cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/61146

Independent leftwing media outlet the Canary has said it is unable to pay its staff after Lloyds Bank blocked access to “a substantial amount” of its money and refused to say why. 

The outlet has accused Lloyds of “debanking” it, and suggested the move may be related to its anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine stance. “Whilst we do not currently know the reasons behind our debanking, we cannot afford to be naive about this,” it said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“We do know that multiple other politically engaged people have suffered similar actions by other banks in recent times.”

The outlet has contacted the bank several times since losing access to its account, it said, but “Lloyds has not explained why it has taken this action. Despite multiple communications from us, the bank has not been forthcoming with its reasoning.” 

“The immediate effect has been that we have been unable to pay any staff or contractors,” the Canary’s CEO, Steve Topple, told Novara Media. 

“We have a large team, and all of them are now extremely distressed and in limbo. Many of them are marginalised people and it has hit them very hard. We are trying our best to mitigate the situation and have so far received much-appreciated support from members of the public.”

Lloyds Bank has not responded to a request for comment from Novara Media. 

The Canary announced plans in May to launch a daily newspaper with a circulation of 25,000 across England and Wales, and began distributing copies to newsagents later the same month.  

From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/60878

Keir Starmer announced his defence investment plan (DIP) today and while the media is welcoming it with open arms (pun intended), the Stop the War (StW) Coalition has rightly called out the BS.

The FT said the increase in defence spending of approximately £15 billion was recently raised by £1 billion in the wake of John Healey’s resignation as defence secretary this month. It has apparently been signed off by Starmer’s expected successor, Andy Burnham.

Stop the War: ‘Never mind the cost of living crisis…’

Stop the War (StW) Coalition posted on X that generals and arms companies have been all over the media today welcoming increased defence spending in the DIP. Meanwhile, completely ignoring the current cost-of-living crisis in the UK.

Generals and arms companies all over the media today welcoming increased defence spending in the DIP

Never mind the cost-of-living crisis or the collapsing services he leaves behind, Starmer wants to be remembered as the man who ramped up spending on weapons https://t.co/W5TPeqMD83

— Stop the War Coalition (@STWuk) June 30, 2026

Those being platformed today are:

• Lord Dannatt, an ex-British Army general
• Richard Barrons, Former director of operations at the UK Armed Forces
• Ross Exley, vice president for defence strategy at Hadean
• Shefali Sharma, chief executive of Oxford Dynamics, an AI defence company
• Tom Redman, CEO of British-based drone supplier, Evolve Dynamics
• James Cartlidge, Shadow defence secretary
• Tim Willasey-Wilsey, a senior associate fellow at the RUSI and Ukrainian drone unit commander Neo

Deborah Haynes, defence editor at Sky News, is reposting RUSI’s propaganda, a think tank that is a mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex.

Drone bonanza

The main beneficiary of Starmer’s DIP is expected to be drone companies.

UK watchdog, Drone Wars, said that drone companies were awaiting a spending bonanza and called the DIP, a “Drone Investment Plan”.

The “big number” in the DIP is the £5 billion earmarked for drones, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, LBC called it a “drone-building blitz”.

According to the MoD, Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, has spent the last two weeks “refocusing” the defence investment plan to ensure it learns the lessons from wars in Ukraine and Iran, BBC reported.

This includes how drones have been used to destroy high-value targets, with Jarvis saying the “character of warfare is rapidly changing”.

The Stop the War Coalition had also posted yesterday that wages, green jobs and welfare should be priorities instead of drones, and aded:

Security, defence and fantasy threats are now the main ways that the ruling class justifies attacks on welfare and social programmes.

The media is pulling out all the stops to ensure a good payout for the arm companies and keep the ruling class happy, it seems.

Featured image via BBC

By The Canary

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/60886

UK ‘counter-terror’ police have detained distinguished US human rights professor and international law expert, Dan Kovalik, at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport.

Kovalik, a well-known author and activist, said on X that he had been grilled about his opposition to Israel’s Gaza genocide and to the illegal war on Iran.

