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As a result of a legal loophole, AI companies have taken to sourcing rare books which they are subsequently scanning and destroying. And as people have highlighted, it could mean many texts are being lost to us forever:

So AI labs are buying old books by the pallet, slicing them apart, scanning the pages, and pulping what's left. The orders are keyed to ISBNs and blind to scarcity. Nobody in the pipeline checks whether the book being shredded is one of the last copies on earth. Some of them… https://t.co/3WECoCQ7wG

— Brad Carson (@bradrcarson) July 27, 2026

AI companies carry out the modern book burning

In the past, tech companies attracted criticism for scanning other people’s work and using it to train their AI models. There are multiple ongoing legal cases regarding the legality of this practice. And it was actually a legal ruling which led to this current issue.

As the Hedgie account explained:

AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they’re free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain “all the books in the world.”

Once again, we’re seeing AI companies behaving in a fashion which is directly at odds with human morality. And they’re doing it solely for their own benefit.

The AI companies claim they’re working towards super computers which will take over the labour that’s currently undertaken by people. The reality is generative AI isn’t on a path towards super intelligence, and while it has some uses, it costs so much to run that the expenses far outweigh the benefits (something we saw recently when AI companies stopped subsidising their products with ridiculously low subscription prices).

Irreversible

Hedgie added:

This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.

ISBNdb’s website literally says “‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy,” and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it “digital preservation.”

I’ve covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it’s irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can’t replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it’s legal. So it’s going to accelerate.

“We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out” is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

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Hedgie is far from the only one reacting with disgust:

Some things are just wrong. Some acts carry an inherent evil that makes any soulful creature recoil with disgust. https://t.co/WFx5QWEBBP

— Bad Writing Takes (@BadWritingTakes) July 27, 2026

Generative AI isn’t just destroying our past; it’s also risking our future. Growing up with technology that thinks for them isn’t doing children any favours, and we’re yet to see what this will mean for them as adults.

Tech that acts as a surrogate brain sounds nice, but without intelligence – without history – we’re really not much more than meat.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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The rapid expansion of generative AI technology has been tremendously worrying for many. There are good reasons for this too, whether it be the threat to jobs, the environmental impact of data centres, or the fact that AI barons keep suggesting their technology may one day kill us all.

In response to this, the Greens’ Greater Manchester mayor candidate Geraldine Coggins is calling for “an end to the folly of rushing headlong into AI development without public debate and environmental protections”.

Environmental impacts

Coggins said:

The world is on fire. A quarter of a million people have been evacuated from the paths of wildfires in Spain and France, and a major incident was declared in the Cairngorms as flames threatened Aviemore.

In my own front room in Trafford, I can smell the acrid smoke from wildfires on the moors.

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The UK has experienced a significant number of wildfires in recent weeks, with Greens leader Zack Polanski also commenting on the issue:

The climate crisis is not a distant threat.

It's here. And it's happening now.

And our Fire Brigade on the frontline of it are asking for help. https://t.co/Nl8GV79S1k

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— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) July 14, 2026

Coggins continued:

On the doorstep, I am being told that people worry about AI and the consequences for their jobs, while musicians and creative artists warn of having their work stolen. People fear AI’s impact on the environment and the threat it brings of ‘going rogue’ and starting wars.

On the jobs front, there is less reason to be worried than there was a few years ago. This is because companies which have invested in AI have struggled to show any Return on Investment (RoI) from the technology.

Companies abandon AI as prices skyrocket

This situation was worsened when the AI companies dramatically increased their prices earlier this year because they could no longer afford to subsidise the expensive tech with artificially low subscription offers.

People are certainly using AI to replace creative work, whether it be uploading soulless AI music to Spotify or authorless AI literature to Amazon. As comedian Stavros Halkias said:

How did f*cking computers become the thing… that does art? And humans are the ones in f*cking Amazon warehouses? Like, shouldn’t the robots be working so we can paint?

Coggins is also correct to highlight that unpredictable AI tech is being used by global militaries and defence contractors. This is despite AI companies making claims like the following:

JUST IN: OpenAI reportedly caught an AI agent leaving “notes” to future versions of itself on how to escape internal constraints.

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) July 25, 2026

There’s every chance OpenAI made the above up to make their tech seem more dangerous – and therefore more valuable – than it actually is (the claim they’re making was a plotline in the sci-fi drama Person of Interest, after all). Regardless of whether it’s true, however, it seems like we’d be prudent to assume it might be, and to take these companies’ toys away from them.

