Ethnic Cleansing — Several Western corporate media outlets have appeared to celebrate Israel’s illegal occupation of the Crusader-era Qal’at al-Shaqif Castle in southern Lebanon.

“Captured a strategic mountain”

At this point it sounds like AP is celebrating Israel’s unlawful occupation of Lebanon. https://t.co/b13dCVICHD

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) May 31, 2026

On Sunday, May 31, Israel issued more illegal forced displacement orders to all residents living south of the Zahrani River. The attack suggests that Israel is moving towards attacking the city of Nabatieh.

Israel had issued more than 10 displacement orders in the last 24 hours. On Friday, the IOF crossed the Litani River for the first time since 2006.

Now, Israel has illegally occupied the historic Beaufort Castle (Qalaat al-Shaqif) in southern Lebanon. In the process of doing so, it killed a paramedic and damaged a hospital.

A paramedic has been killed and a hospital damaged, as Israeli forces say they have captured the historic Beaufort Castle (Qalaat al-Shaqif) in southern Lebanon, pushing beyond the Litani River for the first time since 2006.

Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hito and Nida Ibrahim report. pic.twitter.com/nPBzhn7Vej

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 31, 2026

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Whitewashing

The Associated Press, CNN, Financial Times, and Reuters all used words such as “seized”, “strategic”, “major advance”, and “expands” to describe Israel’s illegal invasion and occupation – all of which are war crimes.

They straight-up stole it. It’s land theft. https://t.co/PpprezaU2t

— Arturo Dominguez (@extremearturo) May 31, 2026

Even Al Jazeera put out a headline stating:

Israel issues more displacement orders in Lebanon, seizes strategic castle

Importantly, the dictionary definition of seizure is:

the taking possession of person or property by legal process

Nothing about Israel’s actions in Lebanon, Gaza, Iran, Syria, Yemen, or anywhere else is legal under international law.

What the headline should have said was:

Israel continues to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon and illegally occupies historic castle.

Of course, we would expect no less from the occupied corporate media, which have spent nearly three years whitewashing Israel’s war crimes.

Western media outlets have continuously used the passive voice to describe Israel’s crimes, failed to name Israel as the perpetrator, and framed the genocidal-terrorist state’s crimes as ‘defeating terrorists’.

“Captured”? Was the mountain a run away? Lost and found? Or maybe “invaded” “occupied “? https://t.co/9YPBUGzy5p

— Samar D Jarrah (@SamarDJarrah) May 31, 2026

All you have to do is compare the reporting to that of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine to see that Western media is in the pockets of the Israeli government.

“Captured”? “Incursion”? Is this the language that we would use to describe a Russian invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory? This strikes as valorising the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as opposed to informing the reader. https://t.co/vwu2GA7gwU

— ᴅʀ. ʜ.ᴀ. ʜᴇʟʟʏᴇʀ (@hahellyer) May 31, 2026

Of course, the difference is that the majority of Lebanese people and Palestinians are Arab, whereas Ukrainians are mainly white. Black and brown lives have never mattered to Western media outlets or governments.

Additionally, the word ‘strategic‘ sounds like a game of chess. It legitimises Israel’s war crimes and suggests that the settler-colonial state has a right to be in southern Lebanon, which it does not.

Manufacturing consent for ethnic cleansing

Obviously, the framing is deliberate. In the same way that the Western media manufactured consent for the illegal invasion of Iran in 2026 and Iraq in 2003, it continues to provide Israel with the conditions and global consent it needs to carry on its genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Lebanon.

Can I walk in my neighbor’s yard and “capture” it? Maybe I’ll go to the grocery store and “capture” a $150 brisket that once cost 40-50 bucks.

As long as you report it that way, people will be cool with it, right? https://t.co/PpprezaU2t

— Arturo Dominguez (@extremearturo) May 31, 2026

Incursion = Invasion
Captured = Occupied https://t.co/6ZNM7ed5k0

— Chris Doyle (@Doylech) May 31, 2026

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You’d have thought that if the Associated Press can spell ‘incursion’, they could spell ‘war crimes’ or ‘illegal’. It managed to point out that Israel has, so far, murdered 3,350 people in Lebanon and displaced more than one million. However, not once in a 1,104-word article does the journalist use the word ‘illegal’ or ‘war crime’

Coincidence?

Whitewashing and minimising Israel’s crimes only benefits Israel. The illegal Zionist regime is stealing land — so let’s call it what it is. Ethnic cleansing, illegal occupation, land theft and genocide.

And let’s not forget that Israel continues to ignore a ‘ceasefire’ to commit these war crimes.

Feature image via Carl Court/Getty Images

By HG

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The military contractor responsible for a huge chemical leak in southern California is also manufacturing parts for F-35 jets for Israel.

