All of us who are white skinned know of historical abuses committed during colonisation of non-white nations. But we continue to abuse non-white people who live within our communities, even though the majority contribute massive benefits to our way of life as our fellow human beings.
I just learned of historic atrocities committed within the United States as a white supremacy backlash against the growing success and prosperity of black communities.
Drowned Towns: The Black Communities Erased by Water
Mar 27, 2025
Throughout history, Black communities in America have built thriving towns—only to have them stolen, destroyed, and erased. In five such cases—Oscarville, GA; Ferguson, SC; Little Egypt, NC; Vanport, OR; and Kowaliga, AL—entire Black towns were forcibly emptied and submerged under water, often under the guise of “progress” or public works projects. What were once bustling communities filled with homes, businesses, schools, and churches now lie buried beneath lakes, their histories nearly forgotten.
These were not accidents. Whether through violent racial expulsions, unfair eminent domain seizures, or deliberate neglect, the residents of these towns were forced from their land with little to no compensation. Their loss meant more than just the destruction of homes—it was the theft of generational wealth and culture.
Today, these lakes serve as recreational spots, their dark past hidden beneath the surface. But the stories of the families who lived, worked, and built their lives in these places must not be lost. This is their history.
Oscarville, GA → Lake Lanier
Oscarville, Georgia, was a thriving Black community in Forsyth County, home to farmers, shopkeepers, and skilled laborers. However, in 1912, white mobs terrorized the town after a white woman named Mae Crow was allegedly assaulted. Two Black men, Ernest Knox and Oscar Daniel, were lynched, and white residents launched a campaign of racial violence.
The Black residents were driven out at gunpoint, their homes burned, and their land stolen. Many were forced to flee in the middle of the night, leaving behind farms, churches, and schools.
Decades later, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flooded the land in the 1950s to create Lake Lanier, erasing the remnants of Oscarville. Families who had owned property for generations received little or no compensation, and the descendants of those displaced still struggle to reclaim their stolen land.
Survivor Account:
One survivor’s descendant, George Rucker, recounted the fear his grandmother felt as a child when her family had to leave Oscarville. “She remembered the night the men came to their home, torches in hand, telling them they had to go or they’d be killed. They left with just the clothes on their backs.”
Lake Lanier has a notorious reputation for unexplained drownings and accidents, which some believe are tied to the violent history of Oscarville.
All of the human race originated in Africa. We are one people – each has equal value. Our ancient ancestors did not strive to survive in order to destroy one another over artificially created belief systems, motivated by greed and desire for power over one another.
There’s a city buried under Lake Lanier (Georgia’s biggest lake), and submerged with it is a secret: An American horror story filled with terror, death, genocide, and ghosts.
If you spend any time in or around Atlanta, you’ve heard tales of Lake Lanier. There are eerie accounts of fishermen seeing ghostly kayaks floating on the water, or women with no hands roaming the Jerry D. Jackson Bridge. Every so often, someone loses their life at the lake and leaves behind stories of good swimmers being snatched under the water, unexplainable boating accidents, or vehicles crashing into the lake without cause.
Many folks who live close by will tell you straight up, “Don’t go to Lake Lanier.” And its death toll certainly validates their point. There have been well over 500 deaths since the lake’s inception and more than 200 since 1994. Whether the lake is cursed or not is entirely up to you. But, one thing’s for certain, its horrifying past adds a much-needed perspective to understanding its haunting present.
Long before Central Park became New York City’s most iconic green space, its land was home to a thriving, self-sufficient settlement known as Seneca Village. Founded in 1825 by free African Americans, the community represented one of the first significant concentrations of Black property ownership in Manhattan. At its height, it was home to about 225 residents, multiple churches, schools, and cemeteries. But by 1857, the entire village was destroyed through eminent domain to make way for Central Park. For more than a century, Seneca Village was all but erased from history.
Seneca Village was established on land purchased from John Whitehead, a white farmer who began selling off lots in 1825. The first recorded African American buyer was Andrew Williams, a 25-year-old shoeshiner who purchased three lots for $125. That same week, trustee Epiphany Davis of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church acquired twelve lots, and soon after, the church itself purchased additional land. These early acquisitions laid the foundation for a settlement where Black New Yorkers could own property, vote, and escape the intense racial hostility of downtown Manhattan.
Following the abolition of slavery in New York State in 1827, more African Americans moved to Seneca Village. By the 1830s, displaced residents from nearby areas, also joined the community. Later, waves of Irish and German immigrants, many fleeing famine and economic hardship, settled alongside Black residents, creating a rare example of a racially and ethnically mixed community in the mid-19th century.
By 1855, Seneca Village had 52 houses, with some built on stone foundations. Archaeological evidence suggests that the homes were well-built and stable, contradicting claims that the area was a “shantytown.” Many residents grew vegetables in gardens, raised livestock, and relied on natural resources like Tanner’s Spring for fresh water and the Hudson River for fishing.
Artificial intelligence has advanced rapidly in recent years, but the technology’s potential long-term risks are also drawing fresh warnings from some of its pioneers.
Geoffrey Hinton, referred to as the Godfather of AI, has said it is ‘not unreasonable’ to predict that it could wipe out humanity within the next decade.
Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight, the Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist put the probability at around 10%, while stressing that there was no reliable method for calculating such a risk.