AI: who benefits?

Coggins continued:

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has brought AI around the Cabinet table with a dedicated Minister to promote its use. They need to focus on how AI is regulated and who benefits from it.

As the region’s first Green Mayor, I will work to end to the folly of rushing headlong into AI development without public debate and environmental protections.

I will not allow our water-deprived peat moors or people’s drinking water to be threatened by AI’s rapacious drive for profits. This is what I mean by my campaign pledge to take back Greater Manchester from Big Money.

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We’ve reported on the threat to the British water supply before, notably here:

Starmer’s ‘systemic planning failure’ on AI data centres puts UK water reserves at dire risk

As we reported:

The Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) was established to provide guidance on how we can achieve “digital transformation” without putting sustainability targets at risk. In aid of this, they published a report titled Water use in AI and Data Centres.

As the report highlights, we were already facing significant water scarcity, and AI data centres will only worsen this issue. What we don’t know is how much worse they’ll make it, because tech companies don’t have to report, monitor, or estimate how much water they use.

We’ll repeat this, because it’s actually a little difficult to believe when you first hear it: AI data centres do not have to report, monitor, or estimate how much water they use.

Determining the future

Coggins concluded:

I will establish a Mayor’s Commission made up of the public, business and wildlife and nature organisations to determine the future of AI in Greater Manchester. It will examine the evidence and make recommendations on how we protect people and plant from the excesses of AI, including its threatening over use of water.

Coggins is absolutely right to be raising these issues. And while she can’t make national decisions, the local campaigns against data centres in the US have proven to be a significant factor in the evolving debate on AI:

The backlash to artificial intelligence and its infrastructure will only grow in the coming months and years. Coggins is ahead of the curve on this front, and we hope more politicians to take this issue to heart.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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The Labour government is floating another vicious programme of sweeping cuts to disabled people’s welfare.

However, the public could be forgiven for not knowing about these because nowhere in the media or wider sociopolitical disability discourse is anyone talking about them like this is what they are.

Notably, while the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has meted out devastating cuts to Universal Credit’s health element, and gears up to once again target personal independence payments (PIP), it has also been colluding with the Home Office to strip hundreds of thousands of migrants of access to welfare. This includes those very same disability benefits.

The lack of recognition that these hostile environment plans represent welfare cuts exposes a glaring gap in discussions around disabled people’s rights. Crucially, it brings into focus the gaping hole in disability justice communities’ acknowledgment that migrants’ rights are disability rights — and that these are inextricable.

Disability is attacked under immigration reforms

It was mid-July when Times home affairs editor, Matt Dathan, broke his ‘exclusive’, setting the stage for Labour’s callous immigration reforms.

Under disgraceful plans Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood published for consultation in November, and which closed in February, the Labour government wanted to increase the time migrants spend in immigration limbo before being eligible to apply for permanent residence.

Government mouthpiece Dathan, who was blatantly spoon-fed the scoop directly from a Home Office source,  laid out the prospective ‘compromise’ option.

Specifically, the report detailed how the Labour government is weighing up exemptions to its plans for certain groups of migrants. In particular, people who arrived in the UK post-2021 would be exempt from its manoeuvres to double the time it takes to qualify for indefinite leave to remain (ILR).

The proposal sits amid a wider programme of anti-immigration reforms.

As the Times reported, over 80 Labour MPs have called on Burnham to scrap Mahmood’s shameful policies. The ‘compromise’ option would therefore be one way that the newly-minted prime minister could persuade prospective rebel MPs to back the broader catalogue of reforms.

But if Labour follow through on any version of these vile plans, they will represent nothing short of catastrophic welfare cuts.

Where was the disability rights community?

The story went viral enough that X made it one of the day’s news explainers. It lingered about the site for the next couple of days.

However, since then, the news seems to have prompted zero fanfare from disability rights groups. Among the most prominent disability rights charities, and Deaf and disabled people’s organisations (DDPOs),  there was tumbleweed.

On X, it appears not one even reposted Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s rebuttal of Labour’s callous proposals. This is despite it garnering over 600 reposts and more than 2.3 million views (at the time of writing).

Yet, it’s abundantly clear that these immigration policies will hit disabled migrants the hardest. So where has the disability rights community been on these de facto sweeping benefit cuts?

Who does the disability rights movement represent?

