Israel’s alliance with Somaliland is gathering steam. The settler-state appears is expanding its military footprint in the region and, as diplomatic relations grow closer than ever, Israel seems likely to  get what it wants.

On 13 June, Drop Site News reported that in an unprecedented display of support, the Muslim-majority nation witnessed “the public waving of Israeli flags—not in protest, but celebration.”

They added that:

Videos shared on social media from Somaliland’s day of independence on May 18 showed Israelis dancing in the streets of Hargeisa alongside locals, with blue and white stars of David flying beside Somaliland’s red, white, and green tricolor flag.

As the Canary reported on 21 May:

Israel and Somaliland have agreed to open embassies in Jerusalem and Hargeisa. Israel’s influence in the strategic Horn of Africa is growing. And there have been warnings Israel might ethnically cleanse Palestinians out of Palestine and into the country.

Israel was one of the first countries to recognise Somaliland, a breakaway territory of Somalia, in the early 1990s. UN members railed against the move, but the US defended Israel while not recognising Somaliland itself.

The surest sign of deepening ties between the settler-colony and fledgling Somaliland emerged on 18 May when president Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi was presented with:

a fragment of an Iron Dome interceptor—the Israeli air defense system used to intercept rockets and drones fired by Iran and its regional allies—by a visiting Israeli delegation.

Israel’s dirty war with Yemen

Nearby Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden, is seemingly Israel’s principal concern. According to Drop Site, Israel has been eyeing up locations for a military facility:

The base in question would allow Israel a military foothold on a crucial waterway near the Bab al-Mandab Strait—a maritime chokepoint comparable in importance to the Strait of Hormuz for exports from the Red Sea.

The outlet underlined a critical observation by pundits and analysts:

Berbera International Airport as a possible host to an expanded Israeli presence in the territory as part of an emerging alliance that would include Somaliland alongside Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi.

The UAE which is already active in the Sudan civil war, has an agreement at the airport.

Ismail Omar Guelleh, president of nearby Djibouti — home to a major US military base — has described the UAE as Israel’s “vanguard,” while Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud accused Israel of:

taking advantage of the long-standing dispute between Mogadishu and Hargeisa.

Abdullahi visited Israel on 14 June, and posted the following message on X:

For thirty-five years, the people of Somaliland have built a peaceful, democratic, and resilient nation. We asked the world: Do you see us? Israel answered first.

Today, history is being written, and Somaliland stands ready to forge a shared future founded on friendship, cooperation, and mutual respect.

A shared future is one way of putting it; another is ‘neocolonialism’. Somaliland is a key strategic location for Israeli power projection against Yemen. The statelet may also come to be a dumping ground for ethnically cleansed Palestinians.

Somaliland has struck a devil’s bargain with Israel, which, it may come to regret.

Featured image via YouTube / the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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Andrea Egan, who took over in January as general secretary of Unison, has said that the Starmer government is ushering far-right Reform UK into power.

The comments come as Unison’s annual conference begins today.

Left-winger Egan ousted Christine McAnea in a vote of Unison members. McAnea had long been accused of prioritising the Labour right’s manoeuvres over the interests and democracy of Unison members.

This week’s conference is Egan’s first in her new role. In an interview with the BBC’s Iain Watson, she said that the union had been a “sleeping giant” that had been “subservient” to Starmer’s Labour for far too long.

Unison has been “handing money over to the Labour Party and getting absolutely nothing in return”, Egan claimed.

She added that she had been “frank” with Labour that it was betraying the people it is meant to be serving.

I have been very frank with the government. When Labour came into power there was a sense of relief. But sadly we’ve been left wanting.

Communities are really struggling. They [Labour] haven’t delivered and my election demonstrated that members were desperate to have their voices heard.

Unison’s Egan says Labour must deliver on promises

The union boss also told Watson that Starmer is on track to “hand the keys to No10 to Reform”.

I have spoken out clearly about the threat Reform brings. It isn’t us that will hand the keys to No10 to Reform —  it’s them, unless they change course. And drastically.

They’ve got to start introducing progressive policies. Investment in infrastructure, pay restoration, better services, insourcing. They need to ensure that they deliver on promises they made when they came into government.