In the height of irony, I was detained at John Lennon International AirPort in Liverpool, England by anti-terrorism police concerned about my opposition to the Genocide on Gaza and the war on Iran. They seized my phone, computer, fingerprints and DNA sample. More to come . . . pic.twitter.com/WOtXQLjjO2

— Dan Kovalik (@danielmkovalik) June 29, 2026

Human rights threatened under authoritarian war on speech

The Starmer regime extensively abuses anti-terror laws to detain — not arrest — journalists, activists and others who speak out against Israel’s crimes and the UK’s collaboration. By avoiding arrest and seizing victims at ports or airports, the state denies the detainee access to lawyers and the right to silence.

Refusal to disclose passwords is punishable by two years in jail. Devices are routinely seized, as in Kovalik’s case.

All these abuses are perpetrated by a regime seeking to protect Israel from scrutiny and criticism, despite wholesale condemnation from the UN, human rights groups and international law experts. None have so far been charged, but multiple UK journalists and authors have been targeted.

One journalist, Asa Winstanley, refused to disclose passwords to protect sources, but he was raided at home where protections are greater. Winstanley has not, so far, been prosecuted. A court ruled the seizure of his devices unlawful.

Liverpool stands with Kovalik

Scousers reacted furiously to the war on free speech on their ‘patch’ and were quick to express solidarity with Kovalik against the shameful detention.

Apologies@danielmkovalik
The people of #Liverpool have a proud tradition of welcoming our guests, unlike our government and security services who should frankly be prosecuted for not preventing a genocide. Hope the rest of your stay is filled with peace and love.

— Liverpool Riverside Left (@LivRivLeft) June 30, 2026

National Security (State Threats) Bill

Not satisfied with abusing anti-terror laws to wage war on UK rights for Israel, the Starmer regime is ramming through further legislation allowing it to quickly designate any group it doesn’t like as ‘terrorist’.

Starmer is pushing the National Security (State Threats) Bill through Parliament in a single day without scrutiny. The bill puts the onus on its victims to prove they didn’t know a group the government later ‘designates’ was going to be banned.

Using information is included as a crime and there are no protections, even for journalists, who quote facts obtained from sources the UK government dislikes.

Craig Murray, himself a victim of an airport detention, pointed this out:

New Labour is rushing its new National Security State Threats bill through parliament in just one day.

It will be illegal to publish TRUE casualty information from Iran, from Hamas-run hospitals in Gaza, or IDF assault details from the resistance in Lebanon.

14 years in jail.

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) June 29, 2026

Britain is an authoritarian terror state. Shamefully, presumptive new PM, Andy Burnham, has given no indication he intends to end this reign of state terror. In fact, Burnham has accepted funds from the director of an arms firm involved in the genocide.

Featured image via AFPTV TEAMS/AFP via Getty Images

By Skwawkbox

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/60907

The UK’s politico-media class loves a bit of pearl-clutching over the phrase “from the river to the sea”. It’s treated as ‘hate’ and a ‘call for the destruction of Israel’. Except when it comes from the Israeli regime, of course. Then it’s fine and dandy. ‘Nothing to see here, move along’…

So with Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest, it’s far from the first time he and other colonisers have used it, but as shameless as could be.

I’m guessing this version of “from the river to the sea” will get zero media attention. https://t.co/It7Iz95eNt

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) June 29, 2026

Israel’s chants not regarded as hateful

When Palestinians and their supporters chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, it’s a call of hope for liberation from oppression, land theft and genocidal colonisation, with equal rights for all who live there.

When Israel and its supporters say, “From the river to the sea”, they mean: “We’re going to keep stealing land until there’s nothing left to steal and if you get in our way we’ll kill you, you sub-human POS”.

But only the former is ‘hate’, or even worth mentioning, in the morally-diseased and collaborator-infested hellscape that used to be Britain.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/61093

A SHIP ran aground in the Strait of Hormuz while using a route not approved by Iran, state television in Tehran reported today.

According to the report, the foreign container vessel “ran aground with its cargo because of shallow waters along the route it had chosen and was unable to continue sailing.”

From Morning Star via This RSS Feed.

