Keir Starmer has threatened all his cabinet with the sack if they don’t tweet support for him by tonight.
Then, in a record u-turn even for him, his office said he hadn’t:

New:
A U.K. government source says it is untrue that cabinet ministers have been told to tweet their support for Starmer or face the sack.

— kathryn samson (@KathrynSamsonC4) February 9, 2026

So far, home secretary Shabana Mahmood, justice minister David Lammy and Angela Rayner have come out in support of Starmer.

However, Rayner — or someone — already set up a leadership campaign website in her name, so some of the support at least may leak away once the u-turn memo circulates.

Featured image via the Canary

Sulky drivers illegally staging horse races on public roads have killed a pregnant mare and her “fully formed” unborn foal. The charity My Lovely Horse Rescue were called to the scene in Ballyfermot in the west of Dublin, where they found an exhausted horse named Anne lying bloodied and abandoned in the middle of the road.

They transported her to University College Dublin (UCD) in the hope of providing specialist treatment. However, vets at UCD determined there was too much internal damage for the horse to recover, and therefore made the decision to euthanise.

My Lovely Horse Rescue received reports of the horse being spotted in the Dollymount area, around 15 km away in the far east of the city. This means the racers subjected the heavily pregnant animal to a gruelling trek across an entire city, with the stress of navigating busy main roads. Up to six horses were involved in the race. Anne was seen falling to the ground an hour prior to her final collapse. The charity say Anne:

…slid for at least 30/40 metres. Her injuries align with this.

Images and videos on their Facebook page show the horse with blood on its legs, unable to stand. They say:

Anne was seen being whipped and kicked to get back up. She didn’t, she couldn’t.

Her abusers fled the scene into the bushes leaving Anne to die!!!

The group have appealed for:

…anyone with pictures, dash cam footage to come forward.

Sulky racing — calls to ban so-called ‘sport’ increase

Sulky racing involves driving horses along a course while they are attached to a two-wheel cart or ‘sulky’. Done on official tracks, it is a legal sport similar to horse racing, albeit with the same risks of injury to animals who are being abused purely for human entertainment. An underground scene exists, however, in which racers drive horses along roads. This violates existing traffic laws.

My Lovely Horse Rescue report being routinely called out to instances of injured or dead horses who have suffered their fate as a result of sulky road races. Media have covered several cases of horses killed by racers in recent years. The latest cruelty has prompted fresh calls for politicians to bring in new laws to specifically ban sulky racing.

Aontú’s Limerick Councillor Sarah Beasley described herself as “horrified” by the death of Anne and her foal. She said of the ‘sport’:

It is endangering animals and human lives, because we know that sulky racing is taking place on busy national roads as well as more rural ones. Can you just imagine the carnage that would be caused if one of these sulkys’ [sic] careered into the path of drivers or pedestrians? The horrors of this are just unimaginable.

Currently the spotlight is on scramblers and their use on public roads which is also illegal, and action is being taken to stamp this out for once and for all, but sulky driving is equally as deadly, both to the unfortunate animals and the public.

She continued:

We need statutory prohibition of sulky racing and training now.

Cruel ‘traditions’ should be discontinued

A petition calling for new legislation has amassed nearly 10,000 signatures. Sinn Féin’s Chris Andrews highlighted Anne’s death in the Senate and called for ministers to deal with “lawlessness” around animal abuse. A previous attempt in 2018 to ban the sport failed. Then Sinn Féin highlighted the lack of clear authority to deal with abuse of horses. Deputy Matt Carthy said:

The problem, however, is that when issues regarding equine welfare are raised with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, they are then pointed in the direction of the local authority, from where they are then pointed in the direction of the Garda and from there they are directed back to the Department.

There is not a clearly defined line of responsibility where people take charge of this issue. In most parts of the country, almost no dedicated staff and resources are allocated to the monitoring of equine welfare issues.

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He said a specific bill outlawing the practice would be the:

…ideal opportunity to start dealing with these issues…

Carthy flagged how:

…Ireland is almost unique in having an urban culture in respect of horses.

