US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau recently said the quiet part out loud, stating that the US will not let India develop like China.

Landau’s remarks are honest about what the USA sees India as: a periphery country, needed to extract profits from by exploiting its low wages, decimating its environment, and plundering its resources.

This is similar to how Britain, in 1947, used the sterling balances negotiations to restrict India’s industrial development.

Though Britain owed India over £1 billion from World War II, Whitehall froze these funds. Britain leveraged “informational asymmetries while Indian sovereignties were in flux,” which ensured India could not use its own savings for industrialisation while keeping the country formally independent.

India’s Hindutva government, a global far-right project (along with US tech companies), reflects this US strategy.

China, with its massive state planning, has not allowed Google and other American companies to serve as virtual town halls or squares the way they do elsewhere, including in the UK. UK elites like Rishi Sunak, Peter Mandelson, and Tony Blair are deeply embedded with US tech, too. For example, Starmer’s adviser held 16 undisclosed meetings with top US tech bosses.

Google AI data centre — a calamity for locals

An example of Hindutva’s red carpet to US tech, helping super-profits for US monopolies and creating a new dependent relationship with the Global South, is Google’s AI data centre in the sleepy town of Visakhapatnam. Google, which is working on the project with Indian cronies — Bharti Airtel and Adani Group,

The hub is India’s first facility built for a US tech giant to train large-scale AI models. It will sprawl across 600 acres and, at full tilt, consume as much electricity as six million Indians.

According to the Polis Project:

In India, data centres are being granted uninterrupted power and water even as nearby poor communities struggle for basic access, and Dalit families in places like Mumbai and Visakhapatnam are reporting eviction pressure, land acquisition, and dispossession tied to this buildout.

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Trump’s racist remarks on India

Hindutva’s obsequiousness to US firms, despite Trump recently calling India a “hellhole,” is because of the material interests of its elites. Just like the UK elites, the Indian elites have sold their souls to greed.

Professor Radhika Desai explains that elites in BRICS countries, including India, are too invested in the dollar system. They park their money there as their “treasure island,” which slows down dedollarisation and deepens their dependent relationship with US capital.

India recently welcomed Marco Rubio, who is Landau’s boss, and promised to buy $500 billion in American goods. Again, capitulating to US interests while India faces a huge crash in the rupee due to Trump’s own choice of war on Iran.

It could be that Rubio is prone to exaggerations like his boss, Trump, though, at least that is what Professor Ashok Swain quipped.

Indians don’t have money to buy gold, don’t have money for foreign travels, no gas, no petrol, Rupee is falling against dollar every day, Marco Rubio still thinks, Modi will buy $500 billion of US goods! https://t.co/w19HY94Akp

— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) May 23, 2026

People’s Dispatch also questioned the nature of Rubio’s visit.

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They said:

The political opposition in India has also found Modi’s government’s approach to the US problematic, often describing it as aimless and bordering on capitulation. They have questioned the failure of the state to defy US dictates of not buying oil from Russia or Iran, which is relatively cheaper and easier to transport than oil bought from the US.

Israel as the ‘Fatherland’

US-backed Israel had few nicer things to say about India. In a recent interview, Netanyahu said that in India, the love for Israel was “crazy.”

Netanyahu:

I’ll say this: we face delegitimization in much of the world — but not in India.

In India, there is an absolutely crazy love for Israel, truly crazy.

I think I have more followers from India than from anywhere else. pic.twitter.com/FRIo2cdVb3

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— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 28, 2026

Again, Israel — which views itself as a part of the Global North — does not view India as an equal. Netanyahu’s appreciation lies in the fact that Israel wants access to cheap labour in India.

Israel’s Brigadier General Erez Winner, in an honest moment, as Landau said, said that India’s population was a ready-made production line for Israeli weapons. He guffawed after making this statement.

Modi infamously called Israel the “Fatherland” in his trip to the country just before it started bombing Iran with the USA.

The consequences of this war of aggression against Iran, a supplier of oil to India, are the fertilizer and food shortages India is currently facing.

India’s Frontline said that Modi calling Israel the Fatherland to India’s Motherland would go down in “history as the moment when India abandoned ethical diplomacy for performative mysticism in order to signal support to all anti-Muslim formations.”

The US-Israel tech alliance can be viewed as two core states functioning as a single war-tech apparatus — whereas India remains a peripheral host, forced to roll out the red carpet for US monopolies while its own people are dispossessed.

For example, US tech has backed Israel’s AI-powered genocide of Palestinians through Project Nimbus — a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services for the Israeli government and defence establishment by Google and Amazon.

Michael Kwet of  Yale Law School said it well:

Big Tech corporations are modern-day East India companies; they are an extension of American imperial power. They colonise the global digital economy and reinforce the divide between the North and the South.

Landau was right. US tech firms have no interest in a developed India. They need cheap labour, plundered resources, and captive markets, not a rival.

Better to take the words of Landau, Trump, and Erez Winner at face value, of what they see as India’s role in the global economy.

