Analysis from all corners - BlogFlock

Starmer’s UK Is Letting Hunger Strikers Die - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-14T12:31:42.000Z

Heba Muraisi is a florist and a lifeguard. She has never committed any violence. She will likely die in the next few days from starvation in a UK jail.

The Starmer government has declared Heba a terrorist.

Her crime: breaking into a facility that creates weapons for the Israeli genocide forces in Gaza. It is the kind of protest that should result in fines and a slap on the wrist.

Not in the United Kingdom of Keir Starmer.

For more than a year, Heba has been imprisoned without trial, enduring brutal treatment. All because her protest group, Palestine Action, has been deemed a terrorist threat, on the same level as ISIS or al-Qaeda.

In November, she and seven other young people went on hunger strike, demanding bail, a fair trial, and an end to being treated as terrorists.

A motion put forward by Labour MP John McDonnell described the conditions in which these prisoners are being held as of “extreme concern.”

The letter was signed by 62 MPs from a number of parties.

In his time at 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister Starmer has shown little or no backbone on any issue, and yet his government has displayed a militant level of support for Israel and the brutal genocide of Gaza. The Labour government treats those who protest the genocide as terrorists.

Thousands have been arrested for participating in peaceful sit-ins or marches.

Award-winning Irish author Sally Rooney is facing a UK book ban for complicity in terrorism because she has spoken out for the arrested.

The Labour government charged Mo Chara, leader of the Irish group Kneecap, with a terrorism offence for his pro-Palestinian positions. Those charges blew up in the government’s face and were thrown out by the courts. Not to be deterred, the British government has reintroduced the charges against Chara.

This is how an authoritarian regime behaves, not an ally of Canada.

The world needs to call out the abuses of Starmer’s UK and demand that the government undertake immediate negotiations to end the hunger strikes.

I remember the hunger strikes of the early 1980s. It was a dark and brutal time.

I remember my grandfather praying for Bobby Sands at the kitchen table. Our family lived thousands of miles from the conflict. My grandfather never liked to talk about the “Troubles,” but he was horrified by the cruelty of the Thatcher government.

People never forgot that cruelty.

People won’t forget the needless cruelty of the genocide either. The latest news it that families are freezing to death in poorly made tents as the west sits on the sidelines while heavily-armed Israel destroys an entire people.

This is the side that Starmer and his government have taken. And the cruelty has come home.

We need to act now.

Call the British High Commission in Canada: 1-613-237-1530
E-mail: ukincanada@fco.gov.uk

Tell them that Heba deserves better than to die of hunger in a British prison.

She deserves the fair application of the rule of law. She deserves to live in a society where the perpetrators of genocide are treated as criminals, rather than the people protesting the genocide.

Tell the British High Commission that we will not stand on the sidelines and watch a young woman die because of the cold-blooded indifference of Keir Starmer.

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Canada is the Linchpin of Democracy - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-13T13:02:43.000Z

In 1939, the odds against the democratic world were massive.

Canada was a poor nation with a small population. But from the get-go, Canadians stepped up and did our part. And in the darkest days of the Second World War, Winston Churchill praised Canada as the linchpin of the democratic resistance.

80 plus years later, democracy is again facing serious threat, and Canada is being tested. A year ago, there were many who thought we would bend or buckle, but we have stood our ground.

Canadians are playing a key role with democratic allies. We are fighting for a just peace in Ukraine. And we are standing up to the fascist threat posed by gangsters who reject democracy and use violence to impose their will.

2026 will be hard and chaotic, but Canadians know what is at stake. We can be counted on once again.

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Why are we OBSESSED with the ancient Egyptians? - HistoryExtra

2026-01-13T11:05:17.000Z

In this fifth episode of our series on ancient Egypt, Emily Briffett is joined by curator and Egyptologist Campbell Price for a final time to explore the enduring legacy and influence of ancient Egypt – from the 'Egyptomania' that gripped Victorian Britain to key discoveries that have shaped our understanding of Egypt’s past.

Watch now or listen to the ad-free episode below:

View Green Video on the source website

Uncontacted peoples: why do nearly 200 groups choose to live outside 'civilisation'? - HistoryExtra

2026-01-12T15:30:12.000Z

A new report by Survival International, Uncontacted Peoples: At the Edge of Survival, is the latest accounting of the human story – and it is a historical document of unparalleled power. It reveals that at least 196 groups in the world are still uncontacted, most of them gravely threatened by logging, mining and drilling for oil. These are the last human beings who have stayed outside ‘civilisation’ since the violence of the West reached across the globe after 1492.

The report cast my mind back 25 years to when we made a series of four films telling the story of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Cortés, Pizarro, Orellana, Cabeza de Vaca: these were men who experienced some of the most incredible adventures in human history. We tracked them on the ground, following in their footsteps over the Andes, up Inca trails to lost cities, and rafting down the Amazon.

The third film was especially powerful in its implications for the here and now, as well as the events of the 16th century. It told the story of the expedition led out of Quito in 1541 by Gonzalo Pizarro (younger half-brother of Francisco, who spearheaded the conquest of the Inca empire). Its goal was to find the fabled El Dorado – ‘the Golden Man’ – a mythical city of gold believed to exist somewhere in the jungles beyond the Andes. The city was, in fact, unfindable – because it never existed. In trackless terrain, the expedition ran into disaster: soaked by incessant rains, running out of food, the men were reduced to eating their horses and cooking their boot leather. Francisco Orellana pushed onward in a home-made boat to scout what lay ahead, but such was the speed of the river that he couldn’t make his way back to the rest of the men.

Read more | “Indigenous Americans who travelled across the Atlantic were horrified by inequalities in European society”

After untold sufferings, the survivors of the main army made it back to Quito nearly a year and a half later. Meanwhile, after many adventures, Orellana sailed eastward, navigating the entire length of the Amazon. He was the first European to see the interior of Amazonia at a time when the middle reaches of the river supported huge settlements. Then, from the mouth of the great river, he sailed back north to Trinidad, completing one of the most astounding stories of human endurance.

On our journey, a parallel narrative unfolded. Down the main course of the Amazon, everyone told us that the water levels were fast receding. Climate researchers had just announced that, at the rate of climate change then observed, the Amazon forest would start to transform into savannah in 2042 – coincidentally, the 500th anniversary of the Orellana expedition. If that happened, the climate cycle would be broken, the weight of history literally tipping the balance.