A 7,000-gallon chemical tank ruptured and threatened to explode at the GKN Aerospace plant in Garden Grove, California, last week. It forced over 50,000 people to evacuate. Crucially, GKN is a British engineering company, headquartered in Birmingham.

The tank contains thousands of gallons of methyl methacrylate. This is a highly volatile and flammable substance used to make plastic. Only recently, it was deemed at risk of a major spillage or an explosion.

Garden Grove is a predominantly working-class and immigrant city in Orange County, just outside of Los Angeles. This means that the evacuation order mainly affected lower-income residents.

Military-industrial complex

Since 2017, the plant has brought in more than $13m in subcontracts with Lockheed Martin, a huge military contractor which is swimming in complicity for Israel’s genocide.

A previous analysis by Ploughshares, an independent Canadian research institute, found that Lockheed awards subcontracts to hundreds of companies in more than a dozen countries to help build F-35 jets.

Now, The Intercept has revealed that GKN is one of the companies manufacturing parts for F-35 Jets, which are likely bound for Israel. In total, GKN has raked in over $255m from subcontracts with Lockheed Martin.

GKN openly describes its Garden Grove plant as “the leading provider” of the plastic bubble which surrounds the cockpit of the F-35 fighter jet.

Importantly, Methyl methacrylate, the chemical that started leaking from the plant last week, is an ingredient in this plastic bubble.

John Ramming Chappell, advocacy and legal advisor at Center for Civilians in Conflict, told The Intercept:

Due to the nature of the F-35’s global supply chain, it is likely that the F-35 components produced at the Garden Grove facility are incorporated into aircraft exported to Israel

This is the same type of aircraft that the Israeli military has used to kill civilians and violate international humanitarian law.

Supplying war criminals with F-35 killing machines

The IOF has repeatedly used F-35s to murder and maim civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen. Hundreds of human rights organisations have called on governments to halt their roles in F-35 production for Israel.

Israel currently has 48 F-35s but is planning to expand its fleet to 100. On January 20, the Canary shared news from Lakenheath Alliance for Peace that three new F-35Is left the UK air base, RAF Mildenhall. These were heading from the UK to Israel.

Obviously, most of these were paid for with US State Department funding because Israel can’t even fund its own genocide.

On May 19, only several days before the leak began, Garden Grove city officials issued a permit for a 34,000-square-foot expansion of GKN Aerospace’s facility.

The company claimed the reason for the expansion was the increasing demand for F-35 jets. This would enable the company to double its production of aircraft canopies.

Swimming in controversy

In recent years, GKN agreed to pay a settlement of almost $1m for environmental violations. These included failure to maintain records of emissions and operating equipment without a permit. Before that, authorities also fined the company for failing to properly inspect its machinery and for labour safety violations.

Obviously, these types of things, along with the current leak, are entirely predictable. What else should we expect when a company puts war, murder and profit above morals and people?

GKN Garden Grove has also raked in more than $4.5m in additional subcontracts with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, which is also owned by Lockheed Martin. It signed contracts in 2023 to produce CH-53K military helicopters. In 2025, Israel ordered a dozen new Sikorsky military helicopters.

We should have guessed that the US military-industrial complex played a part in a potentially deadly spill, which could have harmed tens of thousands of people.

Of course, the US government will continue to sacrifice the well-being, safety, and paychecks of poor people in the US. All so that Israel can continue bombing black and brown people in West Asia without consequence.

Feature image via Leon Neal/Getty Images

By HG

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I don’t usually root for millionaires. In fact, I would say I have a visceral hatred for them. Most corporate biographies offer nothing but exploitative tales of untouchable oligarchs hoarding wealth at our expense. Yet the wild, radical journey of LUSH co-founder Mark Constantine breaks this mould entirely. Hearing about Mark’s humble beginnings, how he experienced homelessness and sleeping under hedges, resonated with me from the start. I’ve been on the streets, and I know how hard it is.

The laughter at the launch

On Thursday, 28 May, I attended the book launch of Dear John inside the stunning LUSH studio on Beak St, London. The event was small, intimate and hosted by James O’Brien. Attendees mixed cocktails while making their own bath bombs as we chowed down on cupcakes emblazoned with Mark’s face. Speaking directly with Constantine and his lifelong friend Jeff Osment, I found the tycoon warm and welcoming.

I still sometimes struggle with being invited to these events. A large part of me still carries that homeless mindset. Yet the absolute openness in that room proved that we made the right eclectic and headstrong man, famous. He’s a star of industry who never forgot his roots. Throughout this book, the backdrop is of a lost boy searching for his father, whom he never knew. The book is named after the perfume Constantine created as an ode to his father. Banging scent, by the way.

Supported by his wife, Mo, who frequently acted as the breadwinner, Mark was a seed who took a little while to sprout. With a little watering from his wife and friends, his relentless passions in natural skincare propelled him to international success. But this is a profound rags-to-riches story without the usual corporate greed. Mark didn’t just line his pockets; he took his money and chose to share it with whoever and whatever he could. He used his £1bn empire to fight state power, fund radical animal-safety campaigns, and rock the corporate world.