DDPOs and disability rights charities have run longstanding campaigns against cuts to PIP, Universal Credit, Access to Work, and Motability. Explore any of their social media accounts and you’ll see a consistent stream of opposition to Labour’s shameless welfare policies.

Disability and benefits-focused outlets have run countless stories on these too.

The simple fact of the matter is, migrants, siloed by the state immigration system into different categories of citizenship ‘deservingness’, are members of the disabled community. That seems like an obvious thing to say but when it comes to conversations around what constitutes immediate disability justice battlegrounds, the fight against the hostile immigration system isn’t usually among the first disability rights groups put forward.

There are some likely reasons for this and it largely revolves around who the disability rights movement includes, and more to the point, who it excludes.

Black disability justice activist Dara Baldwin’s seminal novel To Be a Problem: A Black Woman’s Survival in the Racist Disability Rights Movement maps the racism inside the disability rights movement in the US. In this, Baldwin underscores how the predominantly white make-up of disability non-profits, especially where leadership was concerned, has meant that groups have failed to incorporate issues that impact multi-marginalised disabled people.

Of course, the PIP cuts will likely impact multi-marginalised — in particular, disabled people — the hardest. But there’s no moving away from the fact that, because it affects what will invariably be the largely white membership of these groups, they have prioritised this issue.

In other words, the PIP cuts are enough of a white disabled people’s problem that they get attention and focus.

When disability and migrant rights groups collaborate

None of this is to say that DDPOs and disability rights non-profits have entirely ignored migrants in their advocacy and activism. They haven’t.

Groups like Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Direct Action Network for Disabled People (DAN) have long stood in solidarity with migrant members of the disabled community.

In the UK today, DDPOs and even some disability charities have been engaging in coalition building with migrants’ rights groups. For instance, multiple DDPOs like DPAC, WinVisible, and non-profits such as Disability Rights UK and Inclusion London, among others, are members of the Disability and Migration Network (DAMN).

The coalition includes migrants’ rights groups like Migrants’ Rights Network, Migrants Organise, and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI).

Through DAMN, these groups have come together to fight both the hostile welfare and immigration systems.

In 2025, they hosted a Disability and Migration Justice conference. This unpacked the similarities of experiences of marginalisation for disabled people and migrants in the UK today.

Then, in March 2026, Praxis, a migrants’ rights charity and member of DAMN, organised a mass lobby against the government’s earned settlement plans. Multiple disability rights groups attended.

Acts of solidarity vs intersectional disability rights issue

DAMN also published a statement against the government’s immigration plans and have encouraged the public to contact their MPs. Doing this acknowledges that the disabled community needs to step up on migrants’ rights.

However, there’s still a sense that migrants’ rights issues are separate from disability rights concerns rather than overlapping.

Compared to the energy and resources these groups have directed towards other attacks on disabled people’s rights, they still treat the hostile environment as a peripheral, solidarity-based issue.

These welfare cuts are a constant talking point across their social media and websites. The same cannot be said of these immigration-reforms-come-welfare cuts.

Silent on the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act

Of course, Labour’s latest hostile environment plans are an expansion on the shameful immigration policies that already exist. It’s not the first time the disability rights community has failed to centre the migrant disabled community.

DAMN founder and academic Rebecca Yeo, and sociologist Robel Abay Afeworki, have highlighted how disability charities and DDPOs were silent when Tony Blair’s New Labour government waved through the racist 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act. The Act codified in law that some migrants would have ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’, which is as it sounds.

It bars certain migrants (including asylum seekers) from accessing certain benefits and denies them access to local authority housing.

Not only did this mean that disabled migrants would have no access to the welfare safety net, but removing that support is in itself, a disabling act. It left disabled migrants without vital resources to navigate a structurally ableist and disablist society.

In withdrawing those resources, it prevents migrants (both disabled and non-disabled) meeting even their basic essential needs. It pushes them into poverty, homelessness, and deteriorating health. The result, on top of all this, was physical and mental disablement for many migrants navigating an abusive system.

Migrants’ rights are disabled people’s rights

Disability rights groups haven’t stayed silent this time. However, the government’s latest attack on migrants requires more than solidarity. This moment demands recognition that the immigration system itself is a key disability rights front.

Labour’s current proposals — from racist, ableist welfare cuts to ramping up the disabling hostile environment — will now be the community’s biggest test of its commitment to collective liberation.

