Iran is considering imposing a 10% toll on all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

This would generate an approximate $73bn a year, which will immediately offset the cost of US sanctions, along with paying for all the damage from the US and Israel’s illegal attacks.

Did Donald Trump think he was the only one with the power to impose tariffs?

Brilliant move by Iran. They are planning to levy a 10% toll on all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. This will generate $73 billion a year, completely offsetting US sanctions and paying for war damages. Checkmate. pic.twitter.com/ahjNE3HUEr

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) March 18, 2026

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Is this one of Donald Trump’s great deals??? https://t.co/MDsV93OZyr

— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) March 18, 2026

The US has spent billions illegally blowing up Iran. Now it will also have to pay to fix it.

$11B spent blowing things up, AND we get to pay to fix what we destroyed. #WarWithoutAPlan#IsThisWinning https://t.co/nuIPZ7EhcM

— Jac 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙 (@JacDalAM) March 18, 2026

Trump is so concerned with breaking international law and ranting on Truth Social that he has forgotten to think through the consequences of his actions.

The previous US presidents that denied Israel’s requests to attack Iran all knew who they were fucking with. Trump was the only dumbass who did not 😂 https://t.co/CUzSWZGk43

— Pistachio 🇮🇷 🇵🇸 (@HarleyShah) March 18, 2026

Although that would rely on him having a brain.

This is what asymmetric strategy looks like. When you can’t control the system, you leverage the chokepoints the system depends on. Hormuz isn’t geography, it’s power.

— DialecticalX (@DialecticalX) March 18, 2026

Sanctions

The US has been imposing sanctions on Iran since 1980. Bill Clinton tightened these in 1995 and banned US companies from dealing with Iran. Congress also passed a law penalising foreign entities investing in the country’s energy sector or selling Iran advanced weapons. The US cited “nuclear advancement” and support of groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Most of the West has labelled Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists”. But what the US never said out loud was that it was directly responsible for creating all three of those groups – meaning its sanctions are bullshit. The US has always offered Israel its unwavering support, and it has repeatedly called for both to disarm and disband. Meaning that is also the US’s goal

However, both only exist because of Israel’s repeated illegal invasions of sovereign nations, which the US has both directly and indirectly supported. Hezbollah was formed in 1982 after Israel illegally invaded Lebanon. Importantly, the US supplied Israel with the majority of its weapons for that invasion. Similarly, Hamas’s goal is to:

liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.

Hamas was founded in Gaza in 1987 shortly after the start of the first Intifada, an uprising against Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Once again, in 1987,  the US supplied it with “advanced weaponry” to continue its system of apartheid and cruelty.

Importantly, armed resistance is not illegal under international law, no matter how many Western countries label you as a terrorist. So the US may have imposed sanctions in the name of ‘combating terrorism’ – but the reality was merely a resistance that the US itself had created.

Payback

Now, it seems the Iranians want well-deserved payback.

The Iranian authorities have stated that they are now applying the principle of “an eye for an eye.”

— Kevin Muruta (@KevinMuruta) March 18, 2026

To pay for the 47 yrs of illegal sanctions against Iran ~ This will be Justice for Iran 🇮🇷 https://t.co/9U6C6NJ4gA

— Dave Simpson (@DaveSim25817596) March 19, 2026

Trump and his cronies are getting exactly what they deserve. They may not be paying for their Epstein-related crimes against children, but they will hopefully now pay financially for their own stupidity.

The ability to think through your actions and their potential consequences usually develops during toddlerhood. Unfortunately, it seems that Trump missed this crucial developmental milestone.

Featured image via Associated Press/ YouTube

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has put out a call for evidence for the Timms Review into Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

However, as with pretty much everything the DWP does, it’s already looking like it’ll be another major stitch up.

DWP PIP: Timms Review launches call for evidence

In the last few days, the corporate media has noticeably up its demonisation of disability benefit claimants. Of course, that’s usually a tell-tale sign. You can all but guarantee the department has something in the pipeline when the gutter press kicks into gear maligning welfare.

The latest bullshit was the shitrag Daily Mail clamouring:

One in 10 working age Brits are on disability benefits with 1,000 successful claims A DAY

However, as the Canary’s chief DWP botherer Rachel Charlton-Dailey pointed out, that 1 in 10 figure is complete nonsense. And when disabled people make up 25% of the population – she rightly underscored that it should be closer to 1 in 4. What’s more, as Charlton-Dailey highlighted:

that 1,000 is the number of successful claims. The Mail article glosses over the fact that, in those 13 years, 4.4 million claims were denied. It also completely ignores the scale of the backlog to even get PIP.