LUSH — Moving past corporate crap

When I say I couldn’t put this book down, I mean it. This expanded second edition by HarperCollins brings the history right up to date, and it’s a wild ride. The new chapters bring to light the brutal realities of navigating a collapsing high street. LUSH has survived pandemic closures and Brexit-related staffing issues and has navigated the challenges of managing 50 regional shops directly in the Ukraine warzone. And permeating through the pages was the message that corporate survival relies on community, rather than balance sheets and board meetings.

Constantine always rejected chemical-heavy industry standards. Working from a small, cramped room in his and Mo’s marital home, the young couple mass-produced natural, herbal formulas for The Body Shop. He stubbornly followed his passions, whether it was securing a community allotment with his closest friends or taking up beekeeping to intimately understand the ingredients he used in his concoctions.

His deep love for the land and for wildlife directly shaped his legacy. When his company Cosmetics to Go ultimately folded, Constantine didn’t give up. Instead, he pivoted to recording birdsong and authored two books on it. And using this love of life, he transformed his new project, LUSH, into a powerhouse of activism. The business has backed so many important movements that other corporate entities are shit scared of.

Most notably, Constantine launched a fierce, decades-long war against animal cruelty. He sent two of his trusted employees to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to protest lab testing and established the annual global LUSH Prize. The fund has dished out nearly £3m to scientists and activists working to replace animal safety trials. Constantine has reached even further, financing anti-blood sports campaigns and donating tens of thousands directly to the Hunt Saboteurs Association through dedicated products such as the Fabulous Mrs Fox bubble bar.

LUSH — Upsetting the establishment

This willingness to fund radical, direct action has landed Constantine in hot water. Come on, it’s not normal rich folk behaviour. And the establishment hates it. Rather than hoard wealth like some lovely-smelling dragon, Constantine used LUSH windows nationwide to launch the massively controversial SpyCops campaign. Partnering with Police Spies Out of Lives and the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, his shopfronts were covered in fake police tape, crying out that the police had crossed the line.

The campaign was fearless in exposing the human rights violations committed by undercover cops. LUSH called out the targeting of women in particular who had been coerced into long-term and intimate relationships. Constantine faced massive online backlash and calls for corporate boycotts from the Police Federation, but Constantine refused to back down.

Co-founding LUSH on 100% cruelty-free, ethical terms, he built the brand into the giant it is today. And he built it as a weapon to help fight for global wealth redistribution. And they have backed everything from anti-war efforts to local community food projects.

One of my favourite tales in the book, which perfectly embodies Mark, is the story of how he took on Amazon and won. When the internet retail giant began using the trademarked word “Lush” to direct search traffic towards crappy rival cosmetics, Constantine did not take it lying down. He sued the corporate giants and won a stunning High Court victory. And in a beautiful display of stubbornness against Amazon’s pushback, Constantine trademarked the name of Amazon’s then-managing director. He threatened to release a LUSH shower cream called Christopher North, described as being “rich, thick and full of it”.

Weirdly, Amazon backed down.

The end?

And guess what? Constantine finally found his father, with the help of Jeff. But Dear John is about more than that. This book is a powerful testament to human resilience and proves that, with the right people around you, grassroots solidarity can build a global empire. And you don’t have to sell your soul.

Mark Constantine stands as rare proof that wealth can be used as a weapon for change. And I cannot wait to help them achieve that.

Dear John is out on Thursday, 4 June, and launches at £25. Pick it up in LUSH stores, online at LUSH, or in bookshops nationwide.

Featured image via the Canary

By Antifabot

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On 30 May, Nigel Farage posted the latest in a long line of dehumanising political ads. Reacting with more good humour than Farage deserved, Makerfield candidate Andy Burnham responded as follows:

Are you getting desperate, lad?

Maybe keep your crypto millions for something else.

— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) May 30, 2026

Using refugees as pawns like this shows that Farage lacks any empathy whatsoever.

And if he cares this little for the people who are most in need, we’ve got bad news for anyone deluded enough to think he cares about them.

Nasty Nigel

Farage later highlighted what he was talking about:

Your scheme will provide housing and benefits to people who came here illegally.

I prefer to put the British people first. pic.twitter.com/CEG7Tfg2wc

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— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) May 30, 2026

You’ll note Burnham’s plan relates to refugees and that Farage refers to “people who came here illegally”. Sadly ,in the UK, these two things aren’t mutually exclusive. The reason for this is because we’ve opted to use the loophole of being an island to shirk our international responsibilities.

Speaking more on how the UK criminalises desperation, Rose Cocker wrote for the Canary:

 safe and legal routes are desperately few and far between. Often, they focus on very specific groups of refugees, such as Ukrainians, who are predominantly white, whilst neglecting others, who are predominantly people of colour.