Featured image via the Meteor

By Hannah Sharland

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Lord Glasman at a rally outside the US Embassy in London, calling for the end of the Islamic regime in Iran (Amanda Rose/Alamy)

3 min read1 hr

Exclusive: Labour peer Maurice Glasman wrote and recorded a song dedicated to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, in support of his exiled dynasty returning to power.

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Pahlavi, the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was designated Crown Prince of Iran in 1967 before the monarchy was abolished during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Following the death of his father, Reza Pahlavi declared himself Shah of Iran. 

Having lived in the US as a dissident in exile since the revolution, Pahlavi is a prominent critic of the Iranian government and called for the recent protests that led to a brutal crackdown. 

He campaigned to step up to become the new leader of Iran, but after Ali Khameini’s assassination in US-backed Israeli strikes did not result in regime change, Khameini was succeeded by his son Mojtaba as Supreme Leader.

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Pahlavi has said he would like to lead a transition in Iran to a new democratic government, declaring: “I’m not the destination, I’m a bridge to the destination.” 

Lord Glasman, who told PoliticsHome he “supports the people of Iran in their uprising against the revolutionary regime”, has met Pahlavi four times on recent occasions.

The pair met for the first time earlier this year, PoliticsHome understands, when they had lunch at a restaurant in Paris. There, Glasman played Pahlavi his song via a portable speaker.

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Titled “The Shah is Back”, the tribute to Pahlavi condemns Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei as “tyrants” and calls on Iranians to “believe it, the Shah is back”.

Protesters against the Islamic Republic have chanted “Pahlavi will return” and similar. Glasman’s song includes the slogan “Javid Shah” (Long live the Shah).

A jazz enthusiast, Glasman is a trumpeter and played all of the musical instruments used in the song, as well as singing it.

The Blue Labour founder brought Pahlavi into Parliament for meetings in June, last month.

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Below are the lyrics of Glasman’s song and his recording.

To everyone living and everyone dead

To everyone frazzled and frightened, alone in their bed

To everyone stranded, their hearts still unpacked

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Let it all go, let it flow, the Shah is back

Let it all go, let it flow, the Shah is back

 

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To everyone slandered, to everyone sacked

To everyone frozen and fearful and under attack

To everyone longing for something they lack

 

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Leave it, don’t grieve it, believe it, the Shah is back

 

Khomeini, Khameini, giants of infamy, tyrants of murdering men (Yazid!)

Khomeini, Khameini, you had it in for me, shooting us time and again

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To everyone blinded and everyone tried

To everyone stuck in their bedroom with something to hide

To everyone scratching and starting to crack

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Leave it, receive it, believe it, the Shah is back

He lived in your heart form the start, the Shah is back

 

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Javid Shah! Oh, he’s coming back to heal it 

Javid Shah! I know that you can feel it

Javid Shah! As it was, so it will be

Javid Shah! True nobility

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Javid Shah! Javid Shah! 

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Activists celebrated Pret A Manger’s 40th birthday by dumping a 6 foot birthday card filled with angry messages from customers outside its HQ. In the past four weeks, Pret has received 2,200 comments on its social media accounts about “frankenchickens” amidst the ongoing animal welfare controversy.

The backlash follows Pret’s decision earlier this year to push back its 2018 commitment deadline to stop using fast-growing chicken breeds from 2026 to 2032 – a 14-year delay from its original commitment.

No progress at Pret

Compassion in World Farming’s Chickentrack confirms Pret has made 0% progress on phasing out frankenchickens.

Campaigners argue that Pret is ‘ignoring’ its customers’ concerns, as the high-end chain hasn’t replied to a single comment criticising its stance. 74,000 people have signed a pledge to take a break from Pret until it delivers on its promise to stop selling fast-growing breeds of chicken, known as frankenchickens.

Connor Jackson, chief executive of Anima, said:

The fact that Pret appears to be abandoning their responsibilities to animal welfare has rightly shocked customers. And now they appear to be ignoring customers as well. Understandably, I think this silence has only strengthened people’s concern and anger.

Campaigners from Anima have taken a car-sized, animatronic frankenchicken replica to Pret stores across London. The group has protested at 60 individual Pret stores since the campaign began.

Fast-growing “frankenchickens”, bred to reach slaughter weight in just 35 days, can suffer chronic pain, deformities and heart failure as their bodies struggle to keep pace with their engineered growth rate.