In September 2026, four acts gave up their spots on Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour after Sheeran dropped Macklemore for saying two words from the stage: Free Palestine. Finneas, Aaron Rowe, the Irish band Beoga, and the Danish band Lukas Graham have all walked. Macklemore had introduced his song Hind’s Hall, named for Hind Rajab, a six-year-old killed in Gaza waiting for rescue in a car with her dead relatives. Robert Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium, had barred him from performing there, and Macklemore says Sheeran told him Kraft rallied other stadium owners into an ultimatum: keep Macklemore and lose the venues.
Ed Sheeran apparently doesn’t want to take sides on the whole “is genocide bad” conversation.
It feels obvious to me that what’s happening to the people of Gaza is a genocide. There is more suffering in the world than any one person can take on, and the ways to actually reduce it are not all within reach. Some levers are easy to pull, some are almost impossible to move even when the choice in front of you is between people dying and someone’s profit, and no one can fix it all. What I try to do, as a person and as the founder of this publication, is find the ones I can actually reach that reduce the most suffering while being achievable, and put my attention there.
I’ve posted several pieces on divestment campaigns to move government and union funds away from the companies currently committing war crimes. I’ll make sure to cover that again soon and am working behind the scenes to create a legislative push in all 50 states and with every major union to have mass divestment and contract discontinuation from the companies attacking democracy and murdering innocents en masse.
Thankfully, there have been people doing incredible work on this subject. Qasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer, and the journalist Wajahat Ali have both written about Gaza with a steadiness I admire and have been open about what saying so has cost them. Rashida Tlaib kept at it through a House censure. Naomi Klein has investigated and weighed in from inside the Jewish community. They are more qualified than I am and they have done this work better than I can, and at a moment when it matters this much, watching them do that so well has been a genuine relief. It’s part of why I felt I could finally write this. The ground didn’t need me to break it, only to add what I can, which is what follows.
Here’s how I want to do that. I have beliefs about Gaza that I think are true, and I want to know whether they are. The way to find out is to look at the evidence and rate it: who produced it, by what method, how independent they are from the various sides, and how well it survives the other side’s best objection. That’s also the way I try to get closer to the truth on any subject, and I’ve never shown the whole process before. This piece does.
Before the evidence, a word on how this article is built. In 2016, four Cornell researchers studied about 18,000 arguments across a million replies on the Reddit forum r/ChangeMyView, where people invite strangers to change their minds, to see which comments actually worked. The finding: what changes a mind is calm, sourced, and built from information the reader didn’t already have, rather than the reader’s own frame handed back to them. Calm mattered literally, on a scale where “librarian” rated low and “terrorism” high, the winning comments sat at the calm end. I’ve written this piece to match it.
So let’s begin.
Genocide has a legal definition. It was written in 1948, in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The first part is a list of five acts: killing members of a group; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births; and forcibly transferring the group’s children to another group.
The second part is intent. The acts have to be committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part, as such.
Nearly every serious argument about Gaza is about the second part. The number of dead is contested only at the margins. The question is whether the killing was done to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group or was the result of a war against Hamas fought without restraint and in a crowded place.
The fact is, a government committing genocide rarely writes down that destroying an entire ethnic group is the plan, so courts let you infer intent from the pattern of conduct.
In its March 12, 2026 filing defending Israel, the United States asked the court to throw out that inference and demand something close to an intentional confession: that civilian deaths in urban combat can’t show intent on their own, and that only conduct explainable by nothing but genocide counts.
That is a reading of the law built to benefit Israel, and it’s close to unmeetable, because almost no genocide in history came with the perpetrator announcing it as such.
The Netherlands and Iceland, filing in response and within the same week, asked the court for the opposite, a reading that lets intent be inferred from conduct as it usually is.
Now the evidence, from the most independent and rigorous to the least, with the objection you’ll hear at each rung, answered.
The first rung is the count of the dead.
The Gaza Health Ministry’s count reached 73,789 killed as of September 15, 2026, and the Associated Press describes the ministry’s records as detailed and generally viewed as reliable by UN agencies. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government. That’s the first objection you’ll hear, and independent methods have tested it.
A team led by Zeina Jamaluddine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used capture-recapture, a statistical method that estimates a total from the overlap between separate lists, and put deaths from traumatic injury between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024 at 64,260 against the ministry’s 37,877, an undercount the authors put at about 41 percent. The study appeared in The Lancet in January 2025.
In February 2026, a team led by Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway, University of London, with fieldwork by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, published the war’s first population survey in The Lancet Global Health, covering 2,000 households and 9,729 people.
The UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, chaired by Navi Pillay, who presided over the international tribunal for Rwanda and later served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, reported on September 16, 2025 that Israel had committed four of the five acts in the Convention and that statements by senior officials together with the pattern of conduct established intent to commit genocide. The commission asked the International Criminal Court to add genocide to the arrest warrants issued in November 2024 for Netanyahu and Gallant.
The third rung is human rights organizations.
Amnesty International published a 296-page report on December 5, 2024 and concluded there was sufficient basis to find that Israel had committed and was continuing to commit genocide, with three of the five acts and the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch published a 179-page report on December 19, 2024 and found that Israel had deliberately deprived Gaza of water, which HRW called the crime against humanity of extermination and an act of genocide.
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel are both Israeli organizations, and both published their findings on July 28, 2025. B’Tselem concluded that Israel’s policy toward Palestinians in Gaza had shifted from repression and control to destruction and annihilation; PHRI’s legal and medical analysis found three of the acts, including conditions of life calculated to destroy the group. Guy Shalev, PHRI’s director and the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, called the conclusion painful.
