Israeli soldiers have admitted that their mission is to destroy villages and prevent inhabitants from returning home, which directly contradicts their Zionist government’s claims that they are only targeting Hezbollah.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by AJ+ (@ajplus)

In an interview with Haaretz, Israeli soldiers said:

The only mission is to continue the destruction. There is no other mission. ⁣

They added:

At the end of every day, there’s a report on how many homes were destroyed.

One commander even told Haaretz that Israel’s claims of only targeting “terrorist infrastructure” are false:

It isn’t terrorist infrastructure – we’re destroying everything.

Israel has been destroying homes and other civilian property, such as schools and churches, in more than 55 towns that it is illegally occupying in Southern Lebanon. The villages are predominantly Shia Muslim, and inhabitants are unable to return home.

Israel agreed to a ‘ceasefire’ in Lebanon on April 16. However, since then, it has violated that agreement almost every day. Even Netanyahu posted a video of IOF attacks in Lebanon with the caption “Lebanon – continuing.”

No ceasefire

Israel has displaced more than 1m people and killed over 2,500 since the beginning of March.

The Israeli government’s official line has always been that the IOF is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure.

Yet we have heard IOF soldiers, more government officials than I can count, Israeli journalists and influencers, and so many more inciting genocide. Actors, footballers, heads of CEO’s, settlers and mayors – the list is endless.

To make matters worse, we have an almost endless supply of video evidence on social media, which proves that Israel has a somewhat precarious relationship with the truth.

The IOF has repeatedly been seen destroying the olive trees of Palestinians. When did they become terrorists? 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by CGTN America News (@cgtnamerica)

Despite all of this evidence, Western governments and media outlets parrot the ‘official Israeli line’ about targeting Hezbollah. It’s amazing what money and the fear of being nuked can do to your editorial process.

‘Greater Israel’

Contrary to the illegal settler state’s government, Israel’s goal has always been the complete and systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure. After all, its goal is a ‘Greater Israel’ – which Zionists first mentioned in 1967.

It is used to refer to the territories Israel illegally stole in 1967: the Palestinian territories, the Golan Heights in Syria, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

However, Zionists have also referred to it as including all of Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan, along with significant parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In 2024, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, advocated expanding Israel’s borders. He said:

It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus, invoking the “Greater Israel” ideology.

According to Middle East Eye, he then suggested that:

Israel would gradually grow to encompass not only all Palestinian territories but also parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Additionally, during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, an IOF soldier wore a patch showing a map of “Greater Israel” on his uniform. This map included parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

Of course, that goal will not be possible without Israel destroying everything in its path.

For a long time now, Israel has made its intentions clear. It’s textbook colonialism wrapped up in ‘never again’.

International law?

United Nations (UN) experts have repeatedly warned that destroying civilian housing and infrastructure is a war crime. According to the UN:

systematic or widespread bombardment of housing, civilian objects and infrastructure are strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law, criminal law and human rights law.

Moreover, under international law, every person living in occupied territories has the right to engage in armed resistance.

Hezbollah literally only exists because Israel invaded and illegally occupied Lebanon in 1982.

Hezbollah’s main foundational goal was to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The group’s resistance to Israeli occupation was instrumental in the IOF leaving Lebanon in 2000, after 18 years.

Importantly, armed resistance is legal under international law. A United Nations General Assembly resolution states:

The General Assembly,

Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;

Israeli definition of terrorism

The Israeli government decides someone is a terrorist, and normal rules of international law do not apply. That’s pretty convenient. Of course, the rest of the world follows. If Israel says they’re terrorists, then they must be. At this point, if Netanyahu told most Western leaders to jump off a cliff for the good of Israel, I think they would.

From where I’m standing, there’s only one terrorist group indiscriminately killing children and bombing hospitals – and that’s the Israeli government.

Featured image via Adri Salido / Getty Images

By The Canary

Source link

Source link

Sky News had a segment today discussing the government’s rumoured proposals to cap food prices on essential goods such as bread, eggs and milk.