In short, it was more lowlights in the Mail’s revolting history of vilifying benefit claimants. But crucially, now its agenda in publishing this has been made extra obvious: to manufacture public consent for devastating PIP cuts.

Because lo and behold, less than 48 hours later, the Timms Review has launched its call for evidence. And predictably it’s chock-full of the kind of leading questions that just scream ‘forgone conclusion’.

Just 10 weeks for disabled people to have their say

In a press release the DWP published 19 March, it announced the call, stating:

The Review is examining whether PIP – which supports nearly four million people in England and Wales with the extra costs of disability – better reflects how people’s conditions impact them in the modern world.

The Call for Evidence – which runs until 28 May – is the first step in a wider, accessible programme of engagement, shaped by the Review’s steering group. This will ensure as many disabled people as possible contribute to it, including young people.

The first thing that immediately stands out is that the call for evidence runs for only 10 weeks. Technically, since this isn’t a consultation, that’s not unlawful – unlike the previous Conservative government’s 8-week Work Capability Assessment (WCA) consultation.

Even so, ordinarily, the government will host these in line with its 12-week requirement around consultations. Case in point: the Treasury has announced a call for evidence on the “future of the Advance Corporation Tax regime” today (19 March) as well. That runs for 12 weeks (until 11 June). Because when reforms are for Labour’s billionaire buddies in business, the government will give them ample time to lobby their grievances.

Of course, it speaks volumes that the DWP is giving disabled people – some of whom will need more time to engage – even less time than the standard amount to do so. Ironically, the press release quotes Stephen Timms suggesting:

it is vital that as many people as possible have the chance to contribute.

The DWP likes to talk a big game about listening to disabled people when it’s doing exactly the opposite. Naturally, it’s also not the only ‘stakeholders’ it wants to hear from:

Anyone can respond and those with lived or learned experience of PIP, including disabled people, the organisations that represent them, carers, clinicians, experts, MPs, and other elected officials across the UK, are particularly encouraged to do so.

Those ‘experts’ will inevitably be stacked with talking heads from the likes of Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) and other diabolical think tanks, no doubt.

Constricting PIP criteria: the real agenda – again?

Some of the questions and information the review is seeking could be genuinely game-changing if the DWP responds right. It wants to know about disabled people’s experiences of the assessment process and barriers to it. In other parts of the call, it asks for evidence about reasonable adjustments, experiences with external assessment providers, and both the award review and appeals process.

There’s a lot of opportunity in these parts for disabled people to highlight the many flaws in the current system.

That said, this it the DWP we’re talking about here. The chance it will actually do anything positive to improve the PIP process feel slim to none. At best, it will take forward a few good changes, but use them to package more brutal cuts.

One notable sentence confirming this concerns what the review says it’s “particularly interested in”, states that:

the assessment criteria for both Mobility and Daily Living elements of PIP – including activities, descriptors and associated points – and whether these effectively capture the impact of long-term health conditions and disability in the modern world (from the Terms of Reference)

It’s hard not to see this as a sly to justify constricting the PIP criteria to exclude people. Of course, this is precisely what the DWP previously tried to do to slash people’s access to PIP with its egregious 4 point policy.

Keeping PIP in ‘fixed financial limits’

And question four brings this into focus further. It asks:

What has changed in wider society and the workplace since 2013 (and might be expected to change in the future), how has this impacted PIP and does PIP need to change accordingly?

On its own, that might sound innocuous enough. However, it couches this in calls for:

the factors contributing to increased disability prevalence in society including different conditions, ages, people, and terminal illness

That’s very blatantly a hat-tip to the government’s latest scapegoating around the rise of claims involving mental health and neurodivergence. And of course, the DWP and its lapdog press have been on overdrive stigmatising and trivialising them. The department’s clear goal has been to make it harder for people with these conditions to claim PIP.

To top it off, the review also wants to hear from stakeholders:

how PIP can remain within fixed financial limits

In reality then, this is what it’s all about. The DWP wants to kick people off PIP to slash spending. Making PIP more accessible and inclusive won’t make the department savings. So whatever evidence disabled people provide, a fit-for-purpose disability benefit system won’t be the outcome.

A tick-box exercise

At this point, we feel like a broken record, but it still needs saying: this Labour government has no real intention of genuinely including disabled people in decisions that will deeply impact their lives.

From the moment the government paused its plans for PIP (because let’s be honest, it never committed to chucking its shameful cuts out altogether), it was only a matter of time before it started weaponising bare minimum ‘consultation’ and ‘co-production’ with disabled people. Naturally, it’s all to lay the groundwork for following through with them.

This call for evidence shows that once again, disabled people’s lived realities are little more than tick-box exercises to the callous DWP.

But then, what more should anyone expect from a government that’s already gutted the health element of Universal Credit, is sneakily slashing Access to Work support, and continues to vilify disabled claimants at every turn.

