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Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee released a report Thursday detailing how much more the average American family in every US state is having to spend monthly to cover the rising costs of food, shelter, energy, and other necessities under the leadership of President Donald Trump. The panel released its report on the same day the Trump administration was supposed to…

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Sarah, a 44-year-old single mother in Maryland, was down to the last $20 on her EBT card as of Monday, wondering how she would feed herself and her two preteen boys as the government shutdown dragged on. She’d been out of work since May, after the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to federal contracts and eliminated her job in public health.

She had been rationing her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits for over a month, unsure of when, if ever, the deposit would hit her account again. “It’s been awful,” said Sarah, who asked to be identified by her first name only because she fears speaking out could hurt her job search. But the Maryland mom said she was willing to sacrifice if it meant millions of Americans could afford their health insurance.

“The pitch they made, it made sense,” Sarah told The Intercept. “Everyone knew it was going to be painful, but it was important … and they just wasted it all.”

On Sunday, a group of eight Democratic senators, including Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., cut a deal with Republican leadership to end the government shutdown. They did it without forcing Republicans to agree to any of the major concessions Democrats said they were fighting to secure, which included a reversal of Medicaid cuts and an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. The deal is slated for a vote in the House on Wednesday evening, and it looks likely to pass.

[

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Key Senate Dem Says Party Caved on Shutdown to Make a Symbolic Point About the GOP](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/10/democrats-republicans-government-shutdown-aca-deal/)

While Senate Republican leadership agreed to hold a vote on the subsidies, the legislation is more than likely dead in the water, especially since Democrats forfeited their main piece of leverage. As a result, tens of millions of Americans are projected to see their premiums skyrocket, and an estimated 7.8 million low-income Americans will outright lose their insurance through Medicaid.

The Intercept spoke with four SNAP recipients who said they’re furious that Democrats squandered the sacrifice they made for the last month to ensure access to health care for millions of Americans — just as voters rewarded the party for finally fighting back against Republicans with major electoral victories last week.

“We sacrificed and we would continue to sacrifice because we understood what the stakes were. People’s health care was at stake,” said Delight Worthyn, 67, a SNAP recipient with lupus living in New Haven, Connecticut. “And that they would cave for nothing after we have all gone through. … I only feel betrayed.”

Though the Supreme Court has paused a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for the month of November, some recipients have started receiving full or partial benefits. The SNAP funding available varies by state.

“Don’t talk about me and my food insecurity to justify kicking people like me off of my health care.”

Sasha Slansky, 33, a full-time master’s student at Queens College at the City University of New York who works a series of odd jobs to pay her bills, said it’s “insulting” for Democrats to use SNAP recipients as a justification for caving to Republicans and President Donald Trump**.** In his floor speech, Durbin invoked SNAP recipients as one of the reasons he was agreeing to Republicans’ shutdown deal.

“Don’t talk about me and my food insecurity to justify kicking people like me off of my health care,” said Slansky, noting that Democrats seem not to have taken into account the overlap between SNAP recipients and people who receive Medicaid and their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. “It’s insane, and it’s insulting, and it’s also just so wildly out of touch.”

Nearly 30 million of the 38.3 million people who received SNAP in 2022 were enrolled in Medicaid. The number of SNAP recipients has since risen to 42 million people, as of this year.

“I’m also on Medicaid,” Slansky said. “And as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani and many, many Democrats have made clear, this has the potential to kick [millions] of Americans off of Medicaid, which likely includes me.”

Natalie, a delivery driver living in Lynnwood, Washington, said she managed to spend only half of her SNAP benefits for the month, stretching meals that would normally last her two days to three or four. She received her benefits for the first time since October on Tuesday, but she said it doesn’t erase the hardship of the last month.

Though the Supreme Court has paused a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for the month of November, some recipients have started receiving full or partial benefits. The SNAP funding available varies by state.

“It felt like we were making a small sacrifice, skipping [meals], because we felt like we were doing something to help save people, and that we were doing something good for the country, and to have our only leverage just handed over,” said Natalie, who asked to be identified by her first name because she’s transgender and wanted to avoid transphobic harassment. “It feels like it wasn’t for anything.”