While he was not using culture as an excuse, others have defended sulky racing via this means. This is much the same approach used by others to justify the continuation of other cruel sports still legal in Ireland, such as hare coursing, greyhound racing and foxhunting.

When these two principles collide – defending an established culture vs ending cruelty to defenceless animals – clearly the latter should prevail. We understand this perfectly well in other cases where toxic practices are condoned with a cultural defence; no reasonable person thinks female genital mutilation should proceed on the basis of ensuring an old tradition continues.

Ireland needs to stop lagging behind in preventing animals being tormented for the sake of so-called ‘sport’. Banning sulky racing would be a good start.

Featured image via Ireland Live

On Sunday 8 February, Americans came together to enjoy their annual ‘Superbowl’. And when we say ‘came together’, we of course mean they found new ways to fight the culture war.

Trump, of course, led the charge:

Trump crashes out over Bad Bunny’s halftime show pic.twitter.com/XE2shbQRtm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 9, 2026

Doesn’t this guy have a country to run into the ground?

Superbowl styling

The performer Trump is talking about is Bad Bunny, who released one of the best albums of 2025.

There’s really no need for us to promote his album, because some of the tracks have had well over a billion listens in the past 12 months.

Many right-wingers are asking ‘WhY iS a PuErTo RiCaN pErFoRmInG??’, and the simple truth is because the Yanks fucking love him and his music.

Here’s a video from his performance:

🚨 THIS is America at its best.

Unity. Diversity. People standing together.

Bad Bunny owned the Super Bowl halftime show and brought the whole country with him.

No hate. No division. Just culture, pride, and community. ✊🇺🇸

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This is the America I want to live in. pic.twitter.com/v21w6mp77d

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) February 9, 2026

“the only thing more powerful than hate is love”

bad bunny shouts out all the countries in america
pic.twitter.com/JR5kF8x7I7

— 2000s (@PopCulture2000s) February 9, 2026

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Bad Bunny listing off all the countries in the Americas was powerful. If only the United States would stop invading them and start respecting the sovereignty of its neighbors. pic.twitter.com/3XbiH9ll83

— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) February 9, 2026

Just joyful, wonderful stuff.

If you’re unfamiliar with the relationship between Puerto Rico and America, the US government summarised it as follows:

Puerto Rico has not become an independent nation; neither has it become a State of the Union. It remains a territory of the United States.

In other words, Puerto Rico is America without the (ever decreasing) benefits.

The Trump-supporting Paul brothers fell out over the show, with Jake Paul arguing that Puerto Ricans aren’t real Americans, and his brother arguing the opposite:

I love my brother but I don’t agree with this

Puerto Ricans are Americans & I’m happy they were given the opportunity to showcase the talent that comes from the island https://t.co/yCsuwa79gk

— Logan Paul (@LoganPaul) February 9, 2026

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This exchange wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, but it does give us the opportunity to share this again:

Jake Paul is an absolute embarrassment to the sport of boxing. A fraud who buys his way into fights against legitimate champions like Anthony Joshua, only to get knocked out in the sixth round after clinching, flopping, and running like a coward. He has no real skill or heart… pic.twitter.com/9JSPqi9LS2

— Zenith (@ZenithTheNinja) December 20, 2025

Oh, and also this video of him cowering as Anthony Joshua repeatedly broke his jaw:

THE MOMENT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR.

Jake Paul’s final moments against Anthony Joshua… pic.twitter.com/NCI2OktHB1

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— george (@StokeyyG2) December 20, 2025

God damn, if this is what a ‘real American’ looks like, the US needs to start importing all the fake Americans it can.

The alternative

If you’re one of the glass-jawed Yanks who trembled at the thought of a Brown man banging out hit after hit, there was an alternative from Turning Point USA (TPUSA).

TPUSA was founded by the late Charlie Kirk, and is currently spearheaded by his wife – i.e. the least-bereaved widow in history:

Erika Kirk grinning and laughing on a call just FIVE her husband was shot through the neck. In another leaked call, she’s celebrating merch sales at her dead husband’s funeral- which she refers to as the “event of the century.”