You can respond to the call for evidence until 28 May here.

Featured image via the Canary

Israeli settlers have shown their “undying spiritual connection” to occupied Palestine – by fleeing it in panic. Footage filmed 16 March in occupation airports shows “total chaos” as mobs desperately try to get onto flights out and escape from Iranian retaliation for Israel-US attacks. Like Ben Gurion airport:

✈️🇮🇱 Chaos total à l’aéroport Ben-Gourion : files d’attente interminables en pleine guerre❗️(16 mars 2026) pic.twitter.com/jMHmzlHapK

— The News (@thenews_fr) March 16, 2026

They can all bog off back to Brooklyn pic.twitter.com/n9Wsfw80nD

— Her Royal Heinous 🇮🇪🇵🇸 (@HerRoyalHeinous) March 17, 2026

The clips triggered thousands of responses comparing the fortitude of Palestinians and Lebanese people in their razed lands with the readiness of ‘Israelis’ to run away. Like this one, captioned in French “The difference between the owner of the land and the one who stole it”:

• pic.twitter.com/4XViB9fbTS

— Fania 🦋 (@FaniaNaili) March 16, 2026

“Wah wah, my country is Israel but I want to go back to France”:

NO COMMENT ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/H9Ypix0eum

— OXYGÈNE ⚖️🗽🐢✌️ (@samisam60980585) March 16, 2026

pic.twitter.com/wRZFqWJkQD

— Mekki Rachid (@slim_o27) March 16, 2026

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They can all bog off back to Brooklyn pic.twitter.com/n9Wsfw80nD

— Her Royal Heinous 🇮🇪🇵🇸 (@HerRoyalHeinous) March 17, 2026

Others mocked the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu has not been seen, except in AI videos, for more than a week now. Not without reason, since he has frequently fled, though whether he is hiding abroad this time or dead is not yet clear:

pic.twitter.com/tf0BzihD4w

— mujaheddin (@EdwardSaid1968) March 16, 2026

pic.twitter.com/dP4JScXXhq

— Miguel W. (@miguel_wals) March 17, 2026

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pic.twitter.com/lZHIHqyuLL

— Pablo (@PabloEskoba72) March 17, 2026

And it’s fair to say that there was not a lot of sympathy on show:

pic.twitter.com/ETBMVBdqVL

— ostensible spam (@PsionicPsittacc) March 17, 2026

Brilliant #OperationEpicScurry

— OneQuantumLeap (@OneQuantumLeap) March 17, 2026

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Israel had already put a ban preventing aircraft from carrying more than a hundred passengers at a time in an attempt to slow the exodus-flood. But it seems Iran noticed. Two days after the scenes were filmed, on 18 March 2026, Ben Gurion airport was heavily bombed, making fleeing even harder.

Featured image via X

Two Israeli tourists have been ejected from a Brazilian beach—by popular demand. This happened after they assaulted a woman for carrying a Palestine flag. Beachgoers chanted “free, free Palestine” as the Israelis were booed away.

The incident occurred as thousands of Israelis in occupied Palestine, fearing retaliatory Iranian attacks, formed panicked mobs at airports in an attempt to flee. A true display of their deep connection to the land of Palestine…

Featured image via X/the Canary

The Guardian has gone through 4,366 video clips that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has made since 2021. And it has shown that, as part of his £374,893+ side hustle, Farage has happily performed for neo-Nazis. He may claim he made mistakes, but his consistent dog-whistling suggests he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Farage has received money on the Cameo platform to make videos for all sorts of fans. He recorded messages:

• For a man who got 16 months in jail for participating in far-right riots, which Farage labelled “absolutely outrageous”.
• Dog-whistling around the far-right phrase “If in doubt, kick them out”. As the Guardian said, “Farage uses – or more often alludes to – the hardline anti-immigration phrase more than 20 times”. In doing so, Dr Ashton Kingdon insisted, he was “choosing to cultivate this audience and to speak its language back to it”.
• Happily saying “up the Rhodesia”, despite that likely referring to the historical white supremacist ethnostate in Africa.
• Voluntarily referring to antisemitic conspiracy theories, saying: “Is it the Bilderbergers that are running the world? … It could be the Masons. Some think it’s the Rothschilds. Maybe it’s George Soros. I don’t know. What I do know is actually I don’t think any of it is a conspiracy theory.”
• For people who, as the Guardian said, “openly expressed offensive views in their prompts”.

The most shocking video, however, gave what the Guardian describes as:

a pep talk for Canadian neo-Nazis

Farage endorsing neo-Nazis? Sounds about right.