Without a massive expansion of safe routes, asylum seekers are left with no option but dangerous channel crossings. If asylum seekers have no right to work or other decent income, they will be forced to work illegally. Without adequate housing alternatives, the UK will have to use hotels to accommodate asylum seekers.

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These are problems, certainly. But they are problems that our government has caused.

Farage doesn’t want to solve these problems; he just wants to treat the victims like a punching bag so Reform voters get to feel like there’s someone below them on the totem pole.

“Crypto millions”

Burnham’s response to Farage also included this line:

Maybe keep your crypto millions for something else.

As we’ve reported, Farage is facing separate investigations over a £5m ‘gift’ he failed to declare:

Here are the facts as laid down by Derbyshire:
1) Farage says he won’t run
2) crypto billionaire pays him £5mill
3) Farage U-turns and runs
4) Farage hides the donation
5) Farage announces if he wins the election he will slash capital gains tax for crypto firms

Same old same old https://t.co/ViEIFZkf3A

— Alonso Gurmendi (@Alonso_GD) May 6, 2026

Since all this came out, Farage has done his best to avoid interviews:

Victoria Derbyshire, "We asked for an interview with Nigel Farage tonight and we got a thumbs down emoji from his team"

"Over the last couple of weeks we've asked for an interview with Nigel Farage or anyone from Reform UK's front bench ten times"

Jake Berry, who used to be a… pic.twitter.com/l594M6EQ1Q

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— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) May 19, 2026

Given Farage’s reluctance to speak on camera, it will be interesting to see how he copes with this by-election. And with rumours of Burnham calling an early general election if he wins, things could get even more intense for the toad-faced huckster.

Burnham — A sign of things to come

In response to the Burnham-Farage exchange, Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked:

Is this the next general election campaign? pic.twitter.com/ozyNsfa8O9

— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) May 30, 2026

He’s predicting that the next election will be Farage calling Burnham a ‘refugee lover’ and Burnham accusing Farage of being in the pocket of billionaires. In other words, it’s an election in which Britons will decide who they think is bleeding this country dry: the refugees who have nothing or the billionaires who own everything.

And sadly, neither of these men seem set to represent the pro-refugee position:

in the last couple of weeks alone andy burnham has backed mahmood’s immigration policies, reeves’ fiscal rules and the horrific and unworkable ehrc anti-trans code of practice… https://t.co/Kw8bfoHmpq

— Ben Smoke (@bencsmoke) May 27, 2026

Featured image via Leon Neal (Getty Images) / Leon Neal (Getty Images)

By Willem Moore

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On 26 May, the wax-faced war criminal Tony Blair returned with a half-baked essay on what the UK should do next. Among his widely-panned arguments was the suggestion that we need to increase North Sea drilling. And now, like clockwork, the Blairite homunculus Wes Streeting has stepped forwards to make roughly the same argument:

Labour should cut national insurance and issue new oil drilling licences for North Sea, Streeting says https://t.co/yWsOYDXf0n

— LBC (@LBC) May 31, 2026

New Streeting, New Danger

In his essay, Blair wrote:

3. We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources. This is essential for our competitiveness and for taking advantage of AI.

Responding to this, the CEO of Naked Energy wrote:

The conflict in Iran has given us yet another reminder that dependence on gas weakens our energy security. UK wholesale gas prices rose by around 90% in the first week of the conflict alone, and that volatility feeds straight through to businesses and households.

Shifting towards generating our own gas does not change this, because the fuel extracted from the North Sea is sold at international prices, so it does not provide households or businesses with any insulation from global shocks.

You’ll note Blair’s proposal is in line with the far-right parties Reform UK and Restore Britain. While you can’t simply do the opposite of what your opponents do, it’s important to note that both Blair and the far-right are ignoring the same key information:

The North Sea is pretty much spent and what is left is expensive to lift. Plus, you're wasting time talking about shale.

Why do you make no mention of renewables or battery storage? pic.twitter.com/pFF9X5cZkq

— Clean Energy (@EnergyMix_UK) May 30, 2026

Getting to Streeting, here’s what the ex-health secretary said when asked if the UK should grant new licenses:

Yes. I think that’s probably where Ed will get to. When he makes a decision, I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case.

The granting of those licences will not necessarily translate into cheaper bills, but it will translate into higher tax receipts

Cheaper bills for Britons?

No.

Increased profits for the corporate vultures who are waiting to slurp up what’s left in the North Sea?

Absolutely!

AI freefall

You’ll note Blair’s given reason for supporting more drilling was AI. No prizes for guessing why that is:

I'm not interested in any coverage of Tony Blair's views that makes no mention of the fact the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) is bankrolled by billionaire Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle.

From 2021-2025, Ellison donated or pledged £257m to the TBI. Of course he's an AI evangelist!