Egan is right but also wrong. If Starmer’s Labour carried anything of what Labour is meant to be, there might be a prospect of the party changing — if only to retain power, if not to actually serve ordinary people. But the only thing Starmer’s zombie party has in common with the Corbyn party that it replaced is the brand.

Starmer’s entire purpose in taking over was to end Labour as any prospect of change for the better.

Instead, his party is owned by and run for elite interests — those of corporate privatisers, the arms industry and the Israel lobby.

Starmer’s personal and policy record in Downing Street and even before that is appalling. So appalling that a reasonable person could very easily conclude that Starmer is actively trying to end Labour as a political force and “hand the keys” to the far right.

Do not underestimate the damage Reform will do

Egan shows every sign of under-estimating the threat Reform poses. She cites Farage’s plans to attack workers and the NHS, but Reform would also wage war on minorities and human rights and launch a fire sale of what little remains in public ownership.

But in that, Farge is barely distinguishable from Starmer, who hardly even bothers to try to window-dress his own racism, authoritarianism and lust for privatisation.

Egan was expelled by Starmer’s cronies in 2022 when she was Unison’s elected president. It was an unambiguous show of Starmer’s contempt for the union movement if it won’t serve his interests.

Nothing has changed — not for the better, at any rate. Yet, Watson says, Egan “insists that she has only ever been a Labour member — and it wasn’t her choice to leave”.

The time to separate from Labour is now

Watson’s article notes that in 2027, Unison members will vote on whether to end the union’s affiliation to Starmer’s party. Unison currently pays more than £1 million a year to Labour. That will leave just two years — at most — before the general election at which Egan expects Labour to roll out the turquoise carpet for Farage to enter No.10.

Starmer’s record and the short time remaining to build up a genuine opponent to the fascist right — whether the fascists are wearing red, blue or turquoise rosettes — means waiting another year is unconscionable.

Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, even if he succeeds in this week’s Makerfield by-election and in deposing Starmer, is signalling that he would only put a personality on most of the same awful policies.

Unison, like the entire union movement, needs to disaffiliate now and put its money and resources behind a left party with a genuine chance to stop them. After the self-inflicted implosion of Your Party, that means the Greens. There’s no time for dithering.

Featured image via Unison

By Skwawkbox

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A prestigious private school full of rich kids is facing backlash after its huntsman admitted to an illegal wildlife murder. Done footage captured the controversial hunt as Stowe Beagles were seen tracking and ripping apart a European Brown Hare. It then shows members of the elite Buckinghamshire boarding school congratulating each other on the kill.

We, the public, only have until 18 June to back a total ban on the trail hunting — that’s when the government consultation closes. It is our last chance to close this legal loophole for good and stop these senseless killings.

Blood sports for posh schoolboys

The damning evidence led to a criminal conviction at Northampton Magistrates’ Court on 4 June 2026. Philip Kennedy, huntsman of the Stowe Beagles, pled guilty to hunting a wild mammal with dogs at Crockwell Farm in Northamptonshire.

Kennedy was fined a pathetic £258 and ordered to pay a £103 victim surcharge and £585 in costs. That’s nothing considering the UK Hunting Act 2004 banned hare hunting with hounds over 20 years ago.

Yet the Stowe Beagles still operates as an OFFICIAL extracurricular activity in the school’s games department. Footage shows the pack chasing a hare into a fence line before ripping the poor creature apart. Three members then arrive at the murder scene, shaking hands in celebration. Some members are believed to be schoolboys according to animal rights activists.

So what the hell is going on? Are we teaching rich kids that breaking the law is something to applaud? One rule for the rich, and another for the rest of us it seems.

Ilegal hunt activities are being normalised

Stowe School is not the only educational institution that maintains active hunts. Eton College and Radley College both have kennels for their own packs of hounds. Ampleforth and Marlborough Colleges also maintain strong links with local hunt groups.

Wealthy children assist huntsmen as whippers-in and occupy leadership roles on hunt committees. A Horse & Hound article notes that these school hunt packs are training the next generation of foxhound masters.

For generations, ‘young gentlemen’ (and now some ladies) have followed the well-worn path of masterships from school beagles to college beagles before taking a pack of foxhounds.

