Conservatives and fascists got two absolute spankings last night. First, their man lost in the Gorton and Denton by-election. Then an activist graffitied Churchill’s statue in Whitehall — and not for the first time. That’s a tough 24hrs for people who think they’re living in the movie Zulu because they once saw an Asian person in Big Asda.

Here’s the Canary’s news report on the incident.

You can see the ‘damage’ — I mean, it does just wash off — below:

⚡️Churchill statue in London defaced with “Zionist war criminal” graffiti pic.twitter.com/SlCkWCAGUs

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 27, 2026

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Poor Winston got called a ‘Zionist war criminal’. Another part of the graffiti said ‘stop the genocide’. Thing is… Churchill was a proud Zionist and a key architect of several British imperial genocides. So while it is a bit naughty to spray that stuff on his statue… what was said isn’t technically inaccurate. The graffiti also said ‘free Palestine’, which doubtless added to the right-wing meltdown.

Met Police said a man was arrested at the scene at 4am on 27 February. It’s striking that he was detained for “racially aggravated criminal damage”:

Overnight, the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square was graffitied with red paint.

Officers were on scene within two minutes of being alerted shortly after 4am.

A 38-yr-old man is in custody having been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage.

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— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) February 27, 2026

Proud Zionist

Churchill was a racist, Zionist and imperialist to his core. In fact to be fair to him he never said he wasn’t. He held these views proudly and loudly. The only people who have an issue with this basic fact are his weird cultists. Who, perversely, are often also racists.

Left-wing writer Tariq Ali wrote a (bloody good) book about the cult of Churchill and the reality of the man’s views. He told Current Affairs in May 2022:

He was a supporter of the Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco. He supported Franco like Hitler and Mussolini did in the Spanish Civil War.

Churchill was also “a terribly open admirer” of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini:

He said, what a great role Mussolini was playing in Italy. [“I could not help being charmed by his gentle, simple bearing,” Churchill said of Mussolini.

Then we have the 1943 Bengal famine, which may have killed 3mn people. A British-manufactured horror which:

Churchill refused, explicitly, to intervene to stop that famine.

And don’t forget Churchill’s 1944 crushing of the Greek resistance in favour of fascism:

the order given to the British commander, who the resistance had allowed to enter Athens, that if the resistance doesn’t do as we say, treat Athens as a colonial city. And the bloodbath that occurred in Greece as General Scobie tried to crush the Greek resistance.

Churchill’s views, as you can imagine, on Palestine flow quite naturally from these.

Churchill and Israel

Churchill, like so many imperialists in his day and ours, was both a supporter of Zionism AND an antisemite.

He supported the Balfour Declaration (the colonialist Middle East carve-up which helped get us where we are today) as British colonial secretary:

 I am in full sympathy with the historical traditional aspirations of the Jews.

And said:

Jerusalem must be the only ultimate goal. When it will be achieved it is vain to prophesy; but that it will some day be achieved is one of the few certainties of the future.

Yet he wrote in 1940 that Jews

have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer.

And that:

there are times when one feels instinctively that all this is only another manifestation of the difference, the separateness of the Jew.

Of the Palestinians and their claim on their homeland, he had absolute contempt:

I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time.

He also denied that:

a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the Black people of Australia.

Churchill said such people had just been replaced with “a higher grade race.”

Nice bloke…

Now vandalising public monuments these days is going to get you in trouble — whether the politics are agreeable or not. In this case it seems to have been Dutch pro-Palestine activists. But if we’re talking about the graffiti itself, the claims made aren’t inaccurate. So maybe it’s time butthurt Churchill fans stop pretending and own their hero’s legacy as a racist and bigot.

Featured image via the Canary

Fighting on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has intensified. One Pakistani minister has described it as a state of “open war”. And Pakistan has hit the Afghan capital Kabul with airstrikes.

Afghan forces launched attacks across the British-created Durand line on 26 February. And Pakistan has called the Taliban regime — which replaced the US-led occupation in 2021 — illegitimate and accused it of harbouring militants.

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on 27 February:

Afghan soil is not being used; but, the Afghan Taliban regime is fully aligned with these terrorists and is completely backing these terrorists.

Al Jazeera reported on 27 February:

Pakistan launched air strikes on Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, as well as on Kandahar and Paktia, early on Friday. The attacks targeted Taliban military installations as Islamabad declared “open war” on the group’s government, in the most serious military confrontation between the two neighbours in years.