— Aisha Nicole Malik-Smith (@ANMalikSmith) May 27, 2026

While figures like Blair are talking up AI, the AI companies themselves are experiencing something of a meltdown. Until recently, they charged businesses a subscription fee; something they struggled to make money from, because AI models cost so much to run. Now they’ve switched to capping how much customers can use, and as a result businesses have started to ask themselves:

1. Can we afford this?
2. Are we getting any sort of return on investment?

As AI critic Ed Zitron has reported, the answer to question 1 is increasingly ‘no‘: the answer to question 2 is usually ‘we’re not even sure how to measure it‘:

The problems don’t end there either:

NEW: AI consultant reveals a client accidentally spent $500,000,000.00 in a single month after failing to set employee limits on Claude usage.

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) May 28, 2026

Starbucks just retired its AI inventory tool across North America. It was miscounting and mislabeling store items.

This is the second major AI failure at scale from a Fortune 100 company in 2026.

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The pattern. Starbucks spent reportedly $80-120M building "Deep Brew," its AI… https://t.co/8iJVDn0dGW

— Armaan Sidhu (@realarmaansidhu) May 25, 2026

89% of leaders say AI has not improved their company's labor productivity, despite widespread adoption, per Gallup.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) May 19, 2026

Uber handed its 5,000 engineers an AI coding assistant in December. By April, the company had blown through its entire AI budget for all of 2026, with two thirds of the year still to go.

Cheap, basic AI has gotten almost free over the past few years. But almost no company builds… https://t.co/rTlWgZECa7

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— Anish Moonka (@anishmoonka) May 24, 2026

Two economists just published a mathematical proof that AI will destroy the economy.

Not might. Not could. Will — if nothing changes.

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The paper is called "The AI Layoff Trap." Published March 2, 2026. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Boston University. Peer reviewed.… pic.twitter.com/Kh9IVdhG4w

— Jack (@jackcoder0) May 30, 2026

Despite all this, the establishment continues to tell us that AI is inevitable. And while some future technology may one day make that statement true, the signs aren’t good for the generative AI that’s currently being sold to us.

At max projection is 2 bn annual profit. A valuation that’s 500x that? I think AI is just a money laundering scheme. https://t.co/kbW5PFNCZR

— Ganeshan (@ganeshan_iyer) May 29, 2026

Popular support

To be entirely clear on the North Sea situation, many Britons think we should open new oil and gas developments:

Britons tend to favour allowing new oil and gas developments to be opened in the North Sea, amid reports that some cabinet ministers agree with Tony Blair's view that the UK should extract all oil and gas from the North Sea

New developments should be opened: 46%
Only existing… pic.twitter.com/zxuS81x07w

— YouGov (@YouGov) May 29, 2026

We could really do with a follow-up question here, though, as we doubt people will feel the same once you explain: ‘this plan won’t bring your bills down even slightly‘.

To be entirely fair to Wes Streeting, he is at least admitting now that more drilling won’t benefit ordinary people. To be less fair to him, it’s time to make like a North Sea rig and get in the f*cking sea.

Featured image via Carl Court (Getty Images)

By Willem Moore

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Trump — As we find ourselves in the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, the country is more American than ever. This isn’t a compliment, of course, but it is a way of introducing the chaos we’re seeing around the anniversary planning — chaos even right-wingers are calling out:

I’m actually pretty pissed at how badly they’ve bungled America 250. First they tried to invite Milli Vanilli and a bunch of other absurdly washed up geriatric one hit wonders. Then when that didn’t work they decided to convert the event into a Trump rally where Trump will talk… https://t.co/lYo2jUWOLy

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 30, 2026

Happy birthday

America has produced some of the biggest musical acts of all time. Given this, you’d think it would be easy to book some big hitters for the 250th Anniversary. Instead, we got the likes of Milli Vanilli — a German pop outfit which was famous for not singing their own songs (one of whom is now deceased, RIP):

JUST ANNOUNCED: The Great American State Fair lineup is here, featuring a packed roster of hits including Martina McBride, Young MC, C+C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, The Commodores, Morris Day & The Time, Flo Rida, Bret Michaels, and many more. pic.twitter.com/VI7OK4kDGI

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 28, 2026

As if this wasn’t embarassing enough, several acts have now pulled out, including the Commodores, Morris Day and the Time, and the aforementioned Milli Vanilli. Poison singer Bret Michaels said the following:

Unfortunately, what was presented to us as a celebration of our country has evolved into something much more divisive than what I agreed to be a part of

He added:

Concerns have also been raised regarding the safety of my fans, band, crew, family and myself, including threats that are completely unfounded and unforgivable. Because of that, I have made the difficult decision to step away from this performance

To be fair, the US is a little busy losing Israel’s wars right now, so they can’t be expected to defend the nation’s second-tier rockers.