The Stowe and Royal Agricultural College Beagles have produced the greatest number of masters and huntsmen of foxhounds over the past 50 years

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Kennedy has worked at the Buckinghamshire boarding school since 2003, but his profile has been scrubbed from their website. Kennedy supervised the supposed transition from hunting live animals to legal trail hunting. What the recent conviction proves is that Stowe School has been running illegal hunts. This pisses all over existing legislation.

School hunts send the message that the wealthy are above the law, because their education is paid for in ridiculous sums of cash. And what’s a £1,000 in fines to people paying £50k in school fees yearly… pocket change. If issued to one of us, a fine like that would mean not eating for a month.

Activists slam the school over safeguarding

Following the conviction, Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) chair Simon Russell sent an open letter to Stowe School head Anthony Wallersteiner. His letter states that clear video evidence is proof of a premeditated act in front of schoolboys. Russell wrote that the celebratory handshakes shared between the murderers suggest illegal hare hunting is routine at Stowe.

Russell warns the school of corporate liability under Section 10 of the Hunting Act 2004. This means that school officers face prosecution if illegal hunts occur with their consent or connivance. Russell framed the incident as a severe safeguarding failure that desensitises kids to suffering and murder.

The letter cites the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. This protects kids from violence inflicted on animals. But the Stowe Beagles are always travelling to remote locations. They have previously visited the notorious Coniston Hounds, a pack that has been caught abusing foxes. Exposing these rich kids to deliberate animal abuse is a massive safeguarding risk… so why is the school silent on Kennedy’s conviction? Normalising suffering and death to children just means they will grow up to become less empathetic adults.

The HSA is demanding that school governors disband the hunt immediately and face an inspection. Will these elitist educational institutions finally act? Or will they continue to show kids that killing cute fluffy creatures and breaking the law is a privilege the ruling class is entitled to?

Featured images via the Hunt Saboteurs Association

By Antifabot

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Charities and campaigners have warned that Keir Starmer’s plan to ban under-16s from social media will isolate disabled and LGBTQ+ children.

This week, Labour prime minister announced new legislation to stop children from accessing apps like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube. The ban will take effect in Spring 2027 and restrict livestreams and ‘stranger communication’ for children, including on gaming sites.

The ban won’t help any kids

There are already concerns that, without regulating the tech companies, this will do very little to protect children from the dangers of the internet and punish them instead. The Canary’s Maddison Wheeldon argues that:

There is every chance this amounts to little more than virtue-signalling: a tokenistic gesture to “protect children” while changing sweet naff all about the very systems causing great harm in the first place.

Girl’s rights charity Plan International UK has also warned that the ban won’t keep girls safe. This is because it fails to tackle the underlying causes of misogyny online.

Morgan Griffith-David from Plan International UK told the Canary:

Banning children does nothing to tackle the dangerous misogyny and sexism that has become so rampant across social media.

Harmful gender norms are being constantly reinforced by social media algorithms and addictive features driven by profit, not safety – and blocking access for children lets tech companies off the hook by not forcing them to address these issues.

Social media plan will harm disabled kids

Starmer’s mission to end violence against women and girls has always felt like a rehabilitation tactic. In December, he went on Loose Women to talk about it. This happened to be the same week that the abhorrent treatment of pro-Palestine prisoners on hunger strike came to light.

This now seems like a last-ditch attempt to stop his own party turning against him. But by blanket banning social media instead of making it safer, the prime minister will isolate kids from marginalised communities.

In particular, disabled or LGBTQ+ young people will be affected. Many don’t have an in-person community and have found friends on social media.

For many disabled people who can’t leave the house, social media is where they find their community. Disability charities for young people have spoken out against the ban, stressing that it would take away lifelines.

Julie Davis, CEO of the Royal Society for Blind Children, told BBC News:

We are mindful that this ban risks cutting off vital routes to connection for children who are already too often excluded. We are actively looking at ways to counter the impact this could have.

Others, expressed the need for better safeguards before taking away disabled kids community. Simon Want, Head of Policy and Influencing at the National Deaf Children’s society told BBC News:

We want to see action that keeps children safe from harm while still allowing deaf young people to stay connected, express themselves and access support. This means working closely with families, experts and deaf young people themselves to get the balance right.