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The President Is Perfectly Fine If You Starve](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/07/government-shutdown-snap-trump-hunger/)

Natalie said she wishes that Democrats had built off of their electoral victories in New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and California earlier this month to pressure Republicans, instead of immediately disarming when they had the upper hand.

“The MAGA Republicans were on the ropes. They were getting the blame. Why didn’t they keep using that and pushing the narrative, the truth, on social media and traditional news that Republicans are doing this to people?” said Natalie. “That was a really strong message, and it was one that people were willing to sacrifice for.”

The post SNAP Recipients Crushed by Democrats Caving on Shutdown: “They Just Wasted It All” appeared first on The Intercept.

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Nigel Farage gave a chilling speech to City of London bigwigs on Monday 3 November, in which he laid out his and Reform’s ‘vision’ for Britain. It should strike fear into the hearts of ordinary people, no matter where they live or what ethnicity they are.

Another day, another horrendous Farage speech

The speech started with Farage harking back to his stockbroker days when, he reckons, you only got to work in the City moving money around and betting on stock prices if you were ‘good enough’.

The fact that the City and its fellow financial centres around the world caused the 2008 financial crash and the ‘Great Recession’ that followed it was conveniently airbrushed out – as were reports that Farage himself was reportedly a pretty awful stockbroker who managed to bust at least one company, Farage Futures.

That minor amusement aside, Farage claimed this morning that the stock market is over-regulated – again leaving out that the ‘light touch’ regulation of the Blair-Brown governments and the Tories that preceded them had played a huge role in the crash – and should be allowed to do its thing with minimal safeguards in place.

Scapegoating

It wouldn’t, of course, be a Farage speech without an attack on refugees.

Farage managed, with a straight face, to say both that UK GDP has only risen because of immigration and that migration has “made the average Briton poorer”. He had no shame about quoting a supposed £200bn cost of benefits for refugees given permanent leave to remain – a made-up figure that even the far-right Daily Mail and the ‘think-tank’ that came up with it withdrew because it was so dodgy.

This, along with ‘poor productivity’, is magically somehow the fault of immigrants, not of exploitative employers – no, they need to be protected as we’ll shortly see – and crap wages, which are somehow too high as well as being too low.

But Farage is more than just racist – he has his sights set on all ordinary people and he admits that he is targeting poor people because he wants to protect the poor ol’ rich folk. And not just rich folk generally, but foreign rich folk particularly.

Laced with irony

Ironically for the hate-inciter in chief, old Nige thinks it’s just awful that foreign billionaires may have to pay tax under changes to ‘non-domicile’ rules under which they could live in the UK but not pay tax on the massive wealth they keep outside the UK, so he promised to reverse all that sharpish, along with huge tax cuts so the native-born filthy rich don’t feel like they’re missing out.

Meanwhile, Farage has the British people he claims to want to protect squarely in his crosshairs. Employment rights to protect Brits at work? They get in the way of the thrusting wealth creators so they’ll be out of the window. Minimum wage – already grossly inadequate but at least some level of defence against exploitation? Nope, that’s also a bar to business freedom, so into the shredder it goes.

Energy prices we’re all forced to pay are too high, not because of privatisation and corporate greed gouging customers to fatten the shareholders Farage loves – he made explicitly clear he wants more private industry running everything – but for ‘ideological reasons’.

Bankers

Bankers didn’t cause the crash – no, they’re the greatest asset Britain has – and we don’t need diversity in the finance industry, nothing wrong with the good ol’ boy, old-school-tie network Farage worked in during the 1980s. Nor do we need those pesky ‘EU’ directives against money laundering – “proliferating” Turkish barbers and hand car washes are Britain’s real problem, along with the apparently pointless push to save the environment.

More banking ‘innovation’ is what’s needed, ‘cryptocurrencies’ are the solution to our ills – Can anyone say ‘Trumpcoin’? – and we should be drilling for more oil and gas everywhere we can. And Farage admits he’ll be slashing the public sector and looking at public sector pensions as an opportunity to ‘save’, presumably with a Reeves-like pension grab for his mates in the finance sector.

