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Politics

Reform council accused of banning displays for Refugee Week and for Pride month

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reform

reform

The Reform-led council in St Helens has instructed all local libraries to take down displays promoting or funding anything relating to Pride or Refugee Week.

This Orwellian – and bigoted – move comes just as Refugee Week is set to commence, between the 15th and 21st June, and shuts down the long-seen practice of libraries highlighting resources which increase understanding and compassion towards marginalised communities.

At the same time, the council have afforded £200k of taxpayers’ money to pay a consultant to ‘educate’ elected Reform councillors on the inner workings of the council over four years. This follows a comment made by a newly elected Reform councillor, George Woodward, in their first council meeting that they are:

enthusiastic but politically inexperienced.

Nevertheless, many newly elected councillors begin their terms with gaps in knowledge around policy and procedure, which is why councils already employ paid officers to support and advise them. However, Reform councillors are more than happy for lofty taxpayer funding for specialist political education delivered by consultants of their choosing, while simultaneously imposing cruel cuts to funding for community libraries.

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Reform bigotry

This now-deleted post by St Helen’s Reform Councillor Mal Webster states it is a decision based in equality, because equality is of course the pretense that other groups just don’t exist.

Once again, white supremacy and bigotry is on full display by Reform UK.

Reform ;no longer support performative celebrations’

The Canary has seen an anonymous report from a library worker in St Helens who has spoken out saying “most if not all staff are horrified by this and we don’t have any outlet to disagree or speak out”.

Stating they are a ‘concerned member of the community’, they told us:

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I don’t want my name used because I will lose my job. But I want people to know that Library management has told staff not to support Pride Month or Refugee week. I personally had to take down my Refugee Week display and Pride book display. This has not come from Reform, the libraries, which are supposed to represent the community, are covering themselves to cozy up with the new administration.

All Libraries in St Helens have been told not to support Pride Month or Refugee Week

Quote from Management – “We’re not recognizing Pride as a particular event this year”

Actions taken –

The calendar is being updated to remove references to Pride. Any leaflets mentioning Pride or Rainbow events “need to be pulled” and not distributed.

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Rebranding Events: Events originally advertised as “Pride” or “Rainbow” events are being rebranded as “creative crafts.”

“Pride book displays are to be removed.”

Quote from Management – “The council’s position is that they’re not supporting Refugee Week this year.”

Actions taken

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Removing Displays: Staff have been instructed to “bring down” Refugee Week exhibitions.

Modifying Educational Content: The “empathy school visits” has been updated specifically to “remove” references to Refugee Week.

We have since learned that the Reform council leader and cabinet directed this decision, with Newton-le-Willows Library issuing an “official response” stating that:

The council will not be involved in promoting or funding both Pride and Refugee Week.

Reform Council restrict promotion or funding for Pride or Refugee Week

Now with a clear need to replace the displays with something else, they’ve decided that Christmas comes twice this year – of course, this can’t possibly be called a performative display for one group, can it?

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Money for “sympathetic” policy advisers, but not for inclusive libraries

Subsequently, the Reform council has stated its decision is about ensuring public money is not used for what it describes as “performative celebrations of one group”. However, the fact remains that it has seen fit to pay a consultant £50k a year on a four-year contract to inform Reform’s newly elected councillors, despite the council already having paid council officers who are more than able to inform on council policy and process for all who require it.

Therefore, it seems Reform is more than happy for taxpayer funds to go to the ‘performative’ benefit of one group, so long as it’s ‘theirs’. As a result, their far-right agenda becomes ever clearer, as they decide that it is not in the public interest for local people to have resources to help them understand and empathise with refugees and fellow citizens in their local LGBTQ+ community.

Once again, Reform show they want to restrict access to factual information that doesn’t suit their political narrative – because it goes directly against their gross, bigoted and ego-driven political motivations to divide our communities and increase hate in our towns and cities.

Since the council imposed the policy this week, local residents have been deeply unhappy with this development, with many across St Helen’s contacting their local libraries for answers and some going down to their library to see the ‘lack’ of displays for themselves.

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We also tried to contact a number of local libraries in St Helens, but they would not confirm or deny whether they have taken down their displays. Instead, they directed us to speak to Reform Councillor Long for information regarding this cruel, anti-humanitarian ban.

Only one group matters to Reform – white supremacists

This disgusting policy decision, which in turn will leave communities without the educational resources to better understand issues surrounding refugees and our own LGBTQ+ community, is indicative of Reform UK’s commitment to white supremacy.