As disabled and queer campaigner Charli Clement pointed out, marginalised kids only flock to social media because third spaces in the UK — such as youth groups and libraries — have been ‘decimated’ by successive governments.

Clement said on instagram:

Third spaces in the UK have been decimated to a point that social media is the pseudo third space for most young people. This particularly applies to marginalised young people who are meeting their community and understanding themselves through the digital space.

They continued:

There’s no longer a youth club, there’s no longer a youth centre, there isn’t a place to just go and play basketball with your friends. Joining a group chat or going on snapchat or watching videos with your friends is what is replacing third spaces. If you take away that, where are they supposed to go?

Essentially, Starmer’s internet ban won’t help anyone. Yet, while there are no third spaces and no actual regulation of social media, all it will do is harm marginalised kids.

Featured image via Rendy Novantino / Unsplash

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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As Israel’s brutal expansionist campaign in Lebanon continues with absolute impunity, Lebanese officials warn the destruction could leave up to 250,000 people unable to prove they own homes that have been – or will likely soon be – demolished.

Aerial imagery over Bint Jbeil has fuelled this growing alarm, appearing to show the destruction of sites holding civil records and land deeds – effectively erasing “the paper infrastructure of a city’s legal existence.”

The Intercept report that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) targeted attacks have left Bint Jbeil without a notary. Government buildings have been razed to the ground, and Lebanese citizens are finding their homes absolutely destroyed. When those homes also held key documents proving ownership, their destruction has left local civilians with little ability to prove what they have lost.

This settler-colonialist military invasion has been unfolding, with devastating consequences, for months now – with precious little pushback from Israel’s Western backers in the US and UK:

Israel is blowing up entire civilian homes and residential blocks in Bint Jbeil, South Lebanon, and proudly sharing the footage itself.

Cheerfully broadcasting its war crimes to the world.

No global outrage. No condemnation. No accountability. pic.twitter.com/U7FophdiTt

— sarah (@sahouraxo) May 1, 2026

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Lebanon part of Zionists ‘Greater Israel’

Israel has long been making its expansionist agenda clear to wider society, with Western governments ignoring Israeli politicians genocidal and murderous statements that show a clear intent to wipe out Lebanese infrastructure in the South. The Lebanese government largely appears to be a mere spectator doing little to challenge Israel and the West, recently blaming Iran for Israel’s brutal bombardments on Lebanon.

In the Bint Jbeil district, 36 villages have been among the worst affected by Zionist colonialism, with entire communities forced out before their villages were then flattened by Israeli airstrikes.

Lebanese citizens now describe this as an intentional tactic to clear southern Lebanon, while Israeli officials say the operations aim to keep northern Israel safe from rockets fired by Hezbollah in response to attacks on Palestinian, Iranian, and Lebanese civilians.

According to The Intercept, a mukhtar (local official) has confirmed that civil registry documents up to 2020 have been digitised, though this offers limited reassurance.

That still leaves a six-year gap in which records may have been lost amid bureaucratic breakdown and weak enforcement of registration rules, delaying the creation of a full digital record of property ownership.

An Israeli air strike hit the town of Faroun in Bint Jbeil district in southern Lebanon. New forced displacement orders were issued following Israeli bombardment throughout towns and villages in the south.

LIVE updates: https://t.co/EFvHSAMo0C pic.twitter.com/FuPG9CVl1y

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 14, 2026

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Red Cross ignored by Israeli forces

Efforts are being made continuously to gain access to the site of Bint Jbeil’s Grand Serail. Still standing according to aerial footage, it is a civil authority building which holds land deeds belonging to thousands of families from more than 20 villages.

Since Israel’s ground invasion began, with the IOF taking more and more land in the south, Lebanese authorities have been unable to retrieve the documents.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been the medium through which these requests can be put into place, but even they are still awaiting permission from the aggressor state’s so-called Mechanism Committee.

This committee is responsible for administering the Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire agreement, and have refused to comment on this unanswered request to an Intercept journalist.

In a statement provided to The Intercept, once again, the IOF is attempting to suggest that this civil infrastructure housed Hezbollah’s military assets:

IDF directives permit the execution of clearing operations of structures used for military purposes, or when there is an essential operational necessity that justifies the full or partial demolition of a structure, in accordance with international law.