In the post at the top, Donald Trump described the acts pulling out as having “the yips”. He also vowed to replace them himself, claiming he has more appeal than Elvis. And the crashout didn’t stop there:

Holy shit, Trump is really crashing out. His latest unhinged screed: “We should have a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain. Cancel it, just like I… pic.twitter.com/wmQ0FdFTAX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 30, 2026

Trump also took time to criticise his opponents on the right:

Every single one of them pushed for the release of the Epstein files pic.twitter.com/h48dPGtbdW

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) May 30, 2026

Between all this, Trump bragged about passing one of the mental exams they only administer to folks who are showing signs of cognitive decline:

pic.twitter.com/XDt6q9eNS1

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 31, 2026

Oh, and we also learned about the ‘RUMP’ watch:

Donald Trump has scammed his supporters again.

He sold them a Trump watch with the T missing for $640. pic.twitter.com/ZB3Kni1OsM

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) May 30, 2026

Trump — Hip hip hooray

The music acts aren’t the only thing booked for America 250; there’s also the planned UFC match on the White House lawn:

Starting to come together

[ #UFCWhiteHouse is presented by @Cryptocom and @RamTrucks ] pic.twitter.com/mWYJ45oNBZ

— UFC (@ufc) May 29, 2026

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SEE YOU ON THE SOUTH LAWN @UFC pic.twitter.com/02HoAdxc9e

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 20, 2025

As neoliberal ghoul Hillary Clinton highlighted:

This is what Trump's done to the people's house:

A third of it is rubble.

Another third is a cage match.

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What a metaphor. pic.twitter.com/0JKCj5prXF

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 29, 2026

Some Yanks are pretending this doesn’t represent them, but this is the America the rest of the world knows. It’s a violent, destructive force that turns everything it touches into rubble and rancour. So in that sense, the arrangements for the 250th Anniversary are actually very fitting.

Well done, President Paedophile (allegedly).

Featured image via Kevin Dietsch (Getty Images)

By Willem Moore

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On 8 May, the Canary published an article entitled “Sunderland Reform councillor David Barker allegedly beat up his girlfriend and abused child”.

The piece incorrectly stated that Barker was the same individual who was given a suspended sentence in 2019 at South Tyneside magistrates’ court for assault and causing actual bodily harm to his girlfriend.

The Canary published this based on information it had at that time. Since then, Barker has reached out to us and provided information categorically showing that he is not the same man who was sentenced in 2019.

The Canary would like to unreservedly apologise to Barker, his family, and friends, for the distress and damage that our article caused. We are committed to ensuring that our publication consistently achieves the highest levels of factual accuracy. However, on this occasion, the information we were provided proved to be inaccurate. We took immediate action to remove the article and investigate.

To confirm: Reform councillor David Barker is not the same David Barker who was convicted in 2019. We have permanently removed all content related to this and will ensure that any future information published about him is accurate.

By The Canary

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Sadly, this turned out to be prescient this morning.

Laura Kuenssberg did give Nicola Sturgeon an uncomfortable time in their interview on her Sunday programme on BBC News, but when confronted with the one gaping open goal that Sturgeon has no answer for – and even when Sturgeon TWICE set it up on a plate for her – Kuenssberg failed to knock the ball into the empty net.

That doesn’t – by some distance – mean there was nothing of interest to note, though, so let’s take a walk through what was said.

Kuenssberg opens by asking if she didn’t noting anything odd, to which Sturgeon responds by saying that anything she saw in the house (eg a fancy coffee machine) could plausibly have been afforded by Murrell on his SNP salary, which is broadly fair enough. But the story soon starts to crumble.

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?

Firstly, Tiffany diamond bracelets start at just a few hundred pounds. Even some of their top-ticket ones, like this (ahem) Wings bangle in platinum, come in at only a fraction of the price of a new Jaguar iPace, so it’s weird to suggest they’d have been a bigger red flag than the car.

But for Sturgeon to claim that she’s “not sure” whether the £2,200 Lalique salt and pepper grinders Murrell bought are the same ones she used in the kitchen she says she never went in is comical. Even if you don’t know what they cost, they’re pretty darn distinctive.

Anyone putting a bit of salt on their sausage supper with those would surely pause for at least a moment to say “Ooh, these are fancy”.

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We then get an extended sob story from Sturgeon about all the ways in which she’s a traumatised victim of Murrell (though immediately after it she says “I will never think of myself as a victim”), during which Kuenssberg lets her get away with falsely claiming she’s been “exonerated” and “cleared” of any wrongdoing.

Kuenssberg then gets onto the subject of the infamous campervan.

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Well, Nicola, the reason it might have crossed your mind was because it was listed in the SNP’s accounts, which you signed off on and are both professionally qualified to understand and legally responsible for, as an SNP asset.

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As to the camper’s visibility, incidentally, this is Murrell’s mother’s house. The Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e motorhome, at 24.3 feet, is considerably longer than the typical caravan, and would be quite difficult not to notice even if you’d approached on foot to the front door from the garage side.