The benefits bill isn’t too high because greedy employers aren’t paying decent wages and the inequality of our society is making so many people physically and mentally ill, but because doctors are exaggerating people’s ‘mild anxiety’ and a Farage government would soon put a stop to all that nonsense of medical experts deciding who’s too sick to work, but by political appointees. Not too different from the Tories or Starmer in that regard, are you, Nige mate?

Farage must be stopped

Some lowlights of Farage’s billionaire-nosing speech are below, but if you’re short of time here’s the unsurprising summary: if you’re sick, disabled, poor, have mental health issues, care for a sick family member, have children but aren’t part of a couple that both works, have more melanin in your skin, or generally think human rights are important at work and in society as a whole, Farage and his fascist cronies are poison.

It’s easy to say ‘be very afraid’, but fear won’t stop the fascists. Instead, organise, communicate, and work together to defeat them.

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/farage-be-afraid.mp4

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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Last week, the Trump administration modified a page of the White House website detailing the history of the building to include alleged Democratic administration scandals — as criticism is mounting against President Donald Trump’s destruction of the East Wing to make way for a grandiose, $300 million ballroom. The web page includes a “Major Events Timeline,” which details the renovations…

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According to a new report from the Nerve, UK authorities knew that Russia had recruited Nathan Gill – Reform’s ex-leader of Wales – in 2022. And as journalist Carole Cadwalladr says, it’s raising questions about why it took so long for the police to charge him.

NEW: Police knew a Kremlin spy ring recruited former leader of Reform Wales at least 3 years ago.

So why was Nathan Gill not charged till Feb this year?

Pls read part 2 of @thenerve_news special investigation into Nathan Gill. And please share! 1/ pic.twitter.com/TDMLfeODxI

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) October 18, 2025

Reform – Russia connection

The Nerve is a new outlet established by former Guardian and Observer journalists. In a Twitter thread, Cadwalladr summarised the latest investigation, noting:

Meet the team.

Voloshyn – the man who bribed Nathan Gill – with his wife, Nadia Sass.

In part 2 of @thenerve_news’s investigation, we reveal their tag team approach.

But the UK police knew all this since at least 2022, the same year they fled to Belarus.

So what gives?? 3/ pic.twitter.com/Xq8ilbvMgu

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) October 18, 2025

This “husband-and-wife” team was in communication with:

Politicians ‘across Europe’.A British lord.Nigel Farage.

We previously reported that Farage initially avoided saying he had anything to do with Gill; he later admitted they were close. Now, it appears that Farage didn’t just know the bribed politician; he also knew the bribers.

Cadwalladr continued:

The long delay of UK police baffles professor @A_SHEKH0VTS0V.

Gill is all over his 2021 report into this pan-European Kremlin spy ring.

The Polish authorities charged his main target, Janusz Niedzwiecki, with espionage that same year.

So what took UK police so long?

4/ pic.twitter.com/1TDvPBTl3j

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) October 18, 2025

As people have complained, the mainstream media haven’t dedicated much attention to the Reform bribery scandal. If it wasn’t for the recent election of Zack Polanski, we might not have heard about it again (at least not on the BBC, anyway):

If it wasn’t for Green Party’s @ZackPolanski bringing this up on BBC Question Time last week, the vast majority of us would not have been aware of this scandal. And they say the left are the ones putting country in danger? https://t.co/WSyjgPoacF

— Andrew Johns Politics (@JohnsOnPolitics) October 13, 2025

Cadwalladr is similarly perplexed as to why this story failed to generate media attention:

Seriously.

You think if @Keir_Starmer had been cultivated by this woman, there would be tumbleweed across entire UK media?!?

We are stuck in a right-wing news-sphere & this story proves how dangerous that is. 6/https://t.co/bDzxdxRVO6 pic.twitter.com/B2jpUug4Lj

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) October 18, 2025

It wouldn’t be fair to say there’s been no coverage, of course. Just look at how furious Farage was when this presenter asked him about his connections to Russia:

If you’re a woman, you’ve just been shown how Reform will treat your dignity and rights: Mishal Hussain repeatedly addressed by Farage as “love”as he squirms during questioning around the Reform/Russia scandal. He isn’t fit to lead and our country. pic.twitter.com/vUJu4uQSKb

— Peter Kay (@theonlypeterkay.bsky.social) (@theonlypeterkay) October 18, 2025

What this demonstrates is that we all need to keep asking the question.