Straight up psychopath pic.twitter.com/Jio4M5UerA

— That’s Not Right (@thatsnotrightpo) January 30, 2026

This is how the Daily Show described the event:

Turning Point USA is serving up an alternative halftime show for people who love ICE and hate music pic.twitter.com/ZaIYZa7o5H

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 8, 2026

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Kid Rock was the main attraction at TPUSA’s alternative Superbowl show. And as people pointed out, this old man was too washed to do the bare minimum:

all that build up for a man that couldn’t lip sync to his own song :/ https://t.co/dm3i7ESawi

— matt (@mattxiv) February 9, 2026

Mr Rock recently attracted criticism after people remembered the time he rapped about liking “underage” ladies – i.e. ‘girls’ – i.e. ‘children’:

A 2001 Kid Rock song is going viral for its lyrics about underage girls.

Kid Rock is set to headline Turning Point USA’s Super Bowl halftime show this weekend. pic.twitter.com/Glvm8Z36Fv

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— FactPost (@factpostnews) February 4, 2026

It looks like Bad Bunny blew TPUSA out of the water anyway:

Viewership numbers:

Bad Bunny – 127 million
Turning Point – 5 million

Let’s all take a moment to point and laugh at their puny safe space LOLOL 😂🫵🏾

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— Isaiah Martin (@isaiahrmartin) February 9, 2026

Oh, and it’s worse than that. As people noted, TPUSA had to stream their show on YouTube:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh my god this is so funny and pathetic at the same time https://t.co/FggQkvvjhM

— Harry Sisson (@harryjsisson) February 9, 2026

And it looks like that ‘5 million’ figure may not be an accurate reflection of the actual viewership:

TPUSA botting viewers for their shitty hillbilly half time show will only be eclipsed by the humiliation of every right-wing idiot pretending the numbers are real https://t.co/kglGQObThy

— Secular Talk ([email protected]) (@KyleKulinski) February 9, 2026

For reference, a live stream with tens of thousands of viewers will have a chat that is moving so fast it will trigger a seizure if you try to keep up with it.

Victory

In this latest battle in the culture war, we’re announcing that the MAGA right has lost. We’d like to say they put up a good game, but let’s be real; they barely even made it onto the field.

Featured image via pexels

At this point, everyone knows the wretched Peter Mandelson shared government information with Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson wasn’t the only Epstein associate with access to confidential UK info, however. The former prince Andrew Windsor served as a British trade envoy, and he was also feeding what he knew to the now-dead paedophile:

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential information with Jeffrey Epstein from his official role as a trade envoy. He forwarded an official report from his trips to Singapore, Vietnam, China, and Hong Kong to Epstein just five minutes after receiving it. pic.twitter.com/hpMD07ikFd

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) February 8, 2026

Confidential

The screengrabbed email above is from the latest release of the Epstein Files. In it, you can see that Windsor received reports of visits to Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shenzen.

Did you receive these reports yourself?

Probably not, right; it would be weird if the trade envoy sent their reports to the general British public; it’s even stranger to send them to a notorious international paedophile.

As reported by the BBC, Windsor served as trade envoy for ten years (2001-2011). The BBC additionally highlighted that:

Under official guidance, trade envoys have a duty of confidentiality over sensitive, commercial, or political information about their official visits.

In other words, he could (and should) get into trouble for this.

We’d be surprised if he faces any actual consequences, however, given the fact that he’s escaped them all of his life. The Royals may have stripped him of his titles, but the entitlement remains. As the BBC report:

Earlier in February, Andrew moved out of his home in Windsor to the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk.

Buckingham Palace had announced in October that he would be moving from Royal Lodge, at the same time his title of prince was removed.

The former prince left the property on Monday night and is currently living at Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate while his new permanent home undergoes renovations.

We don’t know about you, but when we fuck up, our punishment isn’t being sent to a managed country estate.

Keeping quiet

The BBC also asked Andrew Windsor to comment on all this. Surprise, surprise; he refused to do so.

Funny that he’s no longer so free and easy with the information he’ll share.