The fourth rung is scholars.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars, a body of about 500 academics that includes Holocaust specialists, announced on September 1, 2025 that a resolution stating that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide had passed with 86 percent of those voting in favor.
Omer Bartov is a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, he was born in Israel, and he served in its army. He wrote in the New York Times in November 2023 that what he was seeing did not yet rise to genocide. He changed his mind in stages over the following year, in the Guardian in August 2024, on CNN that December, then again in the New York Times on July 15, 2025, where he wrote that by May 2024, after the army ordered about a million people sheltering in Rafah to the beach at Mawasi and then destroyed much of the city, his conclusion had become that Israel was in fact committing genocide. A man who studies the crime for a living, who resisted the word against his own background and his own earlier judgment, followed the evidence to it anyway.
The last rung we will explore is governments and the officials who lead them, the least independent sources on either side. Their words appear in the UN commission’s report and in Amnesty’s as evidence of intent.
On October 13, 2023, President Isaac Herzog said at a press conference that “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible” and that civilians could have risen up against Hamas. When a reporter asked whether that made civilians legitimate targets, he said no, and in the same answer he said there were many innocent Palestinians and that Israel operates under international law. Israel’s defenders say he was describing Hamas-run Gaza as a state. The UN commission counted the statement as incitement.
On October 28, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a televised address about the soldiers entering Gaza, quoted the Bible: “Remember what Amalek did to you.” In the Book of Samuel, God orders King Saul to kill every Amalekite, including women, children, infants, and animals. Israel’s answer is that the sentence before the quotation named the murderers of October 7 as the enemy.
On the other side of the ledger sit Israel’s denials and the United States’ filing. Israel says it fights an existential war under international law, that Hamas hides among civilians, that Hamas diverts aid, and that the accusation itself is antisemitic. The United States told the court the genocide allegations are false.
A war against Hamas explains strikes on buildings where Hamas operated. It doesn’t explain a siege on the entire population ordered on October 9, 2023, a famine confirmed in August 2025 while food waited at the border, two million people pushed into less than half their land, or a finance minister saying starvation might be moral. The bodies that applied the legal test to that record found intent: the UN commission, Amnesty, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and 108 genocide scholars. Human Rights Watch found the acts and stopped at intent. The people who say no are the Israeli government, and the United States government defending it. The best legal point on their side asks the world to withhold the label of genocide unless the Israeli government says so explicitly.
I said at the top that it feels obvious to me. Having walked the evidence, I’ll say it as a finding. The two sides are not equal in the evidence they can show.
It’s a genocide.
This article exists because orienting ourselves, even when we are certain, is critical to repairing this world. For my own writing, the value I can offer is clarity, even when the clarity is nothing more than credible sources assembled in a logical order. That’s what this piece is.
There’s a second reason. The work I’ve done professionally brought me close to murder, child abuse, domestic violence, and the people who committed those crimes, as well as their victims. I’ve spent my adult life studying human nature, from military law enforcement, to empathy disorders in incarcerated populations, to education and even behavioral rehabilitation in youth with conduct disorder. I’m also one of the people who lies awake at night thinking about the horrors in the world that we might not be able to stop. Sometimes sleep doesn’t arrive so easily.
Writing is part of how I handle that. It’s how I look for the piece of human suffering I can actually do something about, and then do something about it.
So much has changed over the last few years, as people have continued to discuss the genocide. More people can see this now. A stadium tour lost four acts in a week. A Holocaust scholar reversed himself in the New York Times. Two Israeli human rights organizations applied the genocide label about their own country. A man who calls it genocide was elected mayor of New York. Fewer people are on the fence than were a year ago, and that shift came from education and from the activists and writers who refused to stop explaining it, often against the platforms themselves: Human Rights Watch documented more than 1,000 removals or suppressions of peaceful pro-Palestine posts on Instagram and Facebook, and creators widely report their reach collapsing the moment they name it.
What hasn’t changed is the policy. The United States filed in March 2026 to defend Israel at the world court, and the weapons still ship. Opinion has moved faster than power has, and closing that gap is the work still in front of all of us.
We’re here to fight for freedom and justice, and I’m grateful to everyone doing that.
Robert Kraft said he barred Macklemore from Gillette Stadium over material shown from the stage in New Jersey and what Kraft called a history of “antisemitic rhetoric and imagery.” Macklemore says Sheeran told him that people Sheeran had spoken with found the words Free Palestine and the Palestinian flag hurtful. Kraft kept his stadium and Sheeran kept his tour. Finneas, Aaron Rowe, Beoga, and Lukas Graham gave up their tour dates because this moment demands those of us not under fire to be willing to accept consequences as free speech and human rights continue to be suppressed.
To borrow the spirit of poet and activist Tupac Shakur, whose music I admittedly enjoy far more than Macklemore’s:
Fuck Robert Kraft, fuck Ed Sheeran, fuck genocide denial, and fuck fascists too.
‘Purge Palantir!’: Union nurses warn Big Tech and Big Brother are invading our healthcare system
“Palantir has no place in our hospitals, no place in our community… Nurses are advocates first. We’re trained to advocate and to speak up when something is wrong, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Sept 14 (Reuters) – Large technology companies, including Palantir Technologies, Nvidia and Booz Allen Hamilton, could restrict or cease to use advanced AI models unless Anthropic and OpenAI guarantee not misusing their intellectual property, the Information reported on Monday.