One Kabul resident described her terror:

Then we heard gunfire. When we looked out of our apartment window, we saw bullet-like flames going up in the sky.

Al Jazeera said the airstrikes:

came hours after Afghan forces launched coordinated cross-border attacks on Pakistani military positions in six border provinces late on Thursday. Kabul claimed 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed and 19 outposts captured.

Border war

Border fighting broke out in October 2025. A subsequent Turkey and Qatar-brokered ceasefire has now broken down.

The origins of the fighting are complicated. Ahram Online reported:

Islamabad argues that the authorities in Kabul, led by the Taliban, have failed to curb the activities of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, a separate but ideologically aligned group that has intensified attacks inside Pakistan since 2021.

The Taliban deny this is the case. Kabul-based political analyst Obaidullah Baheer said:

Pakistan claimed that it was doing that in response to TTP attacks based on the bogus claim that the Taliban are supporting the TTP, an insurgent group operating within Pakistan.

Drop Site News posted a timeline of the breakdown in diplomatic relations since January 2026:

Lead-up: January – Mid-February 2026 

▪️Early January: Pakistan warns that Afghanistan is becoming a hub for foreign militants.

▪️February 6: A suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Islamabad kills 31–36 worshippers. The attack is claimed by ISKP, but Pakistan blames the Afghan…

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— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 27, 2026

The Pakistan has also banned personal drones after Afghan forces used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in their attack:

The ban is effective nationwide immediately and will remain in place until further directives are issued. All provincial governments and chief secretaries have been asked to ensure strict enforcement of the directive.

Vast US arsenal

A vast arsenal of US military equipment and weaponry was left behind in 2021. Those weapons are now fuelling the war. As the Canary reported on 4 February:

those weapons have flooded neighbouring Pakistan

The Foundation for Economic Education broke down some of the numbers involved. They said the giant arsenal included:

includes up to 22,174 Humvee vehicles, nearly 1,000 armored vehicles, 64,363 machine guns, and 42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs.

There were mind-boggling amounts of small arms — and even artillery:

the list of allegedly abandoned weaponry includes up to 358,530 assault rifles, 126,295 pistols, and nearly 200 artillery units.

CNN reported that the border region holds vast quantities of copper and other minerals and metals which the US craves:

Pakistan says there is much more wealth beneath its soil –– an estimated $8 trillion in copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, antimony and other critical minerals.

This reality has:

oiled an unlikely friendship with US President Donald Trump, who has put mineral acquisition at the heart of US foreign policy

Pakistan and Afghanistan’s colonial underpinnings

The colonial nature of the conflict zone can’t be ignored either. National Geographic describes the Durand Line as:

part of a long history of colonizing countries establishing borders that serve their own political purposes while ignoring the cultures and ethnicities of the people living there.

As Ahram Online explained:

The roots of the crisis trace back to 1893, when British diplomat Sir Mortimer Durand signed an agreement with Afghan ruler Abdur Rahman Khan to demarcate a frontier between British India and Afghanistan. That line split Pashtun tribal lands between two political entities.

After independence in 1947, Pakistan:

inherited the Durand Line as an international boundary under the principle of state succession. Successive Afghan governments, however, avoided formally recognizing it as a permanent border. The dispute has simmered for decades, occasionally flaring but rarely disappearing.

The neighbours view the border very differently:

Pakistan views the border as legally settled and central to its territorial integrity. Afghanistan’s position has historically been more ambiguous, shaped by ethnic ties, nationalist sentiment, and resistance to what many Afghans see as a colonial imposition.

This explosive combination of competing territorial visions and competition for vast mineral resources is compounded by colonial history and the presence on both sides of the border of vast arsenals of lost American weapons. And ordinary people of the region aren’t without agency, yet to some degree they remain hostage to imperialisms both old and new.

Featured image via the Canary

Israel’s Gaza genocide and constant demands for money and military support have caused its popularity to nosedive among US citizens. A new Gallup poll shows a dramatic about-turn in the colony’s standing across the board, especially among Democrats and unaligned voters, but reaching even to the Republican party.

The change is even more dramatic considering how stubbornly Americans held onto their support for Israel through decades of its abuses and slaughter of Palestinians. Almost two and a half years of ongoing genocide have finally shifted things in a healthier direction and the change has Israel and its lobby flailing.