Around 1.1 billion are reared for slaughter in the UK each year, and the RSPCA has named fast-growing broiler breeds the most serious animal welfare problem in the country.

The Anima campaign has drawn support from broadcaster and naturalist Chris Packham, who has criticised the reversal of Pret’s pledge.

Meanwhile, Project Slingshot, a campaign backed by Joanna Lumley, Paul McCartney, and comedians including Sara Pascoe, Diane Morgan and Kerry Godliman, is running parallel London Underground advertising highlighting the suffering of fast-growing chickens and criticising Pret on social media and on its website.

Anima says it will continue to campaign about Pret until the company commits to a credible, near-term plan to transition away from fast-growing breeds.

Featured image via Anima

By The Canary

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Israel’s former prime minister, Naftali Bennett has said he will declare US ally Qatar to be an “enemy state” if he succeeds in replacing current Benjamin Netanyahu this autumn.

The far-right politician also told Bloomberg he wants to start a war on Turkey. Bennett, who used to be Netanyahu’s chief of staff, clearly thinks Israel is not waging war on enough of his neighbours.

Qatar was trying, at the request of the US, to facilitate a peace deal between Israel and Hamas when Israel bombed the capital city, Doha, to try to murder the Palestinian negotiators.

Bennett has boasted of how many Palestinians he has killed, says he will never allow a Palestinian state and dismissed objections to Israel’s starvation blockade of Gaza. He appears to think Qatar trying to help bring peace is hostility.

Israel ex-PM: Every accusation is a confession

In a classic ‘every accusation is a confession’ speech, Bennett told an Israeli ‘security’ conference that Qatar is an “antisemitic cancer” that wants to destroy Israel. He added:

[Qatar is] a violent antisemitic cancer that is spreading metastases to the West and even to the office of Israel’s prime minister, with the aim of destroying the State of Israel…[and has conducted] a powerful global influence operation that may have caused Israel very major damage.

If “powerful global influence campaign” sounds familiar, Israel has massively increased its propaganda budget and boasted of running a 60,000-strong influence operation to counter outrage at its Gaza genocide.

Bennett also claimed that Qatar “directly” funded the Gaza resistance group, Hamas. In fact, Israel “approved and encouraged the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza to prop up Hamas” as a tactic against rival Palestinian group Fatah.

Failing election campaign

Qatar dismissed Bennett’s comments as an attempt to revive a failing election campaign. Pointing to Qatar’s involvement in regional peace negotiations, an official at the country’s embassy in the US said that Bennett was:

spread[ing] disinformation about Qatar in an attempt to further his own political ambitions.

Featured image via Gil Cohen-Magen/ Pool via Reuters

By Skwawkbox

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A newborn baby girl, just 45 days old, has survived an arson attack on her home in the occupied West Bank, carried out by ‘Israeli’ settlers.

On 24 July, the village of Urif, south of Nablus, was hit by a large-scale settler attack, following a deadly confrontation in the nearby village of Tal.

Israeli settlers inflict violence on village

Around 150 armed illegal ‘Israeli’ colonists stormed Urif, opening fire on residents, throwing stones, and conducting a wave of arson which saw homes, balconies and community halls go up in flames.

Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian homes, businesses, and a Palestinian-owned quarry during raids on the village of Urif, south of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank pic.twitter.com/2nPmToZD3g

— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) July 27, 2026

Israeli settlers set fire to homes and businesses in and around the village of Urif, south of Nablus. pic.twitter.com/y6HYySJk7Q

— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) July 24, 2026

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Settlers attempt to burn residents alive

While Palestinian infant, Lana Shahada, was asleep, these settlers launched a surprise attack on her family’s home. They surrounded the house, locked all the doors and then threw Molotov cocktails and other flammable materials through the windows.

The house caught fire, and so did the girl’s room, but Lana miraculously escaped death as her family managed to pull her from the smoke and flames.

While Lana and her mother escaped the burning house, settlers pelted them with stones. Israeli occupation forces (IOF) were present throughout the incident but did nothing to stop the attack.

Embracing his smiling granddaughter, Fawzi Shahada recounted the terror attack in the video below.

In the middle of her room, a grandfather holds his infant granddaughter, who survived what could have been a certain death after Israeli settlers set her family’s home on fire in the village of Urif, south of Nablus. pic.twitter.com/3DBcbfiWPJ

— Government Communication Center (@pal_gcc_en) July 25, 2026

Years of violence but no action taken

Urif village has been a frequent target of coordinated ‘Israeli’ settler violence, primarily originating from the nearby settlement of Yitzhar. The settlers living here are notorious for their frequent violent attacks on Palestinians and their property.