For more on the the Epstein Files, please read our article on how the media circus around Epstein is erasing the experiences of victims and survivors.

Featured image via Epstein Files

Anika Sweetland, the Reform party’s supposed climate expert is anything but.

Here she is on shithouse Lee Anderson’s GB News’ segment discussing if net zero is a scam:

Good morning fellow Reformers, patriots and climate realists! Last night I had the honour of standing up for our country 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🩵 We have all had enough of the self-sabotage, it’s time to say no to Net Zero and repeal the Climate Change Act! Please kindly repost this and follow me if… pic.twitter.com/dX2kak4GXa

— Anika (@anika_climate) February 7, 2026

As we’ll get into, the real scam is the idea that ‘net zero is a scam’.

Reform climate ‘expert’ is climate denier

Putting her on GB News appears to be Reform’s way of giving her some public PR.

The party is billing her as some kind of scientist. But isn’t a scientist supposed to actually do research? Write academic papers and shit? Put findings out into the world?

After achieving a Bachelor of Science in Climate Studies in 2016, it appears that Sweetland took that degree and did fuck all with it. Scour the internet and she’s done nothing to contribute to the climate change discussion:

She also claims to have been a climate scientist for the Australian Government. There’s no evidence. She was once a Graduate Research Officer (in 2014, fresh from studying) for the Gascoyne Development Commission which presented this to the Parliament of Western Australia:… pic.twitter.com/Lu6OVhHfnR

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) February 8, 2026

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She didn’t go on to achieve her PHD, didn’t write any academic papers. But she does push shit conspiracies about how she was indoctrinated by actual scientific studies:

Climate Establishment Expose: How i was indoctrinated, how I broke free and WHY the climate narrative is still being pushed without consequences. https://t.co/yMYQZv0wdi

— Anika (@anika_climate) February 9, 2026

It appears once upon a time on LinkedIn she claimed to be an events manager and content creator? Oh, and was hilariously crowned ‘Miss British Empire’ during Covid:

Looking at her LinkedIn, her only entries were as a content creator and events manager. She’s since deleted it, trying to claim it never existed:https://t.co/xnKlH3YOhP

We do know that she also had a dabble in pageants, being named Miss British Empire Photogenic. That’s a… pic.twitter.com/paJLNK2Luq

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— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) February 8, 2026

But this was quickly deleted, it seems.

So why the fuck is a woman who discounts the human contribution to climate change being pushed as some kind of fucking expert?

Oh yeah, because it’s Reform.

The ‘Net Zero scam’ scam

In a video titled You’ve been lied to about Net Zero, Simon Clark says that people create misinformation around Net Zero as follows:

So these are the five steps of the anti-net zero playbook. Inflate the costs, ignore the cost of business as usual, ignore the operational savings, ignore the co- benefits, and most egregiously, ignore the costs of inaction. Not getting to net zero is going to cost the world much, much more

Clark also highlights that when people target the ‘cost’ of switching to Net Zero, they ignore the costs of not switching:

the second step often is is to pretend that we can just carry on with business as usual and it won’t cost us anything. Let’s say we’re talking about decarbonising transport. And then people say, “Oh, but you know, an EV that’s going to cost like £40,000. You know, that’s a huge investment. That’s expensive, right?” You know, and you add that up over all of the cars in the in the country and you suddenly get a big scary number.

Again, let’s say we just carry on with petrol cars. Petrol cars aren’t free, right? Okay, maybe you own a petrol car now, so you don’t have to buy a new one, but that won’t last forever. So, that’s step two is you basically pretend that the existing system, which we’ve already built and paid for, can just carry on forever and won’t ever need replacing.

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Sweetland joins the rest of the clowns

It unsurprisingly appears that qualifications and previous endeavours don’t matter to the Reform UK.

But then again, we all knew that after they welcomed Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, didn’t we?

Featured image via Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia)

Iran has sentenced Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi to another seven years in jail. Mohammadi is reportedly on hunger strike following the conviction. According to the Guardian, Mohammadi’s lawyer Mostafa Nili has been in touch with her.