However, rather than show any awareness about the back-breaking burdens on families and vulnerable people surviving this ‘cost of greed crisis’, Sky News appeared to have far more sympathy for the big supermarkets.

Don’t hold your breath though: a government official quickly stepped in to rule out any discussion of price caps, once again showing just how little establishment parties prioritise the interests of the 99%.

Needless to say, presenter Wilfred Frost gave a pretty pathetic bit of lip-service to the need to watch out for profit-seeking price gouging. But once again, the media and political establishment side with the richest in society while rising costs push even more people towards hunger in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Moreover, those prices never come down, which is a win for the billionaires, while ordinary people suffer hunger and negative health consequences.

Can you imagine a news channel presenter editorialising that price controls are a good idea.

Of course you can't.

Here's Eton educated Wilfred Frost explaining why capping the prices of essential items so people can afford to eat is a bad idea. pic.twitter.com/2Hh3ZH7aKp

Advertisement

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 20, 2026

Families must consider ‘poor’ billionaire owners?!

One thing is abundantly clear: our political and media establishment has abandoned the very people it claims to represent. Instead of standing up for the public, politicians and the mainstream media now ask us to sympathise with supermarkets operating in an industry that continues to generate enormous profits.

Meanwhile, those same supermarkets have posted record-breaking profits throughout the cost-of-living crisis. Or, more accurately, the cost of greed crisis. Now, profits look set to rise yet again while more hard-working families fall into food poverty.

Once again, vulnerable people will pay the price because their basic needs simply don’t rank as a priority in a society that increasingly protects profit before people.

What’s even worse, is that it seems these wild profits aren’t enough for these greedy monsters.

Clearly their appetite is ever surging, as our food prices will, whilst appetites go unsated for millions living in poverty.

In April, the Canary reported on surge pricing, ‘greedflation’ and the negative impact this would have.

But, hey, we can’t forget the struggling CEOs

Who are we kidding? Of course, CEOs’ pay will continue to increase exponentially. This week the Canary reported on how the boss of Tesco’s salary had increased by almost a million pounds.

This isn’t only in our food sector of course. All essentials are subject to this as James Wright wrote:

Water and energy companies are also making significant profit that further shows the ‘cost of living crisis’ is manufactured by the current system. In 2022/23, water utilities in the UK made £1.7bn — almost double what they made in 2018/19. And in the first quarter of 2026, BP more than doubled its profits. Clearly, the same trend is seen with Tesco in food retail.

Food prices up 50%.
Wages barely moved.
Billionaire wealth exploded.

This isn’t a cost of living crisis.
It’s a greed crisis.

Advertisement

Full video + article below.

Youtube: https://t.co/eqs3iU6fpb

Substack: https://t.co/Lk24D5qOzE pic.twitter.com/lN3h9r830f

— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) May 19, 2026

Advertisement

Poverty and suffering a mere inconvenience to some

For as long as history has been recorded, the super-rich have treated poverty and human suffering as little more than inconveniences. Billionaires repeatedly put profit before people and reduce working-class families to unlimited sources of wealth extraction.

At this rate, you could almost imagine corporations charging us for the air we breathe — all while executives demand even more sympathy for protecting their margins.

People have had absolutely enough of the greed that has defined this era.

Across Britain, families watch billionaires move the goalposts yet again, but the public can only tolerate so much exploitation before anger boils over.

Then, with the help of super-rich far-right conmen like Nigel Farage, they pit our communities against refugees. Finally, if that doesn’t work, they pit us against one another.

But instead of the media insisting on changing course, they keep finding new ways to make rising costs feel permanent and unavoidable. Consequently, suffocating pressures for ordinary people in the months and years ahead will go on unabated.

Therefore, the 99% can no longer afford to ignore the class war being waged against them while living standards keep falling day by day. Ordinary people do not have a common enemy in refugees or immigrants, no matter how hard parties like Reform try to sell that narrative.

