't screw with vaccination programs and the like. These were all lies, designed to get him past those hearings and into the post, where the GOP would close ranks and refuse to do anything so crazy like impeach a charlatan from a cabinet position.

This iteration of ACIP is a disaster. It is full of anti-vaxxers who have already altered the guidance on vaccines for COVID, Hep B, and childhood vaccines more generally. And this is all happening in the context of a measles outbreak that is now in month 13 and getting worse, despite that disease having been officially declared eliminated over two decades ago.

Well, as you know, retro and nostalgia are all the rage these days, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that ACIP is pining for other eliminated diseases to come back. In this case we have the chair of ACIP wondering out loud on a podcast whether we should be vaccinating for polio any longer.

The conversation started off with this absolute banger.

Kirk Milhoan, who was named chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in December, appeared on the aptly named podcast "Why Should I Trust You." In the hour-long interview, Milhoan made a wide range of comments that have concerned medical experts and raised eyebrows.

Early into the discussion, Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, declared, "I don't like established science," and that "science is what I observe." He lambasted the evidence-based methodology that previous ACIP panels used to carefully and transparently craft vaccine policy.

I barely know what to say. "I don't like established science" is the kind of quote I would expect in The Onion, not on Ars Technica. As for the follow up line of "Science is what I observe," that is a gross misrepresentation of the scientific process. Observation is certainly a part of the method. But you have to couple that observation with tedious and silly things like generating a hypothesis based on those observations, and then testing that hypothesis through rigorous and skeptical methodologies, typically experimentation.

To instead state his stance as he did on this podcast is lunacy. Milhoan went on to claim that vaccines had caused all kinds poor health outcomes, such as asthma, eczema, and deaths. Going even further, he claimed that measles and polio vaccines didn't actually curtail the spread of those diseases, which flatly flies in the face of basic statistical analysis, before making the following jaw-dropping statement.

"I think also as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then," he said, referring to the time before the first polio vaccines were developed in the 1950s. "Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not."

Polio is no joke. While a large percentage of infections will present with little to no symptoms, it is an incredibly infectious virus. 6% of cases have more severe symptoms, including aseptic meningitis and paralysis. Infants infected can get encephalitis. It can result in horrific body deformations as well. The disease is so horrible that international health organizations created the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in the 80s.

And this assclown, hand-picked by RFK Jr., wants to use his position on ACIP to question the need to vaccinate against it?

In a statement, AMA Trustee Sandra Adamson Fryhofer blasted the question. "This is not a theoretical debate—it is a dangerous step backward," she said. "Vaccines have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated devastating diseases like polio in the United States. There is no cure for polio. When vaccination rates fall, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death return. The science on this is settled."

Fryhofer also took aim at Milhoan's repeated argument that the focus of vaccination policy should move from population-level health to individual autonomy. Moving away from routine immunizations, which include discussions between clinicians and patients, "does not increase freedom—it increases suffering," she said, adding that the weakening of recommendations "will cost lives."

Yes it will. Milhoan may not like established science, but that science is established for a reason. It's also trivially easy to go look up case rates for polio and measles before and after mass vaccination programs were put in place and see the results.

Moving to curtail vaccinations of polio should be as clear a line in the sand as could possibly exist for those overseeing this fiasco in Congress. The anti-vaxxer stuff thus far has been bad enough to warrant impeachment hearings for Kennedy. This would be something completely different.

Minneapolis is once again the focus of debates about violence involving law enforcement after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, in her car.

The incident quickly prompted dueling narratives. Trump administration officials defended the shooting as justified, while local officials condemned it.

The shooting will also likely prompt renewed scrutiny of training and policy of officers and the question of them shooting at moving vehicles. There has been a recent trend in law enforcement toward policies that prohibit such shootings. It is a policy shift that has shown promise in saving lives.

Decades ago, the New York City Police Department prohibited its officers from shooting at moving vehicles. That led to a drop in police killings without putting officers in greater danger.

Debates over deadly force are often contentious, but as I note in my research on police ethics and policy, for the most part there is consensus on one point: Policing should reflect a commitment to valuing human life and prioritizing its protection. Many use-of-force policies adopted by police departments endorse that principle.

Yet, as in Minneapolis, controversial law enforcement killings continue to occur. Not all agencies have implemented prohibitions on shooting at vehicles. Even in agencies that have, some policies are weak or ambiguous.

In addition, explicit prohibitions on shooting at vehicles are largely absent from the law, which means that officers responsible for fatal shootings of drivers that appear to violate departmental policies still often escape criminal penalties.

In the case of ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, its policy on shooting at moving vehicles - unlike that of many police agencies - lacks a clear instruction for officers to get out of the way of moving vehicles where feasible. It's an omission at odds with generally recognized best practices in policing.

ICE's policy on shooting at moving vehicles

ICE's current use-of-force policy prohibits its officers from "discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle" unless it is necessary to stop a grave threat. The policy is explicit that deadly force should not be used "solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect."

That point is relevant for evaluating the fatal shooting in Minneapolis. Videos show one officer trying to open the door of the vehicle that Good was driving, while another officer appears to be in front of the vehicle as she tried to pull away.

Shooting to prevent the driver simply from getting away would have been in violation of agency policy and obviously inconsistent with prioritizing the protection of life.

ICE's policy lacks clear instruction, however, for its officers to get out of the way of moving vehicles where feasible. In contrast, the Department of Justice's use-of-force policy makes it explicit that officers should not shoot at a vehicle if they can protect themselves by "moving out of the path of the vehicle."

Notably, President Joe Biden issued an executive order in 2022 requiring federal law enforcement agencies - like ICE - to adopt use-of-force policies "that are equivalent to, or exceed, the requirements" of the Department of Justice's policy.

Despite that order, the provision to step out of the way of moving cars never made it into the use-of-force policy that applies to ICE.

The rationale for not shooting at moving vehicles

Prioritizing the protection of life doesn't rule out deadly force. Sometimes such force is necessary to protect lives from a grave threat, such as an active shooter. But it does rule out using deadly force when less harmful tactics can stop a threat. In such cases, deadly force is unnecessary - a key consideration in law and ethics that can render force unjustified.

That's the concern involved with police shooting at moving vehicles. It often is not necessary because officers have a less harmful option to avoid a moving vehicle's threat: stepping out of the way.

This guidance has the safety of both suspects and police in mind. Obviously, police not shooting lowers the risk of harm to the suspect. But it also lowers the risk to the officer in the vast majority of cases because of the laws of physics. If you shoot the driver of a car barreling toward you, that rarely brings a car to an immediate stop, and the vehicle often continues on its path.

Many police departments have incorporated these insights into their policies. A recent analysis of police department policies in the 100 largest U.S. cities found that close to three-quarters of them have prohibitions against shooting at moving vehicles.

The gap between policy and best practices for protecting life

The shooting in Minneapolis serves as a stark reminder of the stubborn gap that often persists between law and policy on the one hand and best law enforcement practices for protecting life on the other. When steps are taken to close that gap, however, they can have a meaningful impact.

Some of the most compelling examples involve local, state and federal measures that reinforce one another. Consider the "fleeing felon rule," which used to allow police to shoot a fleeing felony suspect to prevent their escape even when the suspect posed no danger to others.

That rule was at odds with the doctrine of prioritizing the protection of life, leading some departments to revise their use-of-force policies and some states to ban the rule. In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for police to shoot a fleeing suspect who was not a danger.

Banning that questionable tactic notably led to a reduction in killings by police.

This history suggests that clear bans in law and policy on questionable tactics have the potential to save lives, while also strengthening the means for holding officers accountable.

Ben Jones is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We've covered how there's a real push afoot to implement statewide "right to repair" laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. Unfortunately, while all fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, only Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws.

And among those states, not one has actually enforced them despite a wide array of ongoing corporate offenses (though to be fair to states there is kind of a lot going on).

Of states that are looking to pass additional laws, Maine appears to be the closest, despite a lot of automaker lobbyist shenanigans. LD 1228, otherwise known as "An Act to Clarify Certain Terms in and to Make Other Changes to the Automotive Right to Repair Laws," aims to make it easier and more affordable for Maine residents to repair what they own.

The reforms were approved by Maine voters as a ballot initiative in 2023, again displaying how these reforms see broad, bipartisan public support.

But the auto industry hasn't been happy with language in the bill that would give consumers and independent repair shops access to vehicle data (because, if it's not clear, they're keen to monopolize repair). Their lobbying was effective enough that the Maine legislature sneaked in language to LD 1228 making it so the auto industry would determine precisely how to share this data with others.

That gave the auto industry too much power over the reforms, so the bill in its current form was recently vetoed by Maine Governor Janet Mills. From her veto statement:

"This provision — which was notably not included in the Working Group's unanimous recommendations — was included at the urging of automobile manufacturers. However, without timely access to vehicle data, independent auto shops are left at a significant competitive disadvantage, and consumers would have fewer choices for automotive service and repair. With this provision included, LD 1228 would undermine the existing law overwhelmingly approved by Maine voters and harm independent repair shops across the state."

The House, being pressured by automaker lobbyists, over-rode Mills' veto, but the Senate flipped and upheld the veto after automakers went overtime spreading scary (and false) stories about how right to repair reforms pose a dire new security and privacy risks (they don't). In some states, automakers have even lied and claimed that such reforms are a boon to sexual predators.

It's another example of how, while we're supposed to function as a representative democracy, corruption ensures that passing positive and even hugely popular reforms that challenge entrenched corporate power is as difficult as possible. And even if Maine does get a useful bill passed, serious enforcement is still an open question given limited state resources and attention spans in the Trump era.

This nation is filled with loudmouths who claim the Second Amendment ensures the rest of the amendments are protected. There are a lot of gun owners who bristle at any hint of gun control, even as they insist they might be the only thing protecting us from a hostile government.

This noise gets a lot louder any time a member of the Democratic party is in the Oval Office. You barely hear it at all when the GOP in the White House, even when the current iteration of the GOP looks a whole lot like the authoritarians these people swore they'd gun down the minute they reared their fascist heads.

Our rights are being destroyed daily but no one on the Second Amendment side has said a thing until now. Perhaps only reason they're speaking up now is because it's a fair-skinned gun owner who was murdered by federal officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota — the second murder of a city resident in as many weeks.

ICU nurse Alex Pretti stepped between a Border Patrol officer and the woman he was trying to douse with pepper spray simply because she was standing there recording him. Pretti stood there, holding his phone up, recording the officer as he first sprayed Pretti with pepper spray before pushing him up against a wall.

Moments after that, Pretti was wrestled to the ground, swarmed and beaten by federal agents. Mere moments after that, Pretti was executed by two of the officers, as described here in Bellingcat's frame-by-frame breakdown of all available footage of the shooting:

After firing once, the agent in the black beanie repositions, and then quickly fires three more shots at Pretti's back at close range while he appears to try to stand up.

[…]

Pretti collapses onto the ground after the first shots and the agents back away. A second agent (the one wearing the brown beanie hat) then draws his gun and fires at least one shot. This is the fifth shot that is heard. The agent in the black beanie can be seen and heard firing more shots. Shots five through ten all fired at Pretti's motionless body.

That shooting was immediately followed by the self-exonerating bullshit this administration has been cranking out since day one:

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Commander at Large Greg Bovino have claimed without providing further evidence, that Pretti arrived at the scene "to inflict maximum damage on individuals" and Noem told reporters that his actions amounted to "domestic terrorism."

"This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism, that's the facts."

No. He came with a phone and was legally carrying a legally-owned handgun. If this government is just going to assume anyone carrying a gun is a criminal who can be summarily executed merely for being near federal officers, we're well past the point any "liberal" administration has dared to go.

And after years of ignoring cops shooting people who happened to be carrying guns (mainly because many of those people were minorities), two heavy-hitters in the gun rights arena have stepped up to criticize one of Trump's many ineffective prosecutors, Bill Essayli, who has decided there's no better way to cap off a long string of rejected indictments by claiming officers are fully justified if they decide to shoot people just because they have guns.

Here's what Essayli added to his repost of the DHS's claim that Alex Pretti signed his own death warrant by legally carrying a gun:

If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.

Don't do it!

Whoops. Gun Owners of America jumped on this first, adding this to its repost of Essayli shoving a loaded foot into his mouth:

[W]e condemn the untoward comments of @USAttyEssayli. Federal agents are not "highly likely" to be "legally justified" in "shooting" concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm. The Second Amendment protects Americans' right to bear arms while protesting—a right the federal government must not infringe upon.

Of course, even though this entity got all hot and bothered by the suggestion that law enforcement officers are welcome to kill gun owners, it had to first give credit where it isn't due (suggesting the DOJ has any interest in engaging in a full investigation) and dipping out of the tweet by sending some strays in the direction of the people who are currently getting murdered by federal officers:

Finally, the Left must stop antagonizing [ICE] and [CBP] agents who are taking criminals off the street and play a crucial role in protecting communities and upholding the rule of law.

Sooooo close. If the organization had stuck to the condemnation of Bill Essayli's assault on the only right they care about, it might have meant something. But it means so much less when this (justified) criticism of federal officials is sandwiched between bending the knee to the DOJ and mindlessly insulting people just like the person they (sort of, from an oblique angle) defended in retrospect.

The NRA followed that up with its own bit of Essayli ass-kicking.

This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong.

Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.

This one is much more straightforward, but still walks back the criticism of the federal prosecutor by telling everyone to "await" a "full investigation" which almost certainly isn't going to be happening.

Only 14 minutes earlier, the NRA account was actually running interference for the administration with a statement it released before Essayli angered the association.

"For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs. Unsurprisingly, these calls to dangerously interject oneself into legitimate law-enforcement activities have ended in violence, tragically resulting in injuries and fatalities.

As there is with any officer-involved shooting, there will be a robust and comprehensive investigation that takes place to determine if the use of force was justified. As we await these facts and gain a clearer understanding, we urge the political voices to lower the temperature to ensure their constituents and law enforcement officers stay safe."

This has led to Essayli trying to walk back his statement by claiming he didn't say the thing he said and that these two prominent critics are "putting words in his mouth." He "substantiated" his counter-claim by putting a whole lot of new words in his own mouth — words that very definitely weren't in the shorter post he put out in support of the DHS's smearing of the person its employees had just executed in broad daylight on a public street.

In the end, it means almost nothing. Two Second Amendment-focused organization raised their voices briefly — breaking with the administration they absolutely adore — to condemn a perceived attack on their rights. But they're utterly silent when it comes to condemning the act that prompted their belated reaction. They don't honestly care how many people are killed by law enforcement officers. The only thing they care about is being able to open carry while shopping at Walmart or invading federal buildings to overturn elections. Everyone to the perceived left of their core membership can continue to get fucked.