Microsoft, meanwhile, is capitalizing on such concerns by pitching isolated cloud environments and its own AI offerings to draw clients, according to the report that cited people familiar with the matter.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Saturday called for AI companies to slow the pace of frontier model development, warning that capabilities are advancing faster than researchers can understand or control — a position quickly endorsed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
But a number of former Palantir employees tell WIRED they believe the public still largely misunderstands what the company actually does and how its software works. Some people think it’s a data broker that buys information from private companies and resells it to the government. Others think it’s a data miner, constantly scanning the internet for unique insights it can collect and market to customers. Still others think it maintains a giant, centralized database of information collected from all of its clients. In reality, Palantir does none of these things, but the misconceptions continue to persist.
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A version of this logic pervades the internal culture at Palantir. When asked what distinguishes it from other tech companies, former employees consistently mentioned its “flat” staffing structure. Engineers can laterally move to more prestigious or challenging projects if they prove worthy based on their skills and connections. One former staffer tells WIRED that this made the company feel like a meritocracy where the best people, and the best ideas, naturally rise to the top.
Some former employees say that Palantir’s meritocratic culture helped cultivate a sense of loyalty among staff. But they also believe that this can make it difficult to speak out against the company or its business decisions. (Gordon said that Palantir “prides itself on a culture of fierce internal dialog and disagreement on difficult issues related to our work.”)
On 17 May 2026, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern for an outbreak of Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus affecting the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
Background
Ebola disease (EBOD) is a severe disease caused by orthoebolaviruses, members of the filoviridae family, which occurs in humans and other primates. The disease was identified in 1976, in almost simultaneous outbreaks in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)) and Sudan (now South Sudan).
Between 1979 and 1994, no human cases or outbreaks were detected. However, since 1994, outbreaks have been recognised with increasing frequency.
Until 2014, outbreaks of EBOD were primarily reported from remote villages close to tropical rainforests in Central and West Africa. Most confirmed cases were reported from the DRC, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Uganda. In 2014, an EBOD outbreak was reported for the first time in West Africa, involving Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. During this outbreak, which was ongoing between 2014 and 2016, there was intense transmission in urban areas, resulting in over 28,000 reported cases. Multiple countries including Italy, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, the UK and the US reported imported EBOD cases associated with this outbreak.
Four species of orthoebolavirus are known to cause disease in humans:
Tai Forest (formerly Ivory Coast) virus (orthoebolavirus taiense, TAFV)
Reston virus (orthoebolavirus restonense, RESTV), was first detected in 1989 in Reston, Virginia (US), in a colony of monkeys imported from the Philippines. It had caused severe illness outbreaks in non-human primates linked to imported animals. Several research workers became infected with the virus during these outbreaks but did not become ill. In 2008, RESTV was isolated from sick pigs in the Philippines. Several animal facility workers developed antibodies, but none reported any symptoms.
A sixth species of Ebola virus was discovered in bats in Sierra Leone in 2018 and named Bombali virus (orthoebolavirus bombaliense, BOMV). It is not yet known if this species is pathogenic to humans.
The Ebola virus is not airborne and is not transmitted by mosquito or contact with food or water. It spreads by direct contact and an exchange of fluid. But the bodies of Ebola victims are highly infectious, with the virus remaining active in bodily fluids.
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Health officials have struggled to persuade community members to abandon traditional burial practices. When officials refused to release the body of a suspected Ebola victim to his family, outraged community members overran and burned a health center in eastern Congo on May 21.
Caritas Congo, Father Makimba said, was placing particular emphasis on awareness-raising and community engagement: “The objective is to provide reliable information, reassure the population and promote appropriate behaviors, ensuring that vigilance does not spiral into panic but instead contributes to an effective and solidarity-driven response.”
Among current acute needs in the communities served by Caritas Congo, Father Makimba said, are personal protective equipment for health workers (several have already fallen ill and died after caring for Ebola victims); hygiene kits; and the installation of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. Rebuilding communal relationships and restoring the capacity of health services will be among the challenges to contend with once Ebola’s immediate threat to life has been addressed, Father Makimba said.
Miliband says late mother shaped his decision to call out Gaza
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has said the memory of his late mother, a Jewish refugee, shaped his decision to speak out on the treatment of Palestinians.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has said the memory of his late mother, a Jewish refugee who died at the end of May, shaped his decision to speak out more forcefully on the treatment of Palestinians, in an interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast.
Miliband told presenters Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart that he had wrestled with the language he should use and how far he should go, particularly over the terms “ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes”.
He said his mother had lost her father and 60 relatives in the concentration camps, and had spent 20 years of her life focused on the situation of the Palestinians.
“I thought a lot about, as I wrestled with this statement and what I should say and what I shouldn’t say and how far I should go, I wrestled a lot with what she would say. And she’d say: look at what is happening to Palestinians. Look at what is happening to these poor people. It’s wrong, and you’ve got to call it out,” he said.
Sanctions and Gaza
Miliband defended the Government’s new sanctions targeting settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. According to a House of Commons Library briefing, the measures announced this month include an import ban on goods from illegal settlements, restrictions on services supporting settlement expansion and a ban on settlement advertising in the UK. The briefing says the Government planned to implement the new trade legislation within six to nine months, and that France and Canada announced similar measures.