Along the route, we heard stories of indigenous peoples in the depths of the forest. In the river town of Coca in Ecuador, a man told us how, as a youngster, he had lived with the Waorani tribe before he moved to the town and learned Spanish. He told of the struggles of those who chose to stay out of the modern world. One group steadfastly refused all contact; another had killed US missionaries who had not respected their wishes to be left alone. For them, he said, the price of receiving the white man’s god was degradation, alcoholism, and the loss of their own language, culture and identity.

Read more | Did Aztec civilisation really ‘collapse’? The reality isn’t as simple as you might think

The Survival International report features the story of one such people, the Mashco Piro in the Madre de Dios region of Peru – perhaps the single largest remaining uncontacted group. Not long after our journeys for the Conquistadors films, haunted by the beauty and tragedy of Peru, I went back with my family. We stayed in the Manu region with local people who lived off the forests and drew sustenance from the river. Beyond them was a checkpoint and a protected region extending 100 miles to the Madre de Dios river where outsiders may not go – and where the Survival report shows the Mashco Piro still live.

So I read the report, with its haunting photos, feeling a sense of profound sadness. The holocaust of indigenous peoples is almost complete. The pattern is the same across the world over the past 500 years: the taking of the land, the extermination of native people and the plundering of the environment, fuelled by white supremacy, evangelical religion, western diseases and sheer greed. And now, five centuries on from the conquest of the Americas, across the entire planet only a few thousand of our ancient brothers and sisters hang on – people who simply do not wish to be contacted. What does that say about us?

This column was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

Canadian Banker Cheers on Trumps Threats - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-11T13:02:04.000Z

Venezuela was invaded. Colombia could be next. Then Cuba. Canada is under consistent pressure. And the peaceful people of Greenland/Denmark are facing military threat. And yet the Bank of Nova Scotia, that venerable Canadian institution, thinks this is great for business.

The so-called “Don-roe” doctrine is a smash-and-grab gangster approach threatening the sovereignty of every nation in the western hemisphere.

But at a recent meeting of bank Chief Executive Officers, Thomson is quoted as saying that Trump’s version of the Monroe Doctrine will be favourable for growth:

“Longer-term, this is a good thing for the Western Hemisphere. It’s a good thing for the U.S. It’s a good thing for the Bank of Nova Scotia.”

Let’s think about what this guy just said.

Donald Trump is threatening the democratic rights of 35 nations in the western hemisphere including Canada. Our nation has faced multiple threats to our sovereignty and serious threats to Canadian jobs. And yet we have a Canadian bank that seems to be onside with this.

Donald Trump is threatening a NATO ally if they don’t give over their land to him. This a frightening age of lawlessness and threat. Is the Bank of Nova Scotia siding with the gangsters at this time?

This isn’t the Bank of Belarus that we are talking about here. Mr. Thomson is the spokesman for one of Canada’s dominant financial institutions.

Thomson made his comments following the invasion of Venezuela. He can’t be naive enough to think this was just about getting rid of an unpopular strongman. Trump has made it clear that this invasion wasn’t about restoring democracy; it was about stealing the resources of a foreign country. Trump says he will demand 50 million barrels from the Venezuelan people and will keep the profits in an offshore bank account – overseen by him.

This outright theft may be good for banks but bad for the world.

Fascist economics has always been a smash-and-grab con job. The economic “model” is only possible because of the willingness of legitimate banks to provide cover. The loot must be laundered and protected somewhere, which is why the banker is willing to offer his business card.

The Nazis stole staggering amounts of Jewish property, art, and investments. All that stolen money had to be laundered. It was the role of the banks to finesse the open theft of stolen funds. Even as a world war was underway and millions of people were dying, the money continued to move through numerous banks.

According to a 1997 investigation by the Christian Science Monitor, the Bank of Canada played a part by transferring four metric tons of gold from a Swiss bank to Portugal for use by the Nazis.

And anyone who thinks that modern Canadian banks are global Boy Scouts will be in for a big surprise.

Consider the once-seemingly staid Toronto Dominion Bank (TD). In October 2024, they were hit with the largest fine ever thrown at a bank for involvement in money laundering.

Investigators noted that TD ignored obvious red flags from high-risk customers and created a “convenient” environment for bad actors to exploit money laundering. It is estimated that TD facilitated over $400 million in transactions to launder funds on behalf of people selling fentanyl and other deadly drugs.

A recent report by FINTRAC (Financial Transaction and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) found that nearly 40% of Canadian banks had breached anti-money laundering rules and that in 8 cases the failures were egregious.

So what do we say about Canadian bankers standing with Trump in a time of existential threat to our nation?

If you have accounts in Scotia Bank, consider moving them.

The Canadian government needs to intervene and issue clear directives to Canadian banking presidents that there will be consequences for promoting Trump’s intimidation of sovereign nations.

Prime Minister Carney is a banker. He knows these guys. He needs to make a call and remind Canadian bankers of their obligation to the nation that created their immense wealth. Our sovereignty is on the line here.

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The Fascism Checklist - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-10T13:05:59.000Z

Fascist leaders move quickly to establish a paramilitary force loyal to the ideology of the regime, sidelining traditional police and law enforcement. They become a law unto themselves.

ICE is now the largest Federal agency, flush with money and operating free from oversight and accountability. Are we surprised that they are shooting civilians in the streets?

Call this for what it is - the face of American gangster fascism.

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Greenland Is Our Line in the Sand - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-09T12:10:40.000Z

Ignore anything you hear from Donald Trump about Russian and Chinese ships threatening Greenland. Or JD Vance claiming the Danes have failed in their job to protect the island. And all the theories about taking control of Greenland’s immense wealth are secondary to the real story.

Donald Trump got the idea for invading Greenland from a mascara mogul.

This detail is important to know because it shines a light on MAGA’s gangster kingdom. Going after Greenland would destroy 80-plus years of Western alliances. It will undermine NATO at a crucial moment. But it all goes back to Ronald Lauder of Estée Lauder telling Donald that Greenland was easy pickings.

This revelation comes from the book The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

A billionaire pal suggested that taking over Greenland would be a cakewalk for the United States. Trump was hooked. After the meeting, he called John Bolton and said “A friend of mine, a really, really experienced businessman, thinks we can get Greenland.”

Trump then posted on social media that people in Greenland wanted him to take them over. “I am hearing that the people of Greenland are ‘MAGA’,” he claimed.

The pressure on Greenland comes after the attack on Venezuela.

The Venezuela shakedown targeted the increasingly frayed international rule of law. An attack on Greenland would lead to the collapse of the West. It is like a frightening replay of the occupation of the Rhineland, Austria, and the Sudetenland.

Then came Poland. The difference is that the Nazis were working to a plan. Trump is working on whim and ego.