A Google Earth satellite image which captured it parked there showed that it came right up to the level of the front window and would have been unmissable from the bottom step.

And the drive would be at a very odd angle/spacing to be the neighbours’.

Although this is at least inventive.

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What did she think it was? Cheese on toast?

(Just for fun, we asked ChatGPT to mock up what it would have looked like in the driveway, based on the positioning in that satellite shot. This is what it came up with.)

She then throws SNP treasurer Colin Beattie under the wheels of the campervan.

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But we must keep at the forefront of our minds that Sturgeon is legally responsible for signing off the accounts as being true and accurate. The idea that a £81,000 vehicle could have been explained away as hiring charges is absurd.

(And even that raises serious questions about the veracity of the accounts, since Murrell actually paid almost £125,000 for the camper, not £80,632.)

As Wings pointed out more than three years ago, you could have hired an entire fleet of much more suitable election-campaign vans (the ostensible official purpose of the Smove) for a small fraction of that money.

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It was absolutely Sturgeon’s job and responsibility to question accounts which showed £81,000 of expenditure on vehicles for the party – which vehicles these were, what they were for, whether they were going to be sold to recoup the money etc, and trying to dump it all off on Colin Beattie – the poor sap who wasn’t even allowed to SEE the books but who would meekly comply anyway, the exact reason he was brought back when Douglas Chapman resigned – is a grim business.

At a minimum, the party treasurer quitting because he isn’t allowed to see the books ought to cause the party’s leader to start doing some serious investigation into what’s going on, especially when half the Finance Committee has already quit for the same reason.

And that’s when Sturgeon’s answers REALLY start to get shifty.

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After once again throwing Beattie to the wolves, Sturgeon pulls off a sneaky switch. She tells Kuenssberg that she had no reason to suspect “what Peter pled guilty to”, which was embezzlement of SNP funds for his own personal use.

But that isn’t what Kuenssberg had asked her about. She’d asked about money vanishing from the SNP’s accounts in 2019.

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There are two separate arms to the Operation Branchform investigation: the fundraiser money that vanished from the SNP accounts, which we noted in January 2020, and Peter Murrell’s embezzlement of SNP funds to buy gaudy gew-gaws for himself, which only became apparent some time after the police investigation began in April 2021, following Sean Clerkin’s complaint based on Wings’ reporting.

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(The point at which the Scottish media suddenly noticed and started giving itself awards for its great scoop.)

As the investigation progressed, the police had started to spot another story.

So Sturgeon was trying to deflect from Kuenssberg’s question by answering a completely different question about something else. And that’s when Kuenssberg totally fumbled the ball.

Trying to pass off the instant disappearance of hundreds of thousands of pounds that was supposedly “ring-fenced” and therefore untouchable as the normal “ebbs and flows” of party accounts is an outrageous dodge, and Kuenssberg just missed it.

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She started off well, trying to block Sturgeon’s deflection from missing fundraiser money onto Murrell’s embezzlement.

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But Sturgeon just bulldozes past it and brings it back to the fact that “one man committed a crime”.

The members of the SNP’s Finance & Audit Committee had resigned in March 2021, the month before the police began looking into the matter, and four months before the inquiry became a formal investigation in July.

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Five months before the committee members quit, Colin Beattie had issued a strident denial that the fundraiser money had gone missing, insisting instead that it was “woven through” the SNP accounts – something that’s the literal polar opposite of being “ring-fenced”.

It’s ludicrous to suggest that Beattie would have been allowed to issue that statement without Nicola Sturgeon’s approval, and equally mad to suggest that Sturgeon would have approved it without checking the accounts that the money was supposedly somehow “woven through”.

(An implausible enough line in itself, given that the SNP’s accounts had previously very carefully separated out “ring-fenced” funds from its general reserves.)

What are we being asked to believe happened here? That Sturgeon said “Colin, didn’t we just raise £700,000 for a ring-fenced indyref fund? So why is there only £97,000 in our bank balance?”, Beattie replied “Don’t worry, Nicola, it’s woven through the accounts in a way that appears to make it invisible” and she went “Oh, that all sounds legit, okay then”?

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So the only possible explanation is that she DID look at the accounts and DID approve both the accounts and Beattie’s official statement, despite the fact that there was visibly, obviously, unmistakably £600,000 missing. And the only way that can have happened is that she KNEW the money wouldn’t be there, because she KNEW it had been spent on something else, and therefore when she looked at the books she didn’t see anything that she didn’t expect.

That isn’t Peter Murrell’s crime (except in so far as that he, along with Sturgeon and Beattie, had signed off the 2019 accounts). He hadn’t stolen anything like £600,000 at that point. By the end of 2019 his embezzling across 10 years had totalled a maximum of £221,000.