There's a line buried in Adam Serwer's recent Atlantic piece on the Minneapolis resistance to ICE that deserves to be pulled out, examined, and posted on every lamppost in America:

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone.

Read that again. It explains so much.

Serwer continues:

In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

For years now, a certain strain of American political thought has operated on the assumption that human beings are fundamentally selfish, that "community" is a sucker's game, and that anyone who claims to care about their neighbors is either lying or being paid. It's the philosophy that undergirds every policy designed to punish rather than help, every sneer at "the woke mind virus," and every insistence that "facts don't care about your feelings."

And then Minneapolis happened.

When the Trump administration surged thousands of armed federal agents into Minnesota—ostensibly over a fraud case that Biden-era prosecutors had already been handling—they seem to have expected one of two things: either cowed compliance or the kind of violent resistance that would justify an even harder crackdown. What they got instead was something that appears to have genuinely baffled them: tens of thousands of ordinary people who simply refused to let their neighbors be dragged away.

Not activists. Not "paid operatives." Just… people. Moms with minivans full of car seats making grocery deliveries. Dads doing dispatch shifts between work calls. Biologists and lawyers and nurses driving around in the freezing cold, honking at SUVs with out-of-state plates. As Serwer describes it:

Even among those involved in opposing ICE in Minnesota, people have a range of political views. The nonviolent nature of the movement, and the focus on caring for neighbors, has drawn in volunteers with many different perspectives on immigration, including people who might have been supportive if the Trump administration's claims of a targeted effort to deport violent criminals had been sincere.

The thing that seems to have broken the MAGA brain is that even people who might have supported targeted enforcement of immigration law looked around at what was actually happening—the pregnant women dragged through snow, the doors kicked in, the indiscriminate terror, the senseless killings—and said "no." Not because they'd been radicalized by some shadowy operation, but because they have eyes and consciences.

Ana Marie Cox, who spent a decade in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region before moving to Texas, wrote for The New Republic about what she calls the "carbon-steel fibers wound together by generations of consistent, need-blind aid":

Bonds formed under the pressure of negative double-digit windchill are key to understanding what's happening. It is impossible to get through a Minnesota winter without help, and only sometimes does that assistance come from your neighbors. The stories about people shoveling out or snowblowing an entire block's driveways without being asked and with no compensation are true, but the real miracles (and just as common) are the times when strangers stop to help someone shovel out a car caught in a snowbank or bring out the kitty litter from their trunk put there just for this kind of emergency. I cannot tell you one story about that happening to me. I have at least three or four. The pun is irresistible: Minnesotans have always declared common cause against ice, they've just changed their focus to the ice that you can't also use for hockey practice.

You can dismiss it as a joke until someone at a café gives you a spare scarf because you can't find yours. People offer assistance without hesitation and without question; I don't think I ever even heard someone dismiss thanks with, "Just pay it back someday." Of course you will—everyone knows it. Some might find it remarkable that the generosity exists right alongside the stubborn interpersonal Midwestern microdistance that can take years to thaw. But the caution of their relationships speaks to the universality of the principle: You don't help people out because you like them. You just do.

Cory Doctorow has referred to his "covered dish" dilemma in the past a few times, which goes like this:

"If there's a disaster, do you go over to your neighbor's house with: a) a covered dish or b) a shotgun? It's game theory. If you believe your neighbor is coming over with a shotgun, you'd be an idiot to pick a); if she believes the same thing about you, you can bet she's not going to choose a) either. The way to get to a) is to do a) even if you think your neighbor will pick b). Sometimes she'll point her gun at you and tell you to get off her land, but if she was only holding the gun because she thought you'd have one, then she'll put on the safety and you can have a potluck."

It's basically a question of, in times of trouble, will your neighbors seek to take advantage of you. Or will they look to work with you as a community to respond to the adversity you all face.

The MAGA world seems to view only the former as possible. They always show up with shotguns. Reality keeps showing that most people lean towards the latter, and show up with covered dishes.

Minneapolis is showing up with covered dishes. Thousands of them.

This is the part that the JD Vances of the world genuinely cannot comprehend. Vance has said it's "totally reasonable" for Americans to want to live only near people they "have something in common with," that social cohesion requires ethnic homogeneity. Minneapolis is proving the exact opposite: that diverse communities can be more cohesive, not less, precisely because they've had to build those bonds intentionally.

Serwer captures this beautifully:

If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it "neighborism"—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn't be more extreme.

What's been particularly striking is how the resistance has explicitly rejected the kind of violent confrontation that the administration seems to have been hoping for. The "commuters"—the volunteers who patrol neighborhoods looking for ICE vehicles—have been trained to follow traffic laws, avoid physical confrontation, and simply bear witness. Their weapons are whistles, phones, and car horns. As one volunteer told Cox in her second piece on the resistance:

"I don't mean to be flip about this, but they can't shoot us all."

There are more of us than there are them. There are more good people in the world than bad. There are more virtuous people who believe in community than angry insecure people who believe that everything is a zero sum game.

And for each act of cruelty, each selfish bit of nonsense from ICE or CBP or the administration, more Minnesotans realize they need to be involved.

The instances of physical violence only goose the number of people willing to be targets. Says Chris, "Every time they attack us, another round of volunteers comes in. We refuse to be cowed."

And it's somewhat working. The administration has already been forced to yank Gregory Bovino, the preening Border Patrol commander who seemed to relish his villain role, out of Minneapolis, though they replaced him with Tom Homan (who, to be clear, is basically as bad). But, still, it's not a sign of strength to be switching leaders and clearly demoting the guy who'd been the face of this invasion. That's a strategic retreat forced by people whose only armor is their willingness to show up.

The MAGA movement has spent years cultivating what Serwer identifies as a series of "mistaken assumptions":

The first is the belief that diverse communities aren't possible… A second MAGA assumption is that the left is insincere in its values, and that principles of inclusion and unity are superficial forms of virtue signaling. White liberals might put a sign in their front yard saying "In This House We Believe…" but they will abandon those immigrants at the first sensation of sustained pressure.

And, as Serwer correctly notes, part of the reason for this belief is that it has kinda been true… for the actual elite, who have spent the last year trying to pretend Trump isn't doing what he clearly promised to do:

And in Trump's defense, this has turned out to be true of many liberals in positions of power—university administrators, attorneys at white-shoe law firms, political leaders.

But it turns out that millions of ordinary Americans are not those people. They're the ones delivering groceries to families too scared to leave their homes, the ones doing laundry for the volunteers doing deliveries, the ones who signed up for constitutional observer training (over 26,000 through just one organization, according to The New Yorker).

Cox captures what this invisible infrastructure looks like:

So much of the resistance is either carried out by women or coded as women's work—unheralded, boring, unglamorous, and mostly undocumented. "You're in the middle of resisting fascism, and someone still needs to do laundry," Chris points out. A single father and a Parent-Teacher Association president, he stepped forward early on to do admin and dispatch, sometimes pulling four-, five-, six-hour shifts.

"I was eating nothing but takeout. I said something, and now I've got a full fridge." The grocery deliveries to immigrant families are vital. What keeps those deliveries happening are the deliveries to the people making deliveries. It's mutual aid all the way down.

Someone even volunteered to do the other volunteers' day jobs, the work-work—formatting spreadsheets, answering emails. She volunteered to sit at a desk; she has young kids and doesn't want to leave them alone. So she offered what she could: clerical skills.

The MAGA bros, full of hate and seething, have been running around X insisting this must all be organized and planned. They talk nonsense about "op sec" and "supply lines" when it's really just all communities looking out for one another.

There's a temptation to view all of this through the lens of political tribalism—Team Blue vs. Team Red, libs vs. MAGAs. But that framing misses something important. Pastor Miguel, who leads Iglesia Cristiana La Via in Burnsville and has been organizing food drives for families in hiding, told Serwer:

"One of the things that I believe, and I know most of the Latino community agrees, is that we want the bad people out. We want the criminals out," Pastor Miguel, who immigrated from Mexico 30 years ago, told me. "All of us came here looking for a better life for us and for our children. So when we have criminals, rapists—when we have people who have done horrible things in our streets, in our communities—we are afraid of them. We don't want them here."

He's not some open-borders absolutist. He's someone who looked at what ICE was actually doing—picking up people with pending asylum cases, targeting workers with valid permits, terrorizing entire neighborhoods—and recognized it as something other than law enforcement. Then one of his friends, a man he believed had legal status, was picked up by federal agents.

This is what the administration either didn't anticipate or didn't care about: that once you deploy armed agents to conduct indiscriminate sweeps through American neighborhoods, you're making everyone feel hunted. And when everyone feels hunted, everyone has a reason to resist.

Consider Stephen Miller's ridiculously racist stated belief that "migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands." Serwer's response is devastating:

In Minnesota, the opposite was happening. The "conditions and terrors" of immigrants' "broken homelands" weren't being re-created by immigrants. They were being re-created by people like Miller. The immigrants simply have the experience to recognize them.

This gets at something crucial: the people organizing mutual aid networks, running food deliveries, and patrolling for ICE vehicles aren't doing it because they've been brainwashed by some progressive ideology. Many of them are doing it because they or their families have seen this before. They know what occupation looks like. They know what arbitrary state violence looks like. And they know that the only thing that stops it is ordinary people refusing to look away.

If you want to support what's happening in Minnesota, the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits has compiled resources for organizations doing this work. But Cox makes an important point: maybe you should also look around your own neighborhood. Because ICE is almost certainly already there, even if it hasn't made the news yet.

This is not a bad time to take groceries to a free fridge in your city. Or maybe: Find a chore to do for a neighbor now, before they need it. Or maybe: Get trained on Naloxone administration. Volunteer to walk dogs. Start a tool library. Learn some names.

Start building those connections. In Doctorow's terms, bring the covered dish now, so that your neighbors know you won't bring a shotgun later.

The resistance in Minneapolis wasn't conjured out of nothing when the federal agents arrived. It was built over decades by people helping each other get through brutal winters, showing up for each other after police killings, and developing the organizational infrastructure that could be activated when the moment demanded it.

Serwer ends his piece with this:

No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one's heroes, no one's saviors—just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.

The morally depraved fear that virtue is common. Minneapolis is proving they were right to be afraid. People bringing covered dishes instead of shotguns is terrifying to them. But it's how civilization actually works—something the MAGA true believers may never understand.

StackSkills Premium is your destination for mastering today's most in-demand skills wherever and whenever your schedule allows. Now, with this exclusive limited-time offer, you'll gain access to 1000+ StackSkills courses for just one low annual fee! Whether you're looking to earn a promotion, make a career change, or pick up a side hustle to make some extra cash, StackSkills delivers engaging online courses featuring the skills that matter most today. From blockchain to growth hacking to iOS development, StackSkills stays ahead of the hottest trends to offer the most relevant courses and up-to-date information. Best of all, StackSkills' elite instructors are experts in their fields and are passionate about sharing learnings based on first-hand successes and failures. If you're ready to commit to your personal and career growth, you won't want to pass on this incredible all access pass to the web's top online courses. It's on sale for $60.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

First off, there's a chance my headline (which went through several iterations) undersells what's actually going on here. What's detailed below is yet another jaw-dropping act of executive hubris, with the DOJ again deciding it can do whatever the hell it wants when a judge dares to tell it "no."

A little background: it was discovered at some point that the acting director of the St. Paul ICE field office, David Easterwood, was also a pastor of Cities Church, also located in St. Paul, Minnesota. A protest naturally followed. A bit more unnaturally, protesters entered the church and disrupted the service. CNN's Don Lemon covered the protest, drawing some fire of his own simply for being a rather persistent critic of the Trump administration and its actions.

Much more naturally, the administration immediately declared it was going to start arresting some people, a list that included CNN's Don Lemon and his producer.

U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said her agency is investigating federal civil rights violations "by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers."

"A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!" she said on social media.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also weighed in on social media, saying that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted.

You'll note the qualifier AAG Dhillon used in this exclamation point-riddled X missive: "Christian worshippers." That sort of thing matters, because it makes it clear (perhaps unintentionally) that this government won't mind if other protesters disrupt religious services engaged in by members of other religions. (You know exactly what I mean as assuredly as Dhillon knew what she meant when posted that response to the protest.)

Meanwhile, in my home state, Kristi Noem's successor, Governor Larry Rhoden, announced legislation that would turn the misdemeanor offense of using threats or violent acts to prevent people from practicing their religion into a felony that would double the jail time and fine for those convicted of this offense (bringing it to 2 years in jail and a $4,000 fine).

"If religious liberties fail, any other liberty eventually fails with it," Rhoden said during a press conference. "If someone decides to target a house of worship, there will be real consequences."

OK. Well, we'll see how this gets selectively enforced in the future. I'm pretty sure some religions are more deserving of protection than others, even if the governor does better at keeping the quiet part quiet than Harmeet Dhillon did.

Long story short: the federal magistrate judge rejected five of the eight arrest warrants presented by DOJ prosecutors, including the two targeting Don Lemon and his producer. Rejected arrest warrants are probably even less common than rejected search warrants. But the DOJ continues to fail its way into history under AG Pam Bondi and the second Trump administration.

Like search warrants, those presenting them to judges have options when judges reject their offerings. They can revise them, perhaps sprinkling them with a bit more probable cause or other connective tissue. Or they can decide to buttress apparently bogus charges by talking a grand jury into signing off on an indictment.

But with grand juries brushing off the DOJ repeatedly in recent months and prosecutors desperate to keep winning the battle of headlines, the DOJ went an entirely different direction — a direction so unexpected and unprecedented that the state's top federal judge felt compelled to write two letters to the Eighth Circuit Appeals Court. Not only did the DOJ ask the Appeals Court to directly review the warrants that had been directed, it did this without notice to the lower court and asked the appeals court to seal its request to keep it from being made public.

That put Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz (a George W. Bush appointee) in the position of having to file an emergency communication of his own with the court, which was followed shortly thereafter by a longer email with more details about the DOJ's actions. Both letters are detailed in Steve Vladeck's extremely informative post on this string of events, which includes this chilling description of the DOJ attempted to do:

[C]hief Judge Schiltz is a highly regarded jurist who could not be accused of having an axe to grind against the current administration. And that's all the more reason why everyone, but especially his colleagues across the federal judiciary, ought to take seriously a pair of letters he filed on Friday in response to an extraordinary (in multiple senses of the word) attempt by the Department of Justice to end-run long-settled understandings of basic criminal procedure in order to bring federal criminal charges against individuals who protested inside a St. Paul church last Sunday.

The Schiltz letters are striking not only because of who wrote them, but because of the deeply unprofessional behavior they describe.