Even if the threat remains at the level of stupid online taunting from the White House, the threat to Greenland is serious. It is destroying the Western alliance and acting like a pincer movement for Vladimir Putin as he pressures Ukraine and the Baltics.

If Trump moves on Greenland, Canada is next. And then we will be facing the age of the gangsters, or as French President Macron says, a world reduced into a “robbers’ den.”

What are the likely next moves?

Clearly, we can expect more chaos from the whackjob social media posts by Trump and his key minions. If those threats increase, it will force Denmark to invoke Article IV of the NATO charter. Article IV is the trigger move that sets the stage for Article V, the military defence of Greenland by NATO allies.

“The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”

What then? Does Donald TACO?

He may very well back down and try to change the channel by threatening a nation in the global south. Even so, NATO would be permanently compromised, and a new set of democratic alliances would have to be figured out.

In scenario two, Trump reacts badly to Greenland/Denmark standing up to him and escalates. He could move more American troops onto the US military installation in Greenland. At this point, the danger of a shooting match escalates.

And if Denmark invokes Article IV, it would see the American military facing down against French warships and Canadian ground troops. This would bring us into completely uncharted territory, a crisis unlike anything since 1939.

There is a third scenario: Europe abandons Greenland rather than risk a direct confrontation. I think this may have been more likely a year ago, but Trump has been so brazen that it is forcing the Europeans and Canada to dramatically rethink our traditional subservience to the mighty America.

I attended the NATO parliamentary meetings in Brussels last February, and had the unsettling feeling that if push came to shove between Canada and the United States, our European allies might just take a dive.

In those meetings, toxic Republican representatives acted like schoolyard bullies. Everyone knew that Trump was threatening and belittling our sovereignty, but none of the major NATO nations seemed to want to be anywhere near Canada.

European allies were doing everything they could to paper over the growing divide and to pretend that things were normal. When we all knew that normal was gone.

Things came to a head in one session where the NATO representatives went out of their way to please the Americans. In doing so, the session’s spokesman threw in a dig at our Canadian delegation:

“Oh and Canada, you need to start pulling your weight.”

By this point, I was fed up with tiptoeing around the big, ugly elephant in the room. I stood up and challenged the NATO chair.

“We have family lying in a cemetery just 15 minutes up the road.
Canadians lost a lot of young men to free you from fascism, so don’t you ever tell us to pull our weight.”

The place went silent.

I then pointed to the smirking American delegation and said,

“We have a nation here that is ridiculing our country and threatening our sovereignty. Canada wants to know if NATO stands for something or is just a club.”

A surprising thing happened. People started to clap.

Afterward, I was approached by representatives from the Baltic states, as well as new members Sweden and Finland, who shared their concern that NATO needed to start being bolder in the face of both the American and Russian threat.

Nonetheless, I came home feeling that we were on our own.

How much things have changed over the course of the year.

In that time, Canada has stepped up on the global stage. We have military trainers in Ukraine. Former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is now a top advisor to President Zelensky. Canada is establishing a permanent base in Latvia. We have opened a consulate in Greenland.

The European allies are looking to Canada as a credible force in working with them to maintain an increasingly shaky world order. We no longer seem so alone.

But it all comes down to Greenland.

If Trump continues to push his dangerous rhetoric, the Kingdom of Denmark will be forced to call his bluff. This is the moment when our democratic allies will have to face down the gangster. If we fail, the world will be looted by the robber’s den.

Things will get very tense if Canada and the Europeans do stand up, but I don’t see that we have another choice.

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A Victorian-era journalist snuck into an infamous asylum, and what she exposed shocked New York - HistoryExtra

2026-01-08T14:31:50.000Z

In autumn 1887, a 23-year-old woman checked into a temporary boarding house for working women in New York City.

She immediately alarmed the other residents: she didn’t sleep for days, and insisted that she didn’t remember who she was. But for all that it looked as if she might be in need of psychiatric support, the woman wasn’t experiencing any mental ill health. She was, in fact, a journalist. And she was trying to get herself admitted to a psychiatric unit for a story.

Elizabeth Jane Cochran, better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was working for the New York World newspaper, reporting on the conditions inside the infamous Woman’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in NYC’s East River.

The resulting article and book would shock America, and lead to reform. But it also helped to boost Bly’s reputation usher in a new style of sensationalist investigative reporting that would come to be known as ‘stunt journalism’.

She became a “proper bona fide celebrity, in a way that almost no journalists of the 19th century were,” explains Dr Bob Nicholson, a historian of Victorian media and popular culture at Edge Hill University, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast about how the story unfolded.

How Nellie Bly tricked psychiatric doctors

Soon after starting to alarm her fellow boarding house residents, Bly was examined by the police, a judge and doctors at a hospital.

“She had the challenge of trying to convince people that she was mad, but not to also terribly mistreat her. [Eventually] the judge sent her to a hospital in New York to be examined. And from there, they were absolutely convinced she's mad. Every doctor was 100 per cent certain,” Nicholson says.

Read more | What was life like for 'ordinary' Victorians?

“They then send her to Blackwell's Island, which is a small island in the river between Manhattan and Queens.”

Her employer, the New York World, promised to retrieve her in ten days – meaning that “for those ten days, she was entirely at the mercy of the people of the asylum,” Nicholson says.

Bly dropped the ‘mad’ act once she arrived at the asylum, but the staff just assumed that her normal behaviours were symptoms of insanity.

“She can't tell them, ‘I am a journalist and I'm doing all this for a story,’ because that sounds like the maddest thing you could possibly say,” Nicholson points out.

With her performance now behind her, it became clear to Bly that she had come upon a big story.

“It’s absolutely ridden with abuse, with terrible treatment of patients,” Nicholson says.

“Nurses and attendants that looked after them day-to-day were particularly abusive. They would beat and choke patients, they would refuse them food, they would tease them and goad them. They wouldn't give them enough clothes to keep warm.”

Bly also “described in vivid detail the terrible food she would have to eat, the times that she would be plunged into an ice-cold bath and scrubbed by one of the other patients, and then placed into just a wet nightgown to sleep in an ice-cold cell,” he says.

Read more | Could you survive in the vicious Gilded Age? Here are the original influencer's secrets to success

While rumours had been circulating about the terrible conditions on Blackwell’s Island, no one had corroborated them until Bly was able to actually see – and experience – them for herself.

“The little details in there really hammer home the horror of it. It's an incredibly powerful expose that she writes when she gets out,” Nicholson says.