Before 7 October 2023, more than half of Americans favoured Israel over Palestine, while less than a third felt the opposite. Now, 41% say their sympathies are with the Palestinians and support for Israel is barely over a third:

US support for Israel plummets

The fall has been accelerating. In May 2025, Gallup found that support for Israel among Americans was 46%, a figure that was already significantly down. Since then, Israel has lost almost a quarter of the support it still had at that point.

However, Gallup’s data show that the change was already underway before the 7 October 2023 raid into southern Israel, though it accelerated markedly after that. This is almost certainly indicative of the US right’s growing dissatisfaction with what it perceives as an “Israel first” approach of US government and many politicians. Even the late right-wing icon Charlie Kirk had disavowed his support for the colony and rejected its money before he was publicly murdered in September 2025, though the Israel lobby moved quickly to try to hide it after his death.

The fall has been sharpest among registered supporters of the US Democratic party. Ten years ago, half of Democrats supported Israel; now, that has fallen to just 17%:

In a sane world, or even a genuine democracy, such a shift in support would have a profound effect on US foreign policy. That the US continues to pursue war on Israel’s behalf — with Democrat lawmakers scarcely less supportive than Republicans — shows just how diseased, bought and corrupted US politics is under the Israel lobby, like its counterpart in the UK.

Featured image via the author

The Charity Commission has found what it described as “mismanagement” by the misnamed ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ (CAA) for political activities at odds with its status as a ‘charity’. The CAA claims to combat antisemitism, but is in fact an Israel-funded lobby group that specialises in “defaming Palestine solidarity campaigners.”

CAA has been under scrutiny since September 2024, when it attacked as “obscene” the Starmer government for daring to make even a phantom reduction in arms licences to Israel. A further complaint was lodged with the Commission by human rights group CAGE in 2025. CAGE describes CAA, along with its fellow lobby group ‘UK Lawyers for Israel,’ as “Britain’s apartheid lobby” for their vexatious attacks on support for the Palestinian people against occupation, oppression and genocide.

However, the Commission’s announcement falls far short of the appropriate step of stripping a political lobbying group of its charitable status. This is hardly surprising: the Commission has been investigating CAA since at least 2018 without effective action.

Campaign Against Antisemitism guilty of mismanagement

The Charity Commission criticised CAA’s ‘failure’ to retain records relating to its 2024 political attack as “mismanagement”, said it had doubts that CAA’s statement “furthered the charity’s [supposed] objectives” and said it had issued the CAA with a “remedial Action Plan”. This treats CAA as if its conduct were merely shoddy and in need of improvement, rather than in line with its real, Israel-supporting goals — even though the Commission admitted it had received other complaints about its behaviour.

The Commission views failing to retain records relating to this decision making as mismanagement in the administration of this charity.

Further complaints have also been raised about CAA’s attack on the UK’s judicial system because a jury had dared to declare the Starmer regime’s ‘terror’ ban on anti-genocide group Palestine Action unlawful. CAA has boasted of its role in securing the ban.

CAA boss Gideon Falter is one of the central figures in the Israel lobby’s attacks on the Labour left during the Corbyn era. In 2024, as hundreds of thousands protested peacefully against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, he tried to claim that police had prevented him from ‘crossing a road’ because of the threat posed by a ‘hateful’ anti-genocide march. In fact, he had turned up with a security detail — not to ‘cross’ the road but to try to barge through the demo in the opposite direction.

Jewish anti-genocide group JVL lodged a 2020 complaint that CAA is a “highly politically partisan organisation which does not deserve charitable status”. JVL welcomed the Commission’s action against CAA as “not before time”. However, in reality it amounts to nothing more than a light slap on the wrist for one of the Israel lobby’s worst offenders. It evidences once again how spineless UK institutions are against the genocide lobby.

Featured image via the Canary

War criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has fled and flown to Greece – like he did in last year’s ’12-day war’ – as retaliatory Iranian missiles batter Israel.

What else would the butcher of Gaza, Netanyahu, do but display his wide yellow streak, turn tail and run – leaving ‘his’ country and its occupying population to burn behind him.