Their own leader Nigel Farage has done little to hide his disdain for marginalised people, as he recently sought to use the tragic death of Henry Nowak to whip up “pure cold rage” amongst fellow racists. Subsequently, we saw white riots in Southampton, which terrorised local residents.

Now, Reform is making clear that they want to leave communities in the dark and withhold vital resources which could help to bring down barriers, decrease fear, and increase understanding towards embattled people in the UK.

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Where this will lead in St Helens awaits to be seen. But nothing good ever comes from fear, and education is the only way we can counter ignorance.

Reform is now actively taking that education away from our communities.

Featured image via Getty/Bruno Vincent

By Maddison Wheeldon

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Politics

Visa chaos frustrates soccer fans

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Visa chaos frustrates soccer fans

BRUSSELS — A growing number of soccer supporters say chaotic visa procedures are keeping them from attending World Cup matches in the United States.

One Belgian-Moroccan soccer fan, who was granted anonymity to discuss the issue without fear of repercussions, told POLITICO he thought he had secured tickets to Saturday’s Morocco vs. Brazil match through FIFA’s lottery system, booked flights to New York and applied for entry to the U.S.

That’s when things began to go wrong.

The fan, who had previously traveled with an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) — the online authorization system used by travelers from countries that don’t need visas for short visits to the U.S. — said his application was approved on May 27, but abruptly revoked one week later.

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“There was nothing mentioned except for travel not authorized,” he said. “That’s the whole frustrating situation — the opacity of the whole thing.”

His attempts to apply for a non-immigrant visa were fruitless. Ahead of the World Cup, the State Department launched an expedited process for some fans seeking visas to attend matches in the U.S., but the Belgian-Moroccan national said he was never able to access it because an initial appointment platform failed to register his payments.

That, in turn, made it impossible to book the mandatory interview at the U.S. Embassy in Brussels required before requesting an expedited appointment. He added that calls to the embassy went unanswered because they were automatically forwarded to an inactive Belgian number.

Other World Cup attendees have reported similar problems. Scottish musician Kenny Smith said his ESTA was revoked despite recent travel to the United States. Meanwhile, Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan was recently denied entry to the country despite being selected to officiate at the tournament.

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FIFA President Gianni Infantino on Wednesday acknowledged that the special World Cup visa system was “not working always, and with everyone.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended visa denials Thursday, citing security concerns.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security declined to say if dual nationals were more likely to have their applications revoked, but said ESTA applications are continuously vetted and approval “does not guarantee admission” to the U.S.

For the Belgian-Moroccan fan missing Saturday’s match, the visa ordeal undermined the point of the tournament. “The whole experience of a World Cup is intended to bring people together,” he said. “Now actually being rejected for no reason, it actually has the opposite effect.”

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Can free speech survive Britain’s mass-migration experiment?

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Can free speech survive Britain’s mass-migration experiment?

spiked is funded by readers like you. Only 0.1% of regular readers currently support us. If just 1% did, we could grow our team and step up the fight for free speech and democracy.

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Belfast pogroms show loyalism is ideal vanguard of a future brownshirt Britain

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Belfast

Belfast

By now, there has been extensive coverage of the fact that the Belfast pogroms took place almost entirely in loyalist areas. This should surprise no one. Loyalism has always been an exclusivist ideology, predicated on the notion that one population deserves to dominate another that is dismissed as less deserving. Historically of course, this viewpoint dictated that Protestants must be allowed to lord it over Catholics.

However, violent sectarianism has largely faded in the north of Ireland, following 1998’s Good Friday Agreement. Instead, loyalism has now applied to immigrants, people of colour and Muslims the bigoted mindset it incubated over centuries.

It’s hard to dominate another group of people without justifying it in some way. Humans, like many other mammals, have an in-built notion of fairness. Seeing others get less without good cause cannot be easily sustained psychologically. Hence many Protestants developed prejudices giving grounds for their superior position. Catholics were said to be lazy, feckless and practicing a heretical religious doctrine.

Belfast loyalists pivot from sectarianism to racism

Years of indulging in this act of self-deceit have easily enabled the switch to applying new fictions to new target populations. Muslims are heathens, satanic even. Immigrants have sparked an unprecedented crime wave, never mind evidence to the contrary. Even children aren’t safe in playgrounds from sinister foreign men.