Featured image via Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

By Nandita Lal

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Over six million donkeys are slaughtered each year to produce ejiao. It’s a gelatine used in supplements, food and cosmetics. And it’s sold globally, including via major online retailers.

Working donkey and horse charity Brooke carried out an investigation. It found that while Amazon UK doesn’t sell these products directly, they remain available through third-party sellers on its marketplace.

Donkeys are vital to millions of people, supporting livelihoods, education and access to essentials in some of the world’s poorest communities.

The donkey skin trade is causing extreme suffering worldwide, including violent capture, long transportation without food or water, and brutal slaughter conditions for these animals.

Chris Wainwright, CEO of Brooke said:

This trade, which most people don’t even realise exists, is causing immense suffering for both animals and people. When a donkey is stolen and slaughtered, entire families lose their income and lifeline overnight. This has to change.

Amazon must take action to ensure its platforms aren’t accelerating this cruelty. So that we can help end the trade and protect donkeys – relied on by so many worldwide.

Brooke has contacted Amazon UK but received no response. The charity has launched a petition to stop the sale of ejiao on Amazon’s platforms, asking for clear, responsible action.

ITV’s This Morning resident vet Dr Scott Miller is also Brooke’s Donkey Skin Trade Ambassador. He’s asking Amazon to consider the devastating effects the trade is having on animals and people globally.

Miller said:

Speaking directly to anyone working at Amazon, I would say I understand your ignorance regarding ejiao. I didn’t know about it either until I started working with Brooke.

But once you know about this product and the brutal trade that’s behind it, you will want to take action. You will want to protect some of the most vulnerable and poorest communities on this planet. By simply banning any product that contains ejiao from your platform.

The UK public can make a huge difference, says Miller, by writing to their local MP, writing to their local newspaper and signing Brooke’s petition to ban ejiao sales on Amazon. He added:

I personally have seen first-hand how the production of ejiao devastates communities, particularly the poorest in Africa. It has a huge impact not only on women, but the health and education of children.

Anyone that has a heart, that cares about animals and that cares about people would want to support the ban of ejiao worldwide.

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In 2025, Brooke found that if the trade continues at its current rate, Africa could lose half its donkey population by 2040.

By signing Brooke’s petition, people can help expose a largely hidden trade and build pressure for meaningful change.

Featured image via Brooke

By The Canary

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The Guardian, or at least one of its journalists, has been implicated in the ‘Labour Together’ journalist spying scandal at least two years before the scandal broke. This is according to the X account “The Fraud.”

The Starmeroid sabotage crew had paid PR firm APCO to try to stitch up independent authors Paul Holden and Andrew Feinstein. They even went after members of Holden’s family, and tried to have Britain’s security services pursue them. For what? All for exposing the large donations the group kept hidden. And an as-yet unnamed Guardian hack knew all about it. That journalist kept silent, as reported by the X-based account on 28 May.

Yet more scandal

Holden exposed the new scandal through a ‘Subject Access Request’ (SAR) under data protection laws. Among the responses Labour Together provided was an email from disgraced then-director Josh Simons to the Guardian ‘journalist’. The response included an email chain showing discussions between Labour Together and the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). They were trying to persuade it to target those investigating Labour Together. Those efforts — to the NCSC’s credit — were swatted away. Still, Labour Together’s pernicious efforts could have ruined the careers of two honest investigative writers.

The scandal first broke in 2025. It was covered by Skwawkbox, the Canary, and other independent media. However, the ‘mainstream’ press only started to pay attention when they discovered that Simons’s outfit had also spied on two Times journalists. As a result, Simons resigned from Starmer’s front bench. He has now quit as an MP. But the scandal went to the heart of Number 10. Moreover, it should have brought down Starmer and his government too. The government was constructed entirely on the lies and sabotage of Labour Together. Labour Together was run by Starmer’s now-former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. Previously, it was run by Simons.

‘See no evil’

The lack of ‘mainstream media’ (MSM) attention when the spying on Holden was first exposed is scandalous enough. Now, these new revelations show at least one ‘mainstream’ hack knew about it two years prior. They still did nothing.

Holden, in an X post responding to an attempt by another ‘mainstream’ journalist to whitewash dodgy ‘MSM’ conduct, explained in detail the significance of the SAR response. He makes clear that the content of these grossly defamatory emails put beyond question attempts by Labour Together, and its agents, to protect themselves.

Here, Zack Polanski talks about disproportionate media scrutiny. He brings up Labour Together, Josh Simons and the scandal around Labour Together hiring APCO Worldwide to target journalists, including me. Before Polanski can complete his point, he is interrupted by
@robpowellnews, who says that was appropriately reported by the media.

But that’s not what happened AT ALL.

In fact, I can now reveal, for the first time, that an as-yet unknown journalist at the Guardian KNEW about this story for 2 years and didn’t report it.

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I found this out in from my Subject Access Request to Labour Together. I’ve copied a screengrab below. It shows that in February 2024, Josh Simons forwarded a series of emails to the journalist. The emails had been sent by Simons and his Chief of Staff at Labour Together to the National Cyber Security Centre.