Asked whether the sanctions would work, Miliband said: “And will it definitely succeed? I can’t say it’ll definitely succeed. Does it have a chance of succeeding, particularly with other international partners acting? Maybe it does. And that’s the whole intention behind it.”
He said people “the world over” were “deeply disturbed by what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza”, adding: “I think the Israeli government is losing friends. I mean, it’s not gaining allies; it’s lost allies. It’s losing allies all over.”
On Gaza, Miliband described the humanitarian situation as “unspeakable and appalling”. He said restrictions on so-called dual-use goods meant “very, very innocent goods” were being stopped from entering, and that “it seems like absolutely a deliberate strategy”.
He said Israeli ministers “have made comments that would be suggestive of wanting to not just kill Hamas terrorists, but at least push out and displace all residents of Gaza”.
“All of us condemn in the strongest terms the murder that Hamas did on October the 7th, but nothing can justify what has unfolded in Gaza since then,” he said, adding that 1,200 Palestinians had been killed since what he called “the so-called ceasefire”.
Miliband said Gaza had “mobilised a whole generation of people, but those people were right, not wrong”. He said a number of people, including from the Global South, had contacted him since he made the statement.
US relations and Hormuz
Pressed by Campbell and Stewart on how the UK should respond to a changing relationship with the United States, Miliband said: “Our alliance with the US matters, but if what you’re saying is we need to recognise the world has changed, particularly regarding our relationship with Europe and the importance of our relationship with the European Union, but also working with middle-sized powers beyond that, a hundred percent, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”
Miliband said his immediate diplomatic focus was reopening the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure had stranded $125bn of ships and cargo by June, according to insurer Allianz.
“My job as Foreign Secretary is to help the British people with the terrible cost-of-living crisis they face. And one of the biggest contributors to that is the fact that the Strait is closed,” he said.
“So my job is not to say what should have happened at the beginning. My job is to say: okay, what can we do now to get out of the mess we’re in? And that is absolutely what my diplomatic focus is on.”
A female-led movement campaigning against asylum seeker accommodation gains national attention amid wider tensions over immigration policy
A grassroots movement known as the “Pink Ladies” has become a visible and contentious presence in Britain’s ongoing anti-immigration protests, mobilising predominantly women in demonstrations against the use of hotels and other sites to house asylum seekers.
Recognisable by their bright pink attire and Union Jack flags, the Pink Ladies have staged rallies from Westminster and Canary Wharf to towns such as Chelmsford, articulating concerns about community safety, border control and the perceived impact of migration on local life.
This mobilisation reflects broader public anxieties over immigration policy and the strain on services as crossings across the English Channel remain elevated this year.
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Organisers describe the Pink Ladies as mothers, grandmothers and local women acting to protect their families and communities, framing their activism as rooted in maternal concern rather than explicit political ideology.
At demonstrations, participants have voiced fears about “unfettered men rocking up on our shores” and urged stronger state action on border security and asylum accommodation practices.
The movement has tapped into anxieties over reported incidents near migrant hotels and the placement of asylum seekers without extensive local consultation, drawing participants from as far north as Inverness to the Kent coast.
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Political figures and commentators have debated the movement’s place in the wider political landscape
Some senior national politicians, including a leading Conservative representative on the London Assembly, have publicly supported the presence of the Pink Ladies at protests, dismissing the notion that their activism constitutes hate speech.
However, critics and anti-racism organisations argue that the movement’s framing can blend community concern with exclusionary rhetoric and has provided a platform that far-right actors and groups have sought to leverage.
Links with established anti-immigration parties and affiliated organisations have drawn scrutiny, even as the Pink Ladies insist they are not extremist and are simply advocating for stronger immigration controls and community safety.
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The Pink Ladies have featured in the wider wave of anti-immigration protests that have taken place across the UK since mid-2025, frequently centred around government plans to use hotels and former military sites to accommodate asylum seekers.
These demonstrations encompass a mix of local residents, grassroots activists and political influencers, with responses ranging from peaceful protest to clashes requiring police intervention.
Opposition groups have also organised counter-rallies emphasising solidarity with refugees and challenging xenophobic narratives.
The evolving dynamics of the Pink Ladies movement continue to highlight divisions within British public discourse on immigration, border policy and national identity.
Who is Tommy Robinson and why does Elon Musk want him freed from jail?
Robinson is serving an 18-month jail sentence for contempt of court, a charge stemming from a libelous video in which he falsely claimed a refugee teenager was a violent thug.
Tommy Robinson leaves the Old Bailey in London, in October 2018. Jack Taylor / Getty Images file
LONDON —A convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record, Tommy Robinson is well known as the leader of the English far right, inspiring rallies of mostly white, mostly male followers shouting soccer-style chants against Islam and immigration.
It has been jarring then, for many Britons to see Robinson — whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — become the latest cause championed by the richest person on the planet, Elon Musk.
“Free Tommy Robinson!” the billionaire entrepreneur and adviser to President-elect Donald Trump posted to his X social media network Thursday.
Robinson, 42, is serving an 18-month jail sentence for contempt of court, a charge stemming from a libelous video in which he falsely claimed a Syrian refugee teenager was a violent thug.
“But he will become less fringe if people adopt him — and that’s the risk you have here,” according to Scott Lucas, a University College Dublin professor specializing in British and American politics. “Tommy’s an icon for certain far-right groups — and Musk knows that.”