The first letter opens with this:

I am working from home today, as the program that my mentally disabled adult son attends each day is closed because of the extreme cold At 11:34 am, I received an email regarding Case No. 26-1135, entitled "In re: United States of America." The order in its entirety read:

The motion of the United States to seal is granted. The Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota is invited to file a response, at his discretion, to the petition for writ of mandamus. Any response is due by 2:00 p.m. Friday, January 23.

This is the first that I have heard of any petition for a writ of mandamus. The United States did not have the courtesy to tell me that they would be filing such a petition, nor did the United States serve the petition on me. I am unable to access any documents in Case No. 26-1135 because, at the request of the United States, the case is sealed-apparently even from me. So I have been given about two-and-one-half hours to respond to a mandamus petition that I have not read and cannot read.

Apparently I am supposed to guess what the petition is about and guess what the mandamus petition says and then respond.

On the evening of Tuesday, January 20, five of the eight arrest warrants were rejected by the magistrate judge. Within "minutes," the DOJ prosecutor was demanding an immediate review of the magistrates' rejections. The review was assigned to Judge Schiltz, who told the DOJ that because what it was demanding was "unprecedented," he would hold a bench meeting with the other district judges to decide how to proceed.

Somewhat ironically, that meeting was postponed due to "security concerns" related to the arrival of both J.D. Vance and AG Pam Bondi in Minneapolis, along with protests at the courthouse where two church protesters were scheduled to make their initial appearances. The meeting was postponed to January 27th.

That wasn't good enough for the DOJ, which had headlines it wanted to keep making. So, it went directly to the Appeals Court, said some extremely disingenuous stuff about "national security" and the ongoing danger of church disruptions if it wasn't able to arrest three more protesters immediately. (It appears to have given up on locking up Don Lemon.)

Judge Schiltz's follow-up email shreds the government's justifications for immediate judicial review of its rejected arrest warrant:

The government's arguments about the urgency of its request makes no sense. As the government says, "dozens" of protestors invaded Cities Church on Sunday. The leaders of that group have been arrested, and everyone knows that they have been arrested. The government says that there are plans to disrupt Cities Church again on Sunday. Of course, the best way to protect Cities Church is to protect Cities Church; we have thousands of law-enforcement officers in town, and presumably a few of them could be stationed outside of Cities Church on Sunday. The government does not explain why the arrests of five more people - one of whom is a journalist and the other his producer - would make Cities Church any safer, especially because that would still leave "dozens" of those who invaded the church on Sunday free to do it again.

Judge Shiltz should be commended for making sure all of this ends up the permanent record. The government tried to bury its attempt to bypass the normal chain of judicial command, but that has only led to it being further exposed as the thugs they are and definitely intend to be. The DOJ is supposed to hold the law in utmost esteem. But this version continues to act as though the law is whatever it says it is.

For now, the DOJ will still need to wait for a review of its deficient warrants by the lower court. The Appeals Court has rejected its end-around effort, albeit without saying anything more than it might be a little premature. But what was actually said by a judge concurring with the rejection of the writ of mandamus isn't exactly heartening:

"The Complaint and Affidavit clearly establish probable cause for all five arrest warrants, and while there is no discretion to refuse to issue an arrest warrant once probable cause for its issuance has been shown … the government has failed to establish that it has no other adequate means of obtaining the requested relief," Grasz wrote.

Hey, Judge Grasz, if you're concurring with the rejection of an "emergency" review of the merits of rejected search warrants, maybe you should keep your views on the merits to yourself. Unless, of course, you're just signalling the Trump Administration that it should speed run the alternatives so the warrants can receive your thumbs up once they return to the appellate level.

For now, the warrants are dead. Unfortunately, the DOJ will have probably moved on to some new horrific thing before these get a second pass by the district court.

Our shitty autocrats are nothing if not predictable.

As we just got done noting, the Trump administration and their right wing extremist billionaire friend have joined forces to wage war on Netflix's attempted acquisition of Warner Brothers. Larry wants Warner Brothers (and CNN) as part of his obvious effort to build a new autocrat-friendly propaganda empire, and Trump has continually signaled his attempt to help him derail the Netflix deal.

Enter FCC boss Brendan Carr, who, right on cue, started popping up in the press to suddenly pretend he cares about competition. Carr did an interview with Bloomberg last week in which he proclaimed that Netflix's acquisition of Warner Brothers would be terribly uncompetitive:

"What you've seen Netflix do as a general matter, in terms of their organic growth, is fantastic," the FCC chair said. "There are legitimate competition concerns that I've seen raised about their acquisition here and just the sheer amount of scale and consolidation you can see in the streaming market."

Carr goes on to state he sees no competition issues with Larry Ellison, one of the wealthiest men on the planet and a key Trump donor and ally, hoovering up the entirety of new and old media.

So, a few things.

One, Carr's FCC has absolutely zero authority over this transaction because it doesn't involve any of the companies he actually regulates or the transfer of any broadcast licenses. Two, Carr has an absolutely abysmal record on competition issues, having rubber stamped no limit of harmful consolidation in telecom and, more recently, local broadcast media.

It would take a journalist covering Carr's comments all of fifteen minutes to find a long, long list of examples where Carr rubber stamped a terrible merger and ignored literally all labor, competition, and market harms. He's genuinely the last person anybody should be asking for their thoughts on market competition, but you're going to be seeing a lot of him in the months to come.

It's also worth noting that of the available paths forward from this point, a Netflix acquisition of Warner Brothers is probably the best of a bunch of bad options. Ideally you'd block all new consolidation in media, but that's not happening with Trump's disemboweled and captured regulators. As such, a Netflix acquisition is a better option than letting Larry Ellison create a right wing agitprop empire on the back of CNN, TikTok, and CBS.

Quick refresher: Warner Brothers rejected Ellison's higher $108 billion offer for Netflix, citing Saudi money involvement and dodgy financial math as something that might make approval more difficult. When that failed, Ellison attempted a hostile takeover attempt with the help of the president's son in law and the Saudis. When that didn't work, Ellison tried to sue Warner Brothers.

When that didn't work, Ellison and friends shifted their attention to trying to smear the "woke" Netflix deal in the media. Enter Carr, who is a useful idiot Trump and Ellison can use to prop the DOJ's inevitable scuttling of the Netflix deal as a matter of serious policy in the defense of the public interest, before offloading Warner Brothers (and CNN, and HBO) to one of Trump's top right wing billionaire donors.

Trumpism has long tried to pretend that it cares about populist antitrust reform and reining in corporate power, but it's always been a lie propped up by a broad variety of useful idiots; some of whom are purported experts on the subject (see: Matt Stoller), and many of which are major corporate media institutions whose journalism has been eroded by the relentless pursuit of consolidation.

Neither Variety, nor Bloomberg, for example, can be bothered to mention Carr's decade-long history of rubber stamping harmful consolidation across media and telecom. Kind of important if you're going to profile a major government figure's thoughts on competition, yes?

I'd be prepared for a fake Trump DOJ antitrust inquiry in the coming months, designed to transfer ownership of Warner Brothers to Larry Ellison and Skydance/CBS. Propped up, in turn, by the usual assortment of bad faith bullshitters pretending this is a public interest effort. Should that fail, Trump's investing in Netflix and Warner Brothers so he's certain to come out on top either way.

In all outcome the public, markets, and labor likely lose due to consolidation. But some of the paths are less harmful to the public interest, and democracy itself, than others.

Before you read this post, I want you to try to recall the stupidest thing you've ever heard someone say. Go ahead and hold that memory in the back of your head.

Perhaps by now you're tiring of all of these posts on America's measles problem that we've endured for over a year now. This is so passe, you might be thinking. So, you know, 1990s. And you would have been right before 2025 and the installation of a gravel-mouthed anti-vaxxer as the Secretary of HHS. Sadly, 2025 saw more cases of measles in America than at anytime in the previous several decades and a current outbreak in South Carolina, one which is already spreading to far-flung states across the country, has been left unaddressed.

In my last post on this topic, I complained that those in charge of these agencies are "barely talking about this." Now that one of those leaders has talked about it publicly, however, I think I understand why they were kept in silence previously.

After a year of ongoing measles outbreaks that have sickened more than 2,400 people, the United States is poised to lose its status as a measles-free country. However, the newly appointed principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ralph Abraham, said he was unbothered by the prospect at a briefing for journalists this week.

"It's just the cost of doing business with our borders being somewhat porous for global and international travel," Abraham said. "We have these communities that choose to be unvaccinated. That's their personal freedom."

Okay, where to begin? Let's just start by pointing out that Abraham is a long-time anti-vaxxer. He has advocated for alternative treatments to all kinds of diseases for which we have actual medicine. He has also advocated for natural immunity over vaccines on the regular. Now that this clown is nominally running the CDC, while America is facing its worst measles crises in over thirty years, the response is as flippant as, "Shit happens because, you know, immigrants."

"When you hear somebody like Abraham say 'the cost of doing business,' how can you be more callous," said pediatrician and vaccine specialist Paul Offit, in an online discussion hosted by the health blog Inside Medicine on Jan. 20. "Three people died of measles last year in this country," Offit added. "We eliminated this virus in the year 2000 — eliminated it. Eliminated circulation of the most contagious human infection. That was something to be proud of."

That would be idiotic even if Abraham were right. But he's not right. As CBS points out in its post, we've always had occasional infections from foreign visitors and sources in America, but nothing like these outbreaks. Only 10% of infections over the last year or so came from outside the country. The rest were domestic spread. And while border policy surely has ebbed and flowed over the past 30 years, there wasn't some drastic change made in the last year that would explain any of this away.

Now, in all fairness, Abraham has also added that getting two doses of the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent a measles infection. I'm sure saying it was painful for him, but he did it. Still, because the stupidest possible people are running our country right now, the CDC is also studying the genomic makeup of measles infections from different parts of the country. But Timothy, you're surely saying, that sounds like good science and something they'd use to help fight the disease.

Nope, wrong. They're desperately trying to show that the outbreaks are from disparate strains to argue that it hasn't been 12 months of continuous spread of a single strain to claim that we shouldn't lose our elimination status.

If the CDC's genomic analyses show that last year's outbreaks resulted from separate introductions from abroad, political appointees will probably credit Kennedy for saving the country's status, said Demetre Daskalakis, a former director of the CDC's national immunization center, who resigned in protest of Kennedy's actions in August.

And if studies suggest the outbreaks are linked, Daskalakis predicted, the administration will cast doubt on the findings and downplay the reversal of the country's status: "They'll say, who cares."

Indeed, at the briefing, Abraham told a reporter from Stat that a reversal in the nation's status would not be significant: "Losing elimination status does not mean that the measles would be widespread."

The phrase "criminal negligence" leaps to mind. That appears to be the work product of our public health officials at the moment. Neglect and attempts to coverup for that neglect on technicalities.

Welcome back, measles. I guess you'll be staying with us a while.

The Scottish Greens, and others, are demanding the expulsion of US forces from a 'de facto US airbase'. These demands come after US troops abducted two people overnight. Importantly, the highest court in Scotland had ordered the two be kept there.

An act of piracy

The two people abducted were the captain and first officer of a Russian-flagged oil tanker, the Marinera. US forces seized the vessel on 7 January near Iceland. Then they brought it to Scottish waters, east of Inverness.

Green MSP Ross Greer told the Scottish Parliament that this was another act of piracy by Trump which breaches Scottish sovereignty. Outraged Greer demanded the eviction of US troops from Prestwick Airport by the Scottish and UK governments. He wanted this done as a response.

Providing a weak response, first minister John Swinney insisted that Scottish law had been upheld but said that he would consider Greer's points. However, his insistence that the airport operates "at arm's length" suggests that no action is intended in Scotland, least, not at this stage.

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/KRog-4U1MePPQ0771.mp4 Disregard for international law

The Scottish Court of Session ordered on Monday that the two men remain in Scottish jurisdiction, after a request by Natia Dzadzamia, the Georgian captain's wife. However, the US government took the two men onto a US vessel. Then it told Scottish authorities after the fact — by email just after 3am yesterday.

Holyrood's justice secretary, Angela Constance, said the US had shown contempt for "Scottish jurisdiction and Scots law". However, the court responded to the US breach by lifting the 'interdict'. This appeared to be an attempt to sanitise the issue.

The Trump regime has committed frequent acts of piracy against vessels sailing under the flags of Venezuela and Russia. These seizures were clear crimes under international law. This was another example of US arrogance and impunity. US political journalist Brian Allen, who posted the video, agreed and warned that US contempt is causing a split with 'allies':

This is a sovereignty breach and allies are starting to say it out loud.

Given the lawlessness of the US government, the Starmer government should be expelling US troops from the whole UK. Instead, he is allowing the US and Israel to use UK airbases to prepare for attacks on Iran and potentially Greenland and has helped Israel monitor Gaza and kill Palestinians — and at least three British citizens.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Greenwich Council has conceded, under legal pressure, that a clause in its employee pension fund investment strategy was unlawful in claiming that it:

cannot exclude investments in order to pursue boycotts, divestment and sanctions against foreign nations and UK defence industries.

It has now committed to removing the "legally erroneous" clause. The council has operated this unlawful policy since at least 2020. But it didn't notify scheme members or the public that it had become aware of this unlawful assertion long before this legal challenge. Greenwich Council currently holds more than £61.8m in complicit investments.

Greenwich Council pension investment

The Public Interest Law Centre is acting on behalf of claimant Lubna Speitan, a founding member of Greenwich Palestine Alliance. It has instigated judicial review proceedings against Greenwich Council. These challenge the council's failure to divest its Local Government Pension Scheme ('LGPS') from the crimes being perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the State of Israel. The claimant is a Greenwich resident and long-standing human rights campaigner, with family in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel's illegal occupation, apartheid, genocide and war crimes have been extensively documented and recognised by international and domestic courts, human rights organisations, and United Nations bodies.

Since 2023, the claimant, together with Greenwich Palestine Alliance, other community groups, pension scheme members, and unions, has been advocating for immediate, full, and permanent divestment from Israel. (Data from Palestine Solidarity Campaign shows the latest figures bring the total known complicity of LGPS funds to over £12.2bn held by 81 funds). The investments include arms companies that are notorious for the manufacture of weapons used against civilian populations, and companies active in Israel's illegal settlement economy.

Divestment, historically and today, is a key mechanism by which the international community can act in solidarity with those oppressed by racist regimes. Local authorities took similar steps in response to apartheid South Africa.

Local authorities do hold the legal power to pursue divestment. The UK Supreme Court ruled a former government policy discouraging divestment was unlawful in R (Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ltd) v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (2020). The government has since removed it from official guidance.

Pension funds may consider non-financial factors where there is no significant financial risk and where scheme members are likely to support the decision.

The challenge

Greenwich Council's Responsible Investment Policy does not currently make any reference to human rights or international law, including acts of apartheid and genocide committed by Israel.