Holden continues, showing just how easily the Guardian and its staff could have verified or disproven Labour Together’s smears on people positively known to them:

You’ll note in the attached image that the name of the Guardian journalist has been blacked out. But Labour Together have confirmed that they were, indeed, a Guardian journalist.

The emails forwarded by Simons show that Labour Together had told the NCSC that I was at the centre of a mad conspiracy theory, making all sorts of wild, ludicrous, highly defamatory allegations about me, my colleague @andrewfeinstein, and my family. The emails explicitly mention that Labour Together had attached an extensive report on which these seriously defamatory allegations was based. It also made it clear that Labour Together had done this after I worked with the Sunday Times and other outlets to break stories about Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney’s unlawful conduct.

What makes this all particularly egregious is that me and @andrewfeinstein have had a long relationship with the Guardian.

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Andrew had worked with it’s [SIC] investigative team since the mid-2000s, focusing on investigating BAE Systems and corruption. The Guardian positively reviewed his book, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, on which I also worked. The award-winning feature documentary based on the book, made by recent Oscar nominee director Johan Grimonperez, featured a lengthy interview with the inimitable David Leigh about the BAE story. Leigh was the Guardian and Observer’s long-time head of investigations.

I started collaborating with the Guardian investigation team in the mid-2010s, focusing on corruption at AgustaWestland. The Guardian also splashed with an investigation based on my work in South Africa in 2022, which had been covered by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Andrew and I had both written for the paper, worked on joint investigations, and also acted as sources for Guardian stories. There are any number of stories where we are not credited but where we provided key information or connected the paper to whistleblowers.

This is not to cloak me and Andrew in mainstream respectability or buff our credentials, but to point out that debunking the lunatic claims in the NCSC emails would have taken five minutes and a few phonecalls around the Guardian office. Perhaps then the Guardian could have reported on this despicable attempt to destroy the reputation of long-time Guardian contributors and collaborators with fabrications and conspiracy theories by the people on their way to forming the next government.

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But that didn’t happen. Instead, a journalist at the Guardian KNEW that Simons and Labour Together had been doing all this outrageous stuff to protect Starmer and McSweeney. For two years: while Labour Together was funding 100 incoming MPs, Josh Simons was getting parachuted into Makerfield and Morgan McSweeney rose to the position of Chief of Staff. And nothing was reported.

Conspiracy and silence

And Holden rounds off by pointing out that those who knew about the scandal and should have acted were not only at the Guardian. In fact, Starmer’s closest advisers — therefore probably Starmer himself — didn’t just know after the fact. Moreover, they were involved all along:

We now know, of course, that the highest levels of the Labour Party had also been copied into discussions about the mad Labour Together/APCO investigation, including McSweeney himself and head of Comms, Paul Ovenden (who was later forced to resign as Chief of Strategy in Number 10 because of revelations from my book).

Just how many other people in Labour knew? Just how many other journalists knew? We still don’t know. Can’t say that mainstream outlets have done anything much to help me find out; half the time, as with the BBC, they don’t even bother to ask me or Andrew to comment the scandal before amplifying the exculpatory self-justifications of Simons and his ilk.

In the end it took brave INDEPENDENT journalists like Khadija Shariffe & Peter Geoghegan (rightly now nominated for the Paul Foot Award),
@PulaRJS and @OborneTweets to break the story. While I’m endlessly grateful for that reporting, and this story breaking through into the mainstream through the dogged work of Peter and Khadija, it should never have taken this long, and it speaks volumes that it only really did so after it was revealed that the Labour Together/APCO investigation had also targeted journalists at the Guardian and Sunday Times.

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Just imagine the Guardian had reported on this back in February 2024.

Just imagine the Guardian, which has NEVER, not once, properly reported on the Labour Together donations story, decided to look into McSweeney’s unlawful conduct. Just imagine the public had been made aware of the character of Morgan McSweeney and the nature of this political project.

Maybe, just maybe, McSweeney’s wretched, scandalous proclivities wouldn’t have destroyed the first Labour government in 15 years, opening up the way for Reform, and tainting the Labour Party with the stench of Mandelson and the horrors of Epstein.

Maybe Starmer, so coddled and protected by the Guardian’s soft-touch reporting, would have been made battle-hardened and ready for governance by some proper scrutiny and challenge.

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Or maybe we could have found out, long before this current crisis, that he wasn’t up for the task.

But don’t try to pretend that there is an equality of scrutiny in the media, and that the mainstream media is fearlessly holding the powerful to task with the same rigour that makes it to literally go rooting around Polanski’s dirty laundry.

Even the so-called ‘liberal’ mainstream media in the UK are utterly suborned and untrustworthy. The Canary and other independent media operate to far higher ethical and professional standards, uncorrupted by oligarch owners and the lust for access to the powerful it is supposed to be exposing.

The Canary serialised Holden’s outstanding book, The Fraud. You can read it here to see the revelations that spooked Starmer’s Labour Together handlers that they embarked on an attempted state-power stitch-up.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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Content warning: this article features graphic discussion of rape and sexual abuse. 