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Combined with this capacity for a supremacist mentality has been the means for exercising the violence necessary to make dominance concrete. In prior decades, it has meant loyalists carrying out ethnic cleansing of Catholics. This was most notable in the 1920s, during the birth pangs of what became known as ‘Northern Ireland’. Loyalist mobs burned Catholics out of their homes, murdered others, and caused an estimated 23,000 to flee. So-called ‘Rotten Prods’ — Protestant trade unionists who stood alongside Catholics in workplaces — were also killed.

Another outbreak of barbarism occurred in 1969, when again loyalist thugs chased large numbers of Catholic families out of their homes, deploying widespread arson again. Belfast politicians have described how the loyalist pogroms of this week mirror those previous horrors. During the ‘Troubles’, loyalist paramilitaries carried out 713 sectarian murders of Catholics.

In its capacity to inspire reactionaries, loyalism is similar to its bedfellow, Zionism. The latter is a racist doctrine of Jewish supremacy that has always permitted extreme violence against the indigenous Palestinian population that stands in the way of their ethnostate.

As it has now reached the inevitable exterminationist phase of its trajectory, it has been celebrated by chauvinists the world over looking to subjugate their own troublesome populations. ‘Israeli’ and Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) flags can be found in loyalist areas across the north of Ireland. Loyalist politicians wined and dined by the terror regime of Tel Aviv came back singing its praises.

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The longstanding links between loyalism and the British far-right

The twin primary sicknesses of these ideologies — a deeply inculcated supremacist mentality, and the willingness to use violence to suppress those deemed inferior — have obvious appeal to far-right actors everywhere. There have long been links between loyalist thugs and like-minded British neo-Nazis.

The Ulster Defence Association was known to have links to the vile racists of Combat 18. One of the latter’s founders, Eddie Whicker, helped arm the murderous loyalist terror gang. Combat 18 members were present at the notorious loyalist disorder at Drumcree.

Daniel Grundle (also known as Daniel Douglas) is the leader of current racist group Our Northern Ireland Voice. He described his founding of the group as a “calling”. Grundle reminisced about how in the 1980s his uncle Jimmy Grundle helped set up a version of Britain’s National Front in the north of Ireland.

The links extend to this day. Before Ben Habib’s recent decision to dissolve it, far-right agitator Richard Inman operated as a link between the racist Advance UK and the north of Ireland. Inman obviously thought so highly of the embedded bigotry within loyalism, that he made the Six Counties his permanent base. From there, he has lauded the Islamophobic hate displays of Concerned Parents Newtownabbey and spoken at far-right rallies.

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Others, such as former Ulster Volunteer Force member Mark Sinclair and ex-Democratic Unionist Party councillor William Walker have linked up with their ideological peers at far-right rallies. Areas of Scotland still have strong loyalist elements, and they have clearly been inspired by the ethnic cleansing in Belfast. Racists there engaged in copycat crimes against people of colour.

Racist politicians embrace street violence

It isn’t just street thugs who seem enthused by loyalist violence. Those looking to take over the British state have been content to carry on stirring up emotions, even as houses burn. Reform’s Zia Yusuf screeched that:

Some cultures are MUCH better than others.

Restore Britain’s official account vomited out:

Restore Britain will reverse the third-worldification of our country.

Farage obviously delights in the prospect of reactionary rioting. In the wake of the Henry Novak murder, Farage exacerbated an already febrile atmosphere by calling for “pure cold rage“. Neither Nigel Farage nor Yusuf of Reform have used their X accounts to offer any condemnation of the Belfast violence. Likewise the even more vile Rupert Lowe of Restore Britain.

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Reform have made no secret of their intent to hurtle towards authoritarianism if they occupy 10 Downing Street. Owen Jones recently enumerated their plans in this regard. As he points out, Farage has spoken of his intent to bring in a:

…British version of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US deportation force that seizes migrants from homes, workplaces and the streets.

Under Reform:

The government would be granted direct powers over the police and would attack the independence of the judiciary, dressed up as a war on “activist judges”.

The parallels with the fascists of the 1930s are clear. The likes of Mussolini and Hitler used street thugs to help them seize power, then implemented an authoritarian state.

Street violence has many useful traits for budding despots. It makes the state look weak, as it struggles to handle the chaos. Far-right parties project an image of strength, and proclaim they will restore order.