You can read much more in part one and part two of the Nerve’s investigation.

Featured image via Nadia Sass

By Willem Moore

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Israeli guards stripped humanitarian activist Greta Thunberg naked and wrote ‘whore Greta’ on her luggage after abducting her, and around four hundred other volunteer crew members, in a criminal attack in international waters on the Global Sumud Flotilla carrying baby food and other vital items to Gaza:

Greta Thunberg: multiple human rights violations by Israel

The fascist thugs’ violence toward Thunberg had already become known from other released crew, but the grim details of the appalling abuse are only now coming out.

Among the crimes Israeli guards and troops committed against Thunberg:

“Israeli soldiers hit, kicked, starved, and tortured me” – Greta Thunberg herself.“They placed a flag next to me, and anytime the flag touched me, they kicked me”.“Whenever I raised my head to look at Ben-Gvir, I was kicked”.She was filmed while stripped naked.She and others were kept in a prison cell at 40 degrees Celsius and deprived of water.Guards threatened to gas her and others, showing them gas cylinders.She and others were kept in solitary confinement for long periods in parasite-infested cell

Thunberg and others also reported that every time anyone looked up from the ground in the ‘stress positions’ they were forced to maintain on concrete floors, they were knocked to the ground and beaten. Thunberg was also tormented with an Israeli flag:

The flag was placed so that it would touch me. When it fluttered and touched me, they shouted “Don’t touch the flag” and kicked me in the side. After a while·, my hands were put in cable ties, very tight. A bunch of guards lined up to take selfies with me as I sat there.

They take my bag and throw away all the things they interpret as Palestine-related. They take each thing and stare into my eyes and at the same time pick up a knife and slowly cut them apart with it, while ten people take selfies.

You felt like you couldn’t “afford” to cry because you were so dehydrated. It was so hot, like 40 degrees. We kept asking: Can we get water? Can we get water?

In the end, people were screaming. The guards kept walking in front of the bars, laughing and holding up their water bottles. They threw the bottles of water in, in the garbage cans in front of us.

Thunberg also reported the support she received from other abducted volunteers – and the price they paid for it:

I needed to go to the bathroom and asked to. Then I needed to be led through where people were sitting and they saw me. A female member of the Swedish delegation said: “We are with you Greta.”

Then she was taken aside and beaten.

Israel is a terror state and a fascist, ethno-supremacist project. If this is how it will treat Thunberg and other foreign victims, imagine what it is doing every day to Palestinian hostages.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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Minneapolis, MN – On Tuesday, October 7, protesters from across Minnesota converged outside the federal courthouse to protest Israel’s unceasing bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

About 2000 protesters joined the rally, draped in keffiyehs and flags and raising their voices toward the collective dream of a free Palestine.

The Minnesota Anti-War Committee (AWC) organized the demonstration in collaboration with the local chapters of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) in response to the Anti-War Action Network’s call for a National Day of Action marking two years of genocide.

“Two years ago, I stood before you just one week after October 7, 2023,” said AWC member Yossi Aharoni from the bed of the pickup truck serving as a podium. “Israel had already begun its indiscriminate bombing campaign, dropping over 7000 bombs in seven days [and] killing over 700 children while its leaders openly stated that they would cut off all food, water and energy to Gaza.”

“Today,” Aharoni said, “I stand before you in disbelief, two years into an ongoing holocaust. 730 days of blood and death. Israel is attempting to employ its final solution through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and forced starvation.” Aharoni framed the resistance and resilience of the Palestinian people as the movement’s compass, declaring, “When I see the people of Gaza, I see their hope, I see their faith, their resilience, their ingenuity. I see an unbreakable spirit of sheer will and determination to resist their own extermination. The people of Palestine will never stop resisting.”

To a crowd carrying signs and handmade poppies, Dr. Christine Harb of the USPCN criticized the Western states that have recognized Palestinian statehood symbolically without undertaking the material action necessary to protect and realize Palestinian statehood.