Reform to New York City’s mental health treatment

The story was published in two parts, with the first ending in a cliffhanger as Bly boards the boat to the asylum, and then later as a book titled Ten Days in a Mad-house. It piqued people’s curiosity, and they were astonished by what she had managed to do.

There was also a “journalistic frenzy” around the story, Nicholson says, because lots of papers had unwittingly reported on Bly’s admission to the asylum at the start. The New York Times had called her a “mysterious waif,” and other papers wrote about the unknown attractive girl who had appeared with no knowledge of who she was.

“She had fooled the journalists, and they'd written all these reports about her. So, one of the first reactions from the other papers who've been duped is embarrassment,” Nicholson says. “They desperately then try to get in first, before her next instalment comes out a week later.”

As well as causing a sensation, the buzz around the story led to real change in the way the facility was run.

“The conditions in the asylum that she uncovers are so shocking and horrifying to people, that it is enough to put pressure on the government to invest more money in the asylums to make sure that they are reformed,” Nicholson says.

The reforms included a new requirement for female physicians and ‘properly trained attendants’ to be present at patient assessments, new sanitation regulations, and the firing of abusive staff members.

Life in Victorian Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy

Member exclusive | This six-week course covers everything you need to know about Victorian Britain, guided by historian Ruth Goodman and filmed on location at Black Country Living Museum. Explore the course now

Nellie Bly was a pioneer of a new style of journalism

Bly’s journalism created change in real people’s lives – but Nicholson thinks that it wasn’t just the coverage that allowed this change to happen. It was her unique approach to the story that gave it so much power.

“Ultimately what makes that story so compelling is not just what she finds, it's her narrative. We really become fascinated with her and with her journey. And the jeopardy of going undercover becomes just as important as anything else,” he says.

Other papers soon followed suit and a new trend in journalism arose. Ten Days in a Mad-house became an early example of investigative journalism with a performative element, designed to attract more attention.

Read more | She exposed the horrors of Britain’s secret concentration camps – so why was she demonised?

“The vast majority of journalists in the 19th century would have been completely anonymous,” Nicholson says. Bly’s story “broke the mould of what a conventional journalist would do”.

But it wasn’t just the experiential element of her reporting. Bly also broke the mould as a female journalist. She wasn’t the first or only woman working as a journalist at the time, but others were mostly confined to covering subject matter like weddings, fashion, and society.

Bly showed that women were capable of much more, and inspired other young women to become stunt journalists in the 1880s, Nicholson says.

“She threw herself into absolutely everything, whether it was learning to fence or to be a chorus girl, being admitted to a ‘madhouse’, or reporting on a war. In the end, she ticks off almost every aspect of journalism. All the things that people told her a woman couldn't do, she did.”

Bob Nicholson was speaking to Kev Lochun on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.

We are holding the line for democracy. - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-07T19:47:12.000Z

How to Bribe a Gangster President - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-07T13:02:31.000Z

If you were going to offer a $10 million bribe to a sitting president, how would you imagine it playing out?

In shows like The Night Manager, it would be done via high-tech e-transfers to offshore accounts. But consider the U.S. intelligence report documenting four men leaving a Bank of Egypt branch near Cairo International Airport on January 17, 2017.

They were carrying two very large and heavy duffel bags. And the bags contained $9,998,000 in American one-hundred-dollar bills.

There was nothing subtle about these bags. The weight of the bags was estimated at over 220 pounds, representing a significant run on American dollars in Egypt. Maybe the guy receiving the money liked getting cash the old school way.

The surveillance of what went down at the bank that day was part of a much broader U.S. security investigation into Donald Trump’s relationship with Egyptian strongman Abdel El-Sisi.

In the final weeks of the campaign, U.S. intelligence picked up credible information that a kickback scheme had been cooked up between Trump and El Si-Si. What they gathered was, according to one official, “astounding.”

The intel appeared to be confirmed by the surveillance of the money being moved in the duffel bags. Two of the four-man team carrying the lucre were identified as being part of the Egyptian intelligence network.

The case is covered in the incredible new book Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department by Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis. Much of what I have put together here comes from their excellent reportage.

So what happened to the money once it was taken to the airport?

We may never know.

El Sisi had seized power in 2013 following the collapse of the Arab Spring. He was an international pariah. President Obama had frozen out El Sisi over the lack of action on human rights violations. El Sisi showed up at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 19, 2016, seeking American support.

Part of that friendship mission was meeting with candidate Donald Trump.

It was the final month and a half of the election campaign, and Trump was under increasing pressure. His election campaign was running on fumes because he hadn’t bothered to focus on fundraising. Trump had bragged that he didn’t need donors because he could pay $100 million out of his own money to ensure his election victory.

Trump was more blowhard than strategist. And he was a cheapskate. Now that the campaign needed him, he was refusing to part with his money. His team was begging him to make a contribution - $50 million, $25 million – anything.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to pay for ads in the final weeks. Then they suggested that, at the bare minimum, he come up with $10 million. On October 28th, he agreed to write a $10 million check.

Following the election, U.S. intelligence officials flagged the $10 million as linked to a deal with El Sisi.

Soon afterward, Trump dramatically reversed American policy toward Egypt. El Sisi was among the first foreign leaders to be welcomed into the White House. Trump boasted:

“I just want everyone to know, in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind President El-Sisi. He’d done a fantastic job in a difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt. The United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong backing.”

The Department of Justice team tasked with investigating the intel on the $10 million bribe was put under special investigator Robert Mueller. Unlike the Russian investigation, everything about the Egypt probe was conducted in secrecy. The only way to prove a connection between the intel and the $10 million carried out in those duffel bags was to get access to Trump’s banking records.

It would be likely that the funds were laundered through one of Trump’s many offshore real estate holdings. But there was huge reluctance to put the spotlight on the president. Mueller was wary of taking on the president. He was allowed to do a very limited search of a few accounts for a few days. It didn’t yield much.

Trump’s handpicked Attorney General William Barr didn’t trust the FBI, which was gathering evidence. His team believed that the DC branch was pro-Hillary. This seemed like a ridiculous charge to make, given the fact that the FBI under James Comey had been accused of destroying Hillary Clinton’s election campaign by going public with a claim they were investigating her for improper use of an email server.

Nonetheless, Barr’s people claimed the DC branch was the “DNC of the FBI.”

Jessie Liu, the lead investigator on the file, was ready to issue subpoenas to obtain access to Trump’s bank accounts, but according to a statement from the House Democrats, she “made a 180-degree turn” after a meeting with Barr. In January 2020, Barr pushed Liu out of the investigation, which was then quickly shut down.