A US federal prosecutor has denied opening a case against a woman who claims Donald Trump raped her. But a source had told the legacy press that such a case is being pursued. It would be the latest of many sexual abuse scandals centering on the US president.

Writer E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of “raping her in the mid-1990s”. Trump and Carroll have already contested two cases heard in court.

Carrol is a former columnist for Elle Magazine. CBC reported:

The top federal prosecutor in Chicago denied on Thursday that his ‌office has launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused U.S. President Donald Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s.

A person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday that the Justice Department had begun an investigation, led by ​the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago, into whether Carroll committed ​perjury in testimony involving two civil lawsuits that she won against Trump.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said:

The Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office can confirm that it has not opened — and has never opened — ​a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll.

Trump complications

An anonymous source previously told legacy media:

the probe involved testimony in Carroll’s successful cases, decided in 2023 and 2024, alleging Trump sexually abused her in a New York department store and defamed her by saying she was lying.

The new case, which federal lawyers deny is being developed, focuses on whether Carroll lied about her case being funded by a third party.

The anonymous source said:

the prosecutors’ move was based on a 2022 deposition statement by the former Elle magazine advice columnist that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit. Her lawyers later revealed ​that Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, had paid some of her legal bills.

A previous appeal found:

Ms. Carroll plausibly represented that she had forgotten ⁠about the limited outside funding counsel obtained in September 2020 when this question was first posed to ⁠her in 2022, and the additional discovery did not indicate otherwise.

CBC said:

A jury found ⁠in May 2023 that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll, and defamed her by ⁠lying, but did not rape her. Another jury in January 2024 found that ⁠he ⁠had defamed her and ordered him ​to pay $83.3 million US in damages.

Trump denies raping/sexually assaulting Carroll. In August 2024 a federal judge found the claim that the current US president had raped Carroll to be “substantially true.” However, the legal issue is complicated by the verdict of a jury in a civil case regarding the alleged sexual assault. USA Today reported that:

Under New York criminal law, an assault constitutes “rape” only if it involves vaginal penetration by a penis. That was the definition the jury was instructed to use in the civil case.

As such, the jury found that Carroll did not prove that Trump raped her, but did prove that Trump sexually abused her.

Trump settling old scores through abuse of the law

Trump uses the US legal system to settle old scores, CBC said:

Since Trump returned to the presidency for a second time, Democrats have accused him of seeking retribution against those who he believes have wronged him.

Adding:

Some have also accused acting U.S. attorney general Todd Blanche and his predecessor Pam Bondi of enabling Trump in those quests, undermining the independence of the Justice Department.

Other targets included:

former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, although a judge dismissed the charges against James in late 2025.

And:

Investigations have also either been announced or uncovered by reporters concerning Sen. Adam Schiff, former CIA director John Brennan and first-term Trump administration members Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor.

The president was a long-time associate of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. One Epstein file linked Trump with a murder in December 2025:

The report additionally details an accusation from a woman who claimed Trump and Epstein raped her. The woman said she wouldn’t call the police as “they will kill me”.

The woman was later found with her head “blown off”. Reportedly, officers at the scene said ‘there was no way it was a suicide’, although a coroner would later deem it to be self-inflicted.

Trump denies any wrongdoing. His accusers are numerous. Reports suggest at least 25 women have accused him of different forms of sexual violence. Time will tell if this new probe into Carroll emerges and if more women put forward allegations in the current febrile climate of legal repression. The US president is under legal and political pressure on many fronts – not least the Iran war. The victims of alleged sexual violence have often had their stories overshadowed by the churn of world events.

Featured image via Getty/Roberto Schmidt

By Joe Glenton

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The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) shouldn’t force people living with terminal illness and progressive, life-limiting conditions to undergo stressful, costly and unnecessary disability benefit reassessments.

So says a coalition of more than 30 organisations, led by end-of-life charity Marie Curie, in an open letter to DWP minister Stephen Timms.

Sent on 28 May to coincide with the Call for Evidence deadline for the Timms Review of Personal Independence Payments, the open letter describes the reform as a “clear and compassionate” way to protect people living with terminal illness and those with progressive life-limiting conditions.

DWP has a chance to make things better

The coalition argues that PIP reassessments represent an unacceptable burden. They force people already suffering with their health to prove they are unwell enough to receive support they will always need.

Instead, they should have assured and constant financial support until they die, so they can focus on what really matters – staying as well as possible and spending time with loved ones.

Signatories include, among others:

• Age UK.
• Amnesty International.
• MS Society.
• Parkinson’s UK.
• Trussell Trust.

The coalition adds:

• PIP is designed to help with the extra costs of disability. But for people who are dying or living with progressive, life-limiting conditions, reassessments can cause needless distress, uncertainty and financial anxiety at a time when every moment matters.
• Reassessing people whose conditions will only worsen adds little value for the DWP. Just 2% of PIP awards for people with Parkinson’s, dementia and Motor Neurone Disease are reduced on review. That’s despite each assessment costing around £282, raising concerns about both the human and financial cost.
• Lifetime awards for people in receipt of PIP via the Special Rules route are already in place in Scotland. This shows that a more compassionate system is both possible and practical.