“We will not exchange our homeland for artificial sovereignty in a ghettoized state,” Harb said. In contrast to the “support” of states like France and the United Kingdom, Harb celebrated principled resistance work, from the “Italians [who shut] down their economy to protect the Global Sumud Flotilla” to Yemen’s military intervention, “doing what every country should do to put an end to this genocide,” to “the resistance in Gaza, still fighting despite two years of constant bombardment, mass starvation and unimaginable death.”

In the final speech of the rally portion, Meredith Aby of the AWC declared, “I want to end here today by reminding us that we will see a free Palestine. Israel is a country living on stolen land and borrowed time. When I went to Palestine in 2002, I saw firsthand a people [who] will not give up their righteous demand for national liberation. We are here in the belly of the beast to do our part to challenge U.S. imperialism, but the real heroes are the Palestinian people who refuse to leave their homes, refuse to give up the right of return, who refuse to be negotiated for, talked over, imprisoned, or starved.”

As cries of support rang out from the crowd, Aby encouraged the crowd to transmute their grief and rage into the energy necessary to continue fighting for a free Palestine.

With the guidance of a well-coordinated team of marshals from many local organizations, the protesters marched toward Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office to call out her complicity in genocide. Klobuchar has regularly voted in favor of war, in Palestine and elsewhere, throughout her tenure as a senator. Upon reaching Senator Klobuchar’s office, New Arab American Theater Works’ Yalla Drum ensemble performed a composition that celebrated Palestinian musicians’ resilience.

Families, labor organizers, religious leaders and college students all joined the march as the sun began to dip below the skyline. The crowd held large handmade signs that spelled out the words “Fight 4 Gaza,” which were illuminated by lightbulbs so they could be read after sunset.

Protesters departed the march feeling energized and indebted to the resistance of the Palestinian people.

#MinneapolisMN #MN #AntiWarMovement #Palestine

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Pittsburgh, PA – On October 10, the Pittsburgh BDS Coalition led hundreds into the streets to speak out against Howmet Aerospace, a locally headquartered company manufacturing aircraft parts for Lockheed Martin. The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement works to isolate Israel for the crimes it is committing in Palestine.

Coming just a day after the announcement of a new ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the Pittsburgh organizers didn’t think for a moment about letting the Palestine solidarity movement settle down. “Just because there might be a new ceasefire doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly okay to sell Israel military jets,” said a member of the Pittsburgh BDS Coalition. “Now is the time to keep up the pressure!”

The event got going with a powerful speech by a representative from the Pittsburgh University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, who spoke to the exhaustion and rage which so many around the world feel watching the Zionist Entity commit genocide in Palestine, with the support of Western Imperialism.

Other speakers included members of PSL, the Our Streets Collective, 50501, the Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, the East End Food Co-op labor union, and Jewish Voices for Peace.

Protesters marched down Penn Avenue behind a large banner reading “Howmet kills,” chanting slogans calling on the company to cancel its contract with Lockheed Martin. Upon reaching the Howmet headquarters, three cardboard models of the F-35 jet, which Howmet manufactures parts for, were smashed in front of the building.

The protest kicks off a week of action against Howmet, which the Pittsburgh BDS coalition has been organizing with other groups around the country. Although Howmet has locations in a dozen states across the US, they are not well-known as a component of the military industrial complex. The Pittsburgh BDS Coalition has been working to fix this by reaching out to anti-imperialist groups near other Howmet locations, several of which plan following Pittsburgh’s example with their own actions across the next week. The week of action also coincides with the international BDS campaign against the F-35 fighter jet, which many European socialists are participating in through shipping boycotts.

Although only 16% of Howmet’s business is dedicated to defense contracts, the fact that it manufactures highly specialized titanium parts makes it a crucial part of the F-35’s production chain – especially as the company has spent years buying up specialized factories to grow and maintain its monopoly on titanium aircraft parts. As the Pittsburgh BDS Coalition sees it, if a popular campaign were to succeed in pressuring Howmet to drop the Lockheed Martin contract and rely on the other 84% of their business instead, it would deal a serious blow to the continued production of the IDF’s favorite fighter jet.