The real threat lies with corporate billionaires and major corporations that dodge taxes, hoard wealth, and keep grinding working people down while the rest of society pays the price.

Featured image via Matthew Horwood/ Getty Images

By Maddison Wheeldon

Source link

76 civil society organisations have written to the justice secretary David Lammy, urging the UK government to act on a “long-overdue” commitment to protect basic human rights in UK law.

Just Fair has coordinated the joint letter and published it on 20 May. It marks exactly 50 years since the UK ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This was a landmark treaty recognising rights to housing, food, health, education, social security and decent work.

Signatories warn that, despite this long-standing commitment, these human rights remain largely unenforceable in UK law. And this is leaving millions of people unable to rely on the basic foundations of a decent life.

Jess McQuail, director of Just Fair, said:

Fifty years ago, the UK made a promise, that everyone should be able to rely on the essentials of a decent life. Today, that promise is still being broken.

Millions of people are going without the essentials, not by accident, but because these rights are not properly protected in our laws. Delay is no longer acceptable. Incorporation is the next step, and it is long overdue.

The letter calls on the UK government to commit to incorporating economic, social and cultural rights into domestic law. That way, human rights can be enforced in practice and provide real accountability when systems fail.

Campaigners say not only would this help tackle poverty and inequality. It would also offer a shared foundation that brings people together, at a time of growing division in UK politics. McQuail added:

At a time when some seek to divide communities and scapegoat others, rights offer a different path, one rooted in dignity, fairness and shared standards we can all rely on.

Incorporating these rights into UK law is a practical step towards building a fairer and more just society.

Advertisement

The call follows recent recommendations from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It urged the UK to give these human rights full legal effect and access to justice when they are violated.

Fifty years after ratification, campaigners say the UK must now move from promise to delivery.

Featured image via Scott Olson / Getty Images

By The Canary

Source link

We were excited to discover this old footage of a very young John Swinney.

?

How thrilled he must be that he’s managed to make his dream come true.

Because in the Scottish Parliament at least, there are now no men and no women, and indeed pretty much only wankers. Just days into its five-year term, gender ideology has already turned it into a trainwreck and a laughing-stock.

Advertisement

After the election, the Parliament website had added “non-binary” to the list of filters by which one could search the MSP cohort, and included male Green MSP Iris Duane in the female category. Shortly afterwards it decided for the first time in its 27-year history to abolish the gender filter entirely.

It’s doubtful that the Scottish Government can comply with its duty to monitor progress on female representation, or indeed its Public Sector Equality Duty generally, if it refuses to recognise the sex of MSPs, but apparently it has been determined that “inclusion” is more important.

Meanwhile, the first act of new Presiding Officer Kenny Gibson – one of just three SNP MSPs who voted against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill – was to announce that he would impose compelled speech in the chamber on anyone with the temerity to know the difference between a man and a woman.

Sanctioning anyone for “misgendering” would be unambiguously unlawful anywhere else in Scotland, but there’s uncertainty over whether the Equality Act 2010 (which protects so-called “gender-critical” beliefs) applies in the Holyrood chamber. In theory both the PO and the Parliament’s standing orders are subordinate to UK law, but we can only hope that an MSP, probably a Tory or Reform one, puts the matter to the test as soon as possible in the interests of clarity.

Advertisement

The Scottish Government has also refused to take any action over the trans-focused Equality Network – an organisation almost entirely funded by the government – giving businesses unlawful and inaccurate advice regarding the Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland.

All of this follows the chaos unleashed by the election of “non-binary” Green MSP “Q” Manivannan, who will under the law as it stands become an illegal immigrant long before the completion of his term in office.

(Although the Scottish Greens find biological women so intolerably gross and icky that they made a female candidate in exactly the same circumstances stand down before the election, despite all the other “diversity” boxes she ticked.)

And the important thing to note is that none of this is a bug. It’s a feature.

Advertisement

The sociopathic freakshow that made up the Scottish Greens candidate list at the election, for example, was not merely an unfortunate aspect of to the fact that the party has nobody but sociopathic freaks to choose from.