Their presence has not only transformed the daily life of Urif’s residents but also those living in other nearby villages such as Burin, Huwara and Madama.

Although the violence has been documented for more than a decade, no action has been taken against these terrorists.

According to organisations such as Yesh Din, the occupation grants de-facto immunity to the perpetrators of this violence. This serves a broader strategic policy to dispossess Palestinians and push them off their lands, so nearby settlements are able to expand.

The Israeli occupation — the government, the military, the police and the judiciary — greenlight this violence, of course.

Lana Shahada’s survival should not obscure the real story — that of a Palestinian baby who was nearly burned alive in her own home, in a village that for years has suffered repeated settler attacks.

Urif’s residents are living through a system that shields the attackers, normalises the violence, and leaves families to face the flames alone. There is an urgent need for accountability and justice.

Featured image via Shehab News Agency

By Charlie Jaay

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The pantomime of cruelty known as greyhound racing is slowly fading away, emitting a death rattle that matches the unpleasantness of what preceded it.

New Zealand has now banned the sport and Auckland’s Manukau Stadium held its final parade of sadism on 26 July. The country will permit no further greyhound racing after 1 August.

One supporter was finally prepared to offer some transparency into the notoriously opaque sport, telling activists who oppose the cruelty:

On Monday we’re gonna blow all our dogs away. Fuck you.

Owners of greyhounds abused for racing have been found to massacre their dogs in vast numbers, a practice known within the barbaric industry as ‘wastage’.

Edward Rennell, CEO of Greyhound Racing NZ, told reporters that the man who made the comments in this case was not actually a “licensed owner, so there were no dogs in his care”. His willingness to revel in the so-called sport’s reputation for cruelty is telling, however.

Greyhound racing vet reveals ‘barbaric’ treatment

Meanwhile in neighbouring Tasmania, a state of Australia, a vet has given extraordinary insider testimony into the horrific suffering endured by racing greyhounds.

Dr Alex Brittan is the former chief veterinary officer for Greyhound Racing New South Wales, another Australian state, located on the nation’s east coast.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) about his period in the role, Brittan said:

…what I learned during my time there was, on a personal level, heartbreaking. On a professional level, pretty devastating.

He continued:

Huge amounts of dogs are being produced. They’re being housed in appalling conditions. They’re raced at a frequency that is barbaric. Their injuries are, aside from a hit-by-car injury, they’re some of the most extreme and appalling injuries you can possibly imagine. The injury rates continue to go up. The death rates continue to go up.

And then once the dog has finished its athletic career, it’s supposed to be rehomed to a domestic couch. And this is something industry would have us believe is happening, but it’s not. The numbers don’t lie.

The number of dogs that aren’t rehomed are classified as backlog, and they tend to live out their lives in commercial kennels, akin to being in solitary confinement with no hope of ever being rehomed.

The ABC host asked Brittan why Tasmania doesn’t terminate the vile practice when it has the legal right to do so, and 70-75% of the population oppose the ‘sport’. Brittan’s answer was simple:

Money talks.

In yet another reminder of capitalism’s guarantee of creating concentrations of wealth and power that undermine democracy, the vet said:

Ten per cent are for it [greyhound racing]. And it’s that 10% which are leading the charge and bending the government’s desire to do what’s right for the animal and instead do what’s right for the gambling industry. The size of the gambling industry is something that flabbergasted me.

There’s $9.6 billion…[that] gets waged on greyhounds every year in Australia. It’s about a $40 billion a year churn when you take in the horses and the trots as well. So it’s a massive, massive industry.

Only Australia, England, the Republic of Ireland, the north of Ireland and the US still permit greyhound racing. Anglophone countries have a tendency to pass themselves off as a civilising force, yet often reveal themselves to be among the least civilised places on Earth.

English campaigners rally for end to greyhound cruelty

Scotland and Wales took a step away from that this year when both banned the activity within a day of each other in March. English campaigners want their government to follow and stepped up their efforts with a march on 25 July, marking 100 years since the first greyhound race.

At the march, campaigners highlighted the immense “scale of pain and suffering greyhounds have faced at the hands of the greyhound racing industry”.