Becca Stacey, Marie Curie senior policy manager, Financial Security, said:

Too many people living with terminal illness and progressive, life-limiting conditions are being forced to prove just how unwell they are, which is simply wrong.

These reassessments rarely change the outcome, but they cause real distress and uncertainty at a time when people should be focused on comfort, care and time with loved ones.

The UK government has a clear chance to fix this now. Ending reassessments and introducing lifetime awards for people with terminal and progressive, life-limiting conditions would create a fairer, more compassionate system that treats people with dignity.

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Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said:

At Age UK we think it is inhumane to burden people in these sad situations, and their loved ones, with a full PIP reassessment.

It is also wasteful since in these circumstances there is usually no prospect of the reassessment concluding that the recipient is ineligible for support, for however time-limited the period they may need it.

That’s why we support Marie Curie in calling for these reassessments to end, and we sincerely hope that the Timms Review will provide the mechanism to enable this to happen.

Featured image via Getty Images

By The Canary

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This is genuinely incredible and says SO SO MUCH about the perception of China in the West.

This is the #1 news show in France, and the host – David Pujadas – asks the pundits around the table (a sample of the top media figures in France) if they can name 3 living Chinese… pic.twitter.com/gkkWxTKfni

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 29, 2026

This selection of French media pundits was offered a simple challenge: name three living Chinese people.

As you’d expect, a familiar response came: Xi Jinping; then… nothing. Rien. Juste l’embarras.

These are not some random fellows interviewed vox-pop on the street. They’re prime-time pundits on the supposedly ‘top’ or number-one French news show. According to Chinese-resident French journalist Arnaud Bertrand, they’re some of France’s media bigwigs. Yet their ignorance on China is staggering.

Like much of the Western media class, they regularly obsess about Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China (CPC). They accept that one cannot study global affairs without talking about the major, transformational role China plays.

Yet they cannot name anyone beyond Chinese President Xi. Not even Premier Li Qiang. What baffling idiocy.

Here’s a simple primer … just think about how many US politicians you could name. One category alone. Now add to that American singers, actors, sportspeople, internet personalities, etc. Sure, they’re English-speaking — but I bet you could name a few across non-anglophone Europe too. Start to notice the imbalance? Funny, innit?

Western double standards

I’ve suffered enough UK and global English-language corporate media over the years to have no doubts that French media heads aren’t alone on this. We’ve all imbibed the simple-minded ‘analysts’ at work.

It’s why so frequently pundits and politicians resort to the same tired clichés: Chinese workers “stole our jobs” (they didn’t); China is “doing colonialism” in Africa, or China is a “threat to our national security” (it’s not). The left isn’t innocent of this either — see anti-imperialist journalist Abby Martin challenging Novara’s Michael Walker on the latter unfounded assertion.

But these French bien-pensants don’t know any counterpart journalists, nor top CPC council politicians nor ministers. Not even the usual roster of Western-media spotlighted Chinese figures such as Jack Ma, Jimmy Lai or Ai Wei Wei. They couldn’t name a single cultural icon like actor Jackie Chan or singer Faye Wong.

They couldn’t offer us any Chinese person they’ve met, even in their personal or professional lives, they’re so isolated from actual contact with China! Gentle reminder — Chinese people account for 17% of us all.

As Arnaud Bertrand writes on X:

They do not know a single living Chinese person beyond the president. …

That’s the level of ignorance of China we’re dealing with in the West today, in 2026.

Top academic researcher Jason Hickel — whose Substack research on China is well worth checking out — added that his experience of talking to Westerners about China is exactly similar.

This is disturbing. And it accords with my own experience, where Western pundits will pronounce very strong opinions about China’s political system, with great certainty, but when you ask them even basic questions like “how do NPC elections work”, “how do CPC elections work”, or… https://t.co/e2DKIlpyab

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) May 29, 2026

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Featured image via the Canary / X

By Cameron Baillie

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Yesterday saw the release of the interim report of the Milburn Review into youth unemployment. However, it completely contradicts everything the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is already doing to make life harder for unemployed and disabled young people.

A media circus instead of support

The long-awaited report was supposed to delve into why so many young people are unemployed. However, that was never going to be the whole story when it was run by Alan Milburn.

Once you got past the DWP-created media circus, the report was Milburn’s attempt to prove his foregone conclusion that young people were faking disability, despite the evidence saying otherwise. While the former health secretary was forced to acknowledge the actual nuanced reasons that kids struggle to get into work, he then contradicted all of them by presenting his own opinions on the topic as fact.

For example, after including a report on young people’s psychological distress, he said:

It confirms that what we are seeing is not simply a change in how young people talk about their mental health. It is a change in their capacity to participate. There is a difference between a generation that is more willing to name its struggles and a generation that is functionally less able to engage with education and work.

While the report pretended to set out all the evidence so Milburn could move forward and work on solutions, the DWP is actually already contradicting it.