The Greens are not a proper party in the normal sense. They have a tiny membership riven with incredibly bitter factional infighting, and don’t stand in most constituency seats. Instead, they exist to opportunistically exploit the electoral system as essentially a form of political terrorism. Everything they do is about “queering” the status quo, by which they mean normal people (especially white heterosexual ones, although “Queer Theory” is only passingly concerned with sexuality) with families and jobs and a fondness for an occasional pork chop.

“Q” Manivannan, whose real name is Srivatsan, takes his nom-de-plume from his social media identity “q_ueering”. Almost immediately after he was elected and a number of offensive and racist posts from his Twitter account surfaced, he locked the account so that it was only visible to his 2,471 existing followers, and then methodically removed every single one of them so that nobody could read any of his tweets. (He now has just two, and nobody but him and them knows who they are.)

Readers might be forgiven for wondering what he wants to hide so badly.

Advertisement

Manivannan joined the Greens primarily because of the party’s stance on Palestine, and wants Scottish taxpayers’ money to be spent not on improving anyone’s lives in Scotland but on paying “reparations” for the “historical and contemporary complicity of Scotland in the colonisation and occupation of Palestine”.

He performs poetry urging people to migrate illegally to Scotland.

He describes himself as a “marriage abolitionist” and a “communist” who runs towards red flags rather than away from them, and also supports the abolition of prisons, like his dribble-witted fellow new Green MSP Kate Nevens.

The Greens want to soak the rich with high taxes, but at the same time they don’t want anyone to BE rich in the first place. They oppose most forms of economic growth as environmentally harmful, and call for “degrowth” as both a tactic against climate change and a path to “upending the engine of capitalism”, ie destroying life as we currently understand it.

Advertisement

Manivannan is explicit about the link.

So if you voted Scottish Green you voted for a communist Scotland with no marriage and no prisons, an end to capitalism not just in Scotland but worldwide, and all your money being given to Palestine. Oh, and more cycle lanes.

It’s not an accident that the Greens put such obvious nutters at the top of their lists. It’s a deliberate statement of open, provocative contempt for normal people and normal society, that says “We are going to do our damnedest to destroy everything you know and love”. Manivannan is simply less subtle than most of them about it.

Consider the selection of the infamous Mridul Wadhwa as a list candidate for Edinburgh. He was EIGHTH on the list. Regions only actually get seven list seats. For him to have any chance of getting elected the Greens would have needed literally 100% of the list vote. So why is he there?

Advertisement

The answer is that he’s there to make a statement. The Scottish Greens WANT you to know that they support this man, who was fired for victimising a rape crisis worker, having lied to get a job running a rape crisis organisation that was supposed to be for a biological woman.

Wadhwa is absolute poison to every decent human in Scotland. And since there was no chance whatever of him getting elected there was no ostensible purpose for putting him on the list. But the Greens did it anyway purely to say “Screw you and your decent society. This is who we admire and prioritise over you, and would happily have making your laws.”

Alert readers may also have noted the presence on that list, in a literally-impossible ELEVENTH place, of Alex Staniforth, a repulsive piece of slime even by the standards of the Scottish Greens, who last year tried to defund Edinburgh Women’s Aid for not being sufficiently inclusive of men.

The Greens only stood three constituency candidates in the Edinburgh region, so even if ALL of them had won their seats and EVERY SINGLE LIST VOTE had gone to the Greens, Staniforth still wouldn’t have been elected. The only reason he’s there is to demonstrate the utter molten contempt in which the Greens hold women, and indeed most normal people generally.

Advertisement

Most of this is the legacy of Patrick Harvie, a tiny angry man with the face of Heinrich Himmler but lacking the warm personality. By the end of this parliament Harvie will have been an MSP for 28 years and trousered over £2,000,000 in wages – not bad for an anti-capitalist – without ever winning a seat in his own right.