Genocidal Netanyahu is a coward

And how it showed. While Netanyahu ran away, Iran’s missiles skipped past Israel’s defences as easily as they did in June 2025 and wrought havoc. There were scenes of utter panic at Israeli ports and shelters:

This is not even Iran’s full response yet. Whereas last year it used swarms of drones and missiles to overwhelm Israel’s defences, now it apparently needed just thirty:

🇮🇷🇮🇱Israel Army Radio: Nearly 30 missiles were used in the latest attack; this is the largest and most organized attack by Iran since this morning‼️ pic.twitter.com/RIrApw9rpl

— Dr.Sam Youssef Ph.D.,M.Sc.,DPT. (@drhossamsamy65) February 28, 2026

US news station NBC broadcast one major strike:

A Mossad-run call centre was hit, according to not yet confirmed reports:

🚨🇮🇷 BREAKING

Iranian missiles have struck Israel’s Mossad-run call centers employing Indian workers near the Al Jumeirah Hotel in Dubai.

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These call centers were reportedly responsible for large-scale scams targeting Americans and Europeans. pic.twitter.com/LvBITWKK2C

— Zard si Gana (@ZardSi) February 28, 2026

Israeli TV was broadcasting live as a missile struck:

Footage showed other missiles breaching Israel’s ‘dome’:

Iranian missiles hitting central Israel just now. pic.twitter.com/Q1VU2khQQT

— Irves (@Irves_Watch) February 28, 2026

Some of the missiles, though not all, were ballistic – though not yet apparently Iran’s most effective hypersonic types:

🚨⚡️BREAKING: Missile alerts are sounding across Israel as footage emerges appearing to show multiple ballistic missiles launched earlier from inside Iran pic.twitter.com/uWRCk7aS4Z

— Segun (@segungideon10) February 28, 2026

Israeli propaganda account ‘Stand With Us’ has just reported ‘red’ warnings across Israel, showing the scale of danger and panic:

And new footage posted by an ABN News producer shows that the attack continues to intensify:

Another footage of interceptors launched from Patriot air defence batteries defending Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base against Iranian missiles.

One interceptor missile appears to have failed.#Qatar #Iran #Israel
pic.twitter.com/dmawZ4fDfh

— Syed Askar Ali Shah (@syedaskar451) February 28, 2026

Locally-shot footage showed devastation where the missiles struck:

The coward Netanyahu and his colony love to bomb and murder children and the defenceless. They run away when a victim can strike back.

Featured image via the Canary

Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock

Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock

Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock

…and darts icon Luke Littler and his long-term girlfriend Faith Millar

The man himself then opened the show properly with a performance of Aperture, complete with a lot of hand-ography and bum-wiggling

Oh, and he also delivered this jibe at the expense of the BBC

…and they were similarly quick to censor an introduction by Angry Ginge, to (he was jokingly calling London a ‘shithole’ if you’re interested)

Jack Whitehall then told us we were about to have ‘our minds blown by the incomparable Rosalía’ and he was absolutely not wrong

The sound was pulled once again after Geese musician Max Bassin declared ‘free Palestine, fuck ICE’ during his International Group Of The Year speech

Jack Whitehall’s exchange with Shaun Ryder and Bez started off chaotic and only ventured into increasingly surreal territory

Rosalía’s special night just kept getting better as she was crowned International Artist Of The Year, beating some seriously stiff competition including Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Bad Bunny, Bruno Mars, Sabrina Carpenter and Lady Gaga

The night’s top winner Olivia Dean was visibly elated to pick up the Brits’ top honour, Album Of The Year

In maybe the only good news of the year so far, Iranian ballistic missiles have struck both Tel Aviv – including Mossad HQ – causing major damage.

JUST IN: 🇮🇱🇮🇷 Major damage in Tel Aviv, Israel following Iranian ballistic missile strike.

pic.twitter.com/lrwGkGxb84

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) February 28, 2026

Mossad HQ and Israeli military intelligence HQ in Tel Aviv hit by Iran.

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) February 28, 2026

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Of course, white Jewish Israelis will be running to their cosy little bomb shelters. Meanwhile, as we have seen previously, the illegal settlers exclude minorities.

Nothing to see here.

Just Israelis hiding in bunkers. Dancing and cheering as bombs rain on schoolgirls in Iran.

And as American soldiers are sent to die for Israel’s war.

CNN and BBC won’t show you this.pic.twitter.com/ZpXv2ImU3T

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— sarah (@sahouraxo) February 28, 2026

And Netanyahu? The dickhead responsible for the chaos across the entirety of the Middle East flew out of Tel Aviv quicker than Donald Trump can post to Truth Social when new Epstein files drop.

🇮🇱✈️ Netanyahu’s plane just left Israel. Circled for hours. Now over Greece.