One video, the Guardian explained, wanted Farage to:

endorse the “Road Rage Terror Tour”, a Canadian show hosted by “Jeremy MacKenzie, Derek Harrison and Alex Vriend”. A quick Google would have revealed to Farage the extremist nature of the individuals and their event.

MacKenzie, Harrison and Vriend are leaders of Diagolon, a group identified as a “Canadian far-right ‘extremist’ group” by the US state department in 2022.

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Diagolon’s website advertised a book alluding to Adolf Hitler called Meme Kampf and the group’s extremist slogan – “they have to go back” – was a nod to the forced repatriation of migrants.

Farage apparently didn’t do a quick search to find out more about the event. Instead, the Guardian said:

he duly obliged, starting his video: “They have to go back.” Farage’s message then encouraged “Andrea” to attend what he said was “the most talked-about show in Canada”. “Why not give it a go?” Farage said. “You never know, you might walk out saying, ‘Road Rage Terror Tour is the best thing that ever happened.’”

The neo-Nazi group quickly clipped up the video and used it in their propaganda. This included one video, the Guardian reported:

in which a leader of Diagolon makes shooting noises and gestures while saying: “I just saw you were brown and I couldn’t help myself.”

In another, the paper added:

Farage’s Cameo clip featured alongside white nationalist and antisemitic messaging

A representative for the far-right group itself said it showed Farage:

being lazy and stupid enough to say anything for a dollar

Farage, meanwhile, pleaded ignorance. A spokesperson said he had been using Cameo “without knowledge of the individuals”.

But we reckon Farage knows exactly what he’s doing.

Featured image via the Canary

The Israeli occupation has tried to murder RT‘s Lebanon bureau chief Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida. Both men were wounded in the attack.

Sweeney was speaking to camera in southern Lebanon about Israel’s illegal invasion and resistance responses when an Israeli missile roared in, narrowly missing the two men – who were both clearly identified as press:

Sweeney has said that he is fine and has already had shrapnel from the bomb removed. Rida said:

We were wearing [press] uniform. The Israeli enemy targeted us deliberately.

Israel has repeatedly killed and maimed journalists in Lebanon, copying its tactics that have murdered hundreds of journalists and their families in Gaza.

Featured image via X

The FIFA World Cup 2026 is entering an early stage of testing, caught between political pressure and security concerns. These concerns extend beyond the stadium and threaten the true image of the sport.

European Commissioner for Sport, Glenn Micallef, escalated his criticism of FIFA President Gianni Infantino, condemning what he described as a lack of clarity and responsiveness to growing European concerns about the safety of spectators.

EU Commissioner presses FIFA

As the largest World Cup in history approaches, co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, warnings are mounting about the repercussions of geopolitical tensions, following Trump’s illegal assault against Iran.

Micallef revealed that his sole meeting with Infantino in Brussels did not translate into concrete steps, despite his explicit demand for clear guarantees regarding the safety of European fans. He emphasised that the lack of follow-up from FIFA raises serious questions.

He stated:

When a host country is involved in a war, providing security assurances becomes a given, not an option.

Public safety challenges

European concerns are not limited to the political dimension. They extend to the security situation within the host countries. In the US, certain measures related to stricter surveillance and immigration are also causing anxiety. Meanwhile, Mexico is facing a rising wave of violence, particularly in areas considered potential World Cup hosting venues.

FIFA maintains that fan safety is a top priority, expressing confidence in the ability of the host countries to provide a safe environment.

However, this stance has not entirely dispelled European doubts, amid calls for greater transparency and detailed information.

A dispute beyond security

The tension between the two sides wasn’t limited to security matters; it extended to the nature of FIFA’s partnerships. Micallef expressed reservations about cooperating with initiatives supported by US President Donald Trump, arguing that this opens the door to increased politicisation of sports.

Conversely, he called for stronger partnerships with multilateral international organisations such as UNESCO and UNICEF, in line with the rules of the international system and to reduce polarisation.

In a broader context, the European official warned of transformations threatening the structure of sports on the continent, pointing to the National Basketball Association’s project to launch a European league and its move towards “closed leagues,” which contradicts the principle of sporting merit.

He also stressed the need to prevent the use of sporting competitions as tools for political propaganda, alluding to the renewed debate surrounding the participation of countries involved in military conflicts.

A test beyond football

These statements reflect a new reality where sport intersects with security and political considerations in an unprecedented way, transforming major tournaments into testing grounds for international influence and power balances.

Between FIFA’s assurances and European pressures, Gianni Infantino finds himself facing a complex challenge: managing a global tournament in a turbulent environment without compromising the game’s essence.

In this context, the question no longer concerns the readiness of stadiums, but rather football’s ability to remain out of the line of fire.

Featured image via White House, Instagram