#PittsburghPA #PA #AntiWarMovement #Palestine

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The Trump administration is drawing up “secret lists of terrorist groups inside the United States,” Senator Elissa Slotkin said on the floor of Congress yesterday — the first such reference to the effects of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7). The directive, as I’ve reported, lays out Donald Trump’s policies with regard to equating “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist”…

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday became the first university to reject President Donald Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which critics have called an “extortion” agreement for federal funding. MIT and eight other schools — the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern…

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Israel is continuing to force the collapse of Gaza’s devastated healthcare system, despite the supposed ceasefire – during which it has killed well over a hundred people through continued bombing and shooting.

Israel is refusing to release kidnapped Gaza medics

The occupation has refused to release doctors abducted during the genocide, such as Kamal Adwan Hospital’s Hussam Abu Safiya, kidnapped almost a year ago by Israeli forces after they destroyed most of the hospital and murdered many of its medical staff, and field hospital director Marwan al-Hams, abducted in July. Abu Safiya has been beaten, starved and repeatedly tortured in an Israeli jail. Soldiers also took Al-Hams’s daughter Tasneem, a nurse, last week.

The colonial regime has also refused entry to international volunteer doctors trying to return to Gaza to help treat the wounded and starving during the ‘ceasefire’, as surgeons Victoria Rose and Graeme Groome explained during an interview yesterday:

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/rose-groome.mp4

Israel has murdered over 1,500 healthcare workers, some of those tortured to death in prison. Israel has over 350 healthcare workers abducted and being held in prisons, under inhumane conditions and frequent torture and violence. The occupation has destroyed or severely damaged all of Gaza’s hospitals and medical experts say that more than four hundred people a day in Gaza are dying from hunger and disease.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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President Donald Trump bragged that his administration “took the freedom of speech away” from protesters who burn the American flag during a rant against anti-fascists on Wednesday. While speaking about “antifa-inspired terror” in a meeting on the anti-fascist movement, Trump touted his recent executive order instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to find ways to prosecute people who burn the…

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I feel like it’s important, you know? I work in radio and it’s shit like this that we don’t cover. We’re not allowed to. Did you know there’s 80 sharia law courts in the UK and we can’t do fuck all about them? I’d risking my job just being here.

Smiling at the group of women in pink surrounding us, the self-confessed manager of Smooth Radio confidently spoke to us all, bolstered by the murmurs of approval from the sea of around two hundred people around her. This was at a far-right protest in Newcastle recently.

She didn’t look like a typical fascist. Neat hair, expensive clothes, an air of confidence a lot of them lacked, but the smirk of confidence as she spewed her hatred was so familiar. It will never fail to shock me how people who seem so normal, can hide their twisted views so well behind a veneer of normality.

Standing behind enemy lines: infiltrating a far-right protest

“‘It’s not just the Muslims, it’s the Jews as well”.

“It’s a fucking invasion!”

“They’re waging a war on our kids!”

It has been ten years since I’d found myself on this side of a protest, ten years since I’d last ‘stood behind enemy lines’ and walked amongst the other side. And I am not going to lie, I hadn’t fucking missed it. At 12.30pm, the fascist crowd in Newcastle was still meagre, barely two hundred bodies milling around the law courts, a sea of flags and shit Knights Templar outfits somewhat hilariously outnumbered by the public just over the road, watching the boat race:

Somewhere in the crowd, an older guy lit a joint, loudly bragging about how he hadn’t slept since the fash rally the weekend before in London. Going off of his red-rimmed eyes, I didn’t doubt it, as I listened to him confessing to anyone who would listen that he was out to “catch a leftie”, and make them pay for the kids they were “selling to the nonces”. The dozen police or so who milled around didn’t seem to care, watching him smoke as the speakers took their place around the stairs which stood to be the ‘stage’ for the pre-march warmup.

The infamous Nick Tenconi was en route, the UKIP leader was still one of the big crowd-clinchers, and one of his Christian acolytes took to the steps. I knew him, his name was Thomas, as he is a well known far-right agitator in Newcastle, a hate-preacher who hides his hatred behind a bible. With his tatty St George’s flag tied around his shoulders, he was greeted by screams of “whose streets?”