REPORT | Israel Violating Ceasefire on Day One, Killing 3 Civilians and Pushing Into Villages in Lebanon

In the first 24 hours after the U.S.-Iran deal was formally announced, Israel has repeatedly violated the U.S.-backed Lebanon ceasefire, killing civilians, shelling towns,… pic.twitter.com/RHa3iAHl52

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— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 15, 2026

Destruction of civilian infrastructure

Under international law, military forces may destroy civilian infrastructure only when doing so serves a specific military objective and is necessary to achieve it.

Nevertheless, Israeli ministers have done little to hide the purpose of their invasions, making it abundantly clear that they wish to destroy and erase existence of Lebanese villages and infrastructure along the Lebanese border.

Monitoring the Grand Serail by satellite imagery, Lebanese finance minister Yassine Jaber told the Intercept:

The walls are still standing mostly, but satellites don’t have keys to doors. We don’t know what happened inside.

Were the records destroyed? Were they confiscated? The truth is still behind the front lines.

They further told of how they have been attempting to retrieve the vital records for four weeks – whether through the ICRC or UNIFIL – but despite these appeals, the area remains a “forbidden zone”.

Sally Aoun of the ICRC Lebanon stated:

The ICRC supported the Ministry of Interior in the evacuation of some civil registries in southern Lebanon at the beginning of the escalation.

It was not possible to support the evacuation in Bint Jbeil because of ongoing hostilities.

Documents have been retrieved from a number of districts, such as Marjayoun and Hasbaya, thanks to the courage of civil servants risking their lives under bombardment. But Bint Jbeil remains untouchable and unreachable for Lebanese authorities and humanitarian agencies.

Tyre is another district under severe attack, with women and children amongst those murdered by Israel, who likewise attempt to justify their crimes by suggesting Hezbollah command centers were the target:

ISRAELI TERRORISTS just bombed a Palestinian refugee camp in Tyre. Civilians, women and children were murdered and injured.
Israeli spokesperson issued a bombing warning for entire area before this, and later claimed attacking a command center for the resistance! How the ####… pic.twitter.com/mnxIYgFgVn

— Hadi Hoteit | هادي حطيط (@HadiHtt) May 27, 2026

Bint Jbeil is mostly destroyed now, as this video below highlights:

Sur la route d’une « terre brûlée » au Sud-Liban entre Beit Yahoun et Kounine dans le district martyrisé par Israël de Bint Jbeil. pic.twitter.com/8eb0qt7tkX

— LibanVision by JMD (@DruartJeanMich1) June 16, 2026

Mitigating efforts to risk further loss of land and property to Zionists

Like many people around the world, Lebanese citizens have often delayed formally registering land purchases, whether because of the exhausting bureaucracy involved or, in some cases, to avoid taxes. Now, however, the destruction of records threatens to strip countless people of land they have lived on for years.

Abu Hassan is among the thousands caught in this disastrous uncertainty. He fled his home without his paperwork and later learned that the notary’s office that held his records had been destroyed, leaving little hope that his bill of sale has survived.

Speaking to the Intercept, he heartbreakingly said:

The house I built stone by stone is dust now. And the paper that says it was mine has gone to God.

Jaber highlighted the devastating consequences of this torched paperwork:

This will create a major legal problem in proving ownership.

Who owns what? Who protects the buyer’s right if the paper contract has disappeared?

Recognising how this risk could snowball further, thus affecting even more Lebanese citizens, he is currently transferring all documents to an online “digital vault” which could take six months to complete.

However, once completed, it will provide security for crucial documentation “that no shell can reach and no fire can erase.”

Featured image via the Canary

By Maddison Wheeldon

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The War on Terror claimed countless Iraqi lives and left social systems irreparably fractured.

The lasting injury is the subject of anthropologist Kali Rubaii’s debut book, Resurgency: Outlasting the War on Terror.

Few studies have captured in such depth the ways Anbaris react, respond and heal from “war-induced social and ecological collapse”.

Rubaii’s journey began in Fallujah a decade prior, supporting local hospitals through transnational solidarity work. She returned in subsequent years. Moreover, she came to form close relations with displaced Anbari farmers.