No answers were provided on the allegations of bribery, as Robert Mueller had refused to call in the president to interview him over the allegations of Russian interference or the Egypt bribe. Mueller was operating under Barr’s rule that a sitting president cannot be indicted for crimes and that it would be unfair to accuse him of one, since he wouldn’t be getting a court hearing to prove his innocence.

On July 1, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court extended the blanket legal protection for life:

“The nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”

So can a dictator or anyone else, for that matter, funnel money to the president to get their way? In a world where the president can’t be charged, and the Department of Justice will not investigate charges of foreign interference and bribery, why not?

I have written in the past about Trump’s longstanding connections to Russian mob money, which was laundered through his real estate empire.

The United States Department of Justice failed to investigate time and time again.

They allowed a gangster fascist to walk into the White House and the world is paying the price.

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The DARK secrets behind ancient Egyptian worship - HistoryExtra

2026-01-06T11:00:14.000Z

Nothing is more synonymous with ancient Egypt than mummification. But why was this postmortem practice actually performed? And what other rituals and beliefs surrounded death in the ancient civilisation?

In the fourth episode of our series on ancient Egypt, Emily Briffett and Campbell Price meet the pantheon of Egypt’s gods and goddesses and take a deep dive into the ancient underworld.

Watch the full video or listen ad-free below:

View Green Video on the source website

Campbell Price is the co-author of Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly! (Walker Books, 2024) and the author of the upcoming Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt (Seven Dials, 2024).

Pre-order now on Amazon

Tragedy and triumph: a 500-year history of Mexico - HistoryExtra

2026-01-05T08:00:31.000Z

The chaos of the Spanish conquest, the humiliation of military defeat to the United States, the disruption of the revolution… Mexican history is often viewed through the lens of trauma and violence. Yet, as Paul Gillingham outlines in a new book, Mexico: A History, this was also one of the earliest democracies in the world – one in which Indigenous peoples enjoyed rights unthinkable in the US at the time. Paul guides Spencer Mizen through one nation's extraordinary history.

MAGA's Race War Targets War Graves in Holland - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-04T13:03:05.000Z

Over Christmas, I was stopped in my tracks by the news that the United States government removed commemorations to Black American war dead in the Netherlands. The move has triggered a great deal of anger in Europe. The Dutch people treat the Allied war dead with a care and respect that borders on the sacred.

The fact that the United States moved against a Black war memorial during the Christmas season only deepened the outrage.

It is a tradition in Holland to light candles on the Allied war graves on Christmas Eve. Dutch families adopt particular graves. The duty to care for those graves passes from parent to child.

These commemorations at the Canadian war cemeteries at Groesbeek and Holten mean a great deal to Canadians who have loved ones lying in those fields. It makes us feel as if our uncles and granddads who never came home are lying with family.

And for the Dutch, the Christmas time memorials are important because they remind the children of the horrific winter of hunger when the people were starving and freezing as they waited for the Allies to break through with liberation.

This Christmas, the MAGA government shocked the people of the Netherlands by stripping the American military cemetery at Margraten of panels that were erected to remember the sacrifice of Black American soldiers.

The move sparked outrage.

The governor of the local province has demanded that the United States return the panels. Dutch spokesman Bas Alberson stated:

“The displayed panels represented a history that we can never forget and from which we can learn, especially now that differences in the world are ever more magnified.”
“They fought for a freedom that they did not have themselves.”

But the white supremacist government in Washington doesn’t give a damn about the people of the Netherlands, or the sacrifice of those who gave their lives fighting fascism. Stripping the war panels is just another opportunity to flex the hate muscles.

This is a white supremacist regime, and everything they have done in their so-called war on “woke” must be considered through the lens of a race war.

I urge you to read the book They Want to Kill Americans by counter terrorism expert Malcom Nance. He documented the rise of what he calls TITUS – The Trump Insurgency in the United States. He studied the shift of online hate following the rise of Trump to the development of heavily armed militia groups focused on the promise of destroying the Democratic Party and driving a white nationalist agenda.

Thus, we saw the rise of the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boys, lone wolf race attacks, and the widespread acceptance of the QAnon conspiracy, which promised the coming “Great Storm” of vengeance against the Woke and the constant race-baiting by the

The insurgency was building to fight a second Biden term, but then Trump shocked even his own supporters by winning. To keep this race hate machine in the fold, Trump had to deliver. This explains the rise of the paramilitary force ICE and the arbitrary attacks on racialized people and immigrants. It is a form of civil war / race war papered over by a micro-thin claim of legal right.

Reassuring the race haters has meant carrying on a relentless attack on Black identity and history – all in the name of the war on “Woke.”

Soon after taking the White House, Trump fired General CQ Brown, who was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pete Hegseth said it was about standing up to DEI. The highly decorated Brown is Black and he was replaced by a white man.

The Trump administration targeted the Smithsonian Institute for its work on documenting Black history. Trump was offended that they discussed the realities of slavery:

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been… We are not going to allow this to happen,” he continued, “and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums… This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE.”

Slavery was evil. End of story. Only a white hater would be offended by that statement.

Such comments by Trump explain the reasons he excluded Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth from the days that national parks are open for free. Instead, he made his own birthday a free day for families to visit.

Shitty and spiteful is the nature of MAGA. Hence, the attack on the war memorials in the Netherlands.

Over one million Black Americans signed up to fight fascism at a time when many of them were denied the right to vote in the United States. There are many accounts of Canadian and American interactions during the war where Canadian soldiers were appalled at the treatment of the Black American soldiers.

Now in death, they are being degraded by a regime of criminals. The United States has come too far to allow this level of race hatred to become institutionalized again.

Canadians, meanwhile, are looking at the liberation of Europe with new eyes.

The sacrifice to free the people from fascism was immense. During the winter of hunger, Canadians were determined to break through and get food to the people. The German army was aided by the traitor squads of the Dutch and Belgian SS, who would fight to the death rather than be captured. The fascists had embedded themselves in the villages and the cities, forcing a grueling street-by-street campaign to free the people.

In battles like Groningen, the Canadians withheld their artillery and air advantage in order to spare civilian casualties. This meant that a lot more young Canadian boys would die. Every soldier going in knew the score, and they did their part.

It is too bad that Pete Hoekstra, who comes from Groningen, has never gone to the cemeteries to light candles for those young men who freed his family from the Nazis. It is doubtful that he would bother to speak for the Black American soldiers who put their lives on the line to fight fascism.

But the Dutch people remember. And the Canadian people remember.

We remember because it is our duty to ensure that fascist hate never rises again.