On 9 December 2024, following extensive campaigning by residents in the borough, Greenwich agreed to look at the fund's exposure to complicit companies, with a view to review and update its Responsible Investment Policy and to consider the need for divestment. However, on 15 September 2025 the Pension Panel voted to put to scheme members a substantially watered down commitment to "integrat[e] human rights considerations into our investment decisions".

Campaigners believe the change fails to take into account demands for full divestment from Israel and that this will have had no impact at all on investment decisions made by the council. Legal proceedings challenging the decision were issued on 25 November 2025.

The claimant argues that Greenwich has failed to act in accordance with its constitution, its Compliance Statement and the Local Government Pension Scheme (Management and Investment of Funds) Regulations 2016, in failing to give effect to an earlier decision of the panel of 9 December 2024, or otherwise failed to give adequate reasons as to why it changed course.

The claim also argued that the council failed to conduct a lawful consultation or consider alternatives to its draft Responsible Investment Policy. It also challenged the council's reliance on an Investment Strategy Statement containing an unlawful instruction, which stated that the Fund:

cannot exclude investments to pursue boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against foreign nations and UK defence industries.

The response

In response to the legal challenge, Greenwich Council concedes that its Responsible Investment Strategy unlawfully stated that it could not pursue divestment from a foreign nation. However, the council denies that this had any impact on its decision not to divest from Israel.

Campaigners strongly reject this, describing it as "disingenuous." They argue that the council clearly relied on unlawful information, which prevented it from pursuing full divestment from Israel without restrictions. This reliance, they argue, undermined all other divestment demands.

The council will also be consulting council employees on its draft Responsible Investment Policy. That consultation will begin at the end of January and run for four weeks. Campaigners are encouraging employees to take part and take a firm stance. Look here for the consultation when it opens.

This is a critical moment for the council and its employees to take a clear, principled stand by rejecting all complicity in genocide and apartheid and committing to ethical investment that upholds international law and fundamental human rights.

Investment 'funding apartheid state'

Lubna Speitan, founding member of Greenwich Palestine Alliance and claimant in these proceedings says:

For decades, I have watched helplessly as my Palestinian family and people have been subjected to constant attack, displacement, torture, and slaughter. It is sustained by the brutal Israeli apartheid state, a system funded in part by investments from our own local council through the Local Government Pension Scheme. By maintaining these investments, Greenwich has been a participant in the genocide of our people and family.

The Council's concession that its policy was unlawful confirms what we have long argued: it always had the power to divest!

Communities Secretary Steve Reed recently claimed that councils could be at risk of being sued by suppliers who lose money, and could face paying substantial damages: "Councils should stay out of foreign conflicts and get on with the job of delivering local services." It is a profound irony and distortion of truth. Divesting from genocide is not foreign policy, it is a fundamental duty to uphold law and basic morality for the communities you serve, rather than investing in injustice abroad. Our campaign is driven by Greenwich residents, pension scheme members, trade unions, and human rights organisations who demand this ethical accountability.

History shows us the way. Councils across the UK once rightly divested from apartheid South Africa. We are simply demanding Greenwich apply those same principles to apartheid and genocidal Israel, (without dilution). Our case has proven they can.

Now, Greenwich must act swiftly to implement full and permanent divestment from Israel. This landmark concession shatters the myth of powerlessness. Councils can no longer hide behind unlawful policies. This sends an unambiguous message to every council across the UK: "the false legal barriers are gone. You have the power to divest. You must now have the courage to do so."

Helen Mowatt, Legal Director at the Public Interest Law Centre says:

For years, councils have wrongly claimed they lack the legal power to divest. Greenwich Council itself has operated this unlawful policy since at least 2020, without informing scheme members or the public that it knew the position was wrong until this legal challenge. Legally, councils can implement divestment, and this error in understanding must be widely disseminated - a point vital not only for investment panel members but also for community groups, grassroots campaigns, and activists.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

Despite some signs to the contrary, many are arguing that America, under Trump, is facing its worst financial crisis since the 1939 great depression. One person making that argument is Peter Schiff, who told Fox News.

Peter Schiff rips @FoxNews out of their MAGA stupor with truth bombs that are imminent:

'The dollar is going to collapse, the dollar is going to be replaced by Gold. We are headed for an economic crisis that will make the 2008 financial crisis seem like a Sunday school… pic.twitter.com/KRRhw4bith

— Shannon Joy (@ShannonJoyRadio) January 28, 2026

Schiff noted that the upcoming event will make 2008 look like a "Sunday school picnic". He also claimed that unlike 2008, this won't be a global but an American issue.

So what's going on?

Faux growth

You may be aware that the US economy actually grew in the third quarter, as the White House's 'Rapid Response' team highlighted:

.@howardlutnick on @POTUS reversing the damaging effects of globalization:

"We're at the one year anniversary of Donald Trump. In the Third Quarter, we grew 4.3%… the $30T U.S. economy is now going to be growing at 5% or more because we are taking care of ourselves."

British environmentalist George Monbiot has accused the government of suppressing the release of a damning report exposing the imminent collapse of our ecosystem — described as a "security risk" in the report. Labour is once again in the spotlight for their condemnable handling of this issue.

After multiple setbacks and dithering from Westminster, the national security assessment is now available, and warns of an impending global meltdown.

The authors of the assessment warned that:

Global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity. The world is already experiencing impacts including crop failures, intensified natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks […] Threats will increase with degradation and intensify with collapse. Without major intervention to reverse the current trend, this is highly likely to continue to 2050 and beyond.

The risks are grave. So why was the assessment suppressed by Labour? Bear in mind, Monbiot calls this the:

most important document published by the UK government since the general election.

Keeping us in the dark

The report was due for public release in autumn 2025. The Times said it took a fierce freedom of information battle to get a reportedly "abridged version" released last month. According to Monbiot:

Apparatchiks in Downing Street sought to make it disappear. Apparently there were two reasons:

(1) because its conclusions were "too negative"

(2) because it would draw attention to the government's failure to act.

Explaining why Starmer's Labour government resisted publication, Monbiot said the following:

When the report at last appeared, thanks to an FoI (freedom of information) request lodged by the Green Alliance, The Times reported that it had been significantly "abridged", I expect by the same goons. Some of its starkest conclusions had been omitted.

He added:

Even so, the assessment - believed to have been compiled by the joint intelligence committee (on which the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ sit) - is not exactly reassuring.

The brink of collapse

Monbiot accused the Labour government of creating a false divide between economic growth, and tackling the climate crisis:

It's not hard to see how inconvenient this report is for Starmer's government, which has repeatedly sought to invent a conflict between prosperity and environmental protection.

He lamented that the report appeared "hastily and crudely truncated". Monbiot asked whether:

the full assessment might also have named some other pressing security threats

For example, the connection between damaging industries and the far-right:

One is the way in which fossil fuel, meat, and livestock producers have been funding far-right movements, to stifle environmental protection measures that would reduce their profits.

He called this a "major driver" of "the fascistic politics" seen in the US.

So it seems that Downing Street — under the leadership of the Labour party — has gagged its own intelligence services. That is telling. MI6, MI5 and GCHQ provide disinterested assessments of the world as it is — in theory, anyway.

The decision to ignore, doctor or suppress their findings is a political one. It suggests Labour's commitments are to something else entirely. And that something feels like the naked self-interest of big capital.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

The British Retail Consortium (BRC), a trade association for businesses like supermarkets, has blamed energy costs and tax rises for the fact food prices have increased by 37% over the past five years.

But this obscures the truth — that of supermarkets rapidly growing profits, in line with the surge in food prices.

Greedflation

Lidl's operating profit rose by 297%, from £79 million in 2021 to £314 million in 2025. Yet we're supposed to believe that higher costs on their end are the sole reason for eye-watering food inflation.

Similarly, Aldi's operating profit rose from £289 million in 2020 to £435 million in 2025 — an increase of 50% over five years (including the Covid-19 years).

This isn't down to people switching to cheaper options. Tesco's operating profit leapt from £1.8bn in 2020/21 to £3.1bn in 2024/25, an increase of 72%. And Sainsbury's operating profit has risen slightly over the same period. It's greedflation, through and through.

Energy costs and tax rises?

At the same time, there have been increased energy costs.

These could be lowered through a publicly-owned Green New Deal, and 40% of a farm's total expenditure costs can be attributed to energy.

Since privatisation of electricity began in the 1990s, average prices have more than doubled, according to Ofgem and Hansard figures. Meanwhile, analysis shows that average gas prices increased by 143% between 1992 and 2022.

In 2023, the average price per unit of electricity in the UK was £127 per MWh. A renewable energy system could deliver the same at costs as low as £55 per MWh. Over time, a Green New Deal would pay for itself. And then it would deliver cheaper energy for every business and individual moving forward.

Businesses have also been subjected to higher taxes through an increase to employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs). But large, profitable businesses like supermarkets should absolutely shoulder increased taxes. In fact, the rise should be put on them and not small businesses.

Non-profit supermarkets

In fact, under the current system, supermarkets may not lower their prices at all even with a much cheaper energy system. We can see that them using energy crises and tax rises as cover for lining their pockets.

Instead, supermarkets should be not-for-profit because they are only middle-manning between the agriculture sector and humans who need food.

That's a major way an administration could tackle the cost of living crisis.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has sold himself as Britain's Donald Trump. That helped Farage to boost his profile when he wasn't trying to win a majority in a general election…it's working less well now that he is. This is especially true as the second Trump administration is — somehow — more chaotic and violent than the first.

One issue which has been growing for a while is the consequences of vaccine scepticism. Much like Trump himself, Farage is something of a vaccine sceptic. This isn't going to be a good look for Farage moving forwards, because Victorian-era diseases are once again on the rise in the US:

This didn't have to happen.

Nice work, MAGA-MAHA. pic.twitter.com/tBDCvaZCjU

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 28, 2026

Anti-vaxx

Trump has a long history of anti-vaccine attitudes. In the summary of a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Science Direct noted:

• Trump voters are more concerned about vaccines than other Americans.
• This effect emerges via Trump voters' greater willingness to believe conspiracies.
• Reading Trump's antivaxx tweets increases vaccination concern among Trump voters.

The above is from May 2020. Interestingly, Trump would later be a big proponent of the Covid vaccines, as they were developed under his watch. This was one of the few times Trump had a significant falling out with his supporters — with the others being when he initially distanced himself from the January 6th Capital Riot and his recent handling of the Epstein Files.

Other than the Covid blip, Trump has only doubled down on his hostility towards medicine. The key driver of this acceleration is health secretary RFK Jr, pictured below demonstrating his unique approach to public health and safety:

RFK Jr. swims in DC's sewage-tainted Rock Creek with his grandchildren despite a National Park Service bacteria warning. pic.twitter.com/3MpVf1AqYU

— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) May 13, 2025

As Hawaiian senator Brian Schatz wrote, RFK Jr:

traveled to Samoa in 2019 to discourage people from taking the measles vaccine which ultimately led to an outbreak in which thousands of people were infected and 83, mostly children, died.

Now RFK Jr. is the health secretary of the US.

And measles is on the rise.

Who could have seen it coming?

Clearly not Farage, as he's in bed with these people:

Nigel Farage is speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC in September, where he's billed alongside Jay Bhattacharya, Great Barrington Declaration co-author and now RFK Jr's head of the NIH.

But wait, it gets (much) worse…

Reform would like us all to think they're the robust, tough guys speaking plain and shootin' straight. Maybe not quite so much. Reform's candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, race-baiter Matthew Goodwin — who calls immigration an "invasion" — has run to the police. Because Labour tweeted something he didn't like.

In a video boasting of doing so, Goodwin — seemingly trying to sound just like Keir Starmer — claimed that Labour had misleadingly edited footage of him. The effect of this was to make him appear to be criticising the people of Manchester, when he says he was really speaking about the Tories during their Manchester conference.

Maybe so — but a criminal complaint and running to the police to defend you instead of defending yourself and proving your political and moral superiority? Doesn't seem all that robust, does it? Judge for yourself:

An announcement. pic.twitter.com/7GjJUL6MIs

— Matt Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) January 28, 2026

Not only that, but Labour had another example — a screenshot, not an edited video — of Goodwin apparently deriding Manchester, at least relative to some other cities. Some other foreign cities, in fact, though the people of Manchester might be more insulted at being considered inferior to London:

Why did you delete this, @GoodwinMJ? pic.twitter.com/yuDGO0M6IB

— Labour Press (@labourpress) January 28, 2026

In the end, Reform is far-right and racist, Labour is far-right and racist. Starmer and Goodwin don't just sound alike.

Don't choose either turquoise or red. A nice green would be a far better shade.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Ok, that's not quite the wording Ofsted used, but the meaning is the same. Deranged Israel fanatic government minister Steve Reed had demanded action against a Bristol school that cancelled a visit by an Israel fanatic MP Damien Egan because parents said they'd keep their kids home. Israel fanatic Reed's call was backed by his boss, Israel fanatic PM Keir Starmer.

Ofsted investigated. Ofsted said no — the school was perfectly reasonable in its actions and didn't breach anything. In Ofsted-speak, it found "no evidence" to support the Israel fanatics' complaints about the Bristol Brunel Academy's decision.

In Torygraph-speak:

Ofsted said it was concerned that the Labour MP for Bristol North East's visit "may have been postponed due to co-ordinated pressure from staff and external groups and therefore potentially in violation of Department for Education (DfE) guidance on political impartiality in schools".

Inspectors found no evidence to substantiate these concerns within the school," its report concluded.

You say 'tom-ay-to'.

Ofsted inspectors found that school staff — who had said they would wear Palestine t-shirts in protest if Egan's visit went ahead:

demonstrate a profound commitment to providing an inclusive learning environment that promotes tolerance and respect for the diversity of modern Britain.

Damn straight.

The Torygraph bleated that:

The findings from the watchdog leave it unclear who is to blame for cancelling the speaking event.

No they don't. They make it absolutely clear that the Israel lobby is, as usual, to blame for always demanding to be considered the victim, even as Israel slaughters hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians and steals their homeland.

There, fixed it.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

The Met Police account on X has thanked a deranged Israel supporter for complaining about peaceful, mostly elderly anti-Zionist protesters near the Houses of Parliament calling for Palestinian freedom.

The 'Blue and proud' X account, which features Israel twice on its profile, tagged in the force on its dishonest complaint that a banner calling for an end to Israel's indisputable influence in British politics is 'Jew hate' = and that the chant for Palestinian freedom 'from the river to the sea' is 'genocidal'.

The Met's response was not, of course, to point out that Israel has been committing an actual genocide in Gaza for more than two years. Nor did it mention that 'from the river to the sea' is part of the 1977 founding manifesto of Israel's ruling Likud party:

between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

Apparently it's only genocidal if supporters of Palestinians say it — even when Israel is actually engaged in mass slaughter to bring it about.