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It can be a tool for intimidating left-wing activists. Additionally, rioting thugs can be integrated into the state’s own security forces once power has been seized.

Belfast — A return to the fascism of the 1930s

The left’s best analysts, like Yanis Varoufakis, have long been warning that we are heading for a repeat of that uniquely dark era. Racist riots and mass mobilisations are becoming increasingly common in Britain, and authoritarian policies are already being implemented by British prime minister Keir Starmer.

Reform are happy to let other street thugs pick up the baton handed to them by loyalists. Once in power, they’ll gleefully receive another gift from Labour. By that point, it’ll be too late, and Britain will pay devastating consequences for inviting its own particular variant of loyalism into government.

Featured image via Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

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Iran war may be ending but humiliated Trump could hit Cuba next

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Cuba

Cuba

The disastrous Iran war may be ending. But a humiliated US may look to Cuba as the next victim with Trump’s crony Marco Rubio applying heavier sanctions. The Americans have been making their aggressive intentions clear for months.

US outlet The Hill reported on 11 June that the US State Department:

announced that it will sanction Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET) amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and the island country.

At the centre of the move was Trump’s Cuban-American henchman and secretary of state Marco Rubio. Rubio said:

the latest sanctions are pursuant of President Trump’s May 1 executive order expanding sanctions on government officials, agents “or material supporters of the Cuban government,”.

The sanctions concern Cuba’s oil and gas company Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET).

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Defence secretary Pete Hegseth was at the US military colony Guantanamo Bay on 10 June. As the Canary reported, Hegseth:

told a captive audience of American soldiers that Cuba had better not try and get long-range weapons. The US has been ramping up threats against the island state.

Rubio accused the Cuban government of:

diverting its energy resources “to line their own pockets: reselling countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoarding energy supplies for its military, intelligence and repressive forces, and rationing energy as a tool of social control.”

Which is a bit rich coming from an openly far-right government committed to denying its citizens even basic healthcare while spending billions on a failed war in Iran.

An Iran deal could mean US move on Cuba

Meanwhile, a Pakistan-brokered deal to end the US attack on Iran looks close. Al Jazeera reported on 12 June that Pakistan’s PM Shehbaz Sharif had said:

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Pakistan is now working closely with both sides to finalize the next steps. Peace has never been this close as it is now.

As the Canary has reported, the US was looking to bring the Americas to heel before it blundered into the Iran war.

Trump’s 2025 national security strategy said as much. The US wants to ensure:

the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States.

And that those pliable governments:

cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations.

Trump and his cronies want:

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a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains.

Cuba is the closest dissenting nation to the US in the Americas. And for Trump’s generation it is an unresolved problem. He would return to it to the status of a mafia-run US vassal state. It will be a happy day when the war against Iran ends. But a humiliated US empire is still a dangerous beast. And the people of Cuba may be the first to feel Trump’s post-Iran wrath.

Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By Joe Glenton

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It's hot. Maybe too hot.

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It's hot. Maybe too hot.

High-stakes geopolitics aren’t the only external factor threatening to hijack the tournament.

Perhaps ironically for a competition hosted by a U.S. president who is highly skeptical about climate change and says assertions about rising temperatures have been made “by stupid people,” the heat is very likely to be a problem.

Heat waves have become a persistent part of Northern Hemisphere summers — each one made hotter, longer and more likely to occur as a result of man-made global warming. The locations of several stadiums across the U.S. and Mexico, as well as the peak-summer timing of the World Cup, are expected to put players and fans at risk of overheating.

The problem isn’t just heat, but also humidity. The combination of the two feels far hotter and is measured with wet-bulb temperature, which mimics how the human body cools off through sweating. A wet-bulb temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit can be fatal even to healthy people; the football players’ union FIFPRO says wet-bulb temperatures above 79 degrees — which can be reached through a combination of 86-degree heat and 50 percent humidity, for example — will affect performance and health, and 82-degree heat should prompt the postponement of a match.

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When scientists last month ran the numbers, they found that 26 of 104 matches are expected to take place in conditions of at least 79-degree wet-bulb temperature. Five matches are estimated to breach the 82-degree wet-bulb barrier. And a peer-reviewed study found that during last year’s FIFA Club World Cup in the U.S., average wet-bulb temperature exceeded 82 degrees in 31 of 57 matches analyzed by scientists.