But even when Sturgeon then reminds Kuenssberg that the initial investigation was into the missing fundraiser money, Kuenssberg lets it go.

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Wings Over Scotland has no idea what Nicola Sturgeon did or didn’t know about Peter Murrell’s embezzling. That’s not our business. What we’ve always been concerned with is the plainly fraudulent fundraising the SNP undertook in 2017 and 2019, garnering almost £700,000 in donations from independence supporters – not just SNP members – on the demonstrably false pretext that it would be ring-fenced for a future independence referendum, when there was clearly never any intention to set the money aside for that purpose.

We know that because at the end of 2017, having taken in nearly half a million pounds from the first fundraiser, it had under £8,000 to its name.

And by a remarkable coincidence, at the start of December that year it had repaid £500,000 in loans to Chris and Colin Weir.

It was under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership that the party ran those fundraisers. It was Nicola Sturgeon who fronted them.

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It was under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership that the party furiously denied having spent the fundraiser money on something else, when it had clearly done so.

It was under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership that the party then concocted a series of ludicrous and contradictory excuses for where the money had gone, and embarrassingly transparent schemes to retroactively pretend to really be spending it on the pursuit of independence.

(Once again, note that this happened in January/February 2021, months BEFORE any sort of police inquiry had begun, so Sturgeon can’t use that as an excuse.)

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That this issue remains unsolved – or at least, that nobody has been held accountable for it – after five years of Operation Branchform is the real story that should be occupying the media long after Murrell’s thievery falls off the front pages.

No explanation has been forthcoming from either Nicola Sturgeon, her successors as SNP leader, or Police Scotland, for what happened to that money, acquired under false pretences. Sturgeon rolled the ball across an undefended goal in the Kuenssberg interview, but Kuenssberg missed the chance just as badly as the Scottish media did when Wings first broke the story nearly six and a half years ago.

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So we’ll need to wait for someone else to ask Sturgeon that question, or indeed to ask the Crown Office why they’re not interested in thousands of people being conned out of their cash.

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There was many other issues raised by the interview, but this piece is long enough already so those can wait until next week. In the meantime, we’re disappointed but not surprised. If there’s one thing Nicola Sturgeon is good at it’s slippery lying, but even that skill is waning as far as the public is concerned.

We can only hope that one day the media will catch up and she’ll be made to sit down in front of an interviewer who’s sufficiently on top of their brief – dare we say from reading the website that broke almost every aspect of this story? – to actually properly nail her on it.

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Spanish coach Luis Enrique continues to make history in the UEFA Champions League. After leading Paris Saint-Germain to their second consecutive continental title, raising his total to three trophies in the competition, he joins the list of the most decorated coaches of “The Big-Eared Cup,” cementing his place among the legends who have shaped the tournament’s glory over the decades.

This latest title grants Enrique entry into the exclusive club of coaches who have won the Champions League three or more times — a list that only includes four names who achieved this feat before him, led by Italy’s Carlo Ancelotti, the holder of the all-time record.

Ancelotti tops the list of most decorated Champions League coaches

According to a UEFA report, Carlo Ancelotti retains his position as the most decorated Champions League coach with five titles. He won two with AC Milan in 2003 and 2007, before adding three more with Real Madrid in 2014, 2022, and 2024.

The Italian coach is considered the most successful in the modern era of the competition, having successfully guided two different teams to the trophy, leaving an exceptional mark that puts him alone on the coaching throne.

Enrique equals Zidane and Guardiola

With three titles, Luis Enrique joins a select group of legendary coaches who have won the tournament three times, notably including France’s Zinedine Zidane, who led Real Madrid to three consecutive titles in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Enrique also matched the achievement of fellow Spaniard Pep Guardiola, who won with Barcelona in 2009 and 2011 before adding a third title with Manchester City in 2023.

The duo is also tied with English legend Bob Paisley, who guided Liverpool to three European Cups in 1977, 1978, and 1981, remaining one of the most prominent coaches in the history of the English club.

Enrique chasing Ancelotti’s record

Although Enrique is still two titles shy of Ancelotti’s record, his success in leading Paris Saint-Germain to European dominance over the last two seasons has quickly placed him among the candidates to challenge this historic achievement.

The Spanish coach has become one of the few to win the Champions League with two different clubs, having secured his first title with Barcelona in 2015 before adding two consecutive titles with Paris Saint-Germain, solidifying his status among the greatest coaches in the history of the continental competition.

List of most decorated Champions League coaches

• Carlo Ancelotti (5 titles) – AC Milan and Real Madrid.
• Bob Paisley (3 titles) – Liverpool.
• Zinedine Zidane (3 titles) – Real Madrid.
• Pep Guardiola (3 titles) – Barcelona and Manchester City.
• Luis Enrique (3 titles) – Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain

Featured image via Justin Setterfield/Getty Images

By Alaa Shamali

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