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Venezuela - The Lesson for Canada - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-03T13:49:04.000Z

Make no mistake, the attack on Venezuela by the Trump regime is not about removing a rogue leader; it is a deliberate attack on international law.

Since coming to power, the Trump regime has deliberately undermined the international rules-based order.

He has targeted the work of the International Criminal Court over its investigations into war crimes in Gaza. He has betrayed Ukraine time and time again while justifying the illegal Russian invasion.

And he has threatened NATO allies, Canada, and Greenland.

By invading Venezuela, Trump is declaring war on the United Nations.

One of the founding principles of the UN is that it is illegal to use force against another nation without UN Security Council Authorization. Over the decades, the United States skirted these obligations while carefully avoiding directly challenging the legitimacy of international law and institutions.

In the case of the invasion of Panama and the kidnapping of President Noriega, the United States set up a long paper trail in the courts regarding allegations of racketeering and drug trafficking.

When George W. Bush set out to invade Iraq, he brought the case for war to the United Nations. The claims of weapons of mass destruction were clearly false, but the United States presented its case in order to be seen as acting within the larger obligations of international law.

Bush also pushed for support from Western allies to create the impression of an international consensus. Trump doesn’t believe in the Western allies. He prefers the United States to act like a rogue state.

In the case of Venezuela, Trump and his minions have made a mockery of the laws of the sea and warfare. The blockade was deemed by UN human rights experts to have no legitimacy. It was considered equal to “an armed attack” because no credible justification was given and no Security Council vote took place.

Trump claimed the Venezuelans had stolen American oil – a ridiculous claim.

Similar ridiculous claims were made for the boats being hunted on the high seas.

These strikes represented murder on the high seas. At least 83 people were killed, including those who were deliberately targeted after their boats were destroyed. This represented clear violations of the law.

Then they shifted from killing supposed drug dealers to seizing oil tankers. Some US lawmakers even suggested legalizing high-seas piracy to advance their goals. This represents a move into banditry by a nuclear-backed nation.

David Crane, the founding Chief Prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, writes:

“If the United States normalizes unilateral force, it signals to authoritarian leaders that aggression is once again an acceptable instrument of statecraft. This erodes the UN Charter’s foundational principle that disputes must be resolved peacefully and that force is a last resort. The United States helped build the post‑war legal order. It cannot selectively abandon it without consequence.”

Trump has contempt for traditional allies in Europe and the Americas. What has emerged in place of the traditional alliances is a dangerous new alignment – a triumvirate of gangster leaders determined to undermine international law – Putin, Netanyahu, Trump.

In the book Autocracy Inc., Anne Applebaum documented how the invasion of Ukraine was marked by Putin’s provocative challenge to principles of international law.

“From the first days of the war, Putin and the Russian security elite ostentatiously demonstrated their disdain for the language of human rights, their disregard for the laws, their scorn for international law, and for treaties they themselves had signed. They arrested public officials and civic leaders. . . They built torture chambers for civilians. . . They kidnapped thousands of children. . . they deliberately targeted emergency workers.”

Even more flagrant were the actions of Israel following October 7.

From the earliest days of the incursion into Gaza, Netanyahu’s agenda seemed less about freeing the hostages and more about eradicating the people of Gaza. A clear pattern of provocations against civilians and aid agencies emerged. The world watched increasingly bold and vicious assaults on hospitals and aid convoys, aid workers, and journalists. Food was used as a weapon of war, including deliberate starvation or gunning down hungry children at supposed aid stations.

Netanyahu was banking on the unwillingness of Western leaders like the UK and Germany to call out these brazen war crimes. And so, while Western leaders denounced crimes by Putin, they tiptoed around the increasingly belligerent attacks on international law by Israel, thereby weakening an already tottering international order.

And then came Trump.

He has issued sanctions against a Canadian jurist working to investigate the war crimes. He has aligned the United States with the crimes of both Putin and Netanyahu. And he has deliberately targeted the Western alliances with threats of invasion in Greenland or arbitrarily moving the Canadian border.

With the attack on Venezuela, he has upped the ante through invasion and kidnapping. Venezuela puts the world on notice, and Canada must be ready.

We played a key role in establishing the International Criminal Court. We helped establish the Statute of Rome, which laid out key protections against state violence.

Canada has a long history of defending the international rule of law. We are now dealing with a regime that will kill people in the water, seize ships on the high seas, invade other countries, and kidnap their leaders. All bets are off.

This is the age of gangsters. And Canada must be ready to rise to the threat.

We must work to build alliances with other democratic nations in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. We need to establish the citizen’s volunteer force.

We must be ready for whatever comes next from the gangsters on our border.

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Trump Isn't Done With Canada - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-02T13:03:15.000Z

Remember this time last year, when Donald Trump ridiculed our prime minister referring to him as “governor” and suggested that Wayne Gretzky be appointed as the puppet leader of a vassal state?

Trump made it clear that he wasn’t interested in a trade deal with Canada. He wanted to break our nation. And he said we had no choice in the matter because Canada didn’t have the cards.

But Canada didn’t bend.

And over the past year, Canadians have inflicted enormous economic pain on the United States while demonstrating an unprecedented sense of unity.

The latest numbers from the tourism guides IT Travel and World Tour show that the impacts are being felt across the USA’s main tourism regions.

Canadian tourism to Arizona is down 70%.

Cross-border travel in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls region has dropped by 83%.

They note that last year, 66% of Canadian boomers planned to go to the United States. This year, it is less than 10%.

In Snowbird states like Florida, the real estate market has been hammered as Canadians sell off properties and head to Mexico, Costa Rica, or stay home.

Meanwhile, in the United States, polling shows an increase in uncertainty and doubt as a year of Trump-inflicted chaos continues to batter the United States. But so far, we haven’t seen any let-up in the rage tactics, threats, and economic intimidation. Nor are we likely to see any backtracking in the coming year.

Trump isn’t done with Canada.

Canadians should expect more economic intimidation as the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) comes up for negotiations.

In year one of the American war, Trump tried on numerous occasions to dismantle CUSMA by instituting arbitrary, across the board tariffs. Canada responded with the threat of $100 billion in counter tariffs. MAGA wasn’t expecting us to stand up and Trump was forced to back track on a number of his “take it or leave it” ultimatums.

The CUSMA agreement held. It controls 90% of cross border trade. But in January Trump will have a platform to use the CUSMA renegotiations to create more economic chaos.

Trump has three options. He can walk away from the deal totally. He can sign on for long term economic peace. Or he can announce that he will limit support to a one year option while threatening us on a whole array of issues.