That study also found that high temperatures were associated with players covering less ground, forcing a change of tactics. Exhaustion sets in faster under high temperatures — at the Club World Cup, 10 players asked to be substituted in a single match. But heat doesn’t just affect gameplay. At the 2024 Copa America, an assistant referee collapsed in the heat and, last month, two people died during sports events held amid a heat wave in France.

As climate change continues to heat the planet, FIFA will have to grapple with the growing threat at every subsequent tournament. The 2030 men’s World Cup in Spain, Portugal and Morocco takes place in a global warming hotspot. The women’s World Cup next year will be in Brazil during a warming El Niño event, expected to supercharge the heating effect of climate change.

And that’s not even counting the other growing climate risks — from wildfire smoke to extreme rain — that threaten to disrupt future events.

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UK election interference: new details of BlackCore Israeli influence operation emerge

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BlackCore

BlackCore

An Israeli influence operation named BlackCore allegedly sought to undermine left-wing politicians and shape elections in the UK and US. The Canary previously reported on a joint French/Israeli media investigation into the shadowy outfit. BlackCore is also accused of setting up a bogus Palestine charity.

Now a French domestic security agency is investigating too. Israeli newspaper Haaretz and French outlet Libération reported on 11 June:

Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France’s local elections in March, is also ‌suspected of meddling in elections in New York City and Scotland, and operating in Angola and Togo, the head of France’s disinformation ⁠detection service Viginum said on Thursday.

In a second article covering another aspect of BlackCore’s operations, also published on 11 June, claimed:

A network of fake fitness coaches, Vietnamese bots, Facebook ads aimed at Brits – and a bogus ‘humanitarian fund’ for Gaza. A Haaretz and Libération investigation exposes a digital operation whose infrastructure leads back to BlackCore, the Israeli influence firm under investigation in France.

Various Israeli influence operations have come to light in recent months. One looks at how the Israeli military shapes media reporting of the Gaza genocide. Another examines leaked documents about a military-run course for English and Hebrew speaking influencers.

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The fact Israel runs complex influence operations is well-known. Press reporting on the granular details is less common.

Election interference by Israel

Russia and China are often charged with election interference in the west. There’s no doubt both countries run influence operations just like the UK and US. But the new Haaretz report sheds light on how Israel runs its own.

The new report:

analyzed BlackCore’s digital footprint, uncovered a toolkit of influence-operation systems routed through servers in Britain, Germany, Finland and Lithuania.

Closest to home is the allegation that Israel tried to shape Scottish elections. French security agency Viginum claims:

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France’s cybersecurity agency has accused the Israeli tech company BlackCore of interfering in the Scottish elections earlier this year by targeting the first minister, John Swinney.

The disinformation detection agency Viginum said BlackCore had this year used proxy social media accounts to target Swinney, the Scottish National Party, and the Scottish government on four occasions.

Viginum’s head of ‘digital interference’ Sébastien Lecornu said:

This modus operandi was not limited to municipal elections in France. It also appears to have ⁠been used to carry out foreign digital interference operations in other countries or regions, such as Angola, Togo, the elections in Scotland, and the 2025 municipal election in New York.

It was previously reported that BlackCore targeted left-wing candidates in Marseille and Toulouse elections.

Brillant added:

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Our investigations did not make it possible to identify the sponsor or sponsors, if indeed they exist, behind this foreign digital interference.

BlackCore — Fake Palestinian charity?!

The other part of the Haaretz report verges on the bizarre. It centres on an allegedly fake charity named Sadaqah Palestine, which:

presented itself as a non-governmental, non-political nonprofit helping Palestinian families, children and refugees affected by displacement, poverty and war.

The ‘charity’ had:

a website with a credit card donation form and maintained social media accounts on X, Instagram and Facebook, and even had a paid advertising budget on Meta’s platforms.

However:

it did not have… any verifiable existence. No organization by that name appears in the U.K. charity register, nor in similar U.S., EU and Israeli records offline. Its social media following, our analysis found, was largely manufactured, including seemingly fake accounts.

The charity’s digital footprint leads back to BlackCore, which has been described as:

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[an] Israeli “elite influence, cyber and technology” firm.

Researchers described the site as:

a honeypot: a decoy built to attract people who wanted to help – in this case, by aiding Palestinians – and to take donors’ money, their personal data or both.

The cynicism involved is hard to fathom:

The page pitched the fund against the backdrop of the collapse of official humanitarian aid in Gaza, noting that as USAID and UNRWA halted most of their operations, ordinary donors had to step in.