War on Terror: After the guns go, there is silence

The portrait of Fallujah isn’t the city caricatured as the launchpad of Al-Qaeda, or where the corpses of Blackwater contractors were paraded. If anything, Anbar is the black sheep of Iraqi society — a closed world exoticised and vilified — facing distrust even from countrymen who have internalised these views.

Rubaii’s study is therefore a corrective to the view of Anbar as contumacious. She centres Anbari farmers as they navigate life, war and death, and explores the changing face of imperialist violence after guns and warplanes have fallen silent.

This is what Rubaii terms resurgency, “political potential for recovery from shock”. It is a way of strategising, innovating and outlasting these conditions.

The inverse — counter-resurgency — is the invisible hand of the War on Terror as it rummages through people’s lives. From governance, employment and food practices to homemaking, reproductive health and general livability, it punitively “warps one’s dreams, aspirations, and sense of possibility,” Rubaii says.

Furthermore, it adopts a “let-live-less-than-lethal” approach that leaves its mark on existing and unborn generations. This extends into reproductive life itself.

Worse than death

What might that look like? You have land dispossession, privatisation of Iraq’s once highly localised seed market, excessive agrochemicals use, uranium contamination, birth defects, wartime displacement, corporate capture, and a military–cement industrial complex (the list goes on). The takeaway is that even after the War on Terror juggernaut retreats, its tremors are still felt far and wide.

Resistance in this context (if we can describe it as such) is neither romanticised nor a single-dimension strategy. The author admits it may be imperfect as she explains to the Canary:

For me, the argument that life goes on after war, and that people are resilient and resurgent, is so deeply discounting of how life is made to go on.

She adds:

It is often the work of depoliticised or even made subaltern actors who are doing the ongoingness, the outlasting of Empire.

This is backed up by years of fieldwork. The book’s colourful cast of Iraqi interlocutors demonstrate how Anbaris have consistently risen up even when forced back to zero.

“People do what they have to do to survive, and they do it with intention. It is not special, but it is political,”  she notes in the conclusion.

The book shows how many Anbaris have come to accept, “There are so many things worse than death”. For a province denied justice, it is a painful truth to swallow. This is set against the evidence of damage readers are confronted by.

This land is ours

The discomfort is important for Rubaii, who reminds us that Anbar is more than “a place one returns to die”.

The displaced farmers we meet throughout the book risked everything to return to their orchards and farms during heightened periods of conflict. They defied sectarian militias and deathly checkpoints to tend to their plants, trees and harvest.

This act of “subversive return” is “as politically agentive as a protest,” Rubaii argues. Indeed, such actions “lay the groundwork for future grassroots resistance”. The benefits aren’t necessarily apparent and may take decades to materialise.

Rubaii pens stories that bear witness to the weight of complex trauma Anbaris carry. Despite that, they have been actively forging:

…a politics of social and ecological resurgency that embraces undesirable outcomes as a core feature of outlasting the War on Terror.

How does it look? In some instances, farmers experimented with alternative methods for fertilising date trees in chemically saturated farmlands. Meanwhile, others risked procreating.

In Fallujah, the capacity to give birth has been fatally undermined by uranium-induced birth defects — a silent tragedy, particularly for “a community where having children is highly valued,” Rubaii reminds us.

It is a silent scream the world has yet to heed. We find ourselves breaking into tears as we discuss the unspeakable horrors would-be mothers continue to face.

Flipping the script

Rubaii’s pictorial writing style distinguishes her scholarship. I relished every sensory detail she carefully tracks: the taste of metal, sulphurous air, dirty water, parched rivers and the mustard haze of sandstorms are all palpable. As is the sensation of sticky soot and dust coating lungs and the sight of treacherous highways, cratered, rerouted, and militarised.

While the book’s chain of events is neither tightly connected nor linear, the scattered order is intentional. This is no cookie-cutter story about Iraq. Instead, the book mirrors the constant shuttling  between “home” and precarious places of refuge.

There is an almost Orwellian quality to her writing, particularly in the way she turns militaristic “weapons-grade” terminology, such as “the wolf, the sheep, and the sheepdog” on its head.

She explains:

Metaphors have been used to typecast places like Anbar and the people in it as a sort of enemy of others. One of them is this idea that counterinsurgency is understanding that the insurgent is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

This justifies, her words “killing innocent people in the name of presuming that they might be combatants”.