DWP contradicts own report

The report claims to want to support young disabled people so they can get into work. However, the way the government is trying to keep them from accessing that support says otherwise.

Currently, the DWP is pushing ahead with the youth guarantee, which will force young people into any work. This applies whether or not it’s their chosen career. The scheme has been criticised for pushing young people into military and war-related careers. Most recently, the department celebrated McDonald’s joining the youth guarantee. As a result, young people will be forced into low-skilled jobs that are rife with harassment.

Alongside this, they’re also systematically stripping disabled people of benefits. The DWP chief Pat McFadden refused to rule out scrapping the health element of Universal Credit for disabled people under the age of 22. They’ve also cut Universal Credit for new disabled claimants. This means anyone who claims now will get half what a disabled claimant got last year.

All of this is despite the fact that the DWP’s own figures revealed that work poses a serious health and suicide risk for young disabled claimants.

Even though the DWP is forcing more disabled people into work, they’re of course doing absolutely nothing to support them. To the point where they’re actively cutting Access to Work (AtW) and stripping people of the support they’re already entitled to. There’s also a monumental backlog of people waiting for Access to Work, and in March, it was 66,000. Most recently the DWP crowed about hiring new AtW advisors, despite them being shamed into it.

DWP doesn’t care

What’s clear from all of this is that the DWP is hellbent on destroying disabled people’s lives. However, they know that in order to do that, they need to create a narrative of who deserves benefits. This is exactly what they’re doing by making themselves look like the saviour of unemployed disabled people.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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A growing group of academics, students, trade unionists, education advocates, and civil society organisations across the UK has condemned the Ministry of Defence’s newly launched Defence Universities Alliance. They’re warning that the initiative represents a dangerous escalation in the militarisation of higher education.

Demilitarise Education has released an official public statement opposing the Defence Universities Alliance. Ten organisations and groups across the UK have endorsed the statement, including:

• World Beyond War.
• Action on Armed Violence.
• Loughborough Action for Palestine.
• Stop the War.
• Boycott, Divest, Sanction Group – UCL.
• CND.
• People & Planet.
• University & College Workers for Palestine.
• Quakers in Britain.
• Campaign Against Arms Trade.

The endorsement signals growing cross-sector concern over the Defence Universities Alliance’s potential impact on academic independence, democratic accountability, ethical research, and the future role of higher education in society.

Defence Universities Alliance – embedding militarism into education

The Defence Universities Alliance, which launched earlier this month, seeks to recruit twenty founding university members. Universities joining the alliance would commit to expanding research and development in so-called “defence and national security” technologies while strengthening pathways into military-related industries.

The initiative fundamentally reshapes the role of universities, away from serving the public good and towards supporting military infrastructure, weapons development, and state militarisation.

Jinsella, co-founder and executive director of Demilitarise Education, said:

The Defence Universities Alliance is designed to lock civil society into the conveyor belt of perpetual war. University leaders must see past the facade of a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to defence.

This isn’t about human security, it’s about arms-industry profits. Innovation in favour of creating the conditions for peace and conflict resolution should be coming out of universities, not war machines.

NGOs warn that the alliance threatens academic freedom and institutional independence by encouraging universities to align research priorities with military objectives rather than urgent social, environmental, and humanitarian needs.

Under the Defence Universities Alliance charter, universities would be expected to support the UK’s wider military strategy actively. This might be through defence-focused research partnerships, skills development, and closer collaboration with arms manufacturers and the defence sector.

Growing criticism argues this could fundamentally reshape the role of higher education by prioritising military and national security objectives over independent, socially beneficial research.

This could steer students and graduates into defence careers through targeted skills and career promotion. And it risks embedding a “whole-of-society” militarisation agenda that blurs the boundary between education, public institutions, and military priorities.

Concerns are also growing that increased institutional alignment with defence interests risks undermining academic independence, narrowing ethical debate on campuses, and redirecting public resources and expertise away from urgent social challenges such as inequality, healthcare, climate, and education.

The three major charter points embedded here are:

• Defence research prioritisation: universities becoming more focused on military/national security research.
• Defence skills and career promotion: students being channelled into defence-sector employment.
• “Whole-of-society” collaboration agenda: deeper institutional integration between universities, government and defence industry.

Iain Overton, of Action on Armed Violence, commented:

Universities should be places of critical inquiry and peaceful scrutiny. They are not extensions of the military-industrial complex. The growing alignment between higher education and defence interests risks undermining academic independence and distorting research priorities.

We have seen this in the past and that past has led, invariably, to war. We know this is the path, and yet we continue down it, blindly and without moral scruples.

Call for resistance and transparency

There are also concerns about the broader government agenda surrounding the Defence Universities Alliance, including efforts to expand military-linked career pathways and increase defence-sector recruitment through higher education institutions.

Commitments to the Defence Universities Alliance charter will reposition universities as part of the UK’s so-called “Defence Industrial Base”. This move erodes the political neutrality of higher education and risks academic freedom.