The man who started the war. Who promised victory. Who declared Khamenei dead.

Now flying away while his country burns.

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They’ll call it a trip. They’ll call it strategy. They’ll call it anything… pic.twitter.com/89OtANR4qF

— New Direction AFRICA (@Its_ereko) February 28, 2026

IsNOTrael is getting a taste of its own medicine.

BOOM BOOM #Telaviv, please #Iran make them feel what they have done to #Gaza https://t.co/8HXtdxInnV

— kandang puyang (@KandangPuyang) February 28, 2026

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If you play with fire you can get burned. God save the Middle East. https://t.co/UX9uspqsyr

— Neil Nevim (@NeilNevim) February 28, 2026

And I’m guessing all media broadcasts will be banned from Israel in 3, 2, 1…

Tel Aviv is in tatters right now. Israelis are banned by military order from filming the damage (one of their many democratic values).

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) February 28, 2026

Israel is finally getting an iota of what it deserves for murdering thousands of Palestinians.

Netanyahu and Trump bomb civilian areas, killing children in the process, and then run, hide or party. They give zero fucks about the lives they are taking.

Anyone who has chosen to stay in Israel after watching Netanyahu and his terrorist government wage war on Palestinians for the last two and a half years needs to give their head a shake. And quite frankly, I have zero sympathy that they now have bombs falling on them.

Featured image via the Canary 

The man on trial for the murder of 27-year-old Zahwa Mukhtar expressed his remorse that none of the six occupants of the car adequately checked she was conscious.

“She was still breathing”

During his final day giving evidence, Duane Owusu was quizzed on his defence statement, probed on how the car they’d been travelling in circled back twice towards Zahwa. The first time was within minutes of her receiving an “open-handed shove” by Owusu.

Another witness in the car said she was still breathing, but he didn’t look for himself. On Friday, the 36-year-old defendant said:

I didn’t even believe she was seriously injured, that’s honestly the truth. I didn’t think I caused a serious injury […] Nobody got out the car to check, that’s what I regret.

The defence statement continued:

The group then drove off unaware that [Zahwa] had sustained a life-threatening injury but shortly afterwards decided to return. Before they could do so the vehicle was stopped by police.

The stop, which was on suspicion of drugs, lasted about 50 minutes, during which time Owusu told jurors he thought Zahwa might appear and tell them herself what had happened.

Steering clear

He didn’t want to drive back to Zahwa, who was outside a care home in Chadwell Heath Lane, due to repeated altercations between her and two other women in the car, Paige Allen and Abigail Winter. Owusu believed returning would have risked reigniting those arguments if she re-entered the car, he told the court.

When Owusu learned Zahwa still hadn’t moved, he agreed with others to return to check on her. On route, he asked to be let out of the car, but the driver refused.

The defendant said:

I agreed, let’s go back, but as he’s done the u-turn, I just didn’t want to be involved with the fighting so I was going to remove myself from the whole group.

Henrietta Paget KC, prosecuting, suggested Owusu wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and “the scene”.

“No,” he began.

The whole night I was preventing them from fighting, stopping the fights..I was just tired…I was basically being a peacemaker. I felt like the whole night I was just being a babysitter for people, which I don’t mind doing, but I’d just had enough of the fighting.

Defendant maintains his innocence

Evidence of altercations between all three women was mentioned in court, including one of Owusu’s conversations and reference to a cut on Paige’s nose from 16 August, before Zahwa’s death.

Before being struck in the neck, the prosecution’s case is that two kicks were aimed towards the finance assistant’s face.

Referring again to Owusu’s defence statement, Ms Paget read:

The kicking motions were not intended as strikes but were made to create distance and to move the deceased away from the vehicle as he was concerned that she would attempt to re-enter the car or place herself at risk.

He did not intend to, and did not, make contact with her and disengaged once she was clear and another female intervened.

She ask asked:

What does it mean, you didn’t mean to make contact with her?

Owusu replied that he didn’t mean to harm or hurt Zahwa.

On the advice of his legal team, Owusu answered ‘no comment’ to questions during his police interview and was arrested before he’d had a chance to hand himself in, he said.

Everything that happened was a total accident. I’m traumatised talking about that and I’m deeply sorry. That wasn’t how the night was supposed to go.

Owusu, of Althorne Way, Dagenham, denies murder and manslaughter.

The verdict is expected next week at the Old Bailey.

Featured image via the Canary