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wren-five.mp4

Police stand idly by as fascists incite violence in Newcastle

His speech almost made my jaw hit the floor. Whipping the Newcastle crowd into a frenzy, he openly declared war on Muslims, the same old tired trope of young men coming covertly to our shores and fighting a silent war against Christianity. That in itself wasn’t a shock, but his tirade against Israel being in the same vein came out of left field and bowled me over, especially knowing Yaxley-Lennon’s affinity and funding past. But this was visceral. An actual call to violence, that day, against pretty much any denomination that wasn’t Christian. Surely the police were going to do something?

How wrong I was. It was as if the words coming out of his mouth didn’t register, as if the police didn’t care as he called for the crowd to “cleanse the streets of the Muslim filth”. In hindsight, I don’t know why I was so surprised, if one thing hadn’t changed in my ten year hiatus, it was the police’s utter contempt for the left as it became very clear.

I found out later, in a few moments in which I spoke to him, that this particular speaker had been stung by counter terrorism for the hatred he refused to stop spewing at demos.

Crackpot conspiracies and disinformation in abundance

Several more speakers passed, a manic woman decked out in a hilarious Temu-sourced Union Jack ensemble, screaming about protecting our kids, a younger man who fake cried halfway through his hate-speech, and a man with about six teeth dressed as some kind of knight. I nearly lost my shit laughing at every single one, not just at the ridiculous outfits, but at the sheer level of disinformation these individuals peddled to the crowd. Free benefits and mobile phones, wildly inaccurate statistics on crime rates, accusations of secretive organisations who controlled the government and child-services from the office of Keir Starmer. I mean, the man is a colossal dickhead, but even I struggled to see how people could believe this horseshit. Yet the crowd ate it up, hook, line and sinker.

Luckily, just when I thought I was going to have to walk away, the sea of shit flags parted and we were off. Following close to the back of the crowd, I had one last look over them all. The spectrum of people in the sea of shit flags and knock-off fag smoke was huge, ranging from a large group of older women, all sporting pink t-shirts emblazoned with “save our kids”, all the way down to young teens who were way too young to be at the event, let alone to understand the complexities of the messages being conveyed. And at the head of the march was the typical gang of burly, dentally-challenged men.

Fascists march led by small men: a total failure

Hilariously, the Newcastle march was an absolute failure. At every single turn, at the end of every single street, we were met with the police running ahead in a desperate attempt to get between the antifascist side and the pathetic crowd I found myself in. I cannot begin to explain how proud I was as we turned that first corner and came face to face with thousands of people, dozens of placards, and the racist chants around me were drowned out by the cries of the left. I was less proud, however, as the tracksuit-clad knuckle-dragger next to me threw up a Nazi salute.

It was stunning. No matter where they turned, they were cut off as the police scrambled to hold the lines, instantly surrounding the tiny crowd from all sides. All around me they closed ranks, and the smell of stale fags, shit weed, and Lynx Africa nearly suffocated me as I pulled my mask closer to my face.

https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wren-seven.mp4

Far-right hopelessly outnumbered in Newcastle

“I thought they were at the monument, the dirty pedo bastards!”

“I’ll kick their fucking heads in”.

“Where is Tommy?”

That last one was hilarious, it seemed to ripple through the Newcastle crowd as it became more and more apparent that the right weren’t going to be able to finish their march. After being absolutely stationary for about twenty minutes, not moving an inch whatsoever, the first few people began to disappear as it dawned on them that not only were they hopelessly outnumbered, their precious Yaxley-Lennon was evidently a no-show.

As if realising this, it was at this point that the sea of cheap flags parted, and I caught my first glimpse of Tenconi, heralded by a bunch of large, bald men carrying crucifixes. I couldn’t help but laugh at the size of him… he was so small. And watching all of these fanatical far-right guys, just moments ago screaming about killing trans people, suddenly begin to fawn like school children, nearly did me in. They swamped him, desperate to shake the hand that a few weeks ago I had seen throw up such a casual Nazi salute at a rally.