And:

It declares its location as Palestine; X’s own metadata places it in the United Kingdom. In its 13 years of existence, the account has never once “liked” anything.

Followers were also fake: a mix of US-based ‘fitness’ accounts and Vietnamese bots. Researchers traced the page to BlackCore via:

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Digital certificates – the public, immutable record created every time a website obtains an encryption authorization.

You can read the full reports on the charity and the election interference here and here. They offer a rare glimpse inside an alleged Israeli influence operation. This is notable of itself. The fact one aspect of this operation was to exploit public goodwill over Palestine is especially grotesque.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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Alternative World Cup rankings

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Alternative World Cup rankings

Congratulations to Sweden on winning this year’s World Cup … and also to France, Qatar, Uruguay, Norway, New Zealand and Switzerland for the same thing.

No, POLITICO hasn’t been engaging in match fixing, but we have been crunching the numbers to see how all 48 of this year’s World Cup participants rank in several other categories, and the countries mentioned above all did well. There are 10 EU countries taking part.

First of all, we took each country’s FIFA ranking from the world soccer governing body. In April, France was the number one country in the world, with Spain second and Argentina third, all the way down to New Zealand, which was the 85th-ranked country in the world and therefore the lowest-ranked team in the tournament.

Then, we looked at all 48 countries to see how they ranked in terms of five other categories, staring with gross domestic product per person, according to World Bank data for 2024 (the last year for which data is available).

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Stay tuned for more data visualizations today and tomorrow.

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Watch: Bosnia fans chant for Palestine before match vs Canada

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Bosnia

Bosnia

Bosnia fans have gathered to chant their support for Palestine before their team’s match against Canada today, 12 June 2026.

Bosnia — Genocide collusion

To Canada’s shame, its government has colluded in Israel’s genocide just like that of the UK and most other western states. The Bosnian fans are on the right side of history:

The match finished 1-1, but only one nation won where it matters.

Featured image via Michael Steele/Getty Images

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Thunberg speaks out against EU’s deportation bill before Parliament vote

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Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg took to social media to condemn the EU-wide deportation plan, calling on citizens to rally against it.

The European government and institutions are pushing through a law which the far right celebrated as the start of the era of deportations, she said.

European Parliament is planning to vote on it next week, the activist said on Friday, slamming efforts to pass the law “quietly and quickly.” She slammed European politicians for fueling wars and climate catastrophes and then unleashing detention on people who flee from them.

The EU’s controversial deportation bill is heading for a crucial vote next week, as far-right parties and the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) have joined forces, with the bill expected to be passed on June 17.

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She called on European citizens to:

Refuse outsourced prisons, refuse far-right policy, refuse a Europe governed by fear. Call your MP, write to your government, tag your ministers in the comments, and let them know that this won’t keep us safe. We keep us safe.

Greta Thunberg — European ICE

Greta Thunberg said Europe had been taking notes from the USA’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Private security companies, detention contractors, surveillance firms, and deportation airline owners will benefit from the new law if enacted, she warned, saying:

Public money is being directed away from housing, school, and healthcare as powerful politicians cut deals with wealthy CEOs, turning deportation into an ever expanding industry.

According to the EU Observer, the bill seeks to make it possible for EU member states to create so-called “return hubs” in foreign countries,  facilities reserved for individuals whose asylum claims have been rejected, who have been ordered to leave Europe, and who cannot return to their home countries for a variety of reasons.

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This isn’t happening just in the EU. Reform UK has completely embraced the ICE model.

Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, unveiled plans for a “UK Deportation Command” earlier this year.

Yusuf is currently in the USA, cosying up to the far-right Heritage Foundation, where they drink together from the same elixir of hating migrants.

Thunberg is right: only we can save ourselves. And the threat is Yusuf, the Heritage Foundation, and Europe’s far-right and all their ilk.

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Featured image via Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images

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Elon Musk is a threat to democracy, and now also a trillionaire (same thing, really)

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk

Elon Musk has been all over the headlines today, 12 June, as he tips over the threshold to become the world’s first trillionaire. And inevitably, Musk is a walking, talking argument against the existence of such wealth — which he uses to oppose democracy and amplify the far-right around the world.

The real-life Bond villain (thanks, Financial Times) owes his latest windfall to SpaceX. The company, of which Musk is the majority shareholder, makes its initial public offering at a value of around $1.8tn.