I wouldn’t bet a dime that Trump will take the middle option. So that leaves everything from constant economic harassment to the nuclear trade option.

A year ago, these were the things that kept us up all night. But Canada is a tougher country now than it was a year ago. We have been working to diversify and to rethink trade. The impacts could be serious, but they will be felt on both sides of the border.

And this is where Trump will be taught some hard lessons.

He is much weaker than he was a year ago. And so is the United States.

They may have the largest economy in the world, but it was made possible by just-in-time delivery of services from Canada. They can’t take this for granted anymore. Trump’s numerous tantrums have driven home the fragility of an economy that is intricately tied to Canadian suppliers and markets.

The real danger for Canada would be to drop our guard and assume that, since Trump is weaker, he will back off. Don’t bet on it. At the end of year one of the Ukraine war, the optimists believed that Putin was in an increasingly untenable situation. Putin not only held, but he also came back stronger.

And so must we.

Economic chaos will remain part of the struggle with the United States. Will this include an overt threat to Canada? This too is possible.

If so, it will likely come through the Trojan-horse tactics of the Alberta separatist gang. I have reported on the meetings they have been holding in Washington and their claims to have been offered $500 million to help create a breakaway region.

They have also been given enormous leeway by Danielle Smith. She recently overrode the courts by writing legislation that says the courts have no jurisdiction to review the constitutionality of a referendum to break up our country.

It is ridiculous, but Canada seems willing to let her carry on.

Smith also dramatically lowered the number of people who had to sign on to force a referendum. Will she move the separatist referendum ahead of the already credited pro-Canada Alberta referendum?

This too seems likely which gives rise to the dangerous Donbas scenario. Never mind that the Alberta separatists are a marginal group of losers. The referendum would unleash massive political interference in our country and could give Trump the excuse to create a crisis.

MAGA knows they can’t beat us from the outside. And so they will be working to defeat us from within.

A year ago, I would have felt like a conspiracy loon for daring to put such thoughts to paper. Not now. In watching the United States in 2026, we are watching the classic playbook of criminal oligarchs.

We held our own in year one.

We will hold again in year two, but we need to be ready for whatever they throw at us.

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The Choice That Changed Everything - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2026-01-01T13:02:51.000Z

And you may ask yourself, ‘well, how did I get here?’
And you may ask yourself, ‘well, how do I work this?’
— Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime

The great thing about the turn of the calendar is that it forces us to stop for a moment and reflect on what the last go-round the sun was all about.

A year ago, Canada was in a very different place.

And so was I.

During the 2024 Christmas holidays, as Donald Trump ramped up his attacks on Canada, it was becoming clear he was deadly serious. But Canada’s parliament was too distracted with internal fighting to notice.

For months, the House had been gridlocked in the Conservatives’ toxic procedural games. Nothing was moving. No legislation was being passed.

Just before Christmas, Chrystia Freeland took down the Prime Minister. Mr. Trudeau was forced to step aside at a crucial moment. The government was in free fall. The Conservatives were up 25 points in the polls.

Then the NDP leader piled on with an announcement that our party would bring down the government at the earliest opportunity.

This was when I broke ranks.

I had always been loyal to the “sticking together in the trenches” attitude that comes from being the smallest party in a fractious political realm. But this kind of brinkmanship was the last thing we needed as Trump was threatening our border.

When asked by Ottawa media about pushing a non-confidence motion in January, I stated that parliamentarians needed to put the needs of the nation ahead of our partisan interests.

Breaking ranks in politics has consequences. Regardless of your motives, you alienate colleagues who continue to hold to the party line. But I felt that Canada’s Parliament was sleepwalking towards disaster. Something had to be done.

That Christmas break wasn’t comfortable. I had gone into the political wilderness, and I honestly didn’t see a path ahead. But getting out of the Ottawa bubble was the best thing that could have happened to me.

The more I spoke with Canadians, the more I realized they had little interest in the drama on the Hill. Instead, they were focused on sticking together and standing up for our country. They knew what was at stake.

This was when I decided to focus my efforts on talking directly to Canadians. I thought perhaps I could help develop strategies to get us through the threat.

That was the beginning of the Charlie Angus Resistance Substack.

I had no expectation that it would take off the way it did. Or that I would end up touring the country to help foster the incredible grassroots resistance that is now in place. Or that our small team would launch the Meidas Canada Network, which has garnered millions of views from people around the world.

My focus was, and remains, keeping Canada strong, independent, and democratic. No small feat in a world of gangster fascism.

It’s been a helluva year, and the struggle shows no signs of waning. And to tell you the truth, I have never been busier or as hopeful.

I’m up for the fight ahead. Are you?

If you value this work, please consider renewing your subscription or upgrading from free to paid. It directly fuels our ability to grow this movement.

As for New Year’s resolutions? Mine is simple: keep kicking at the darkness.

I know it will bleed daylight.

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The Year Canada Grew Up - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2025-12-31T13:03:10.000Z

Do you remember the Canada that led the world think we were a nation of likeable slackers? Getting by was good enough. We didn’t rock the boat. Americans barely knew who we were.

And when they did notice us, like in the infamous ‘Blame Canada’ episode of South Park, we laughed and went along with the gag. It didn’t bother us that Americans saw us as bland and inoffensive, too harmless to be anything more than the butt of a joke.

When they made fun of our accents with the bizarre “oot and aboot,” we simply smiled and played along.

But not anymore.

I was thinking about how much things have changed when I heard a podcast with Graeme Wood of The Atlantic discussing the last-minute decision by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss to kill a story about illegal rendition and torture under the Trump regime.

According to the internal emails the staff at 60 Minutes saw this 11th-hour intervention as a blatant attempt to shield the Trump administration from embarrassment. But in the Atlantic podcast, Wood bent over backwards to recast it as a mere misunderstanding, with much of the blame placed on the investigative journalists for resisting a determined outsider in the form of new CBS president Bari Weiss.

Wood didn’t mention Trump’s shakedown lawsuit of Paramount to force an apology for how 60 Minutes had edited an interview he didn’t like. He didn’t mention Trump’s work to get Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert fired. Or the fact that the President of the United States is threatening to withdraw broadcast licenses from networks that don’t provide fawning coverage. He didn’t bother to explain to the listener that Weiss is the darling gal of the Trump regime.

Nope. The vital back story was missing.

But when it came to the issue that the Canadian affiliate ran the story as per their legal right, Wood went hard. He put it down to Canadian “treachery” in an attempt to discredit American journalism.