He claims to be a bisexual, but in all his decades in public life nobody’s ever known him to have a male or female partner – something which also applies to almost everyone in senior positions in the party. The last time he’s known to have been inside a woman it was his mother. If anyone’s having sex with the Scottish Greens leadership, they (perhaps understandably) don’t want anyone finding out about it.

Harvie took the mild-mannered environmentalist party of Robin Harper and transformed it into a far-left home for intolerant extremists, driving out widely-respected moderates like Andy Wightman for even daring to TALK to feminists.

Harvie groomed the repellent misogynist Ross Greer as his successor, but when the party held a leadership election last year 88% of its membership declined to vote for ANYONE. Greer got in on just 298 votes.

Advertisement

It’s worth remembering that the Greens came dead last in last week’s election (of parties represented in the Parliament), with a total of just 375,000 votes. The Lib Dems got 478K, the Tories got 543K, Reform got 745K and Labour got 809K. But Scotland’s electoral system rewarded Greer and Mackay’s misfit crew with 15 seats, just two less than Reform who got twice the votes.

And that’s the heart of the issue – the Greens and their lunatic policies are toxically unpopular with Scots, which is why the party hates society, which is why the people it puts up for election are all so foul. It’s not a coincidence. It’s design.

That’s why when people question their motives, Greens don’t respond by saying “Look, we’re in this to make Scotland a better place, give us a chance and judge us on what we do”, they say “LOL just wait, you’re going to hate us even more!”

It’s because if you’re a normal Scot just trying to survive with your family from day to day without queering/destroying the entire order of Western society, they already loathe everything about you.

Advertisement

Worryingly, despite the arithmetic in the chamber putting John Swinney in an almost uniquely strong position where he only needs the support of any one other party to pass any vote, all the early signs are that the SNP are going to cling to the Greens and their agenda anyway, giving a party with just 8% of the vote a massively disproportionate influence to go with their disproportionate seat numbers.

So get ready for five years of the queerest Scottish Parliament ever, folks. We can only hope there’s some fragment of a recognisable Scotland left at the end of it.

Source link

The post PMQs Badenoch brands Labour government as ‘like the Soviets won’ appeared first on Conservative Home.

Source link

Social and environmental causes are being positioned as close to the hearts of modern-day Royals. But given their enormous wealth and persistently high environmental footprint – amidst ongoing revelations about how much they extract from the public purse – how does this claim stack up?

The Royal assets

Prince William is set to sell off a fifth of the Duchy of Cornwall, raising money “to build homes and help nature”. Announcing this ten-year ambition in the Times earlier this week, its Chief Executive claimed that the Duchy:

should first and foremost exist to have a positive impact on the world.

Not many would disagree that Royal assets could – or should – be directed towards making the world a better place. But how much do the Royals currently benefit from all the resources afforded to them, and how does that compare to the good this does for people and the planet?

The Duchy of Cornwall, created as a source of income for the male heir to the throne, is an enormous portfolio of land worth over £1 billion. It’s estimated to earn Prince William over £20 million each year. Similarly, the Duchy of Lancaster provides an annual sum now approaching £30 million that flows directly to the King. This is on top of the Sovereign grant that the monarchy receives from the government, which has risen sharply in recent years, approaching £140 million in 2026/7.

Beyond these reported sources of income, the Royal Family do not share details of their inherited or privately earned wealth, but this is evidently immense: they own three private estates, which between them occupy more land than Birmingham, as well as extensive collections of jewels, art and more. Their postage stamp collection alone is valued at over £100 million, about 200 times what the average person in the UK earns in a lifetime.

Talking the talk…

So what do the Royals do with the astonishing amount of wealth and land under their control?

Whilst some of their money appears to be channelled towards well-meaning causes, how much remains unclear. The foundations fronted by the Royals, such as the King’s Trust and the Earthshot Prize, are well-publicised for their charitable work, but aren’t solely financed by the Royals themselves – they’re vehicles that redistribute donations and grants from a range of sources.

As large private landlords, both Duchies emphasise their:

commitment to local communities, economies and the natural environment.