No, the response from the Met Police was to thank the anonymous racist X account for "letting us know" — and to reassure the racist behind the account that "our ops room are [sic] now aware":

Met Police drop the masks

The complaint was also dishonest in claiming that the banner about Zionism is "exactly the same rhetoric used by all Jew haters throughout history". Israel has only existed since 1948, Zionism since the late 1800s. If the banner had said 'end Jewish control', then it would have been antisemitic. But it didn't — Zionism is a political philosophy centred on a (recently-created) foreign nation-state. Many Jews are not Zionists; most Zionists are not Jewish. But facts and accuracy are not, of course, significant components of Zionist complaints and propaganda.

The above is a screenshot of the posts in question in case they are deleted. Below is the embedded post so readers can watch the video and decide for themselves whether there is anything objectionable — apart, of course, from the complaint and the obsequious response:

@metpoliceuk Pro-hate mobs outside parliament today with a sign saying "End Zionism Control Of UK Politics". This is exactly the same rhetoric used by all Jew haters throughout history.

Watch the police stand around while the genocidal "from the river to the sea" is chanted pic.twitter.com/vDzHh5RQpM

— Blue & proud

If you're particularly masochistic, and like subjecting yourself to the X feeds of the worst people in the world, you may have noticed a particular phrase gaining traction recently — 'suicidal empathy'. The term is typically credited to Canadian professor Gad Saad. His book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense focused on the concept that there are certain toxic ideas which end up harming those who adopt them. He described the phenomenon occurring in nature:

Take wood crickets for example. They avoid any contact with water, as they fear drowning. But when a 'hairworm' parasite attaches to them, the parasite needs the cricket to jump into water to complete its reproductive cycle. As a result, the infected cricket undergoes a kind of 'zombification' and leaps into the water voluntarily, thereby sacrificing itself for the benefit of the parasite.

This is how I perceive progressive students, radical feminists, and even certain liberal Jews. They internalise foreign ideas that lead them to act against their own interests, and essentially commit suicide. Unfortunately, the source of these ideas is academia.

According to Saad and his disciples, 'suicidal empathy' is a manifestation of this in humans. The suggestion is that the West is destroying itself through a desire to help those who will supposedly harm us — immigrants, Muslims, trans people, Palestinians.

Perhaps the leading adopter of the notion of 'suicidal empathy' is billionaire Nazi Elon Musk. A search of his X account for the term yields a seemingly infinite set of results. Speaking to podcaster and frequent platformer of the far-right Joe Rogan, Musk said:

The fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy. The empathy exploit. They're exploiting a bug in Western civilisation, which is the empathy response.

Diminished empathy suits the rich and powerful

Others pushing the idea include Reform candidate Matt Goodwin, and assorted prominent right-wing commentators. There's a pretty obvious reason why an instruction to be selective in our compassion should come from the faction of politics that defends concentrated wealth and power. It's classic divide and conquer — if we all see society as composed of those who are deserving of assistance and those who aren't, it's a lot easier for us to be pitted against each other. The rich will continue to dominate while we are convinced to blame those who have been assigned parasite status.

Saad has an even more sinister reason for perpetuating this concept. As a relentless backer of so-called 'Israel' as it carries out a holocaust in Gaza, convincing people that Palestinians are unworthy of empathy is a useful way to ensure the slaughter continues. A recent vile tweet shows footage featuring the remains of 'Israeli' prisoner of war Master Sergeant Ran Gvili being returned home. Saad says:

One culture reveres its fallen heroes to know [sic] ends but celebrates life. Another culture reveres death more than life. Which is the one that you'd like to be a member of?

The suggestion is that Palestinians do not mourn their dead. We are asked to ignore the evidence of our own eyes, of families weeping over the shrouds of relatives slain by Zionists, and instead pretend that Gaza is one large death cult, undeserving of sympathy. Be selective in your empathy, we are urged, so that we can properly delineate which groups can be safely marked for extermination.

Suicidal empathy — same shite, different name

This current template is simply the latest chapter in the right's attempt at controlling how we perceive empathy, the extent to which we should believe in it at all, and who should be its recipients. A previous iteration was the term 'virtue signalling'.

Under this framing, we were invited to believe that any act of kindness was merely a dishonest performance intended to convey the appearance of virtue. No one could possibly be doing anything for genuinely altruistic reasons; it must always be an act of cynical manipulation. 'Performative' was the twin term usually paired with this slander.

In fact, Sky News Australia managed to produce reports on consecutive days in 2025 attacking activist Greta Thunberg for 'performative' and 'virtue signalling' actions respectively. Thunberg was on board the Gaza flotilla, attempting to deliver aid to Palestinians starved by the Netanyahu regime.

Never mind the fact that virtually no aid was getting in due to the Zionist entity's policies; never mind that activists had been left with no other option due to failures of governments worldwide to act; never mind the fact that the flotilla put Gaza on the agenda and rallied activists across the world. Don't focus on verifiable facts to determine what may have motivated Thunberg. Instead, focus on the unverifiable contents of her mind. Oh, and be sure to assume the worst possible motives, in opposition to all available evidence.

McCarthy and Reagan tried the same tactic

From undermining the very existence of empathy, to denouncing those who exhibit it; a previous approach was to label anyone with a conscience as a 'bleeding heart liberal'. An article in Atlas Obscura traces its first use to one Westbrook Pegler, a:

…soul-sick, mud-wallowing gutter scum columnist

according to one contemporary. Pegler:

…didn't like the labour movement, Communists, fascists, Jews, and perhaps most of all, liberals.

He used the term in the 1930s to reprimand those trying to pass an anti-lynching bill in the US congress. 'Bleeding heart liberal' was later adopted by infamous persecutor of the left Joseph McCarthy, and later still by Ronald Reagan.

Throughout this same period, conservative philosopher Ayn Rand was attempting to push her own understanding of empathy's role in the human soul. While it was permitted under her reasoning, she viewed it as entirely secondary to the most virtuous course of action — pursuit of one's own selfish desires above all else. Rand actively advocated against support for disabled and poor people, and for causes like feminism and those battling to liberate themselves from US domination.

Suicidal empathy — the cult of selfishness benefits neoliberalism

Her ideas were of great use to the burgeoning neoliberal project, which necessitated a concept not of homo sapiens, but of homo economicus. That is, a being that cared solely about its own resource maximisation. If consideration of others existed, it was purely confined to one's immediate family. Hence the Thatcherite dogma of there being no such thing as society:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand 'I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!' or 'I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!' 'I am homeless, the Government must house me!' and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society?

There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

Rand's and Thatcher's was a Social Darwinist vision for how society should be designed. The most extreme purveyors of that approach were the Nazis, in which the strong crushing the weak was viewed as progress, cleansing the gene pool of unworthy material.

Empathy need not even come into the discourse — it was a simple scientific matter of removing objectively lesser specimens. Hitler's regime used medicalised language in reference to those it wished to expunge. They spoke of 'racial hygiene' and characterised Jewish and Roma people as pathogens harming the German 'body'.

Genocide and hateful discourse mark a return to Nazism

We now see a return to this language in the work of Saad, as he speaks of "neuro-parasites" and the impact of "pathological ideas" on Western culture. He has recently completed a tour of so-called 'Israel', the ultimate modern achievement in eradicating empathy.

Zionist soldiers showed themselves to have zero compassion for innocent Palestinians, resulting in what is perhaps history's first 'joyful genocide'. The impulse for caring was successfully overridden to the point where rampaging genocidaires delighted in their eradication of an entire people.

Fundamental to Zionism is an ethno-purist notion of a land for one people. This naturally veers towards a ruthless purging of all who don't fit within this plan. Benjamin Netanyahu himself has previous when it comes to celebrating the notion of the strong crushing the weak. In 2018 he said:

The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.

His remarks were immediately criticised for sounding like something from Mein Kampf.

Far from being irrational, empathy is the only logical course

The hope of the right now appears to be that this template can be applied more broadly. Their current focus is on the protesters in Minneapolis standing against the fascists of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Assorted ghouls inform us that those being gunned down to protect their neighbours from being dragged off to gulags are exhibiting suicidal empathy.

In reality, what they are doing is profoundly rational. The activists risking their lives have correctly identified their true enemy — the would-be tyrants in the White House destroying the law, and the wealthy donors that back them.

They know that only by standing in unflinching solidarity with those being targeted can they guarantee their own freedom. If the modern-day brownshirts of ICE are successful in rounding up demonised people of colour, it'll just be the beginning. Ultimately, no one will be safe.

Though Saad is an advocate of evolutionary psychology, he ignores the following interpretation — that empathy is our most fundamental means of survival. That only by guaranteeing the well-being of the collective, can we all thrive. That rabid competition is the most primitive drive in nature, whereas cooperation and mutual aid are the most sophisticated.

Empathy isn't unique to humans. We share this trait with many other pack animals. Elephants travel in groups to pay their respect after other elephants die. Mikhail Bakunin found space for this concept of nature, and humanity within it, 150 years ago — we must urgently revisit this lesson to ward off the nihilistic vision being pushed by today's ruling class.

Featured image via RS&H

By Robert Freeman

Luke Akehurst has once again opened his mouth. Which means once again, he's been caught chatting shit.

Luke Akehurst claims that the faction he is part of, that wrecked, lied & smeared in order to regain control of the party, then ruthlessly purged the left & hollowed out the membership, & which now oversees a party polling at under 20%, has the best interests of Labour at heart pic.twitter.com/ydRu2oARsc

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) January 27, 2026

Akehurst is the former director of We Believe in Israel, an organisation known for overlooking Israel's decades-long flouting of international law. The organisation sits under Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, a think tank that promotes 'awareness' of Israel. I think we already have way too much of that.

Famously, Labour parachuted Akehurst into a safe seat in North Durham for the 2024 General Election. Of course, he lives over 250 miles away in Oxford.

Q: How many Labour party members selected Luke Akehurst to be Labours candidate for North Durham?

A: Three. All three Lukes mates on the NEC and none of them from North Durham.

This is what they wrecked, lied and smeared for.

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) January 27, 2026

Luke Akehurst deletes the evidence

He also deleted over 2,000 posts from X in the run-up to the election — I wonder what he was trying to hide?

But now, Akehurst has claimed that his faction of Labour has the best interests of the party at heart. The same faction that lied, wrecked and smeared Jeremy Corbyn to take control of the party. And as Secretary of Labour First, he basically focused on overturning the influence of Corbyn's left.

Yes, you might be right about your morally bankrupt faction still having the upper hand in Labour.
But so what?
Labour is bleeding out in front of us.

Eleven countries, including nine European states alongside Canada and Japan, have condemned the Israeli authorities' demolition of the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in East Jerusalem.

They described the move as a dangerous and unprecedented escalation against a United Nations agency, warning that it undermines UNRWA's ability to carry out its humanitarian mission amid worsening conditions in the Gaza Strip. In a joint statement, the countries called on Israel to halt all demolition operations, open border crossings, and lift restrictions on humanitarian aid entering Gaza and the West Bank, in line with international humanitarian law.

On 20 January, Israeli occupation authorities demolished facilities and mobile offices inside UNRWA's headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir participated in the demolition, which was widely described as a direct violation of a UN agency's mandate.

An unprecedented measure undermining UNRWA's work

The joint statement described the demolition as "an unacceptable and unprecedented act against a United Nations agency," noting that it is part of a broader campaign to obstruct UNRWA's operations.

The statement was signed by the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, and Spain, as well as Canada and Japan. The signatories emphasised the breadth of international opposition to Israel's actions. They reaffirmed their full support for UNRWA and the services it provides to millions of Palestinian refugees, particularly in Gaza. The countries also welcomed the agency's commitment to reform and implementation of the recommendations contained in the Colonna report.

The statement expressed grave concern over Israeli Knesset legislation passed in October 2024 and reinforced in December 2025. The laws prohibit UNRWA's work and official communication with Israeli authorities, while also cutting electricity and water to agency facilities.

Demands to open crossings and allow aid

The signatory states urged Israel to fully facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid across Gaza and the West Bank. They referenced Israel's stated agreement to a 20-point aid plan proposed by US President Donald Trump.

The plan provides for aid entry and distribution under United Nations and Red Crescent leadership, without interference.

The statement stressed that humanitarian conditions in Gaza remain dire and that current supplies fall far short of minimum needs. It called for international NGOs to operate freely and for restrictive registration requirements to be lifted. The countries also demanded the reopening of all crossings, including the Rafah crossing in both directions. They urged the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian materials, including items designated as "dual-use," which are essential for relief and early recovery.

Palestinian and international responses

Hamas welcomed the joint statement, describing the international position as significant. The movement called on the signatory states to translate condemnation into concrete political pressure.

It urged governments to ensure UNRWA can resume its humanitarian work without restrictions or political blackmail.

Hamas also called on other countries to adopt similar positions and increase pressure on Israel to end its attacks on UNRWA and respect its UN mandate.

In a related response, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese accused Israel of waging a systematic assault on the United Nations system. She warned that the demolition of UNRWA's headquarters represents a dangerous escalation against both international institutions and the Palestinian people.

Albanese called for the suspension of Israel's UN membership and the imposition of sanctions, stating that the actions constitute flagrant violations of international law and humanitarian principles.

Featured image via ECFR

By Alaa Shamali

A new series of leaked emails reveals discredited 'left' journalist Paul Mason's legal meltdown after his collaboration with state security services was exposed. Mason's emails with intelligence-linked figures were first outed by The Grayzone in 2022. He now works at an arms industry-funded 'think tank'.

Publicly, Mason responded to the 2022 leaks with a 'non-denial denial' claiming the emails "may be" "altered or fake" and denied recognising a bizarre (and now well-known) chart he sent to intelligence assets showing the links he imagined existed among left groups, left media and Russian and Chinese state actors. But the leaked emails show him admitting to lawyers that he did create it — and trying to find angles to wage a legal war on The Grayzone and other left outlets that publicised his collaboration.

The latest leaks come hot on the heels of Paul Mason threatening Green leader Zack Polanski with ten years in prison. In an X post, Polanski had mocked Mason's chart:

Confirmed: Paul Mason 'secret state' contacts

Mason's lawyers were to pour cold water on his wish to "deplatform/demonetise" The Grayzone. Like him, however, they were apparently keen to launch a criminal prosecution against The Grayzone in the US — presumably on the basis of his unfounded claims that they were funded by or working for Russia.

But even the lawyers told Mason that he had no realistic prospect of arguing that he wasn't in "contact with Britain's 'secret state'" — because clearly he was.