Organisations involved in the statement are calling on university communities across the UK to resist the initiative through collective action, democratic scrutiny, and public accountability.
The coalition is demanding:

• Full transparency regarding implications and discussions or negotiations relating to Defence Universities Alliance membership.
• Democratic oversight through university senates and governing bodies.
• Meaningful consultation with students, staff, and affected communities.
• Development of alternative partnership alliances.

Organisations supporting the statement are calling on university communities across the UK to resist the initiative through collective action, democratic scrutiny, and public accountability.

Union motions in favour of demilitarising education have now been adopted at six universities with further cross-campus organising to challenge the expansion of military influence within universities being encouraged.

Annachiara Canetta, Europe organiser at World BEYOND War, added:

At World BEYOND War we believe that educational institutions should imagine and build alternatives to militarism, not become increasingly entangled with it.

We oppose the Defence Universities Alliance and the normalisation of military influence in academic life, and we stand in solidarity with Demilitarise Education and all those resisting the Defence Universities Alliance.

Featured image via Getty Images

By The Canary

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Andy Burnham has finally hit back at Tony Blair’s thinly veiled criticism of his potential leadership of the Labour Party.

Blair previously published a rambling article via his eponymous think tank, the Tony Blair Institute, detailing his belief in the so-called ‘radical centre‘. From what we can tell, that means private-sector deregulation, centering AI above all, slashing welfare and wages, and sucking up to Trump. Really radical, that lot.

The section of Blair’s essay which reads as an attack on Burnham is this:

the alternative which thinks the answer is moving even further left on taxes, spending and welfare, spun with a rehash of the far-left critique about nothing good coming out of the last ‘40 years’ of ‘neo-liberalism’, which presumably includes the last Labour government.

Likewise, Blair also criticised a nascent impulse in what’s left of the supposedly left-wing Labour party to, you know, put out left-wing policies:

It is one thing when in opposition to indulge this perennial delusion that when we lose seats to the right the country is really signalling it wants Labour to move left; it is dangerous to do it in government.

Would we at the Canary necessarily characterise Burnham as all that left-wing? Probably not. However, he’s a damn sight further left than Blair, for sure.

Burnham: ‘life has got harder’

Now, however, Burnham has come out with his rebuttal to Blair’s perceived criticisms. In an article for the Times on 28 May, the Manchester mayor wrote of reading Blair’s essay:

I kept waiting for the main topic of conversation on doorsteps in Makerfield to make an appearance. And it never did. The fall in the living standards of millions, and the reality that life has got harder for most year on year since the financial crash in 2008, is, I believe, the gaping omission in his analysis.

In fact, Blair called for policies which will make people’s living standards even worse. Namely, the ex-Labour leader called to slash the minimum wage, worker’s rights, and benefits. Likewise, he also advocated for the deregulation of both the housing and technology sectors, claiming that:

We need a transformative programme for planning reform and deregulation. The planning system in Britain is an abomination. The government has taken significant steps, but well short of a truly radical reform.

However, this call for deregulation was an ‘in’ for Burnham, who wrote that:

Lest we forget: the principal cause of the 2008 crash was a failure of regulation. So how can a new wave of deregulation plausibly be the answer to the problems we have experienced since? This is the real “retro” thinking, I suggest; the kind of thinking that would doom us to repeat past mistakes and, if we’re not careful, prevent us from protecting children by failing to regulate social media, artificial intelligence and big tech.

Regulation for growth

Instead, the new leadership hopeful called for us to “build a higher-growth economy” precisely in order to achieve “regional equality and social justice”. Of course, exactly how that commitment to social justice lines up with his support for anti-trans and anti-immigrant stances is anyone’s guess.

Continuing in the ‘regulation for growth’ vein, the Manchester Mayor argued:

In Greater Manchester, we have laid a new path to [a higher-growth economy]. We call it Good Growth. In the past decade, we achieved the highest annual average growth anywhere in the UK — 3.1 per cent — and, at the same time, as the Centre for Cities recently found, the biggest reduction in inner-city deprivation. This has not come about by leaving things to the market but by being very interventionist and intentional about it.

It’s certainly correct that Manchester is doing a good deal better for itself than many comparable cities. Part of that is down to the city’s control over its transportation system – including nearly half a billion pounds of dividends from its international airport, owned in part by the council.

As Burnham is wont to do, he turned to Manchester’s buses as an example:

We are proud to be the first place anywhere to reverse one of the biggest Thatcher legacies: bus deregulation. A system that charged single fares of more than £4 when I arrived in 2017 is now capped at £2. […] Tony is right to say that we need welfare reform and that the numbers of young people on benefits is too high, but how can you fix that if people can’t afford to travel to training, jobs and opportunity?

The non-radical center

Burnham finished off by writing that:

We need a huge transfer of power, resources and personnel to combined and local authorities to create more agency at the ground level, empower our community and voluntary sectors and make Good Growth a reality everywhere. This means big changes to British public procurement, using full social value weighting, to give local entities the best chance of winning contracts and recycling maximum value back into communities.