He said:

She has been sentenced to six years in prison for ‘gathering and collusion’ and one and a half years for propaganda and two-year travel ban.

The paper added:

She had been arrested in December at a memorial ceremony honouring Khosrow Alikordi, a 46-year-old Iranian lawyer and human rights advocate who had been based in Mashhad. Footage from the demonstration showed her shouting, demanding justice for Alikordi and others.

Iran has been rocked by near-revolution since December. Protests which began among small businesses over living costs were reportedly brutally repressed. Figures of dead and wounded are hard to verify due to state-enforced media and internet blackouts. Some estimates put the killed and injured in the tens of thousands.

Nuclear talks in Oman

The blackout also makes claims about the degree of US and Israel involvement difficult to corroborate. Despite this – or as a result – conspiracy and rumour have proliferated.

The new sentence comes as the US and Iran prepare to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear programme. US President Donald Trump has deployed a US navy armada to the region.

Iran and the US will meet in Oman. Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani visited Muscat ahead of the talks. Anadolu Agency said:

The indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington were halted following the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June last year, during which the US targeted three key Iranian nuclear sites.

Adding:

While Iranian media have not specified the agenda of Larijani’s visit, sources said he is expected to discuss the contours of the next round of talks with the Omani mediators.

Narges Mohammadi: Venezuela connection?

The Nobel Committee condemned Mohammadi’s arrest on 12 December 2025:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee calls on the Iranian authorities to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions. The Committee stands in solidarity with Narges Mohammadi and all those in Iran who work peacefully for human rights, the rule of law, and freedom of expression.

They appeared to suggest there was a link between Mohammadi’s arrest and the award of a Nobel to pro-US Venezuelan figure Maria Corina Machado:

Given the close collaboration between the regimes in Iran and Venezuela, the Norwegian Nobel Committee notes that Ms. Mohammadi is arrested just as the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado.

They offered nothing further to verify this specific claim.

Iran wants to appear strong in a crisis

Mohammadi had been temporarily released on a medical furlough from jail when she was re-arrested. She had been serving a 13 year sentence for:

charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against Iran’s government.

During the recent protests Mohammadi:

kept up her activism with public protests and international media appearances, including even demonstrating at one point in front of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where she had been held.

Mohammadi has reportedly had multiple heart attacks in jail. Her doctors fear she may also have cancer. This is why she was on medical furlough from her previous sentence. Now she appears to have been returned to prison. And at the precise moment the Iranian government is looking to avert internal crises and head off a threat of regime change.

The implications of this crunch moment for Mohammadi may be dire.

Featured image via the Canary

Former French education minister Jack Lang has quit a “plum” job running France’s Arab World Institute over his links with serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein. His appearances in the latest tranche of Epstein files have triggered a money-laundering investigation by French police. Prosecutors said on Friday that the investigation is a “preliminary” probe into “aggravated tax fraud laundering”. It encompasses Lang’s daughter Caroline as well as Lang himself.

Lang’s name reportedly appears hundreds of times in the new files, though not in connection with sexual crimes. Caroline Lang appears as a beneficiary of a €5m bequest in Epstein’s will. Both have denied any wrongdoing. Lang said that he wanted to avoid damage to the institute and would “calmly refute” the allegations before a planned extraordinary board meeting.

In December 2025, Lang joked that he would be in his role at the institute forever: “When I’m somewhere, I’m there for eternity”. His resignation came after pressure from the board. He becomes the third senior figure linked to government to resign in less than a week. Keir Starmer senior adviser Peter Mandelson and Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney quit in the UK to try to protect Starmer.

Featured image via the Canary

An industrial ‘on-site shredding’ lorry has been photographed at Downing Street just three days after Keir Starmer warned that his officials needed to review “potentially hundreds of thousands” of pages of documents relating to Starmer’s decision to appoint the disgraced Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador and senior Downing Street adviser despite knowing Mandelson had stayed close to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer has promised full transparency, but is already hiding behind Epstein’s victims to withhold sensitive information. The presence of the shredder van may be commonplace at Downing Street, but its arrival today – spotted by Sky News hack Sam Coates – will have many wondering.