This is far from Musk’s first intervention in European politics, and he has increasingly opined on the subject since backing Trump’s election win in November. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has largely supported far-right nationalists, most recently in Germany. Their rise on the continent has coincided with Trump’s second term, teeing up the prospect of transatlantic cooperation among this former political fringe.
It is in Britain, however, where Musk has focused most attention.
Restore Britain activists are coming after me – they’ll need to join the queue, behind the far left
Rupert Lowe denied his party is neo-Nazi and said he detests ethno-nationalism, but prominent supporters have suggested that Jews control the country’s politics and don’t belong here
September 4, 2026 13:44
Restore Britain co-founder Charlie Downes (YouTube/NextGenerationPodcast)
Restore Britain activists don’t like me. They’ll need to join the queue, behind the far left, who got there first. It is now so long that it must be snaking down streets and out of town. If anything it is encouraging.
The two ends of the queue have more in common than either would admit. Neither can take criticism. Both descend on their critics en masse. And when their own words are put back to them, neither disowns them. They reach instead for a devious Jewish plot, and complain that they are the ones who have been betrayed.
Restore’s activists were sufficiently upset that an entire episode of the Lotus Eaters podcast was given over to defending the party and attacking the journalists responsible, most of them Jewish. Lotus Eaters was founded by Carl Benjamin, a YouTuber with a history of racist slurs, and rape “jokes” about Labour MP Jess Phillips. It is not a fringe operation. It is one of the biggest political podcasts in Britain, with more listeners than many shows with established brands behind them.
Wearing an ill-fitting suit, the presenter Connor Tomlinson read out my entire quote from the front page of the Telegraph, where I described Restore as a home for the far right. The Telegraph has now joined what Tomlinson calls the “enemy outlets”. Critics, he says, are guilty of “stochastic terrorism”.
Tomlinson called me an “ethnic” partisan. I plead guilty. I am partisan when it comes to neo-Nazis who want to “remigrate” me and wish to appear respectable. He was cross that I had blocked a merger between Reform and Restore. I would love to take the credit but the damage was done by Restore’s own racists. Even Reform kept its distance
Two Minutes Hate from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Party members are gathered to watch the face of the enemy of the state, Emmanuel Goldstein, and let the hatred out. Orwell gave that face a Jewish name on purpose, four years after Belsen.
Then the episode turned to Israel, and reminded me of the other thing the far left and the far right agree on. Both are convinced Israel is a racist, ethnically pure state. The difference is that the left hates it for that and the right would like to build one here – while, for the most part, still despising the original.
Pink Ladies in crisis as leader Orla Minihane provokes revolt
The Pink Ladies are tearing themselves apart over American mother Lindsay Clancy, accused of killing her three children, as supporters accuse founder Orla Minihane of bullying and intimidation
Orla Minihane – support for Lindsay Clancy has thrown Pink Ladies into crisis
The Pink Ladies are tearing themselves apart over their founder Orla Minihane, exposing deep fissures inside the women-led anti-immigration movement just days after she quit her leadership role in Rupert Lowe’s increasingly fractious Restore Britain.
Minihane’s handling of the case of American child killer Lindsay Clancy has triggered a furious row among supporters, with some former allies turning on her, others scrambling to defend her, and serious allegations being traded on X.
Flashpoint
The immediate flashpoint is Clancy, the Massachusetts mother whose trial for killing her three children ended in a mistrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict. Her defence centred on postpartum psychosis and severe mental illness.
Lindsay Clancy – killed her three children
Minihane’s comments have been interpreted by some Pink Ladies supporters as an argument that women suffering from postpartum psychosis need urgent recognition and treatment. Others have accused her of expressing support for a woman who killed her children.
The row exploded when the main Pink Ladies X account responded to a post stating “Your leader supports Lindsay Clancy” with: “So do we.. you arsehole.”
Mali: Russian mercenaries suffer major military blow
Mouhamadou Kane | Wendy Bashi07/30/2024July 30, 2024
The Wagner Group has suffered one of its heaviest losses in Mali after Tuareg separatist militants reportedly killed or captured several dozen fighters from the Russian mercenary group.
Dozens of Russian mercenaries have apparently been killed in Mali by Tuareg separatistsImage: French Army/AP/picture alliance
JNIM, Al-Qaeda, and the Tuareg FLA: Captured Malian Soldiers as Bargaining Chips
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In Mali, Tuareg rebels and the al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group JNIM attacked a convoy of mercenaries from the Russian Defense Ministry’s “African Corps,” along with Malian soldiers, AFP and Reuters reported.
The convoy escorting more than 200 Russian fighters and more than 100 Malian soldiers was heading toward the northern town of Anefis, according to Reuters. A contingent of Russian mercenaries and Malian troops continues to hold a military base in the rebel-held town.
Anefis is critical to holding the strategically important city of Kidal, located roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) away and controlled by Tuareg groups, AFP said.
Russia’s “African Corps,” run by the Defense Ministry, supports Mali’s armed forces in their fight against Tuareg rebel groups, which have long sought to establish their own state in the north of the country.
Tuareg, Berber-speaking pastoralists who inhabit an area in North and West Africa ranging from Touat, Algeria, and Ghadames, Libya, to northern Nigeria and from Fezzan, Libya, to Timbuktu, Mali. Their political organizations extend across national boundaries. In the 2010s there were estimated to be more than two million Tuareg.