“Global TV may have been merely careless in letting the segment out, but since they are Canadian, I would not rule out treachery, and an effort to make Americans and their media look silly, no matter their political views.”

Like many Canadians, I saw the word ‘treachery’ and thought, F-you. The days when Canadians will be your meek puppy to be pushed around are over.

It is a sentiment I have been seeing across the online world: F-you Atlantic, that’s the last issue we’ll buy, We are done with you, etc.

I saw a similar reaction to the news that Jim Beam Distillery is shutting down production because of the collapse of America’s export market for booze.

Many Canadians that I know were celebrating with lines like “sucks to be you” or “FAFO” (F-k Around Find Out). A massive economic catastrophe hit the American heartland, and Canadians were doing high fives.

Last year, such sentiments would have seemed un-Canadian. But last year, we weren’t facing threats to break our economy or turn us into a vassal state.

Canadians have changed.

When we were first threatened by Trump, we were convinced it was a misunderstanding. Who didn’t like Canadians?

In the early days of this American war, I saw many posts about the work Canadians did to help Americans stranded during 9/11, or how we helped hide the hostages in Iran. We wanted to remind Americans that we were their cousins, their friendly neighbours.

But it became apparent that Trump wasn’t kidding around. And we knew these threats were for real. And then everything changed.

Canadians responded with an unprecedented display of nationalism. A massive boycott was launched and it was led by ordinary people. Our resistance grew even as many in the pundit class assumed Canadians would cry ourselves back to sleep. That hasn’t happened. We have proven to be a lot tougher than people thought.

In the year since the war began, Canadians are no longer trying to please.

We aren’t waiting to find out whether economic peace can be found with the stroke of a pen on a trade agreement. Canada has taken bold steps to move out from under the shadow of the United States. We are building economic and military alliances with Europe. We are now talking about a 300,000-person citizen army to defend our nation.

This would have been an unimaginable proposition a year ago. Now it is being embraced.

But I want to go back to Mr Wood, a writer for The Atlantic and a lecturer on politics at Yale University. Some might suggest that Mr Wood was being ironic in accusing Canadians of treachery. The Canada of a year ago would no doubt have bent over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt. But that was a different Canada.

On the podcast he said we as a nation were responsible for making American journalists look “silly”. But that’s not the appropriate word.

The word is pusillanimous - an adjective for displaying a lack of courage or determination; timid.

The failure of the American intellectual and media class to stand up in the face of gangster authoritarianism has been something to behold. The world didn’t need the ingenuity of Woodward and Bernstein to expose the naked criminality and kleptocracy of Donald Trump. It has been on full display since day one.

What was required was for journalists, writers, and political leaders to stand up and do the right thing. That hasn’t happened.

So leave it to Canada. Maybe this is why Mr. Wood sees treachery in our national fibre. He is watching a nation that Americans dismissed as a weak geek take on the bully of the block.

Does that make us treacherous? No. It makes us a nation willing to defend democracy, truth, and the rule of law.

Deal with it, America.

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New Year's Eve, newts and Nessie: a history of British folklore - HistoryExtra

2025-12-31T08:00:24.000Z

Why should you be careful about who's first through your door on New Year's Day? What led people to believe that newts and earwigs were responsible for their ailments? And why do sticks play such a key part in children's imaginations? Ceri Houlbrook and Owen Davies, co-authors of new book Folklore: A Journey through the Past and the Present, join Matt Elton to chronicle some of the most compelling stories from British folklore – and explain why they include UFOs just as much as ghosts and goblins.

What the ancient Egyptians REALLY thought about the pyramids - HistoryExtra

2025-12-30T11:00:13.000Z

What would an average ancient Egyptian citizen's relationship have been with the pyramids? Why did they wear gooey wax cones on their heads? And what was it like to attend an Egyptian religious ritual?

In this third episode of our series on Ancient Egypt, Emily Briffett and Egyptologist Campbell Price delve into the vibrant world of ancient Egyptian culture – taking in the art, architecture, fashion and festivals.

Watch the video or listen ad-free below:

View Green Video on the source website

Campbell Price is the co-author of Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly! (Walker Books, 2024) and the author of the upcoming Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt (Seven Dials, 2024).

Pre-order now on Amazon

Bourbon Waves a White Flag - Charlie Angus / The Resistance

2025-12-29T13:02:56.000Z

In every war, there are some battles that are more symbolic than others. Few products are as symbolic to the American brand as Kentucky bourbon. That is why the recent decision to shut down Jim Beam’s flagship operation in 2026 has drawn significant attention to the impact of Canada’s consumer boycott.

Suntory Holdings, the owner of Jim Beam, blamed a “glut” in the market, a changing youth demographic, and the need to make enhancements at the site. The fact is, this so-called glut means they can’t sell their product.

The industry produced 55 million fewer gallons this year than last year.

And at the heart of the problem is one brutal fact: the United States has lost 85% of its export market in a single year. This is the power of the Canadian boycott.

We are now one full year in the economic war with the United States. Trump made it clear he would use the trade war to economically weaken our nation. The talking heads assumed that Canada would fold.

That didn’t happened.

Canada has come through 2025 with surprising stability. MAGA, on the other hand, has suffered some staggering losses.

Since the boycott started, seven American whiskey distillers have declared bankruptcy: Luca Mariano distillery in Danville, Garrard County Distilling, Westward Distillery, Montana Distillery, Devil’s River Distillery, Old Black Button Distillery, and Kentucky Owl.

When Kentucky Owl went bankrupt in October, they attempted to put up barrels of whiskey to help pay down their debts. This was rejected by the court. Judge Everett said that testimony from market experts “really brought home to the court the dismal state of the barrel market.”

Among the insights: it would be “very challenging” to sell this inventory without a “considerable discount.”

There are 1,500 jobs on the line due to the Jim Beam closure. The owners have no one to blame but themselves. Suntory Holdings invested heavily in republicans for the Senate and the House in the 2020 election.

Over Christmas, four Canadian provinces, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia took American booze that had been sitting in their warehouses and sold it off, donating the money to charity. Once that stock is gone, no new American product will be purchased.

At the same time, the market has shown a massive shift as Canadians embrace new product lines both domestically and internationally. The shelves are changing and so are buying habits.

Meanwhile, Trump and his ambassador, Pete Hoekstra, continue to insult Canadians.

The bourbon market is dead. It was killed in year one of the economic war between the United States and Canada. As a symbolic defeat for MAGA, this is a major loss.

Year two of the economic war is about to begin. It will be a difficult, but as long as the Canadian boycott remains strong, we will continue to take the fight to the MAGA hate machine.

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