But this is hard to reconcile with the profits made from tenants that have included state schools, the NHS and charities, nor the £1.5 million a year they receive renting out an empty prison to the government.

Whilst they act as patrons for nature charities and support several ecosystem restoration projects, the Royals are regularly criticised for the harm they cause to the UK’s nature. This includes presiding over the destruction of our seabed and their penchant for killing wild animals.

The sustainability data reported for activities funded by the Sovereign Grant alone shows the Royals shifting to buying renewable electricity, but does not provide any evidence of significant changes in their consumption, waste or carbon emissions. State-funded “business travel” by the Royals has risen each year since Charles became King, and resulted in the equivalent of 1,900 tonnes of CO₂ emissions last year. That’s like taking five economy-class flights between London and New York every single day.

…but the action does not match

There’s perhaps no starker symbol of UK inequality than the Royal Family living lives of such obvious excess, while an estimated 30% of children live in poverty. And for an institution that benefits so significantly from a legacy of colonialism and slavery, the idea that the Royals are doing anywhere near enough to address systemic injustice is hard to swallow.

And to show the kind of environmental leadership often ascribed to them, they would need to go far, far beyond buying solar panels, planting hedgerows, and adjusting the fuel guzzled by Royal helicopters.

Ecologist Prof James Bullock, who has previously campaigned for the Royals to rewild their land, said:

The UK is one of the most biodiversity depleted countries in the world. To start reversing that and to help adapt to climate change we need to give large areas of land and sea back to nature, as well as use farmland and other productive land more sustainably. The Royals, with their huge landholdings and wealth should be taking a lead on this necessary transition rather than tinkering around the edges.

Commenting on William’s recent announcement in the context of the Royal’s historical land-grabbing, Bullock also said:

The Prince is selling land appropriated from the nation. It would be more appropriate if he gave it back.

Featured image via Aaron Chown – WPA Pool / Getty Images

By Abi Perrin

Source link

If I ever had doubts about how protestors at Saturday’s Unite the Kingdom rally feel about Muslims (which I don’t), they were quickly laid to rest as my Instagram timeline flooded with photographs and videos of incendiary – and sometimes bizarre – anti-Muslim displays of behaviour, which included a Korean musician playing the cello while wearing strips of bacon on his shoulders, before shaking hands with Tommy Robinson on stage and announcing:

I may be hung like a chipmunk, but I’ve got enough balls to fight Islam.

I’m sorry, Mr. Cellist, but crispy cured pork will not result in me fainting or repel me back into the shadows like a vampire exposed to garlic. I also found his self-denegrating joke about the size of his package to be, in all honesty, quite sad. It plays into racist Western stereotypes about Asian men that have sought to emasculate them. It was an example of the ways in which people of colour belittle themselves to fit into white-dominated spaces. But I digress.

Saturday’s march was less ‘Unite the Kingdom’ and more ‘Unite the fight against Islam’ – the crusader references at the march were too many count. Far-right racists often accuse British Muslims like me of playing the victim card, but never has there been more blatant hatred for Islam on display than there was at Saturday’s march, which one attendee called ‘an incredible family day out in London‘ in a post on Facebook group Britain’s Voice, showing just how polarised British society has become. I am not sure you can call a rally where a 15-year-old girl was sexually harassed on camera ‘family friendly.’

However, the cherry on the top was Collectif Némésis’ niqab stunt.

Unite the Kingdom: an anti-Islam trope as old as time

Three members of the French right-wing ‘feminist’ group – I am intentionally putting the word feminist in quotation marks – took to the stage during last Saturday’s rally clad in black niqabs (the Islamic face veil) and abayas (an over garment worn by some Muslim women) before whipping them off in unison to a crowd of jeering men yelling “take it off.” How very feminist of them.

Not only was Collectif Némésis’s stunt reductive, resorting to the use of Muslim women’s clothing yet again as a symbol of what they perceive to be oppression, which is an anti-Islam trope as old as time, but by politicising our clothing and placing us on the frontline of their racist, bigoted political agenda, they are endangering us. And endangering fellow women isn’t very feminist, is it?