The northern Tuareg live mainly in true desert country, whereas the southerners live primarily in steppe and savanna. The Tuareg consist of confederations including the Ahaggar (Hoggar) and Azjer (Ajjer) in the north and the Asben (Aïr Tuareg), Ifora, Itesen (Kel Geres), Aulliminden, and Kel Tademaket in the south. The southerners breed zebu cattle and camels, some of which are sold to the northern Tuareg. Raiding of caravans and travelers was important in pre-European times, as was caravan trading, which declined with the introduction of motor vehicles. Droughts across southern Mauritania, Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso (Upper Volta), and Chad in the 1970s and ’80s both reduced the numbers of the southern Tuareg and eroded their traditional pastoral way of life.
July 21, 2026 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan said on Tuesday that the Yemeni Houthi group’s declaration of a naval blockade on Saudi ports poses a direct threat to Red Sea navigation, expressing full support for any security measures taken by Riyadh.
The Iran-aligned Houthis said on Tuesday that they forced six ships in the Red Sea to turn back after threatening to target vessels that fail to comply with their announced maritime ban against Saudi Arabia.
Houthi-run media quoted a military source saying six vessels turned around over the past 24 hours following warnings issued by the group amid escalating regional tensions.
Reuters reported that two oil tankers carrying Saudi cargoes bound for Asia altered course in the Red Sea on Tuesday following Houthi threats and headed toward the Suez Canal.
Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the government is “deeply concerned regarding statements issued by the Houthi militia regarding the imposition of a naval blockade on Saudi ports, which poses a direct threat to Red Sea maritime navigation and harms the security and economic interests of coastal states.”
The statement reaffirmed Sudan’s full backing for Riyadh’s right to take all necessary security measures to ensure the safety and operation of its ports and safeguard Saudi national security.
The foreign ministry noted that the Houthi militia’s actions undermine security and stability in the Gulf region and Red Sea coastal states, carrying dangerous implications for broader regional security.
Sudan called on the Houthi movement to refrain from any actions targeting Saudi ports or other Red Sea coastal facilities.
It urged the regional and international community to exert further pressure and implement measures to combat and eliminate the activities of terrorist militias across the region.
The Red Sea is one of the world’s most vital maritime corridors, accounting for 10% to 15% of global sea trade alongside significant container and oil traffic, making disruptions a direct risk to international trade and energy markets.
Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin
The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.
She is the daughter of two well-known philanthropists
Anderson was born in December 1986 to entrepreneur Harry Loy Anderson Jr. and philanthropist Inger Anderson. She grew up in Palm Beach, where she continues to reside today.
Her father became the youngest bank president in the U.S. when he started leading Worth Avenue National Bank at 26 years old. Together, he and Inger became well-known as a philanthropic couple, with Harry serving as a board member on the Historical Society of Palm Beach County and the national board of governors for the American Red Cross, per his obituary in the Palm Beach Daily News.
“My mom has always been an inspiration to me,” Anderson told Fashion Week Daily in March 2022.
Harry and Inger welcomed five children in addition to Anderson: daughters Mea Stone, Bebe McCranels and Kristina McPherson, and sons Harry Loy III and Kent.
Anderson is a model and socialite
Anderson attended Columbia University, graduating in 2009 with a degree in art history, criticism and conservation, per her LinkedIn. She often posts photos of herself modeling on her Instagram, including shots of herself on the cover of Quest magazine in 2020 and a photo shoot with Hamilton Jewelers that same year.
She was also featured in a story in Palm Beach Illustrated in 2021, with the outlet describing her as a “local influencer.”
With 700 islands, the most pristine waters, and award-winning beaches, the Bahamas is a tropical haven like none other.
Celebrities like Jay Z and Johnny Depp even own private islands in the Bahamas. Talk about a star-studded location.
However, the country is world-renowned for one other reason – it’s financial services sector.
With over two hundred financial institutions including licensed banks and trust companies, the Bahamas’ financial sector is second only to its tourism sector in terms of GNP contribution.
Moreover, the Bahamas’ GNP is one of the highest in the region, owing to the stable political and economic environment.
The name the Bahamas still invokes notions of a classic tax haven from the jet-set era. Sure, once upon a time Americans would come to the Bahamas with sacks full of cash and deposit it into the Bahamian banks. Those days, however, are long gone.
The Bahamas today is a premier offshore banking jurisdiction. However, the country has strict regulations and legal frameworks to avoid money laundering and shady financial activities.
In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look into the Bahamian banking system and its pros and cons. We’ll also discuss how to open a bank account in the Bahamas.
Donald Trump Jr. met model Vanessa Haydon at a fashion show in 2003. They married at the Trump Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005, and went on to have five children. In March 2018, Vanessa filed for divorce after 12 years of marriage.
Around that time, Trump Jr. began dating former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Along with his responsibilities for the family business, Trump Jr. has hosted the business show 21st Century Television and been involved with the medical charity Operation Smile. He has long held a love for the outdoors and counts hunting and fishing among his personal interests.
In November 2019, Trump Jr. published his first book, Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us. In September 2020, he self-published his second book, Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden and the Democrats’ Defense of the Indefensible.
Photographs from a controversial hunting expedition taken by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump in Africa last year have recently resurfaced, igniting a fresh wave of debate over the ethics of trophy hunting. These images, posted by the hunting tour company on their website, show the Trump brothers posing with various dead animals, including an elephant, buffalo, crocodile, and a large leopard. The pictures have triggered outrage among conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts globally, highlighting ongoing tensions around trophy hunting practices.