Paul Mason had asked his lawyers to review a rant he had drafted, in which he denied collaborating and accused his critics of deliberately putting his life in danger. They responded with an edit 'toning down a bit' his denials because it was "difficult to say you don't have any contact with 'Britain's secret state'":

Paul Mason mocked and self-owned

Following these revelations, Mason's public posts were routinely mocked by left-wingers pointing to his disgrace-by-email. So too was his string of failed attempts to secure selection to contest a parliamentary seat for Labour.

The pro-war Mason was also caught, and exposed exclusively by Skwawkbox, engaging in a pro-Starmer, pro-Israel meltdown and accusing an audience member of antisemitism. He then posted to Twitter a made-up quote he attributed to her in an attempt to defend his smears.

For full disclosure, Paul Mason also self-owned when an attack on Skwawkbox went wrong. Mason tried to compare Skwawkbox to the right-wing press after Skwawkbox exposed Keir Starmer's involvement in 'Beergate'. Just by the by, Starmer did get fined, but the fine disappeared after Durham's chief constable was leaned on from above. Anyway, Mason's attack on Skwawkbox backfired badly, with hundreds of respondents praising the factual coverage and mocking Mason for supporting the Brylcreemed blancmange, eg:

These episodes further fuelled the "avalanche of derision" every time he posted — and didn't persuade Starmer to smile on his would-be candidacies.

Back to the latest leaked emails. Discussing his chart with his legal team, Mason told them that he had only shared it with pro-Ukraine war academic Emma Briant. In fact, even if that claim were true it would not change its significance.

Briant claims to be "one of the world's leading experts on information warfare and propaganda". She has also been accused of being an intelligence services asset and engaged in extensive correspondence with Mason and intelligence-linked figures. Like Mason, Briant has tried to use lawyers to silence those discussing her security state connections.

'The politicians are outed'

The new leaks also confirm the extent of Mason's cosiness with a range of unsavoury establishment figures. These include Keir Starmer — himself a "long-time servant of the British security state" — and John Healey, now defence secretary, as well as an unnamed "senior ex-military person". Mason fretted that if his emails with these characters were exposed, "the politicians are outed" and bemoaned the "implicit pressure" this created:

As Mason told Jaffey on September 29 2022, "[Kit Klarenberg] still has all my correspondence with Keir, John Healey and a senior ex military person so there is implicit pressure." However, it was not until February 2025 that Mason's contacts with Starmer and Healey were publicly disclosed.

Mason further revealed to Jaffey that a figure he described as a "former Labour foreign policy advisor who now works in corporate security" had been exposed through his leaked email exchanges. He worried that if the full content of his email account's sent and received files was publicized, "the politicians are outed."

"At that point," he fretted, "the attacks will be reframed as a wider attack on UK democracy."

Mason's emails to his lawyers also reinforced his apparent connections to the security state. He told them that he had been in discussion with the government's 'National Cyber Security Centre'.

Lawfare

Despite the numerous setbacks and the knock-backs from his legal advisers, Mason "remained determined" to wage lawfare on his critics. This includes enlisting the UK's National Crime Agency against The Grayzone and journalist Kit Klarenberg:

Despite these setbacks, Mason remained determined to weaponize the law against The Grayzone for the high crime of factual journalism. On December 16 2022, he informed Jaffey he'd "given a verbal witness statement to two officers" from Britain's National Crime Agency. The officers, Mason wrote, had "indicated it was likely the UK will pass the investigation into the hack on me over to US law enforcement, and that the statement needs to be robust enough for the US courts."

So far, at least, this wish remains unfulfilled.

In none of the leaked communications with his lawyers does Paul Mason appear to deny that he was working with intelligence assets, intelligence-linked figures or indeed British intelligence directly to target sites and individuals he didn't like. This means, as Klarenberg puts it in the latest exposé, that:

The faded journalist remains dogged by allegations that he was himself a British intelligence asset all along, with even prominent mainstream reporters posing the question to Mason in social media exchanges.

Whether this triggers yet another public meltdown is, for the moment, a matter of conjecture. For now, he seems to be obsessing over the Greens — despite insisting they have no chance of defeating Labour — and, of course, with promoting the Ukraine war.

Read the latest Grayzone revelations in full here.

Featured image provided via author 

By Skwawkbox

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent has reportedly tried to enter the Ecuadorean consulate in Minneapolis, US, sparking a diplomatic incident.

Despite Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, is a major ally of Trump. Less than three months ago, both presidents were making a deal to deepen their countries' commercial and economic ties.

Nevertheless, Ecuador immediately filed an official letter of protest with the US embassy in Quito after the Minneapolis incident.

'If you touch me, I'll grab you'

Ecuador's foreign ministry stated that the ICE agent "tried to enter the premises of the consulate" at 11:00 (local time) on Tuesday 27 January. The statement also reported that consulate officials stopped the agent in their tracks, acting:

to guarantee the protection of the Ecuadoreans who were inside the consulate at the time

It's important to note that the US agent's attempt to enter the consulate was a major violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Under this accord, consular premises are held to be "inviolable". This means that the authorities of the consulate's host country can't enter it:

except with the consent of the head of the consular post.

Of course, the Ecuadorean officials reported that they gave no such consent.

A BBC article on the incident also reported on a video which had been shared across Ecuadorean media. It stated that:

a consular official can be seen rushing to the entrance door and telling an ICE agent "this is the consulate, you're not allowed in here".

The agent tells the official that "if you touch me, I will grab you".

The consular official then states again that "you can not enter here, this is a consulate, this is a foreign government's office", before closing the door.

Is this how ICE de-escalates?

The incident at the Ecuadorean consulate could not have come at a worse time for ICE or Trump himself.

On 7 January, an ICE agent murdered 37-year-old Renee Good in broad daylight on the streets of Minnesota. Trump and US officials attempted to characterise the cold-blooded shooting as 'self-defence', in spite of clear video evidence to the contrary.

Then, on 24 January, another ICE agent murdered nurse Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis road. Officials tried to claim that Pretti was armed, despite an agent having removed the legal firearm from its holster before Pretti was shot multiple times in the back.

Thus far, eight people have died in contact with ICE in 2026 alone. Most died in detention centers whilst under the custody of the US agency.

As such, it's unsurprising that thousands of protesters braved sub-zero temperatures on the streets of Minneapolis last week to voice their opposition to the Trump regime and its murderous ICE enforcers.

Then, on 27 January, Trump made public claims that immigration enforcement would "de-escalate a little bit" in Minnesota. However, given that this was the very same day that an ICE agent tried to enter the Ecuadorean consulate, you'll have to forgive us if we don't take the lying snake-in-the-White-House at his word.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alex/Rose Cocker

On Monday 2 February, the Undercover Policing Inquiry will start Phase 2 of its Tranche 3 hearings. This phase of the Spycops inquiry will cover Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) operations from the early 1990s to 2008, and the squad's ignominious end, when the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) replaced it.

Staggering scale of Spycops abuse

The inquiry has revealed the staggering scale of the abuses carried out by Britain's secret political policing units and their long-term infiltration deployments. During February and March, the Inquiry will hear from five former undercover officers from the SDS:

• James Boyling ("Jim Sutton") undercover from 1995-2000
• "Jason Bishop" undercover from 1998-2006
• Carlo Soracchi ("Carlo Neri") undercover from 2000-2006
• "Simon Wellings" undercover from 2001-2007
• Robert Hastings ("Rob Harrison") undercover from 2004-2007

Evidence will also come from civilians affected by those deployments, from targeted environmental groups like Earth First!, the Genetic Engineering Network and Reclaim the Streets, animal rights groups and hunt saboteurs, trade unionists and anti-Fascists, anti-militarist campaigns like Stop the War Coalition and Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), and anti-globalisation protests around the world, including at the G8 summits in Genoa, Italy (2001) and Scotland (2005).

Boyling, Soracchi and Hastings all deceived women into sexual relationships and several of those women will give evidence about some of the extreme abuse they suffered at the hands of the police.

And on 12 March the inquiry will hear evidence from Patricia Armani Da Silva about spying on the campaign for justice for Jean Charles de Menezes, who police shot dead at Stockwell Underground Station on 22 July 2005.

See here for a timetable of all those due to give evidence live and in person.

Hearings will take place at the International Dispute Resolution Centre, opposite St Paul's Cathedral. For live coverage of hearings follow @tombfowler on social media & see twitch.tv/spycopstv.

Groups working with those affected by Spycops deployments include:

Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance

Police Spies Out of Lives

Undercover Research Group

The Monitoring Group

Blacklist Support Group

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

Donald Trump's illegal actions in Venezuela recently boosted the threat of direct US military action in Latin America. And as Trump's regime eyes up other targets in the region, Your Party's Zarah Sultana has joined with "parliamentarians, trade unionists and organisers from more than 20 countries" to stand firmly against US expansionism.

Resistance in solidarity with Latin America

Latin America has long been a key target for US terror. And amid Trump's new "imperial assault" in the region, Sultana travelled to Colombia to show her opposition. There, she and other attendees:

forged a shared diagnosis of the present crisis and a common strategy to confront it.

They then adopted a 'San Carlos Declaration', affirming all people's right to decide their own future (independently of US interests). This declaration also insisted on the need for unity in defending that right.

As French politician Clémence Guetté insisted:

We will not let Trump sow chaos across the entire world without reacting.

Proud to join parliamentarians, trade unionists and organisers from more than 20 countries at the Nuestra América convening in Bogotá this weekend, where we signed the San Carlos Declaration.

As anti-imperialists, we reject the Monroe Doctrine and defend the sovereignty and… pic.twitter.com/Y2ViQxamZt

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) January 27, 2026

Sultana asserted that left-wingers need to:

work across borders to resist Donald Trump's crude expansionism.

And she stressed that:

The UK and Keir Starmer must stop acting as Trump's poodle.

It was great to speak with Colombian President Gustavo Petro about the need for the left to stand firm in our anti-imperialism and work across borders to resist Donald Trump's crude expansionism.

As @petrogustavo warned in December 2023, what we've witnessed in Gaza is a… pic.twitter.com/FnLEaDEN0v

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) January 26, 2026

Numerous figures from the US itself were also there to oppose Trump's interventionism.

As co-general coordinator of Progressive International David Adler pointed out, the US is particularly gleeful about the stranglehold it's been forcing onto long-time bogeyman Cuba, which Trump has claimed:

will be failing pretty soon

If you are not actively organizing against Trump's imperial designs for Cuba, then you are complicit in the destruction of international law and its most basic principle of self-determination. Stop waiting for a kinetic intervention. Speak up and join the fight to stop him now. https://t.co/mFZBww8aG5

— David Adler (@davidrkadler) January 28, 2026

Zarah Sultana: 'The same struggle we have across the world'

Speaking at the Nuestra América (Our America) conference, Sultana argued that:

The struggle we have here in Colombia is the same struggle we have across the world… What happens in this hemisphere never stays just here.

She said "sovereignty itself is at risk" following the US abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, highlighting that:

If it can happen in Venezuela, it can happen anywhere.

She condemned the British government's failure to oppose this breach of international law. But this was unsurprising considering the UK's loyal and longstanding support for US foreign policy aims. Indeed, she pointed out that the UK's own destructive "legacy has not ended", having been a key player "from empire to global capital".

Amid the West's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza, Sultana stressed, international law has "become meaningless". That's why, she said:

our struggles are deeply connected. What happens in Colombia matters in the UK, what happens in Venezuela matters in Palestine, what happens here shapes people everywhere.

With this in mind, she asserted:

Internationalism isn't charity. It is collective self-defence.

Featured image via Twitter

By Ed Sykes

Activists across the UK have disrupted arms factories. This comes a day after the storming of an arms industry dinner in response to hunger strike demands.

Actions at multiple arms factories

Today, 28 January, activists across the UK have disrupted multiple factories in a response to the ending of the hunger strike and a call to continue to shut down arms factories.

The disruption took place separately across Lancashire, Newcastle and Edinburgh. Combined, hundreds of activists took to the entrances of all factories, blocking access to the sites from as early as 5:00am. Workers at the sites were unable to gain access, some for an entire shift.

The increase in mobilising outside arms factories comes as the largest coordinated hunger strike in Britain has ended. In a final statement the hunger strikers continued the call to shut down all arms factories.

The factories targeted were BAE Systems in Samlesbury, near Preston, Leonardo in Edinburgh and Rafael in Newcastle. Groups from across the UK joined, travelling hours at a time to support the blockades.

Police used force against protesters in Lancashire, manhandling them off the entrances and violently moving people along. In Edinburgh, despite their best efforts, police could not break the human barricade of the protesters. See footage from Edinburgh here.

Arms dealers' bunfight interrupted

On 27 January in London, swarms of campaigners targeted a luxury dinner attended by a number of arms dealers, leading to arrests of protesters. A focus on arms manufacturers has significantly increased as the last two and a half years have exposed the UK's deep military relationship with Israel, including surveillance flights and monitoring that have been exposed by Declassified.

A statement from the BAE OUT Campaign (@baeoutcampaign) group said:

We have been regularly blockading the BAE Systems Samlesbury site for the past two years with over fifty activists at a time. The reason we do this is because of parts being made in this factory that are used on the F-35 fighter jet, the deadliest fighter jet known to mankind, used in Gaza and beyond.

The genocide is starting at our doorstep and we refuse to allow this to happen, this is why we are creating a full scale campaign to expose the arms industry for what it truly is, a merchant of death.

We know this is impacting them because we see the disproportionate police response as well as the workers themselves telling us it is causing a delay in production. Doing this on a regular basis means supply and production is being severely affected.

Featured image

By The Canary

Reform Party joke Lee Anderson is showing once again how little he actually knows. Fresh from campaigning in the wrong place, 30p decided to try attacking disabled people.

30p Lee Anderson talking out of his arse again

Except he, of course, hasn't got a fucking clue what he's talking about. During the weekly Department of Work and Pensions oral questions, he asked:

Could one of the Ministers please explain to me and the people of Ashfield why the UK has one of the highest rates of disability in Europe?

This warranted a slightly baffled response from the minister for disabled people, Stephen Timms

I am not sure which figures the honourable Gentleman is drawing attention to.

That's because, as usual, Anderson was talking utter fucking waffle.

UK doesn't have highest rate of disabled people

In the UK, roughly 25% of people self-identify as disabled. It's thought the figure could actually be higher, as this is taken from census data and not everyone will be happy calling themselves disabled. The last census was also in 2021.

This might seem high, but there are many countries that have higher rates of disability.

According to Eurostat, Latvia has the highest rate, with 41.2% of its citizens being disabled. This is followed by Finland at 34.3%, then Slovakia with 33.3%. In fact, the UK isn't even one of the top ten European countries with the highest rate of disabled citizens.

We're not in this chart because thanks to arseholes like Anderson, we're no longer in the EU. But at a rough estimate, we're about 14th.