Muslim women bear the brunt of anti-Muslim hatred

The intent is clear: to stoke racist tensions by reinforcing the pernicious view of Islam as an oppressive force against women. And it is Muslim women who bear the brunt of these tensions.

It is well-documented that anti-Muslim hatred is gendered, with more Muslim women in Britain experiencing anti-Muslim harassment and hate crimes than Muslim men. Arguably, that’s because the hijab makes us more visibly Muslim. According to Tell MAMA, a non-governmental organisation monitoring anti-Muslim hatred in the UK, 65% of Islamophobic incidents in cities happen to girls and women, and stunts like the one Collectif Némésis pulled off last Saturday just embolden those who seek to harm Muslim women.

The consequences are serious; last month John Ashby was given a life sentence for raping and strangling a Sikh Woman last October in Walsall who he thought was a Muslim woman.

Mainstream British media outlets also bear some responsibility for the entitlement and impunity the far right feel when it comes to expressing their hatred towards Muslim women. When it comes to media coverage of the hatred that was openly expressed towards Muslims and Islam last Saturday, all you can hear are crickets.

Collectif Némésis’s actions contradict feminism

Then, there is the anti-feminist aspect of Collectif Némésis’s pathetic burlesque. The three French activists can be seen in the video encouraging the men in the audience to shout, ‘Take it off.’ The sexual objectification of women via the removal of clothing is misogyny at its finest. It also plays into the Orientalist and colonialist-era obsession that some white men in the West have with unveiling Muslim women. As a visibly Muslim woman, I feel equally hated and fetishised by far-right white men.

Collectif Némésis claims to be a feminist group, but really what they exhibited at the Unite the Kingdom rally was their blatant support for Britain’s misogynistic, patriarchal far-right movement whom, if they were to gain power, would rescind women’s rights. According to Politico, one in three Reform supporters are fans of Tommy Robinson, a party that has spoken about repealing the Equality Act 2010, imposing a tax on childless women, and lowering the legal abortion limit, among calls for a return to traditional family values reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale. Women who degrade, ridicule, and harm other women to win the approval of the same men who would hurt them, are, what queer feminist activist and writer Mona Eltahawy calls: foot soldiers of the patriarchy.

Right-wing women like those who are members of Collectif Némésis hide behind the guise of feminism and ‘liberating’ Muslim women. They have absolutely no interest in making life better for Muslim women; their hatred is one and the same.

Featured image via Instagram/CNN News 18

By Yousra Samir Imran

Source link

Chancellor Rachel Reeves will announce eased ring-fencing rules for commercial banks such as Lloyds, HSBC, Santander and Barclays. Strengthened after the 2008 financial crash, the regulation separates investment banking from retail banking.

Why deregulate banks?

The government aims for the eased regulation to enable big banks to lend more to businesses. The current ring-fencing means banks cannot use deposits from individuals and small or medium enterprises (SMEs) (retail) to lend to huge corporations and governments (investment).

Reeves wants to deregulate and enable an additional estimated £80 billion in lending to businesses. But taking £80 billion that’s backed by the deposits of individuals and SMEs, and using it to increase the excessive profits of large corporations, doesn’t seem like the best move.

In a letter organised by Positive Money in December 2024, 50 academics and experts warned:

Lending to the real economy has consistently made up around just 10% of bank lending in recent decades. The vast majority – around 80% – of bank lending goes towards inflating the price of pre-existing property and other assets.

Inequality is the real issue

In order to increase lending to the real economy, the UK must reduce economic inequality. This disparity is stark: 157 billionaires have wealth to the sum of 22% of the UK’s entire GDP. Meanwhile, more than 14 million people, or 21% of the country, live in relative poverty.

It means there is a huge lack of demand for products and services in the UK as people struggle to meet basic needs.