Featured image via X

On Thursday 5th February, the Canary sat down with Andrew Feinstein to discuss his upcoming book ‘Making a Killing’. He is a former ANC member from South Africa who worked alongside Nelson Mandela and has worked tirelessly alongside others to expose the arms trade and its corruption of politicians around the world.

Working in collaboration with others, Feinstein has united the brutal conflicts in Gaza and Yemen in one body of work, allowing readers to connect the dots between the billionaire-owned military machine and world leaders’ involvement in the mass murder and devastation of the Middle East.

Alnaouq: ‘Who killed my family?’

In the co-author’s own words, we asked Feinstein to share with us the backstory that led them to write this book:

So the book is called Making a Killing, How the West Profits from Slaughter in Gaza and Yemen. Where we got the idea for the book from is that a friend of mine from Gaza called Ahmed Alnaouq lost 21 members of his family in the bombing of a family home in an area of Gaza called Deir al-Balah. And he asked me, who killed my family? Who made the bomb that killed my family? Who made the plane that dropped it on my family home? Who gave them the orders? And who profited from it? And that’s how we’ve gone about the book.

So, the book follows what happened to Ahmed’s family in Gaza. And it follows another family in Yemen, which was a much more drawn-out conflict. So, in Yemen, again, it was someone who we knew of, an extraordinary Yemeni woman called Radia. She started a human rights organization in Yemen, without which we would never have known about the atrocities committed with British and American and other Western weapons by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And the extraordinary thing about Radia is that she comes from a family where her father was a public intellectual in Yemen.

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He wasn’t affiliated politically, and he was hated by everybody because he used to, in the truest sense of the word, speak truth to power, to all power. He was assassinated 14 years ago, so just before the onset of the conflict. And to this day, they have no idea who assassinated him because it could have been so many different groups and people.

To contrast with the story of Gaza, we decided the story of Yemen would be about someone who has not only suffered from the conflict, but who has shown this extraordinary resilience to document the conflict and to demand accountability for the conflict. So, this is what drives both Ahmed and Radia, which is the similarity in the story. And so, the book traces the weaponry that’s been used in both conflicts, through specific incidents. And we then trace back who sold it, who manufactured it, everybody involved, and how much money everybody has made out of it. And the figures are stupefied.

And then we ask in the book: So, who killed these people? And how do we ensure justice for all of the people who have been killed in these conflicts?

And it’s by demanding accountability for all of those who have profited and people profit not just materially but politically as well. Our political leaders convince us that they spend these extortionate amounts of our money on weaponry, that they sell it with massive corruption into these conflicts and that we are the good guys in the conflicts. And the reality is we’re not.

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But the politicians present themselves as our protectors and our war heroes and they’re making shed loads of money out of it. And that includes the politicians. People like Tony Blair, who is a war profiteer and was when he was in office. He’s making money now out of war because of decisions he made in government. Keir Starmer will be exactly the same. And all of these people in this kill chain need to be called to account. So that’s really what has motivated the book.

‘Most difficult book I’ve ever tried to write’

We then asked how it felt for Feinstein to write this book, as a Jewish, western man operating in a capitalist society:

I don’t find writing easy generally. But this is the most difficult book I’ve ever tried to write.

Fortunately, I haven’t done it alone. There are five of us who’ve co-authored the book. And so, on the team, people have written different parts of it, and I’ve turned it into one narrative and one style. But in order to do the book, we’ve had to follow the conflicts, we’ve had to examine the weaponry, and we’ve had to trace back where the weaponry comes from. So in that sense, it’s been a horrific thing to do.

And we’ve had to constantly remind ourselves why we’re doing it. Because it’s almost like having to focus on the awfulness that our governments have created and been a part of, and are obviously absolutely complicit in. The anger, and to be honest with you, the hatred that I feel, for our morally and materially corrupt politicians and political process has grown exponentially through the process of writing this book.