Repressive policing of antifascists as the fash throw Nazi salutes

I have to admit, Tenconi spoke to the Newcastle crowd like a pro. He knew exactly which fears to play on, which shady facts to whip up hatred, and where the education of the people around him had failed them, never once missing a step as he was led towards where I stood. I couldn’t help myself, I took a selfie with the moron, who had the cheek to ask me if I wanted one as he got close, and decided that was my time to leave. One disgusting trophy to mark my return after a long hiatus.

And I was becoming increasingly more aware of cameras around me.

Slipping out was easy, the police evidently didn’t give a shit about the pathetic crowd I left behind, although I wish I could say the same for the winning side. Within ten minutes of rejoining the antifascists, not only had I been shoved by an over-zealous male copper for no reason, they also let several fash get themselves into dangerous situations.

Far-right bigots not welcome on our streets – not least in Newcastle

I left that day smiling. The North East – particularly Newcastle – is a cold, impoverished place, and for years we have seen the far-right go from strength to strength, not least with the riots last year. Every lamp post near me is adorned with a flag, we have racist graffiti on every bus stop and transphobic stickers on every traffic light.

But for today, at least, Newcastle had spoken, the far-right’s march was a laughable testimony to the fact that the Toon stood firmly against their hatred, and were willing to turn out in their thousands to show they’re not welcome on our streets.

By Antifabot

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The Canadian Department of Global Affairs has updated its travel advice for people planning to travel to the United States, specifically warning people who have the gender marker “X” on their passports that they may face obstacles or restrictions while traveling abroad. The X marker is specifically granted to transgender or nonbinary individuals who do not want to place a “male” or “female”…

Source

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When the Tony Blair Institute was first accused of involvement in Donald Trump’s deranged and criminal ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan to drive out or kill Gaza’s Palestinian population and turn the Strip into a ‘riviera’-style beach resort, it tried to deny it – telling the Financial Times (FT) when approached for comment on a ‘slide deck’ outlining the plan that:

Your story is categorically wrong… TBI was not involved in the preparation of the deck, which was a BCG deck, and had no input whatever into its contents.

However, the FT subsequently confirmed that, while not ‘author[ing] or endors[ing] the final slide deck’, Tony Blair Institute staff were involved in the plan:

The Tony Blair Institute participated in a project to develop a postwar [sic] Gaza plan that envisaged kick-starting the enclave’s economy with a “Trump Riviera” and an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone”.

The plan outlined in a slide deck, seen by the Financial Times, was led by Israeli businessmen and used financial models developed inside Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to reimagine Gaza as a thriving trading hub.

Titled the “Great Trust” and shared with the Trump administration, it proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the area and attracting private investors to develop Gaza.

While the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) did not author or endorse the final slide deck, two staff members at the former UK prime minister’s institute participated in message groups and calls as the project developed, according to people familiar with the work.

One lengthy document on postwar Gaza, written by a TBI staff member, was shared within the group for consideration. This included the idea of a “Gaza Riviera” with artificial islands off the coast akin to those in Dubai, blockchain-based trade initiatives, a deep water port to tie Gaza into the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor, and low-tax “special economic zones”.

The Tony Blair Institute document also described Israel’s destruction of Gaza as:

creat[ing] a once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild Gaza from first principles… whose assets could be sold to investors via digital tokens traded on a blockchain.

Trump does want Tony Blair to run Gaza

Despite its initial attempts to distance itself from the plan, the institute and Blair personally are now reported to be in line, not just to help implement the plan but to run the whole of Gaza. According to press reports (emphases added):

The White House is backing a plan that would see Tony Blair head a temporary administration of the Gaza Strip – initially without the direct involvement of the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Israeli media reports.

Under the proposal, Blair would lead a body called the Gaza International Transitional Authority (Gita) that would have a mandate to be Gaza’s “supreme political and legal authority” for as long as five years.

His and his institute’s plan for Gaza led non-profit news site currentaffairs.org to describe Blair as:

The monster we always knew he was.

The Tony Blair Institute has claimed that its planning has:

always been dedicated to building a better Gaza for Palestinians.

The foundation and its founder should be nowhere near Gaza. They should, however, be very, very close to the Hague.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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