Over 90% of U.S. employers rely on hiring algorithms to screen job applicants. Many different employers use algorithms from the same few vendors. We conduct the largest empirical study of algorithmic hiring with data for 3.4 million real job applicants submitting 4 million applications to 156 employers across 11 market sectors. Every application was assessed by algorithms from a single vendor: we test whether this algorithmic monoculture bottlenecks job opportunities. We are the first to demonstrate large-scale evidence of racial disparities and homogeneous outcomes in high-stakes hiring decisions.

Howdy folks!

I've been reflecting on the spread of content found in !pravda_news@news.abolish.capital and did a little investigating. I had a feeling that there were some British publications that were highly represented in the feed, but wanted to confirm if that was really true. Here are my findings:

| Source | Share of pravda_news | Rank | |

|

|

| | thecanary.co | 18.4% | #1 (dominant) | | morningstaronline.co.uk | 4.6% | #5 | | novaramedia.com | 2.2% | #13 | | Total Share of British Sources | 25.2% | - |

25% of the feed, is quite a lot. It doesn't help as well that morningstaronline.co.uk has sports coverage that I've tried to filter out of the feed. Sadly, the RSS they provide does not tag their posts in any way. This means I would need to perform some kind of look up on that specific publication for sports related keywords and bounce the post, which is going to be very prone to error and false positives.

A new community focused on Great Britain.

So, I've decided to move these publications into a new community !Britain@news.abolish.capital. Which will house them going forward. If you want leftist news about Britain, you can find it there. This also allows for more British publications to be added to the site without feeling like I'm contributing more Britain focused content into an already British skewed feed. At the time of this posting, there are about 15 stories in the queue, once those have run their course, you'll see the publications in the table above begin posting in this new community.

My goal for pravda_news has always been one to highlight world news, and that can be a struggle depending on available sources, and those sources rate of posting. theconnary.co Is a good example. This brings me to another idea that I've had in my head for a while now.

Cross posting from communities (idea)

This isn't implemented yet, but it could be easy to do. The idea is simple. In the other communities, top stories (of a given time-span, undecided at this moment) would be cross-posted into !pravda_news@news.abolish.capital. This would effectively act as a community filter, taking what people found upvote worthy over the last X hours in other communities, and automatically cross-posting those stories into !pravda_news@news.abolish.capital.

This would allow the site to have these siloed communities with focused themes, but still serve that content into the larger, more populated feed. Hopefully in turn it encourages people to join those other feeds.

No timeline on this feature currently. But would be interested in hearing people's thoughts.

Reflecting

I hope this content has been useful to you in some way. I'm always surprised to see how many people engage with the feeds provided here! There is a great diversity of participation from across the network, which is encouraging! It feels like this site has been in operation for much longer, but we've only been up for the last 8 months. So much has happened in that 8 months time as well, and these feeds have chronicled a lot of it.

Thanks for reading!

BREAKING: New reports suggest that the Pentagon may be preparing to deploy the 82nd Airborne Division to take part in a ground invasion of Iran. The Washington Post reports that this elite unit has been instructed not to participate in scheduled exercises, and is awaiting further orders. Will they be the first "boots on the ground" as Trump escalates the war with Iran to new heights?

A U.S. ground invasion would be absolutely catastrophic. Huge numbers of U.S. troops would die, unthinkable Iranian casualties would ensue, and the economic crisis would deepen. It would be just like George Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq, but perhaps even more bloody. The U.S. public knows this — that's why Trump administration officials have lied about their intentions so insistently.

Now is the decisive moment. The people of this country need to take a stand before it's too late and Trump plunges us into yet another forever war in the Middle East.

Protests are taking place nationwide tomorrow as part of a powerful coordination day of action. Join a demonstration near you!

Endorse the Call to Action

Register Your Action

Please make an urgently-needed donation to support emergency anti-war mobilizations as Trump and Israel unleash war against Iran.

March 7 actions (check here for frequent updates)

March 7 actions (check here for frequent updates)

Akron, OH
Highland Square
12:00 p.m.

Aliso Viejo, CA
Aliso Creek Road & Enterprise
11:00 a.m.

Allenstown, NH
Memorial Park Main St, Durham, NH
6:00 p.m.