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Feinstein then explained three things he hopes will be achieved through sharing this book with wider society:

So, I suppose there are three things:

The first is that we want people to read this book. Very few people know anything about the Yemen conflict. We call it the forgotten war. It went on for ten and a half years. And it was like Gaza but spread out. It destroyed millions of people’s lives and continues to. And of course, people tend to have one of two views on Gaza. And we want people to be able to read a totally factual account with a lot of footnotes so that everything they read, they can see how it’s been verified as factual. I hope that some people who have been apologists for the conflict or who haven’t thought it’s a particularly bad thing on the part of our governments perhaps reassess. So that would be the first thing.

The second thing is we want accountability. We want to ensure that out of this book with all the material in it, there are a series of legal cases around the world trying to get justice from the people who have engineered these conflicts and the people who have materially profited from them. They should suffer the consequences of what they’ve done, which is to destroy millions of human lives and there are domestic and international laws that apply, that our governments have run roughshod over. And those laws need to be applied.

The third thing is that the book tries to show that these conflicts are not an aberration of our political system, but are actually a reflection of it, and are absolutely integral to and a central part of our political system. And we want people to understand that our political systems in the so-called West are broken beyond repair and are not fit for purpose and are causing immeasurable suffering across the world so that a tiny elite can profit and benefit. And so, I suppose, and not explicitly but implicitly, It’s a call for fundamental structural and systemic political change in the world.

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Feinstein’s advice to those new to advocacy against western brutality

Finally, we asked Feinstein what advice he would offer to someone new to advocacy and unsure where to start in order to act effectively in solidarity:

There isn’t a lot of accessible good stuff written about Yemen, to be honest. But there is, there are a couple of writers who’ve written well on it. There’s a woman who lived in Yemen for 55 years called Helen Lackner, whose work we’ve used a great deal in the book. We’ve spent many, many hours with her. She’s an extraordinary human being. Yemen is one of the most complicated places I’ve ever tried to understand. Everything is in a constant state of flux and fluidity. Allegiances, alliances, it’s just constantly changing. It’s extraordinary. So, her work would be an interesting place to start, but I think more important would be to start on the sort of Western meddling in the Middle East and how destructive that’s been. And there are all sorts of wonderful writers, people like Robert Fisk, who was the independent Middle East correspondent for decades and decades. I would have said Noam Chomsky but I’m not sure that I will just at the moment.

There’s some very good stuff that’s been written about this I would also suggest a film was made at Shadow World Investigations, we wrote this 555-page book with almost 3000 footnotes on the global arms trade. But fortunately, there is a 90-minute film. And I would strongly encourage people to watch that just to get a sense of the systemic nature of the arms trade and how it corrodes our politics while causing destruction across the world.

There is also an extraordinary song by LowKey called ‘Hand on Your Gun’ that says in a song of a few minutes what took us 555 pages. And I would really encourage people to listen to it.

We have done some more accessible stuff. We did a book called ‘Indefensible, Seven Myths that Sustain the Global Arms Trade’, that just deal in a very conversational way with myths like ‘increased defence spending makes us safer’, ‘corruption only happens over there in the arms trade, not here’, all of which is a nonsense. And we then disprove those myths. And you can read it for free on our website at shadowworldinvestigations.org. So that’s probably a good place to start and to get a sense of this industry that’s responsible for 40% of all corruption in the world, that corrupts our politics, that corrupts all sorts of other countries’ politics, and that kills on average, half a million people a year. But the last three years, it’s been far more than that.

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And then we do events all over the UK all the time. So to come to our events and engage with us, even those who might not agree with us, who have different views to us. Because we like to be challenged. and we believe that we’ve come to the views that we hold in a very factual, evidence-based way. And I think in the sort of post-truth world that we live in where to be a successful politician, your primary skill has to be to lie constantly and convincingly, it’s really important to engage on the basis of verifiable facts. And that’s what all our work tries to do, and that’s what this book will do. a very factual account of who has profited and how they have profited, and a very factual account of the legal position that they should be answerable for. And I hope that it just raises questions for people about what we should be doing in Britain or the United States or Europe to stop our governments and our countries being involved in the creation of murder and mayhem across the world.

Making a Killing is due to be published in September 2026.

Featured image via the Canary