Quoting figures from the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB), the governing body for greyhound racing, a statement from the League Against Cruel Sports said:

The trackside death toll has now reached 1,518 since 2017 when figures were first published, and the same figures show a shocking 38,816 injuries suffered by racing greyhounds during that period.

Large majorities supported the ban in Scotland and Wales. Polling across Britain and the north of Ireland in 2022 showed only 4% of people take an interest in the tormenting of greyhounds. Just 14% felt it important to British culture, and 81% prioritised the wellbeing of the dogs over the limited number of jobs the industry creates.

The signs of Andy Burnham being a different sort of prime minister are not promising. However, if he’s looking for low hanging fruit to signal a change of tack, a good place to start would be to ban cruel bloodsports like greyhound racing.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

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Independent MP Adnan Hussain has demanded action from the UK government after London Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan admitted Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Khan is supported in his demand by at least nine other parliamentarians.

International law requires International Criminal Court (ICC) member states take every available action to prevent genocide. The Starmer government contorted itself shamelessly to strenuously deny the genocide. New PM Andy Burnham has shown similar evasiveness.

But Khan’s admission, coming from one of the Labour party’s most senior representatives, puts the Burnham government firmly on the legal hook. Quoting Khan’s recent speech, Hussain made the point emphatically below.

MP for Blackburn instigates letter

We, the undersigned Parliamentarians, note the recent public statement by the Mayor of London that genocide has been committed in Gaza and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears responsibility. Whatever individual Members’ views may be, it is of profound constitutional and political significance when such a senior elected figure within the governing party publicly reaches this conclusion.

The question before the United Kingdom is no longer simply one of rhetoric, but of legal obligation.

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The United Kingdom is a State Party to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The International Court of Justice made clear in its 2007 judgment in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro that the obligation to prevent genocide is one of conduct, not merely of reaction. A State’s duty arises when it learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide may be committed. States are not entitled to remain passive until the conclusion of lengthy judicial proceedings before taking reasonable measures within their power to prevent the crime.

If senior representatives of the governing party now believe that genocide has occurred, or that there exists compelling evidence that genocide has been or is being committed, then the United Kingdom must ensure that its actions are consistent with its obligations under international law.

Accordingly, we call upon the Government to:

• Publicly set out its legal assessment of the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Genocide Convention in light of the current evidence and recent statements by senior public figures,

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• Use every diplomatic, political and economic means reasonably available to the United Kingdom to help prevent further atrocities.

• Support all lawful international mechanisms for accountability, including proceedings before the International Court of Justice concerning allegations of genocide and the work of the International Criminal Court in investigating alleged international war crimes.

• Fully comply with the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Rome Statute, including cooperation with any valid arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court

• Ensure that no arms exports, military cooperation or other forms of assistance expose the United Kingdom to the risk of contributing, directly or indirectly, to serious violations of international law, including genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity

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• Review the United Kingdom’s diplomatic, economic and defence relationship with Israel to ensure that it reflects the same principles and standards that the United Kingdom has consistently applied where other states have been credibly accused of the gravest international crimes, including through economic sanctions and other restrictive measures.

This is not a question of treating one state differently from another. It is a question of applying the principles of international law consistently, irrespective of the identity of the state concerned or its allies.

The United Kingdom has long claimed to uphold a rules-based international order. That commitment has meaning only if the same legal standards are applied universally, without fear or favour. Where there exists a serious risk of genocide, the duty to prevent is engaged. Where credible allegations of international crimes are made, accountability must be pursued. Where international courts exercise lawful jurisdiction, their processes must be respected.

History will judge not only those who committed atrocities, but also those states that possessed influence and failed to use it. The United Kingdom must now demonstrate that its commitment to international law is measured by its actions as well as its words.

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Signed

Adnan Hussain MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
John McDonnell MP
Lord John Hendy
Ayoub Khan MP
Shockat Adam MP
Iqbal Mohammed MP
Richard Burgeon MP

Admission from London mayor

It’s not Khan’s first use of the word ‘genocide’ relating to Gaza but, perhaps stung by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stating that he wanted Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu arrested, Khan strengthened his language.

Last week, he triggered a deranged Israel lobby meltdown by saying that no one can credibly deny Israel’s genocide:

It’s inescapable to draw the conclusion in Gaza we are seeing before our very eyes a genocide.

Hussain is absolutely right: the UK government must stop evading its legal obligations — or admit it is merely a failed-state poodle to the US and Israel.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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