Maybe he meant benefits? Still wrong though

Anderson could've perhaps been talking about the countries with the highest rates of disability benefits. We must point out here, the most 'reliable' source for this according to Google is a mobility furniture shop's blog. But let's be honest, there's no way Anderson did more than a quick Google browse here, if that.

According to Oak Tree Mobility, the UK has the 6th highest disability benefits. If you actually look at it this is due to the extra things disabled people are entitled to. However those other things are attached to Universal Credit, our main disability benefit PIP. It's done what Reform also loves to do and conflate the two.

And let's not forget that not all disabled people are on benefits. Only 33% of disabled people in the UK get PIP.

Regardless of this, far more countries have higher benefits. Our rates are nowhere near the likes of Switzerland. Swiss disabled people get around £7,149.55 in benefits each month. This also completely disproves the rhetoric from many politicians that our "generous" benefits system incentivises claimants. Despite this stonking amount, just 14.6% of disabled people in the country are on benefits.

Trusting AI instead of his limited brain power?

Best guess is that Lee has Googled something like "amount of disability by country in Europe". When I did the same, Google's AI gave me the wonky overview:

Disability Assessment and Social Protection - European …Approximately 21.7% of the UK population lives with a disability, the highest in Europe, with over 14.6 million people affected, yet with a relatively low average monthly allowance of £679.90.

You literally just have to continue reading the 'overview' to get the truth, though:

Latvia (41.2%), Finland (34.9%), and Slovakia (33.3%) report the highest shares of citizens with disabilities. Overall, roughly 20% of the EU population (16+) reports some form of limitation.

Lee Anderson doesn't care if it's true

Let's be honest, Anderson doesn't give a fuck if the UK does have the highest rates of disability or benefits in Europe. What matters to all right-wing politicians is that the public believes it. They're going to keep feeding the narrative that disabled people are all faking it to sit on their arses all day and laugh at hardworking taxpayers.

Because that way the public ignores that fact that politicians and the millionaires who fund them sit on their arses laughing at taxpayers all day

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip has warned of serious and unprecedented indicators affecting the health of mothers and newborns, amid the ongoing fallout from the war and the collapse of the health system.

The ministry confirmed that the impact of the aggression continues, even after the cessation of military operations.

Babies born underweight in Gaza

According to official data published by the Ministry of Health and reviewed by the Canary, approximately 4,900 babies were born underweight during the past period. This represents a 60% increase compared to the pre-war period. The data also recorded nearly 4,000 cases of premature birth and around 5,000 miscarriages, indicating a sharp deterioration in health and nutrition conditions for pregnant women.

The ministry warned that these figures may not reflect the true scale of the crisis. It said the actual numbers are likely far higher, as many women cannot access healthcare due to destruction, displacement, and the lack of medical services. Officials also documented 611 cases of intrauterine deaths, a 47% increase compared to 2022. There were 315 recorded cases of birth defects, up 58%, and 452 newborn deaths during the first week of life in 2025.

The ministry confirmed that the health repercussions of the war are ongoing. Primary healthcare clinics continue to report rising cases of miscarriage, premature birth, and intrauterine death, despite the halt in fighting.

Meningitis scare in the South

In a related warning, the ministry revealed that cases of spinal fever — meningitis — have been recorded in southern Gaza. It cautioned that the disease could spread to northern Gaza due to deteriorating health conditions. It explained that meningitis spreads rapidly in crowded environments. Repeated displacement and forced population movement mean any outbreak poses a direct threat across the entire Strip.

The ministry stressed that Gaza's health system is in a catastrophic state. Hospitals and medical facilities are unable to cope with a potential epidemic due to depleted resources and severe shortages of staff, supplies, and medicines.

It warned that the lack of basic medical supplies, laboratory tests, and treatments for meningitis could cause the disease to spiral out of control. The situation must be treated as an urgent health emergency requiring immediate intervention and the unrestricted entry of medical supplies.

Featured image via Doctors Without Borders 

By Alaa Shamali

The Canary has heard from a group of journalists in Portugal. Their magazine, VISÃO, went bankrupt but they've revived it as an independent production. Now they're taking the campaign for independent media global, with the slogan #NãoFechemOsOlhos which means Don't Close Your Eyes:

The 12 journalists of VISÃO speak out

The magazine went bankrupt, salaries disappeared, and the newsroom was left without resources. Even so, the 12 journalists of VISÃO kept working. They produced the magazine, joined forces to try to buy the title itself, raising €200,000 in 10 days, and turned the crisis into a manifesto in defense of serious and independent journalism, at a time marked by the spread of fake news.

For 32 years, VISÃO has reached newsstands every week, known for its in-depth reporting and serious journalism. Last year, the group to which it belonged was unable to overcome the challenges of editorial changes and filed for bankruptcy, even though it is the best-selling title in the country.

From the newsroom, only 12 brave journalists remained. With unpaid salaries and no physical newsroom, they decided to keep publishing the magazine from their homes, using their own resources — resisting like soldiers in an improvised trench. So far, they've produced 25 issues under extremely difficult conditions. And there is more. They want to win this war by buying the title and continuing to print it. Although the magazine has a website with some articles, VISÃO still relies mainly on its print edition and newsstand sales.

In an era dominated by fake news, clickbait, AI texts, and a political landscape in which democracy faces real risks, the fight of these 12 journalists has taken on a much greater meaning.

From a gesture, a movement is born

Under the slogan #DontCloseYourEyes, the movement began with a simple gesture: closing the eyes of the 12 journalists in images published in the magazine and on social media. This symbol helped open the eyes of hundreds of public figures - from music, culture, politicians - and crossed borders, gaining support from names such as Brazilian writer and comedian Gregório Duvivier and Spanish journalist Pilar del Río.

The goal of raising a substantial amount through crowdfunding in order to bid at auction and buy VISÃO led to an unprecedented result: in just 10 days, the initial target of €200,000 was reached - and exceeded.

This outcome confirms something that had already been felt: even in a country facing economic difficulties and a political moment that puts democracy at risk, there are still people who believe in and support serious journalism and a free press.

In fact, many do. According to the Digital News Report Obercom / Reuters Institute 2024/25, Portugal is among the European countries with the highest levels of trust in news. But this fight is only just beginning.

For democracy and against fake news

The #DontCloseYourEyes movement has come to symbolize a struggle that goes beyond journalism itself. Portugal's political landscape has shifted in recent times, and for the second time in its democratic history (after forty years) there will be a second round in the presidential elections. A democratic candidate and a far-right candidate who follows the same Trumpist and Bolsonarist playbook are in the running.

Only 52 years after the Revolução dos Cravos and the end of dictatorship in Portugal, democracy is once again at risk. And if there is no democracy without a free press, the fight of these 12 journalists takes on even greater urgency when private investors threaten to enter the auction to buy the magazine simply to shut it down.

Buying the title and becoming the country's first independent print media outlet has become more than a movement, it is an act of resistance.

More than 12, we are MIL (Movement for a Free Press)

The #DontCloseYourEyes campaign needs more eyes open around the world. Quite simply, it needs greater strength to secure priority in the purchase and prevent a magazine with decades of investigative journalism from falling into the wrong hands.

Mainly because we need more people and more journalists to join forces in defense of democracy, a free press, and, above all, the right to quality, nonpartisan information that all citizens should have access to.

Closing your eyes is easy. Keeping them open when everything around you demands surrender is the hard part. If journalism closes its eyes, the whole world is left in the dark. For democratic values and independent journalism - now more threatened than ever - VISÃO invites everyone to join the Movement for a free press, using the most powerful weapon we have: information.

The 12 journalists of VISÃO are:

Rui Tavares Guedes, Margarida Davim, Alexandra Correia, Filipe Luís, Rosa Ruela, Plácido Junior, Clara Cardoso, José Barros Moura, Rui Antunes, João Carlos Mendes, Sónia Calheiros, Lucília Monteiro.

#DontCloseYourEyes

Featured image via VISÃO

By The Canary

Gaza's children were suffering from trauma symptoms such as depression, grief, and fear long before October 2023. They'd had 15 years of life under Israeli blockade, siege, and repeated military attacks.

But now, after Israel destroyed 90% of schools, 94% of healthcare and 92% of residential buildings, the mental health crisis is far worse. UNICEF has stated that:

all children in the Gaza Strip are in need of mental health support.

Gaza: innovation through necessity

In central Gaza, mental health professionals are responding with an innovative approach: virtual reality therapy. Through headsets, traumatised children are transported from their harsh realities to experience peaceful islands, woodland walks and calming natural environments. This is imagery that can initiate the healing process, especially when other treatments have failed.

Most children arrive at the makeshift therapy tents excited for this temporary escape. But the therapists themselves carry the double burden of treating others' trauma while navigating their own.

Abdallah Abu Shamla, mental health programme manager at TechMed, has lost his brother, his home, friends and colleagues to Israeli assault. Despite this - and while studying for his master's degree in psychology through online classes - he finds hope and purpose in facilitating healing for others. He says:

The war has stripped away much of what defined my life. My brother was killed, leaving a void that no words can fill. Friends and colleagues, once my companions in building hope, are gone. My home, the place where I once welcomed patients and family, lies in ruins.

In Gaza, grief is shared across families, neighbourhoods and generations. Trauma is not an exception, it is the atmosphere we breathe.

How trauma healing through a headset works

Abu Shamla is one of five mental health therapists working for TechMed. It's a Palestinian-run organisation founded by software engineer Mosab Emad Ali in April 2024 after his son was severely injured in an airstrike.

In partnership with The Sameer Project, TechMed has treated over 450 cases since October 2025, providing psychotherapy, physiotherapy and speech therapy for individuals, mainly children. Abu Shamla and his team see 10-15 cases daily.

Over a patchy internet connection, Abu Shamla described a recent case of a 15-year-old girl suffering post traumatic stress disorder after her father was killed in an airstrike and she suffered a serious leg injury.

This young person was debilitated by anger, depression, insomnia, and social withdrawal. Abu Shamla explains:

Across six sessions of talk therapy, physiotherapy and virtual reality lasting 45-60 minutes, she was able to sleep better, be more social, reconnect to her mother, talk about her father and understand loss and death.

Given the extreme levels of trauma children have been exposed to - family members killed, their homes destroyed, repeated displacement, and dire humanitarian conditions - therapists are seeing children with psychosomatic symptoms, social withdrawal, speech difficulties, and other presentations of trauma.

The virtual imagery isn't just a brief escape, it provides a vital channel for children to talk (often when previously too traumatised to speak), process emotions, calm their nervous systems and learn self-regulation through grounding techniques. Abu Shamla continues:

We have six tools, each with different imagery, for mental health and one for physical therapy. The speech therapists use the headsets too.

One of the tools teaches patients how to breathe in a better way and talk about their traumatic incidents.

Abu Shamla and his team achieve these outcomes working from two tents, one no more than a few metres square. Lack of space means no privacy for patients and limits movement for those wearing the headset during sessions.

These constraints reflect the continuing challenges across Gaza. Despite a so-called ceasefire in October 2025, Palestinians still face desperate shortages of shelter, food and safety as Israel continues blocking aid and medical supplies.

This month, the occupying power suspended the operating licences of 37 international aid organisations, including Doctors Without Borders, leaving millions without essential aid and healthcare.

Healing while surviving their own trauma

The role of therapists and doctors is not just urgent but profoundly challenging. By mid-2025, over 1500 healthcare workers had been killed and hundreds detained and tortured. As Abu Shamla says:

As a psychotherapist, I am trained to hold space for others' pain. But here, I am both witness and participant.

I sit with patients who describe the same explosions I heard, the same funerals I attended. My professional role does not shield me from trauma - it deepens my responsibility.

Abu Shamla's story is far from unique:

Thousands of therapists, doctors and caregivers in Gaza carry the same double burden of loss and responsibility. We continue because we must.

For these healthcare professionals, their roles and personal identities have become inseparable. Abu Shamla explains:

My losses shape my work, and my work gives meaning to my losses.

Through TechMed, we are proving that even in the harshest conditions, innovation and compassion can coexist.

VR therapy does not erase trauma, but it creates a fragile sanctuary - a reminder that joy and agency are still possible.

Healing as resistance

In Gaza, trauma therapy is both an act of defiance against persistent death and a way to rebuild the human spirit when everything else has been shattered. Abu Shamla adds:

I continue to believe in the necessity of therapy, because healing - even in fragments - is an act of resistance against despair.

As our call ended, I learned that Abu Shamla would be attending his uncle's funeral later that day. A sharp reminder that when the VR headset comes off, the reality of trauma continues.

Images via AFP

By Yanar Alkayat

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted to the Metropolitan Police has revealed the staggering costs of the recent mass-arrests of activists voicing their support of Palestine Action.

Palestine Action was the first non-violent direct action organisation ever to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government. As such, showing support for the group could carry a 14-year prison sentence.

However, rather than being cowed into submission, Palestine Action supporters have continued to turn up to protests in their hundreds. The resulting mass arrests under the Terrorism Act have, predictably, put massive strain on the UK police forces.

Now, thanks to an FOI submitted to the Canary by an anonymous source, we know exactly how much the ban is costing. That is to say, enforcing the Palestine Action ban has cost £12m, in the Greater London area alone, over the course of just three months.

Palestine Action protests: month-by-month breakdown

So, let's break that down, shall we? The FOI response from the Met covered September-November 2025. It provided details on arrest numbers, costs, and resourcing issues solely for policing 'Palestine-Israel protests'.

In September alone, the Met spent just under £3.8m policing the protests. That included 4,247 shifts for police officers purely focusing on the protests, along with 755 'mutual aid' shifts.

That is to say, the Met had to borrow hundreds of officers from other precincts to patrol Palestine protests. These 'mutual aid' powers are only meant to be used in anticipation of a major incident. Oh, and those extra shifts cost nearly £610,000 for the month alone.

Then, in October, the Met shelled out well over £4m to show up at the Palestine protests in force. That included just shy of 4000 regular officer shifts, and 1418 extra mutual aid shifts.

Likewise, November's expenses were similarly astronomical, with 5,558 regular shifts and 246 mutual aid shifts. These added up to a total cost of over £4m for the second month running.

1441 arrests for terrorism offences

Beyond those raw figures, the FoI data become even more telling.

Over those three months, the Met made 1441 arrests arrests under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act - i.e. supporting a proscribed organisation.

Often, the Section 13 arrests targeted pensioners and disabled people holding up placards reading:

I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.

At the time of the FOI, 510 of the arrests were subject to a Postal Charge Requisition. That is to say that the arrestees were charged via letter, rather than at a police station. In total, 45 of the offences were under Section 14 of the Public Order act - likely for failing to observe movement restrictions imposed on a protest.