“That’s kind of the frame,” she says.

But I actually was understanding this beyond the scope of a combat framework and thinking, if you’re really thinking about occupying indigenous land and what the relationships are between wolves and sheep and sheep dogs, you know, of course the wolf is in fact the indigenous animal, the noble creature.

Rubaii’s engaging storytelling — animated by the book’s dramatis personae — gives it an edge not always found in academia. The book owes its depth to the diverse cast of Anbari farmers and families, many of whom serve as gatekeepers.

Acknowledging the privilege of access, Rubaii inhabits every aspect of their lives. She writes about drinking dirty water, contracting cholera, eating radioactive dates and milk kinship. She is clear-eyed that her personal health and safety cannot be considered “exceptional” in the context of this radical approach.

Commenting on the motivations behind these choices, Rubaii writes:

I want a critique of empire that approaches Iraq as more than simply a case study. For many ethnographers, we do not choose places or topics as such. They choose us. Being both American and part of the extensive, multigenerational Iraqi diaspora compounded these complexities.

Featured image via Rasheed Hussein/ UNHCR

By Nazli Tarzi

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The Labour politicians looking to replace Keir Starmer have been talking about expanding drilling in the North Sea: among said politicians is Wes Streeting. In response, Green Party deputy Rachel Millward has described his plan as “environmentally reckless and economically illiterate”.

Reckless Streeting

As we reported, Streeting said the following about drilling in the North Sea:

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

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

The reason he’s saying this is simple; it’s because Reform is saying the same thing. The reason Reform is saying it is also simple; it’s because the party takes fistfulls of cash from the fossil fuel industry.

Speaking on Streeting’s plan, Millward said:

Rosebank alone contains enough fossil fuel to produce over 200 million tonnes of CO2 if burned – more than the combined annual emissions of 28 low-income countries.

Opening up these oilfields will do nothing to improve energy security or bring down bills either, because any oil and gas extracted will be sold at global prices on the world market.

To be completely fair to Streeting, he did admit that wrecking our Net Zero targets wouldn’t benefit ordinary Britons. To be less fair to him, why do it then?

Renewable technology is better than ever and continuing to improve; why not double down on that to drive down energy costs while simultaneously making some money?

Oh yeah, because Reform said we need to cling to the past, and Labour has no vision for the future.

Pathetic.

And although we’ve always said Streeting was the oiliest Labour politician, we didn’t mean it so literally.

Featured image via The Canary

By Willem Moore

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A few seconds of television coverage during the 2026 FIFA World Cup turned into an issue that sparked widespread controversy in sporting and media circles. Australian VAR official Sean Evans was seen making a controversial hand gesture ahead of the match between Germany and Curaçao. As the Canary previously reported, Evans was seen to have:

briefly formed an “OK” gesture with his right hand near his leg, a symbol that has been co‑opted by white extremist groups. 

The gesture was quick, but it was enough to trigger immediate concern from FIFA’s anti‑discrimination unit, which monitors all matches for offensive behaviour. The monitor formally requested that Evans be stood down from further involvement in the tournament pending review. 

However, FIFA have now claimed that after investigation they do not believe Evans contravened guidelines.

FIFA clear VAR official

FIFA’s Independent Disciplinary Committee stated that:

Fifa’s independent disciplinary committee can confirm that, after looking into the matter involving support video assistant referee Shaun Evans, it has found no evidence of breaches of the Fifa disciplinary code

Evans also issued his first comment on the matter, confirming that the gesture was not deliberate and was not intended to convey any message or political or ideological affiliation, explaining that what happened was an “involuntary and unconscious movement”, and that other footage showed him repeating the gesture whilst holding a pen during the match.

Although the referee has been officially cleared, the case has sparked widespread debate about the sensitivity of symbols and gestures at major sporting events, after the organisation “FARE” called for his exclusion from the tournament, arguing that the gesture resembled a symbol used by far-right groups in some Western countries.

This incident brings to the fore the challenges facing world football in the fight against racism, as the battle is no longer limited to chants and behaviour in the stands, but now also encompasses symbols and gestures that may carry political or ideological connotations in the eyes of large sections of society.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

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