The Hunting Trip and Its Fallout, among the images, one particularly striking photograph depicts Donald Trump Jr. grinning while holding the severed tail of a dead elephant, knife in hand. This display of triumph has been met with significant criticism from those who argue that such actions undermine conservation efforts and ethical hunting practices.
In response to the backlash, the Trump brothers issued a statement defending their actions. They describe themselves as “avid outdoorsmen,” emphasizing their upbringing in a family tradition of hunting and fishing. They assert, “We were brought up hunting and fishing with our Grandfather who taught us that nothing should ever be taken for granted or wasted. We have the utmost respect for nature and have always hunted in accordance with local laws and regulations… We love traveling and being in the woods—at the end of the day, we are outdoorsmen at heart.”
The brothers further defended their actions by claiming that all the meat from their kills was donated to local villagers who were “incredibly grateful.” This point attempts to frame their hunting as not only a personal pastime but also a form of charitable contribution.
Critics argue that the Trump brothers’ high-profile hunting exploits amplify ethical concerns about trophy hunting. The hunting company involved in this trip has tried to mitigate public concern by stating that they only allow the hunting of “old & mature male animals, which are beyond their prime productive time.” They also claim that their operations create jobs and support local communities. However, the assertion that this type of hunting contributes positively to conservation and local economies remains contested.
Vulcan Elements, which aims to shore up U.S. access to key materials for high technology, has gone from a $200 million valuation to a potential $2 billion one, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
The Trump administration, which watched as rare-earth minerals became a bargaining chip in tariff negotiations with Beijing, soon followed, offering the company a record-breaking $620 million Defense Department loan, as well as $50 million in CHIPS Act incentives, securing the Commerce Department an equity stake in the company.
The investments deepened ties between 1789 and the administration. In 2019, 1789 co-founder Chris Buskirk founded the Rockbridge Network, an influential group of conservative donors, alongside Vice President JD Vance.
The Trump administration has poured millions of dollars into support into Vulcan Elements, a start-up backed by Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, reportedly sending its valuation skyrocketing (Getty)
Umar Kremlev, the Russian oligarch at the centre of reports that he helped pay for Donald Trump Jr’s wedding in the Bahamas, has spent the past decade moving through some of Russia’s most politically connected circles.
Born in 1982 in Serpukhov, an industrial town about 60 miles south of Moscow, he has said he boxed until the age of 19 but never turned professional, blaming what he later called a lack of discipline.
In the years that followed, he accumulated a criminal record – convictions for extortion in 2004 and assault in 2007 – before resurfacing by the mid-2010s as a little-known boxing promoter. His outfit, Patriot, counted the former American world champion Roy Jones Jr among its roster. Jones was later granted Russian citizenship.
By then, Kremlev had also shed his birth name, swapping Lutfulloyev for the more Russian-sounding Kremlev – a surname that bears an obvious resemblance to the Kremlin, and one that also put further distance between him and his earlier crimes.
It was in these same years that he began building ties to figures close to Putin.
Kremlev started attending gatherings of the Night Wolves, an ultranationalist biker club whose leaders have long enjoyed close links to the Kremlin, the Russian investigative outlet Proekt wrote in a profile of the businessman.
At one of the bikers’ meetings, he met Alexei Rubezhny, a powerful major general in Russia’s federal protective service, which guards top officials.
Rubezhny became one of Kremlev’s most important patrons, helping him gain access to senior officials and lobby his interests through the government. The two are also related: Proekt reported that Kremlev is married to Rubezhny’s sister.
Kremlev’s rise through boxing came soon afterwards. In 2017, he was made secretary general of the Russian Boxing Federation, which under his tenure grew closely tied to powerful members of the Russian elite.
Rubezhny headed its supervisory board, while Igor Sechin, the chief executive of the state oil company Rosneft and one of Putin’s longest-serving allies, has also served on it.
Kremlev’s reach soon went global. In 2020 he was elected president of AIBA, later renamed the International Boxing Association, putting a Russian official with strong Kremlin ties at the head of the sport’s international governing body.
Mr. Fugazy calls himself the “director general” for a syndicate, headed by attorney Roy M. Cohn, which plans to stage the rematch between Ingemar Johansson and Floyd Patterson at the Polo Grounds in late June…
Mr. Fugazy told The Voice last week that the rematch was “bought for a pretty good price” from Vincent J. Velella, an East Harlem Republican politician who is now under indictment for perjury, and Bill Rosensohn, whose matchmaker’s license has been suspended.
Mr. Fugazy’s group is known as Cohn’s Feature Sports, Inc. Mr. Cohn used to to make news as the more vocal half of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist-ferreting, super-sleuth team of Cohn and Shine during the days of the Un-American Activities Committee…
In addition to heading the scandal-ridden IBA, Kremlev has strong ties to the health and youth sports group Healthy Fatherland, the outlet reported. Ukraine has sanctioned the organization for allegedly helping Russia carry out the “mass abduction, illegal deportation, and forced relocation” of Ukrainian citizens, including children, in occupied territories under the guise of “rehabilitation.”
Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne: Who are the Sheffield-born crypto-billionaires who have donated £72m to Reform?
Story by Chris Burn
• 2h
Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne have hit the headlines this weekend for donating a combined £72m to Reform.
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage has hailed the twin donations from Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)
The donations, amounting to £36 million from each man, are the largest in British political history and together are equivalent to three-quarters of the money spent at the 2024 general election by all parties combined
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