For comparison, the Met made just 124 other arrests at protests between September and November. Of these, just 25 resulted in actual charges at the time of the FoI request.

From this, we can draw two conclusions. First, the costs of enforcing the Palestine Action ban are eye-wateringly high for the police. Second, if you're given to the belief that police actually do anything useful, it's also diverting thousands of officers from their actual jobs to arrest non-violent protesters.

'Emotionally and physically exhausted'

Police themselves seem divided on whether they agree with the proscription of Palestine Action. However, both camps seem united in the belief that they are utterly overwhelmed trying to enforce the ban.

Deputy assistant commissioner Claire Smart, who led a policing operation against a September protest focusing on Palestine Action's proscription, stated that:

The tactics deployed by supporters of Palestine Action in their attempt to overwhelm the justice system, as well as the level of violence seen in the crowd, required significant resource which took officers out of neighbourhoods to the detriment of the Londoners who rely on them.

Similarly, Metropolitan Police federation chair Paula Dodds stated in October that:

There aren't enough of us. Hard-working police officers are continually having days off cancelled, working longer shifts and being moved from other areas to facilitate these protests.

Our concentration should be on keeping people safe at a time when the country is on heightened alert from a terrorist attack. We are emotionally and physically exhausted.

Meanwhile, even some police officers have admitted to being disgusted at what the government is calling on them to do. One anonymous officer told Novara: 

I was told to help in the arrest of a disabled person for holding up the sign stating they opposed genocide and supported Palestine Action, which I did.

I did it knowing it had nothing to do with upholding justice or our professional values, just to protect my job and livelihood. My father was an officer, and the reason I came into the police. I know he would be ashamed and turning in his grave if he saw what I did.

Is this the best use of our money?

We know, we know, poor cops. However, it's abundantly clear - from both the officers' own reports and the information contained within the FOI - that the UK justice system is utterly overwhelmed.

We'll leave aside, for the moment, all question of whether the ban on Palestine Action is righteous, justified, or -for instance - a symptom of deepening authoritarianism from a Labour government that crossed the line so long ago it's a mere speck on the horizon. All of that's a matter for the philosophers and the courts.

From a purely practical standpoint, the UK cannot afford to enforce this ban. The police already cannot cope. The Met alone spent £12m arresting pensioners holding placards. The courts were underwater even before they were flooded with thousands of extra 'terrorism' charges.

Surely, as a society, there's something better we could be spending this time and money on?

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

The government is set to force veterinary practices to publish their treatment prices, allowing pet owners to shop around for the best prices.

This comes after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that the veterinary market was costing households up to £1bn over five years. An estimated 60% of UK households have pets, totalling around 17m. In 2024 alone, pet owners spent £6.3bn on veterinary and related services.

However, currently, 84% of vet practice websites publish no pricing information at all. It also found that vet fees have risen at nearly twice the rate of inflation, which is why the government has now decided to take action.

Industry insiders have claimed the huge price increases are due to big companies buying up smaller companies en masse. The government claims the changes will:

make the system clearer, fairer and more transparent for owners - while supporting veterinary professionals alike.

The reforms are the first in the sector in 60 years.

Vets - significant price differences

Currently, most vets do not publish their prices, and there can be significant price differences between practices. For example, the CMA found that the cost of a simple procedure, such as neutering a dog, can range from £120 to £700.

Another common procedure for dogs - surgery for cruciate ligament disease - can cost up to £5,000 or more.

This means owners are often caught off guard and forced to pay extortionate prices for treatment. But of course, by the time they find out the prices, their pet has already received treatment. This means it's too late to opt out. 

Many pet owners are facing hard choices. Some are having to put pets down or take out huge loans to cover the cost of life-saving treatment.

Some of the specific measures mentioned by the CMA in October included capping the cost of prescriptions at £16, requiring prices in writing for any treatment over £500, and the price breakdown for pet care plans. It also proposed a price comparison website, similar to those for home or car insurance.

More control for owners

The changes will give owners more control. However, it is also expected that, in addition to giving customers a choice, vets will be forced to lower their prices over time to compete with other practices.

Additionally, every vet practice will need an official operating license, as GP practices and care homes do.

Currently, non-vets own 60% of UK vet practices. Under the new proposals, veterinary practices will have to disclose who owns them so pet owners know whether it is local or part of a big chain.

The British Veterinary Association, which represents 19,000 members, said that it broadly supports the proposals. However, they were:

very unlikely to dramatically alter the cost of veterinary care.

Vets have been robbing pet owners for years. Because let's face it - why wouldn't we pay to keep the animals we love alive? They can charge what they like and get away with it - so it's about time the government holds them to account.

Featured image via HG

By HG

The British military is no stranger to sexual abuse scandals. It is an institution which seems incapable of protecting its own people from internal predators and abusers. In the last week, two more scandals have emerged.

One case saw two instructors from a British Army training camp in Yorkshire jailed. The second case is about claims that up to 500 people were sexually abused during military medical examinations.

Two instructors from the Catterick infantry training camp were jailed for sexually abusing a teenage recruit. On 23 January, a military court heard how Lance Sergeant Antony Pugh and Sergeant Connor Forgan bragged in messages about "sexual relations with the trainee".

The BBC reported:

Both had denied a charge of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust but were convicted by a court martial board following a trial last year.

Pugh was jailed for 20 months, while Forgan received a 16-month sentence and both were dismissed from the Army. They were also placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years.

British military: disgraceful, indecent, misogynistic

The judge presiding over the case was withering in her comments:

Any communications were expected to be professional but you both engaged in unprofessional communication which quickly turned sexual.

She said they discussed the recruit, a "17-year-old child", in a "disgraceful, indecent and misogynistic manner".

Power imbalance is exacerbated within the services, and service personnel are taught to follow the orders of those senior to them.

As instructors you were well aware of where the line was, and you both willingly stepped over that line for your own sexual interests.

The other scandal involves historical allegations.

Widespread sexual abuse

Wiltshire police launched an investigation into military sexual abuse during medicals in October 2025.

Detectives specifically want anyone who may have experienced criminal, inappropriate or unusual behaviour during Army enlistment medical examinations to contact them.

The police may not have expect the sheer scale of the response. On 23 January 2026, the BBC reported:

The force said it has since been contacted by people who reported incidents from the 1970s up to 2016 at locations across the UK and the investigation, named Operation Pianora, has now been widened to include both the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

Detective superintendent Darren Hannant of Wiltshire police said:

The number of people who have contacted us highlights the seriousness of the abuse being reported, my team and I are committed to engaging with each survivor and witness.

Those who serve, or seek to serve, our country deserve to be treated with dignity and respect at every stage. I urge anyone with information to come forward - you will be listened to and supported.

The investigation continues.

Jaysley Beck reforms?

Teenage soldier Jaysley Beck killed herself in December 2021. Beck was sexual harassed and assaulted by more senior soldiers. She was later branded a troublemaker for complaining. And she was pressured to accept an apology letter from her assailant.

The army gave Beck's attacker a mere six months in jail. And even that was only after a long legal battle by Beck's lawyers and family. The Beck case became very high-profile. The army was to partly to blame, a coroner ruled.

The Centre for Military Justice (CMJ) said the inquest revealed a wider pattern of abuse:

Other young women at the Inquest gave evidence more widely of the vile and degrading comments and behaviours of males from equivalent and higher ranks that they had to put up with - treatment that left them humiliated, despondent, scared and angry.

The government said in February 2025, :

The Army has accepted the failings identified by the Service Inquiry and responded to the recommendations to improve Service life across its culture, policies, and practices.

Despite this - and despite the public outrage - sexual abuse is still happening in the military. People forget sometimes: the military is an employer. And most people would also accept that workers should have basic protections from abuse by their bosses. Yet for all its noise, the military seems to be incapable of guaranteeing even these. It's long past time for serious change.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

During the Prisoners for Palestine hunger strike, many Western media outlets maintained that this was the first significant prison hunger strike since the IRA hunger strike in 1980-1981.

Parallels between the two hunger strikes certainly exist. Two liberation struggles against British colonialism, in Ireland and Israel, confronted settler colonial violence and genocide. And, these hunger strikes were also a protest against the carceral prison system itself.

Hunger strike history: here's what's being missed

Whilst mainstream media may not pay attention, there are significant hunger strikes and protests inside UK immigration removal centres (IRCs) against the same violence that the Prisoners for Palestine actionists are protesting against. We are fast approaching the 8th anniversary of the 2018 Yarl's Wood Hunger strike, where from 21 February to 20 March, 120 women detained inside, launched a hunger strike to protest "unfair imprisonment and racist abuse." Their list of demands included calls for:

• an end to indefinite detention,
• the Home Office to respect Article 8 of the European European Convention of Human Rights regarding refugees and asylum seekers,
• an end to chartered flights,
• a stop to detaining vulnerable people,
• and a stop to detainees working for as little as £1 an hour.

As punishment, several of the hunger strikers in Yarl's Wood were kept in solitary confinement. Other hunger strikers were removed from the UK for participating. The hunger strike came at a pivotal time of emboldened border violence as a result of the hostile environment policy.

In the aftermath of the Yarl's Wood hunger strike, the Home Office reported in 2019 that there had been over 3000 hunger strikers in IRC facilities since 2015. In fact, campaigners suggested that the actual number of hunger strikers was likely much higher.

Given the fact that the UK is the only country in Europe where there is no statutory time limit to immigration detention, it is no wonder that detained migrants have turned to hunger striking to protest their inhumane treatment.

Courting the far-right

Now, in 2026 Keir Starmer routinely competes with the far-right Reform party as to who can be more vicious to migrants and asylum seekers. Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, drew applause from Tommy Robinson in November for restoring "control and order to our borders". This was after she outlined plans to prevent refugees from having the right to live permanently in the UK by removing refugees once the Home Office deems their country safe to reside in.

We can see the far-right turn on immigration with the return of military barracks in Scotland and East Sussex to house asylum seekers as a tactic the Home Office believes will dissuade further asylum in the UK.

Then we come to the "one in, one out" plan to remove those asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats back to France. In November, asylum seekers launched a hunger strike to protest being removed to France, calling attention to the criminalisation of this policy on asylum seekers.

On Wednesday, 14 January 2026, over 100 asylum seekers detained at Harmondsworth near Heathrow airport and Brook House near Gatwick airport launched a coordinated peaceful protest against being removed to France on flights scheduled for the next day.

Some detainees feared that once in France, smugglers would threaten them, while other detainees feared European Union law would make it easier for them to be moved to another EU country and ultimately to their country of origin, where they may face death.

Their peaceful protest was met with the strong arm of state violence. In the early morning of Thursday, 15 January, as reported in the Guardian, an asylum seeker who participated in the protest said:

They brought special forces for us, they used [teargas], they took us by force inside rooms, they took the ones who have tickets by force. We are in pain; our eyes and bodies are burning.

Rise in racism

Given the onslaught of rabid xenophobia and racism, it can not be seen as a mistake when the UK media ignores years of migrant hunger strikes in resistance to growing carceral immigration policy.

The harmful effects of this immigration policy are extending to British citizens, where a joint study by Reprieve and the Runnymede Trust found that 9 million people could lose their British citizenship because they may qualify for citizenship through their parents.

This has contributed to growing concerns around the normalisation of citizenship stripping, particularly for minoritised British citizens. We must not forget that politicians routinely weaponise immigration status when it comes to migrants advocating for Palestine, whether here in the UK, US, or Germany.

Umer Khalid, one of the Prisoners for Palestine strikers, has now ended his hunger strike after doctors warned he was on the cusp of death. Mainstream media has done its level best, along with the government, to ignore the protests of the hunger strikers. However, as the above demonstrates, there is a long and storied history of institutions ignoring hunger strikes.

The past and present hunger strikes are an important part of tactics towards liberation that must not be ignored.

Featured image from video screengrab via the Guardian

By Sanaz Raji

UK fascists are trying to paint the upcoming Manchester by-election as a battle between Reform and Muslims, via Zack Polanski's Green Party. But far-right hate-monger and bigot Katie Hopkins has gone even further, sending out a dog whistle to anyone who hates Jewish and gay people too.

Zack Polanski rises above it

Green Party leader Zack Polanski rose above her bullshit. And he used the opportunity to highlight the media's role in Hopkins gaining such a prominent platform:

Whether it's the UK, or the US, The Apprentice has a lot to answer for… https://t.co/2WqEUj61D7

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) January 27, 2026

 

Hopkins had previously suggested the Greens were "the Muslim Party in camo gear", and essentially framed the Gorton and Denton by-election as a battle between 'Reform and Muslims'. You'll notice she conveniently failed to mention the Christian, Jewish, or other religious (and non-religious) support the Greens will likely attract in the election.

Hopkin's comments fit neatly into the far right's racist dog-whistle about Muslim people, whom fascists try to demonise despite evidence suggesting extreme violence is less likely from people with a "well-established religious identity".

Fascist Katie Hopkins calls the Green Party "the Muslim Party in camo gear" and essentially suggests that the Gorton and Denton by-election will be 'Reform vs Muslims' pic.twitter.com/biOY2VAyZE

— Ed Sykes (@OsoSabioUK) January 28, 2026

Corporate stooge, "Temu Enoch Powell", and Labour Friends of Israel vice-chair Mike Tapp, meanwhile, has suggested "dodgy" Polanski is trying to "hypnotise" people in Gorton and Denton. And Tommy Robinson has been whining about "the beginning of the end" that a "Green/Islamic alliance" could represent. Rattled, fascists?

Media helped Katie Hopkins spread her violence-inciting hatred

Hopkins is no peace lover herself, though. She once suggested a "final solution" was necessary, for example. And she dehumanised migrants as "cockroaches" while calling for "gunships" to deal with them.

She is also the 'woman of the people' who went to a private school, had "intelligence corps" sponsorship for her degree, and has openly shown consistent disrespect for:

• Working-class people
• Women
• Disabled people
• Fat people
• Full-time mums
• Ginger people
• People with tattoos

And the list goes on. The elitist hate and contempt for pretty much everyone who isn't a fascist just oozes out of her.

No wonder she has called herself the "female Farage".

But as Polanski pointed out, one of the most shameful things is that the mainstream media has given her such a big platform to spread her misanthropy. Because like millionaire Thatcherite and current Reform leader Nigel Farage, Hopkins has played the media machine effectively.

Via reality TV shows like the Apprentice, I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, and Celebrity Big Brother, Hopkins boosted her profile with an early version of today's 'rage-baiting' money machine.

The right fears unity

It's not just fascists who are trying to rally people with dogwhistles around the Gorton and Denton by-election. The right-wing Labour government is also bricking it. Because a Green victory could spell the end for the rubbish about needing to mimic Reform, and possibly the beginning of the end for Labour itself: