Count Binface is among the candidates for the Makerfield by-election. So voters will have at least one coherent manifesto to ponder.

UK politics has a long and rich tradition of electoral candidates who apparently exist in a different universe from everyone else. It’s how we ended up with Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as successive PMs.

But aside from the utter deadbeats standing for allegedly serious parties, there’s the novelty candidate. The Official Monster Raving Loony Party pretty much wrote the book on this sort of thing. And its leader, Alan ‘Howlin’ Laud Hope, will be lining up alongside 13 others of varying seriousness in Makerfield.

There’s a perception that the Loonies are no more than the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party of Blackadder the Third fame. However, the party has a decent track record of seeing manifesto policies become reality.

Crucially, the Loonies’ precursor, the National Teenage Party, ran on a platform of reducing the voting age from 21 to 18.

Count Binface is a worthy torchbearer for such political satire in the 21st century. A Jägerbomb to the Loonies’ real ale, if you will. So it’s worth checking his manifesto to see the actual good stuff in amongst the frivolities. I mean, sorting out footy corners is surely pie-in-the-sky.

It’s fair to say Andy Burnham might not be a fan of point 10.

The Count Binface manifesto — Makerfield Great Again

1. I will cut your taxes, and raise everyone else’s.
2. All 99 Flake ice-creams to cost no more than 99p and Wigan Kebabs to be price-capped at £2.
3. Rephase the traffic lights on Liverpool Road to ease congestion.
4. Corners to be refereed properly in football.
5. People who use speakerphones on public transport to be conscripted.
6. Wifi on trains that works. Also trains that work.
7. The £6.6m Ashton-in-Makerfield regeneration scheme to be regenerated.
8. Pensions to be double-locked, with an extra little chain on the side.
9. Cyclists who break the highway code to be forced to ride unicycles instead.
10. Elected mayors to be ineligible for parliament until after their term of office.
11. Free parking at the Gerard Centre to be increased to 3 hours.
12. Auto-renew on all online subscriptions to be abolished immediately.
13. HS2 to be renamed FFS1 and rerouted so it ploughs through rail execs’ homes.
14. Galloway Bakers’ ‘Full Monty Bin Lid’ breakfast to be Britain’s new national dish.
15. Tries in Rugby League to be increased from 4 to 5 points in line with inflation.
16. Ceefax to be brought back for the entire Greater Manchester area.
17. MPs to lose their subsidy for cheap food and drink in parliament.
18. The hand-dryer in the gents’ toilet at the Crown & Treaty pub, Uxbridge to be moved to a more sensible position.
19. Count Binface to be the UK’s entrant at Eurovision 2027.
20. I stand by my past manifestos: croissants, Brexit, Trident, building at least one affordable house: I’ve got it all covered.

Featured image via the Canary (Binface by Leon Neal / Getty Images, Burnham by Christopher Furlong / Getty Images)

By John Ranson

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Shadow Equalities Minister Claire Coutinho has suggested that we need to be “clear-eyed” when considering the issue of Black maternal deaths. Apparently, ‘the left’ (and also, you know, the NHS) are too quick to blame racism for the fact that Black people are three times more likely to die during childbirth.

We’re having this whole ridiculous ‘debate’ again because, over the last week, Reform leader Nigel Farage has redoubled his attacks on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives. Those of us who don’t receive our talking points directly from Trump’s fascist America may know these better as EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion).

Obediently, swathes of the mainstream media have begun to platform ‘debates’ on EDI. Or, you know, just jumped straight to saying that the police force have been ideologically captured by the idea of not being racist. No, seriously.

 Maybe society isn’t equal?…

In today’s case in point, Claire Coutinho appeared on Sky News with interviewer Sophie Ridge. The two had a friendly chat about whether Black people disproportionately dying during childbirth is actually racism, really, if you think about it.

Ridge kicked off by making an obvious point — sadly necessary when arguing with a Tory. She stated that we have equalities guidance in the first place:

because at the minute we don’t have a society where people of every race are treated equally? […]

Black women are more likely to die during childbirth than white women, because they’re not being listened to. So, is there a balance here to be struck, if we really are trying to get to the place where everyone is treated equally?

Coutinho, at first, ignored the issue of deaths in childbirth. Instead, she turned to the education system, and immediately displayed her fundamental misunderstanding of the issue:

Well look, Kemi Badenoch did this work in government. She looked at racial disparities where things are going wrong, and the problem that you’ve got is that the left want to say is that all of the reason those things are going wrong is because of racism. That is not the case.

Take the education system. You have a system where Black African children are doing well, and Black Caribbean children are not doing so well, but the left wants to say the problem is racist teachers.

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That statement — that the left wants to blame racist teachers — is meant to conjure up a very specific image. It suggests a teacher stood at the head of a class, being unambiguously cruel to black kids, whilst treating white children like angels. The watcher is meant to think ‘but my teachers never did that’, and then dismiss ‘the left’.

(Let’s ignore for a moment that some of them did do that, and we didn’t pay attention because we were eleven at the time).

However, that bigotry isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of systematic, institutionalised discrimination. It’s a gross simplification of a vast, complex, deep-rooted problem. What’s more, it’s that systematic discrimination that equality initiatives are meant to target.

Coutinho — ‘Look at the evidence’?

Ridge moved on to ask:

If you look at the NHS and the way that Black women are however many times more likely to die during childbirth. That can’t be right, can it?

In a recent study, campaign group MBRRACE-UK (Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK) found that Black people are three times more likely than white people to die during childbirth or shortly thereafter.

In reply to Ridge’s question, Coutinho said:

No of course not, but then you should go and look at the evidence. Every single time there is a serious death in the NHS, when it comes to maternity, you should look at the evidence. Is it because a Black woman was not listened to? Is it because there was some other health factor happening that we need to go and change?

What you need to do is root out the ideology that says that everything is racism – actually it might be other things, it might be that you’re more susceptible to some other form of heart disease or whatever it might be that’s causing harm.

The problem here is that we have already listened to the evidence. We’ve done so many times, ad nauseam, but racism is deeply entrenched in our system. Change, where it does happen, is slow, and hampered at every step by people looking desperately for any explanation other than racism.

‘Not anecdote but evidence’

As an example, we can look to campaign group Five X More’s 2025 Black Maternity Experiences survey. It reported that almost one in four Black people were denied pain relief during labour. Likewise, almost half of them received no explanation.

As the Canary’s Vannessa Viljoen wrote at the time:

This was not anecdote but evidence — data from more than a thousand women across the country.

Coutinho’s call to “look at the evidence” “every single time” someone dies during childbirth might seem sensible. However, at its worst, a focus on individual cases seeks to blame individuals suffering discrimination for their problems.

Even at its best, a relentless focus on individual cases also works to obscure the bigger picture. More specifically, it works to obscure systematic inequalities.

It’s easy to dismiss one Black woman being denied pain relief during labour. Maybe the doctor just made a mistake. Maybe she didn’t seem to be in much pain. However, if the doctors ‘just make a mistake’ far more often in relation to Black people’s pain, it’s evidence of a systematic issue.

Coutinho — ‘Evidence-based and clear-eyed’

Coutinho concluded by arguing that:

The problem is that people are no longer able to be evidence-based and clear-eyed about this. And I’m afraid the dominant ideology, the real problematic ideology that we have, is that the root cause of all of these differences is racism. That is not the case.

Well that’s just fab, isn’t it. Except, just yesterday, we saw a perfect example of how being evidence-based and clear-eyed isn’t enough for the right.

You see, Black people are twice as likely to receive a prostate cancer diagnosis compared to white people. However, the NHS isn’t blaming racism for that fact.

Rather, there’s an androgen receptor protein which is strongly involved in the growth and spread of prostate cancer. That protein has a far higher prevalence in Black people.

However, when a prostate cancer screening study worked to target the Black community because of that fact, Reform’s Zia Yusuf stated kicking off about it being racist towards white people, and evidence of a two-tier system.

It’s a common refrain of the right that ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’. However, if the right were as cold and logical as they want to believe, they wouldn’t be getting het up about targeted prostate cancer studies.

And, more to the point, we wouldn’t be having this ridiculous debate about institutional racism in healthcare yet again. Sure, the idea of institutional racism might hurt their feelings. However, it was, is, and will continue to be a fact for all the time we waste running yet another study to check it hasn’t gone away on its own.

Featured image via Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

By Alex/Rose Cocker

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UK PM Keir Starmer appears to have found his backbone as he strengthens his rhetoric towards divisive X owner Elon Musk, saying the billionaire:

has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division.

That is not who we are in Britain.

Adding:

When it comes to disgusting images on Grok, we take Grok on and fight, because that’s who we are as a country.

Starmer is right, of course, which is a refreshing change of pace. However, condemnation alone achieves precious little. The government must urgently curb the influence that super-rich elites wield over British politics and wider public debate – and he must make this behaviour expensive for Musk.

After all, if the government fails to act, those who draw huge profits from division will continue to inflame tensions and encourage further white grievance politics.

That risks bringing even more unrest, more intimidation, and more violence onto Britain’s streets as unaccountable powerful figures exploit public anger for their own nefarious purposes.

Keir Starmer on Henry Nowak murder:

Elon Musk again has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division.

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That is not who we are in Britain.pic.twitter.com/N6qH2Bpnw8

— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 4, 2026

Starmer: ‘We react calmly, as his family have done’

Elon Musk has been peddling divisive content about Nowak’s death on X for months, using his typical far-right themes and incendiary rhetoric to whip up hate amongst racist white Britons. Farage has also joined this incitement, using the opportunity to convince predominantly white British men that our state is anti-white – playing again into the far-right toxic conspiracy theory that white people are being replaced in the UK.

Ahead of meeting Nowak’s family today, Starmer spoke to a journalist about how he feels about Musk’s dangerous meddling in British politics:

We need to also assert who we are as a country, because Musk, again, has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division.

That is not who we are in Britain. In Britain, we are reasonable, tolerant people.

When we have a terrible case like Henry’s case, Henry Novak, we react calmly, as his family have done.

He then referred to other sinister, harmful sexualised content created by Musk’s tech, with lucrative returns of course. After all, we’re sure paedophiles and perverts hadn’t even dreamed to have such an accessible tool in the past to create sick, sadistic and degrading content.

Until Musk came along to appeal to their sordid fantasies, of course, as Starmer also condemned saying:

When it comes to disgusting images on Grok, we take Grok on and fight, because that’s who we are as a country.

Yesterday, we examined how super-rich elites shape public attitudes and often direct undue suspicion and hostility towards already vulnerable marginalised communities. Yet when white men commit murder, rape, violence, or abuse, few politicians or commentators rush to portray white men as a collective threat.

Instead, they treat those crimes as the actions of individuals rather than evidence of a wider problem. However, when a Black or Brown person is the aggressor – or the victim is Jewish – there is always a moral panic to follow.

Elites are a danger to civil society

This surely highlights the dangerous impact a billionaire with impactful control over a social media platform can have in destabilising our society and bringing chaos to our streets. Southampton recently saw violent, aggressive ‘protests’ from a significantly large group of thuggish brutes who saw it as their ‘right’ to behave violently towards the police.

It is worth noting that this kind of violence does not erupt at peace marches — or even at the vigil held after Sarah Everard’s abduction and murder by a serving Met police officer. Time and again, these scenes emerge when figures such as Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, and Elon Musk inject themselves into events, inflame tensions, and encourage division for their own political purposes.

Musk, in particular, regularly uses his enormous platform to amplify provocative and divisive narratives. Despite appeals from Henry Nowak’s grieving family to reject hatred and avoid turning his death into a political football, Musk seized on the tragedy to promote claims that white people face systemic bias in the UK.

In doing so, he ignored the wishes of those closest to the victim and helped fuel the very tensions they had urged people to resist.

As Starmer also touched on, Musk has also been more than happy to make life easier for paedos and perverts on his platform by giving them the tools to create any image their depraved fantasies crave.

As a result, X’s Grok made images of child abuse and sexualised content of women without their consent — including a female Labour MP who is suing xAI for allowing the site prompt to create such harmful and degrading images.

Real action MUST be taken

Lord Blunkett — former Labour home secretary — has also called for legal action against Musk due to his inflammatory actions around Nowak’s murder. Referring to the mistaken identity of two officers who were subsequently targeted online, Blunkett said without legal action “it’s the wild west”:

"I hope on behalf of those two officers legal action will be taken, otherwise it's the wild west."@LordBlunkett calls for legal action against Elon Musk, after he linked the wrong police officer – who has now gone into hiding – to Henry Nowak's arrest.@maitlis | @jonsopel pic.twitter.com/vXI1tpt6SV

— The News Agents (@TheNewsAgents) June 4, 2026

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Dangerous elites appeal to dangerous men

MP Jess Asato clearly has Keir Starmer’s backing in her legal case against Musk’s tech company, which she accuses of breaching data protection laws and misusing private information. Among the most disturbing content at the centre of the case is a video that Asato says depicts her being chloroformed and “prepared for a sexual assault”.

There is little evidence that society has benefited from handing vast amounts of power to billionaire tech elites such as Elon Musk. Instead, social media platforms have too often amplified some of the ugliest attitudes in society, giving those who spread abuse, hate, and misinformation an unprecedented platform and audience.

Furthermore, the algorithms behind these platforms actively reward outrage and hostility, pushing the most divisive content towards those most willing to see it. Needless to say, women, children, and marginalised communities often pay the highest price for that morally bankrupt business model.

Therefore, if Starmer is indeed serious about tackling these harms caused by Musk, he will need to do more than issue strongly worded condemnations.

He must find a way to hold powerful platforms to account and curb the corrosive influence that figures such as Musk can exert over public discourse.

Featured image via Joe Giddens – WPA Pool/Getty Images

By Maddison Wheeldon

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MPs from the influential science committee have warned AI war firm Palantir’s increasing power over the UK state is an “unacceptable weakness”. The committee also noted the firm, which is very close to the current Keir Starmer government, espouses openly far-right politics.

The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee urged the government to:

exercise the 2027 break clause in the NHS Federated Data Platform Contract with Palantir and either develop an in-house replacement or seek an alternative UK provider.

The MPs also rejected the idea Palantir was the only firm capable of providing services the UK needs:

The report argues that vendor lock-in should not be seen as inevitable and calls for a strategy to end lock-in across the public sector, diversify suppliers and strengthen digital resilience.

The UK military, police, NHS and, allegedly, the Telegraph newspaper have started to use Palantir technology. The firm is also involved in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and maintains a permanent desk in southern Israel. Trump’s paramilitary immigration operations also use the firm’s gear.

The Canary reported on 2 June that UK officials are even using Palantir software to decide what Palantir technology to buy to fight future wars.

And as the Canary reported on 20 April, Palantir’s ‘manifesto’ is a collection of far-right tropes more suited to a far-right manosphere podcast than a multinational arms firm:

For example, Point 21 reads:

Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

While Point 22 is a fascist-accented lament for Western white supremacist ‘culture’:

We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Palantir burrowed deep into British infrastructure

The science committee accepted some of these issues, though arguably did not go far enough.

MPs noted:

The relationship between the public sector and Palantir has attracted increasing public attention, in part because of its supply of software to the US military, and use by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

Adding:

Comments about the NHS made by the company’s co-founder Peter Thiel, and a 22-point manifesto published by the company have also raised concerns.

The MPs also called bullshit on UK Palantir boss Louis Mosley’s defence of the firm. Mosley “distanced himself”:

from Thiel’s comments and told us that the company existed “to support democratically-elected governments in delivering the mandate that they have been elected to deliver”.

Yet, the committee noted:

The company has published a 22-point manifesto based on the writing of CEO Alexander Karp, which argued that “the ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Adding:

This is despite Louis Mosley telling us that the company “is not… political. We represent a diversity of political views and do not take political positions as a company”.

Mismatch of values?

The report authors concluded that:

 Palantir should not have such a significant role in the UK public sector, and that it is far from the only company capable of providing the data analysis ‘middleware’ required by public bodies.

As well as scandal over Palantir’s military and immigration uses:

Its co-founder has criticised the concept of a national health service and the company has issued a manifesto that makes explicitly political arguments, undermining what the head of their UK and European business told us.

They said there was a “clear mismatch with UK values”.

This is debatable of course. The report makes no mention of Palantir’s role in Gaza — an atrocity the UK is deeply implicated in. Yet the report does raise several important points. Palantir’s accelerating power over UK police, military and even health infrastructure should worry us all. And the MPs are correct to say the plug needs to be pulled as soon as possible on this Trojan Horse for tech billionaires with a fascistic agenda.

Featured image via Leon Neal/Getty Images

By Joe Glenton

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Tom Pickup is one of Reform UK’s Lancashire County councillors. In November 2025, he was exposed for being a member of a WhatsApp group which was calling for genocide against Muslims. In February, the party quietly reinstated him, and has now promoted him to a new position:

He’s also reactivated his account. Blocked us of course because @TomPickup is a bigoted snowflake. pic.twitter.com/GOxtVGdrkQ

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) June 3, 2026

Reform — “Tactical”

Comments in the WhatsApp group Pickup was a member of included:

• Calls for a “mass Islam genocide”.
• The suggestion that Keir Starmer “needs a fucking bullet”.

Pickup made unsavoury contributions of his own, replying to a comment that Starmer is a “DICKtator” by responding he was a “dicktaker”. When questioned on this, Pickup said:

99% of what occurs in groups, I don’t see. Based on my involvement in it and what I have seen, I’ve been my usual jokey self and it’s been twisted out of context.

Regardless of whether he meant it, you ideally want councillors to be mature enough to not think calling someone ‘gay’ is the height of hilarity.

Pickup also said:

Everyone in Reform is a lot more hardline on immigration than is typically stated publicly, to get a majority government we have to be tactical.

This is something we all know to be true, of course. It’s obvious in the sort of political candidates Reform attracts, as we’ve reported:

• Reform candidate suggests ‘melting Nigerians’ to fill potholes.
• Calls for Reform candidate who praised rape of Sikh women to face suspension.
• Another Reform candidate praises Oswald Moseley — A rite of party initiation?
• Reform activist said ‘Hitler was right’.
• Reform welcomes ‘shoot the p*kis’ scandal ex-Tory.

Pickup returns

As Blog Preston have reported, Pickup’s suspension ended in February following an apology from the councillor. Pickup will be the cabinet member for adult social care, which has proven to be a controversial position. As Blog Preston noted:

During County Cllr Dalton’s year-long stint at the top table at County Hall, he led a controversial review into the future of five county council-run care homes and five day centres, amid concern over the poor condition of their buildings. The potential closure of the services sparked protests and petitions – although the authority insisted no pre-determined decisions had been made.

Following a public consultation – during which the cabinet member urged respondents to “be emotional” in making the case for the facilities in their existing form – it was ultimately decided all of the homes would remain open, along with the three day centres that are currently operational.

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Reform’s threat to close down local care homes attracted significant controversy, with protests taking place in the city of Preston:

Position of power

Despite his denials, it’s a fact that Pickup was in a group calling for the most extreme form of violence against Muslims. Now, the man will be in a position of power over elderly Muslims who live in Lancashire’s already-underfunded care homes.

It’s far from a desirable situation, and it shows Reform UK doesn’t care if constituents trust the party to keep them safe.

Featured image via Nigel Roddis (Getty Images) 

By Willem Moore

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A court in Geneva has confirmed that peaceful opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is a legitimate right. As Palestinian exile Muzna Shihabi notes, the landmark decision:

•  Acknowledges that a genocide is underway.
•  Rules that nothing justifies sanctioning peaceful activists.
•  Confirms that freedom of expression protects non-violent civil disobedience and that repressing these mobilizations is incompatible with democracy.

A lesson for the genocide-enabling Starmer government and its war on free speech and peaceful protest, as respondents are already noting:

@Keir_Starmer @YvetteCooperMP Imagine how it must feel to finish your day in the knowledge that your actions let you sleep with a clear conscience. Not clambering on for money or power, just doing what is right. Just imagine.

— Lisa Alqatari (@LisaAlqatari) June 4, 2026

Genocide — ‘Routine’ shame

The UN’s international law and human rights expert for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, commented that:

Once again: justice for Palestine starts at home. It only takes people caring and applying Intl Law. And persevering.

Albanese knows about being persecuted for standing against genocide. In May 2026, the Trump regime re-imposed its sanctions on her despite a judge’s ruling that they breached her rights.

To the UK’s shame, a May 2026 report has described repression of pro-Palestine speech under the Starmer regime as now “routine”.

Featured image via Joshua Roberts/Getty Images

By Skwawkbox

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While the world’s attention has moved onto other horrors, Israel continues to bomb Gaza and burn families. The so-called ‘ceasefire’ is just a curtain to hide its atrocities.

As the people of Gaza tried to survive another night last night, Israel continued to bomb the open-air concentration camp it has created:

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A post shared by Ibrahim Nazmii (@ibrahim_nazmii)

At least nine people were killed and many more injured in four separate bombings. The attacks created horrors that are all too familiar – civilians burning in bombed buildings, including children, despite heroic attempts to help:

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A post shared by Omar Hamad 𓂆 (@omar.hamad7)

Israel — Residential targets

All of the buildings attacked were residential:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by عين على فلسطين | Eye on Palestine (@eye.on.palestine)

It’s all too easy for horror-fatigue and the axis of evil’s other crimes to take our eyes from Gaza. We must resist and keep highlighting the ongoing genocide.

Featured image via Getty Images 

By Skwawkbox

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The Justice Bill currently passing through the Northern Ireland Assembly will allow the police to retain a person’s biometric data for a massive 75 years. This is despite the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) previously ruling that indefinite holding of such information is a violation of privacy.

75 years may not be indefinite, but it’s essentially a lifetime, meaning the difference is largely moot. More worryingly, the bill allows the state to keep information such as fingerprints and DNA for most of a century in cases of “terrorism-related” offences. This could include cases of inviting “support for a proscribed organisation”.

Such legislation has been grotesquely abused to criminalise peaceful supporters of anti-genocide group Palestine Action. The direct action collective sought to halt Zionist atrocities by smashing up the arms factories making the weapons used to murder Palestinians.

Legitimate protest is further undermined by the bill granting authorities the power to retain data for “breach of the peace” offences. These are typically minor matters stemming from low-level civil disobedience. In Stormont, Gerry Carroll of People Before Profit questioned whether this:

…quite loose term [breach of the peace] could be used to keep people’s data for quite a long length of time when, by most people’s definition, the person might not have committed a serious crime.

Carroll: ‘biometric surveillance being smuggled in through the back door’

The current plan is to operate biometric data retention on a 75/50/25 model. That means for offences such as murder, rape, severe violence and the aforementioned ‘terrorism’, data can be held for 75 years. It’ll be 50 for offences that result in a custodial sentence of 5 years or more, and 25 for those not involving time in jail.

Carroll has introduced an amendment to ensure people are informed that their data is being held, something not previously part of the bill.

The West Belfast MLA also criticised how the bill permits the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to create a “facial-image database”. He said in a press release sent to the Canary:

This is the architecture of biometric surveillance being smuggled in through the back door, with a promise to fill in the detail later.

The legislation does not treat photographs as biometric data in the same way as fingerprints and DNA. The PSNI are therefore permitted to hold images indefinitely, including those of suspects photographed at a police station. That means people who have committed no crime will potentially sit on a police database forever.

The Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY) expressed alarm at this in its June 2025 briefing, saying it could be used as part of rights-violating live facial recognition systems (LFR). The PSNI have previously expressed interest in introducing such a system, saying the police service:

…fully recognises the value this could bring to investigations and public safety.

Big Brother Watch have said such technology:

…discriminates against women and people of colour. 80% of people misidentified by facial recognition in London in 2025 were Black.

NICCY suggest the use of photos may again be a violation of European law. They cite the case of Gaughran vs UK, where the ECHR found that retention of photographs is a violation of the:

…right to respect for…private and family life.

Justice Bill — DUP want to keep jailing 10 year olds

The north of Ireland Policing Board’s human rights reviewer said in 2024 that:

…the PSNI continue to hold biometric data (fingerprints, photographs, and DNA profiles) on hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Ireland unlawfully and has been doing so since 2008.

Another contentious aspect of the bill is whether it will alter the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR). The north of Ireland has one of the lowest MACR levels in the world (see under ‘United Kingdom’), at an outrageous 10 years old. That means children not yet in secondary school can be put behind bars.

There are various amendments seeking to change this via the Justice Bill. Carroll has asked that it be set at 16, while Alliance MLA Sian Mulholland has introduced an amendment setting the level at 14 years. Doug Beattie of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) has sought to set it to 12, leading to a clash with UUP leader and ex-PSNI man Jon Burrows. Beattie has since resigned from the party.

The dinosaurs of the Democratic Unionist Party and Traditional Unionist Voice are determined to ensure dealing with youth offenders is kept firmly in the 19th century. They favour maintaining the status quo; i.e. jailing 10 year olds whose forebrain has barely started developing.

A June 2023 consultation on raising the MACR found overwhelming support for the obviously sensible and humane approach of raising the age to 14. MLAs will continue debate on this aspect of the bill next week.

Featured image via Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

By Robert Freeman

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The Pentagon is publishing fake AI ‘news’ across Latin America which mix financial advice with imperial propaganda. One article even celebrates the “precision” of the 3 January US raid on Venezuela. The operation recalls British fake media operations from the Cold War recently released from secret archives.

The project reflects the subtler side of American attempts to restore dominance in a continent the US ruling class views as its personal fiefdom.

Pentagon pushing fake news

The Intercept revealed on 2 June that a magazine named La Tilde was funded by the US government and operated:

as a military messaging platform for U.S. Special Operations Command South, or SOCSOUTH, which executes special forces missions throughout South and Central America as well as the Caribbean.

The outlet even got a sort of admission from La Tilde’s spokesperson:

When asked about SOCSOUTH’s role behind La Tilde, spokesperson Trevor Wild replied with the text of the site’s About page noting that it’s a government operation, but declined to comment further.

The magazine’s mix of normal stories with supportive articles about US imperialism recalls a similar British operation from the Cold War years. That operation was run by the UK’s Special Editorial Unit (SEU), part of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD).

It served as a:

clandestine anti-communist propaganda unit which operated in the Foreign Office between 1948 and 1977.

According to a Declassified UK investigation from 14 May 2026, SEU produced deniable (or ‘black’) propaganda. Targets included nationalist and anti-colonial movements around the world:

Anti-colonial leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indonesia’s Sukarno, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah were a frequent focus of British propaganda operations.

Declassified writer John McEvoy added:

Elsewhere, the SEU orchestrated propaganda campaigns on such diverse topics as fishing rights in the North Atlantic, apartheid in South Africa, and European communist parties.

Fake media organisations of yesteryear

But here is a key parallel:

Running news agencies was one of SEU’s “core activities”. These are described as “controlled outlets” in the archival material.

The fake outlets then and now mixed everyday news items with overtly political material to appear less suspicious:

In order to look like bona fide news agencies, the SEU’s “controlled outlets” fused political with “anodyne” content in order to “sweeten the pill” of the propaganda material.

These “anodyne” articles covered such issues as women’s affairs, health, sociology, geography, history, and sport.

This US’ updating of an old method combines filler AI-content about investment and travel advice mixed with openly pro-US propaganda material with headlines like:

Operation Absolute Resolve: The mission that captured Nicolás Maduro and set a new standard for precision and coordination

And:

“A rare happiness, but a real one”: Venezuelans speak about the hope that resurfaces after Nicolás Maduro’s capture.

Different fading empire, virtually identical shenanigans.

AI content, no bylines, US denials

The Intercept reported that La Tilde:

carries no bylines, masthead, or mention of actual staff of any kind. Although the site claims it employs “dozens of freelance reporters and content creators,” at least some of the site appears to have been generated by a large language model.

Adding:

Running articles through Pangram, an AI-text detection service, produced multiple hits for both English and Spanish writing either partially or entirely written by machines (though such tools are known to deliver false positives).

Former Pentagon cyber-policy adviser Emerson Brooking noted the La Tilde website’s “shoddiness” and said it was:

AI all the way down.

Brooking said:

If you can generate new content and even news fronts at the flip of a switch, your influence operations can shift target and focus much more quickly.

That seems to be the thinking behind recent AI-powered Russian and Chinese networks, for instance.

The US military denied any connection to La Tilde:

SOUTHCOM [US miltary Southern Command] “does not fund, operate, or have any official association with La Tilde,” according to spokesperson Steven McLoud, who did not respond to further questions.

And La Tilde looks to be expanding operations. The Intercept found:

An analysis of subdomains hosted on LaTilde.co reveals the site plans to launch bespoke versions for readers in Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, and Peru.

Propaganda wing of Trump’s American Empire

Dominance in the Americas has always been US policy. President Trump has sharpened it in the 2025 National Security Strategy. The Canary has followed this process since Trump’s 2024 re-election:

The Monroe Doctrine, many Canary readers will be aware, basically means US political and economic dominance of the continent. The ‘Donroe’ doctrine, as the new version has been called, is Trump’s typically egotistical update.

As we noted:

The US started 2026 with an attack on Venezuela and various threats against neighbours like Greenland, Canada and others. Since then, it was steered — with the help of Israel — into a war with Iran. And spent the last few months getting an arse-kicking in a dramatically failing conflict there.

However:

the Americas have not been forgotten in Trump’s vision. The US military and US intelligence have been busy while Iran took the headlines.

You can read our 30 May analysis – ‘Trump’s American empire: US operations are firing up across the continent‘ –  here. You can read the full National Security Strategy here. The new US counter-terrorism strategy also mentions uses the coded language of cartel ‘narco-terrorism’ to build consent for US hemispheric power.

Influence operations like La Tilde are the flip side of kinetic US military actions, partner training and support for Trump-aligned right-wing politicians on the continent. The Iran war will end at some point. The US ruling class will return more fully to a core competency: bullying their neighbours into submission.

Featured image via Getty/Win McNamee

By Joe Glenton

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