Allentown, PA
Memorial Park Main St, Durham, NH
6:00 p.m.

Anchorage, AK
Anchorage Veteran's Memorial (W. 10th Ave & I St.)
5:30 p.m.

Asheville, NC
Pack Square
2:00 p.m.

Baltimore, Maryland
G.H. Fallon Federal Building (31 Hopkins Pl)
4:00 p.m.

Baton Rouge, LA
7122 Perkins Rd
2:00 p.m.

Bennington, VT
Main Street - Four Corners
10:00 a.m.

Brainerd, MN
Intersection of Sixth and Washington Streets, across from the historic Brainerd water tower
1:00 p.m.

Boise, ID
Boise City Hall
5:30 p.m.

Cadillac, MI
Shay Locomotive (130 W Cass St)
10:00 a.m.

Charlotte, NC
CLT Military Entrance Processing Station
12:00 p.m.

Chicago, IL
Water Tower Park, 806 N Michigan Ave
12:00 p.m.

Cincinnati, OH
Jacob Hoffner Park - 4109 Hamilton Ave
3:00 p.m.

Cleveland, OH
W 25th Market Square
5:30 p.m.

Columbia, SC
City Hall (1737 Main St.)
11:30 a.m. — March to State House at 12:00 p.m.

Corvallis, OR
Benton County Circuit Court
12:00 p.m.

Columbus, OH
Ohio Statehouse
4:00 p.m.

Dayton, OH
Dayton Courthouse Square
3:00 p.m.

Eugene, OR
Wayne Lyman Morse Federal Courthouse
2:00 p.m.

Fort Myers, FL
Corner of Daniels Pkwy and Cleveland Ave
9:00 a.m.

Fresno, CA
Blackstone and Nees
3:00 p.m.

Gainesville, FL
Alachua County Clerks Office - 201 E University Ave
4:00 p.m.

Hudson, NY
5th & Warren Sts.
11:00 a.m.

Indiana, PA
IRMC Park - North 7th Street
12:00 p.m.

Indianapolis, IN
Indiana Statehouse, east side
2:00 p.m.

Junction City, OR
Eugene Federal Courthouse
2:00 p.m.

Kent, OH
Downtown Kent (Gazebo)
2:00 p.m.

Kingston, NY
Academy Green Park
3:00 p.m.

Lake Forest Park, WA
Intersection of Bothell Way and Ballinger Way
11:00 a.m.

Lancaster, PA
Penn Square, King & Queen St
12:00 p.m.

Largo, FL
Central Park
5:30 p.m.

Las Vegas, NV
City Hall - 495 S. Main Street
6:00 p.m.

Long Beach, CA
Cherry Ave and Ocean Blvd
2:00 p.m.

Los Angeles, CA
LA City Hall
2:00 p.m.

Lowell, MA
Lowell City Hall
4:00 p.m.

Montpelier, VT
Vermont State House
5:00 p.m.

New London, CT
70 Huntington street
12:00 p.m.

New Orleans, LA
Congo Square
4:30 p.m.

New York, NY
Union Square
2:00 p.m.

Oneida, NY
Oneida City Building - 109 N Main Street
4:00 p.m.

Pittsburgh, PA
Corner of S. Highland Avenue & Penn Avenue
2:00 p.m.

Richmond, VA
Monroe Park
1:00 p.m.

St. Louis, MO
Arsenal and Grand
1:00 p.m.

Salem, MA
Riley Plaza
12:00 p.m.

San Diego, CA
4812 W Point Loma Blvd
10:00 a.m.

San Francisco, CA
Embarcadero Plaza
2:00 p.m.

San Jose, CA
Cesar Chavez Plaza
2:00 p.m.

Santa Ana, TX
411 W 4th St
3:00 p.m.

Twin Cities, MN
Chicago Ave & Franklin Ave
3:00 p.m.

Washington, DC
White House
3:00 p.m.

West Springfield, MA
Park Street, Town Common
2:00 p.m.

Wilton, NH
NH State House, 107 North Main Street, Concord, NH
2:00 p.m.

(Taken from an email sent to me by the ANSWER Coalition. Emphasis original.)