Of course, once any individual’s personal wealth enters the billions — never mind the trillions — it becomes largely hypothetical. We, humanity that is, just aren’t made to comprehend that kind of amount. NBC tried to visualise the total:

A stack of $100 bills worth $1 million stands just over 3 feet tall. Scale that up to $1 billion, and the stack is over half a mile high. At $1 trillion, however, the stack reaches a staggering 679 miles in height, nearly 11 times the distance from Earth’s surface to the edge of outer space.

Elon Musk — Buying up democracy

Personally, we at the Canary still find it difficult to picture that kind of thing. We’re activists and journalists — we work in concepts. Fortunately, there’s a ready example in those terms, too. $1tn will buy you, more or less, one global democracy, or a sizeable chunk of it at the very least.

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Back in January, Oxfam released research highlighting that billionaire wealth had reached its highest level in history, breaching $18.3t (trillion) globally. Inevitably, that wealth also brings vast political power. In fact, compared to the average citizen, billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office.

Elon Musk already tried his hand as a fascist politician — after a buy-in donation of over $250m to the Republican Party in 2024. Under Donald Trump, he became the unelected co-chair of ‘DOGE’ (the Department of Government Efficiency).

Of course, the department did absolutely nothing to alter the USA’s national debt, which actually spiked in 2025. However, Musk’s wild slashes to the USAid budget caused a conservative initial estimate of 750,000 deaths around the world. Likewise, that’s not even mentioning the 300,000 federal employees he left out of a job.

All that in the mere 10 months of DOGE’s tragic existence.

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Amplifying the fash on Twitter

However, even outside of direct political office, Musk — seen here sniffing around for a party invite from convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein — has still proven himself perfectly capable of buying political influence and stifling democracy.

Actually, scratch that, ‘capable’ is the wrong word — $1tn just makes up for an awful lot of incompetence.

After seemingly accidentally backing himself into a corner and being forced to purchase Twitter for $44bn, Musk gained massive power over (what was once) one of the world’s more popular social media platforms. Over and over again, he’s used that power to amplify far-right voices and talking points.

Since the ill-fated Twitter purchase, far-right accounts have seen a boom on the site. As NBC News found in 2024:

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at least 150 paid “Premium” subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of X’s rules.

In several cases, the Nazi accounts gained traction because of Musk’s active help. He personally retweeted several prominent ‘race science’ adherents. Mother Jones described him as:

spreading misinformation about racial minorities’ intelligence and physiology to his audience of 176.3 million followers.

Oh, on that note, a quick aside. Musk — pictured here giving a Nazi salute at a far-right political rally — has argued it should be criminal to describe “non-violent” people as Nazis or fascists. Oh, and the same goes for telling people to hate America.

So much for Musk’s famed ‘free speech absolutism‘ (except when he’s defending his AI bot generating child sexual abuse imagery).

Attacks on UK democracy

One of Musk’s favoured pet fascists is Rupert Lowe, founder of the extreme-right Restore UK. Since launching Restore back in February, ten of Lowe’s X posts have received over 10-million views. This, in turn, has caused massive issues for Reform UK, as it faces pressure from the even-further-right.

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Another key beneficiary of Musk’s algorithmic patronage is Tommy Robinson, one of the organisers behind the white-supremacist ‘Unite the Kingdom’ (UtK) rally. The white-supremacist agitator/all-round scumbag has openly admitted that Musk previously covered his legal costs.

Likewise, Musk addressed the 2025 UtK rally via video link. He called for “a change of government in Britain” along with a:

dissolution of Parliament and a new vote held.

The Financial Times counted more than 100 of Musk’s social media posts attacking British multiculturalism. More recently, he exploited the tragic murder of Henry Nowak to foment the riots in response. Likewise, he also amplified Robinson’s dogwhistle calls to riot in Belfast earlier this week.

In response, Green Party leader Zack Polanski stated that:

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This man is a threat to our democracy. He backs violence and extremism.

Blaming a group of people for the awful actions of an individual leads us to a very dark place.

Musk, Lowe, Farage, Robinson – these men don’t give a shit about this country, they want to rip us apart.

In our deeply broken system, money is power. A billion, let alone a trillion, gives an individual the power to buy things that should never have been for sale. Musk is a living demonstration of the fact that no reasonable society should permit the existence of such obscene wealth.

Featured image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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By Alex/Rose Cocker

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