For example, citizens can’t afford to buy a home, let alone upgrade one. Millions of people upgrading their homes delivers a lot more economic activity than a few super rich people upgrading theirs. But banks aren’t lending to electricians or plumbers to start their own businesses because the demand isn’t there for those businesses to thrive.

What led to the financial crash?

Again, extreme economic inequality is the issue.

The financial crash happened because people didn’t (and still don’t) have enough money to account for inflated house prices.

Before 2008, banks gave people too much credit to make up for it, known as ‘sub prime mortgages’. People then defaulted on the mortgages when house prices fell and rates increased, causing the financial crisis. However, if the super rich weren’t hoarding houses and using them as assets, the crash wouldn’t have happened.

Featured image via Leon Neal/ Getty Images

By James Wright

Source link

Yves Sakila, a 35-year-old Black Congolese man who has lived in Ireland for more than 20 years, has been killed in a horrific encounter with a team of brutish security guards in Dublin.

Video footage from 15 May shows a group of five men holding Sakila down with what is clearly excessive force. All five men are placing their weight on the grounded man, who is not providing any meaningful resistance. At one point, one of those on top places his knee forcefully into the back of Sakila’s neck.

The footage closely resembles the appalling racist murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, US, in 2020.

In media reporting of the Dublin incident, the phrase “became unresponsive” is applied to Sakila. It is the same passive voice framing so often used for police killings as if victims’ sudden loss of life was a spontaneous incident unrelated to the actions of anyone else. The evidence strongly indicates the men restraining Sakila caused his death.

Sakila mourners: ‘Don’t whitewash this crime’

People mourning his death held a vigil at the scene of the crime on Henry Street on Tuesday. There, a woman can be heard demanding:

We want the media to say that a man was killed. We want the media to cover what happened…we want justice.

Another man berates the media present and insists they cover the incident properly, and be on the side of justice. The likes of RTÉ and the Irish Times have referenced the claim that the five-man assault of Sakila occurred in the context of an alleged shoplifting incident. They have not emphasised that even if Sakila had been accused of murdering someone, the nature of restraint the men used had no justification.

The Irish Times at least made some limited attempt to humanise Sakila, who was homeless. Quoting staff at the Salvation Army shelter where he lived, the Irish Times wrote:

Staff described him as a “pleasant and quiet” resident who had a “deep interest in technology and sometimes attended prayer services”.

They also quote a mourner at the vigil, Boma Biansolo, who said:

I came here because…my brother [died] here on Friday and no one tried to help him or save him…Of course I am scared for my son because that happened.

This is another disturbing aspect of Sakila’s killing — the fact he was assaulted while a large crowd of people looked on and did nothing to assist him as he clearly cried out in distress. It poses disturbing questions for Irish society, especially in the context of Bertie Ahern’s recent disgusting racist remarks.

Speaking on the doorstep of a potential voter who was vomiting out a torrent of xenophobic bile, Ahern said:

The ones I worry about are the Africans. I agree with you on the Africans. We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places. I think there’s too many from those places.

Killing follows racist remarks from Bertie Ahern

It would be excessive to directly blame Ahern for Yves Sakila’s death. However, such remarks, made often enough by influential people, create a racist culture in which violence against people of colour becomes more frequent.

Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, of People Before Profit, emphasised this.

He said:

Immigrants are facing increasing hostility and fear of attack created by far-right groups, but also by anti-immigrant government policies and rhetoric. Bertie Ahern’s recent comments were a shameful example of how government parties are fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hatred to divert from their own disastrous policies. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael bear heavy responsibility for the fear immigrant communities have to live with today.

In a statement, Shane O’Curry, of Irish Network Against Racism (INAR), said:

The death of a black man in such circumstances is extremely worrying, and we urge the authorities to thoroughly investigate all of the circumstances leading to this man’s death, in order to ensure minority ethnic community confidence in the criminal justice system.

The group is calling on supporters to attend a protest organised by the Congolese community in Ireland. It will take place at the Dáil at 1pm on Thursday 21 May.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

Source link