Devolved political power, a regulated private sector, and a empowered communities? Sure, sounds great, we’re all for it. However, as we’ve seen in recent weeks, Burnham’s other policies and actions haven’t quite lived up to his leftist hype. Just as a quick roundup, Burnham:

• Supports Mahmood’s racist immigration changes.
• Is silent on wealth taxes.
• Won’t back proportional representation this parliament.
• Ditched trans rights to panic-grab Reform votes.
• Wouldn’t work to renationalise Thames Water.

As the Canary’s Willem Moore summarised – Burnham might not be right-wing enough for Blair, but that’s hardly saying much. Meanwhile, he’s still not managing to put out a substantive left-wing policy either.

This might not be Blair’s ‘radical centre’ – whatever the hell that means – but by God does it look like the centre all the same.

Featured image via Getty/Ryan Jenkinson

By Alex/Rose Cocker

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Pragmatism does not mean grifting. Pragmatism is a serious philosophical movement. At its heart is a definition of truth. It seeks an honest answer to the question, “Does this work, and what practical difference does it make in our lives?”

If it’s a short-term gain at a long-term cost, it is not pragmatic. If it enriches a small group of people at the cost of serious economic damage, it’s not pragmatic. At least not in the context of a democratic government.

Pragmatism is one of the most abused words in politics. What should mean, “Will this work?” is weaponised to mean, “I’m scared to challenge vested interests.” Or worse still, “I’m going to do something unpopular with the public, but my donors will love it. I’ll call it ‘making tough decisions.’” The real word for that is cronyism.

The return of the crypt keeper

Tony Blair has popped up out of his box again to tell Labour how pragmatic cronyism should be done. But there was nothing pragmatic about the Iraq War. 179 British service personnel killed. 3,598 wounded. 487,000 civilian deaths. West Asia plunged into turmoil for decades. Was it pragmatic to get £13 billion of NHS PFI investment at the cost of £80 billion? How about failing to regulate the banks, and the subsequent 2007-08 crash?

Now he says increasing carbon emissions is a good idea – after Saudi Arabia gave him £9 million. He thinks handing over our public services to unregulated AI firms is a spiffing idea. It’s pure coincidence that he’s been offered £257 million from global AI giant Oracle.

Blair, like his best mate Mandelson, is one of the most brazen – along with Farage, who says his £5 million undeclared ‘personal gift’ from overseas crypto-billionaire Christopher Harbone has nothing to do with Reform’s policy of tax cuts for crypto-billionaires. The other £22 million Harborne donated to Reform was just a coincidence, apparently.

Burnham’s ‘pragmaticism’

I read an article yesterday that accused Andy Burnham of changing his positions. It’s widely reported that:

• he’s backing Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules;
• he’s reversed his position on support for refugees;
• he’s abandoning some trans rights;
• he’s changed his position on the EU;
• he won’t take water companies into public ownership, but have “stronger public control”.

I saw a comment that this is ‘pragmatism’. Sometimes people say ‘pragmatic’ when they mean ‘timid’.

If Andy was bold, he’d win big. Polling shows that the number-one reason people will not vote Labour is “I don’t know what they stand for” – followed by being incompetent, being out of touch, and not trusting their promises. None of this will be improved by U-turning.

Funny how it’s always ‘pragmatic’ to be right-wing

“Left-wing” policies are always popular. 74% support mass council-house building. 77% support wealth taxes on billionaires. 82% support public ownership of water. And despite the media reporting and hordes of online bots, 77% of Britons agree that transgender people should be protected from discrimination.

So the establishment attack the messengers. Left-wing politicians lack profile, media experience, and a track record of being in government. They get smeared before anyone can look at their policies. None of that applies to Andy Burnham. He already has massive recognition. His high personal ratings are based on his current image – people see him as “left-wing”.

He does not need to tack right. He won 62% of the vote in Makerfield in the 2024 Mayoral election. Voters know him independently of his red rosette.

Voters would love it if he said:

I will bring water back into public ownership, and the companies that have been squeezing us dry will not get bailed out by tax payers.

Or if he said:

I’ll build a million council homes so everyone can have somewhere secure to live. I will tax billionaires. I will bring in PR, no ifs, no buts. I will protect the most vulnerable and stand against division. Black or white, gay or straight, cis or trans, old or young, able bodied or disabled, I will invest what it takes to build a Britain that leaves no one behind.

If he spoke like he did outside Bridgewater Hall in October 2020 when he stood up against the Tory government, he would win Makerfield at a canter.

But that’s not what he’s doing.

After Starmer

The collapse of Starmerism has handed him an opportunity that almost no one in politics ever gets. He could remake Britain. It’s on a plate.

What’s the pragmatic choice? Listen to the Labour Together advisors, take the path of limping centrism, and lose the general election in three years time? Leave a legacy of crumbling public services, rip-off utilities, and stunted life chances for millions?

Or stand and win on a common sense programme that’s massively popular. Then start to fix what needs fixing. Win a second term and lift millions out of poverty, heal division, and give everyone security from cradle to grave.

Bravery is pragmatic.

Featured image via the Canary

By Jamie Driscoll

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