The UK government used fake organisations and forged documents to disrupt its enemies and protect its interests amid the Cold War, declassified files show.

The information comes in a series of highly sensitive files which were released to the National Archives in London.

The files belonged to the Information Research Department (IRD), a clandestine anti-communist propaganda unit which operated in the Foreign Office between 1948 and 1977.

Within the IRD there was a highly secretive subdivision named the Special Editorial Unit (SEU), which specialised in the “dark arts” of covert statecraft with assistance from MI6.

That involved planning and executing “black” propaganda operations such as the creation of fictitious organisations and the dissemination of forged documents.

These “black” operations were designed “to encourage a reaction, incite violence, or foment racial tensions”, according to historian Rory Cormac, whose new book looks into the key figures behind the SEU.

The SEU also secretly controlled a series of global news agencies which posed as legitimate media groups and functioned as conduits for British propaganda content.

In addition to this, it supplied “independent” journalists with special briefings and pre-written articles which were then published under their own names.

The focus of much of this material was on the Soviet Union and its external activities, but other campaigns targeted left-wing and national liberation movements across the developing world.

Anti-colonial leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indonesia’s Sukarno, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah were a frequent focus of British propaganda operations.

Most AI note-takers approved for medical workers by the Ontario government had errors in their testing, the province’s auditor general found in a report released Tuesday.

Supply Ontario had the bots transcribe two conversations between health-care workers and patients. Most of the vendors that were approved had inaccuracies in their results, including “incorrect information, AI hallucinations and incomplete information,” Auditor General Shelley Spence’s report notes.

Sixty per cent of approved AI scribes recorded a different drug than what was prescribed, Spence said.

Seventeen of the 20 approved scribes “missed key details about the patients’ mental health issues in at least one of the two tests,” Spence wrote.

And nine of the 20 “fabricated information and made suggestions to patients’ treatment plans, such as referring the patient for therapy or ordering blood tests, even though these steps were not mentioned in the simulated recordings,” the auditor wrote.

Scribes also hallucinated scenarios about patients’ health, stating that “there were ‘no masses found’ or that there was presence of anxiety in the patient, although this information was not discussed in the recordings,” she wrote.

The province did not put much weight on accuracy in its testing. “Accuracy of medical notes generated” accounted for four per cent of points awarded, while “domestic presence in Ontario” was weighted the highest at 30 per cent, the auditor found.

“Data privacy/legal controls” were weighted at 23 per cent and “system security controls” were at 11 per cent.

Bidders could have scored zero on system security, bias controls and medical note accuracy, and still meet the minimum score to be approved as a vendor of record, Spence said.

The tests also did not have to be done live, in front of the evaluators. They were given recordings and allowed to run the system offline, then send the results to Supply Ontario, Ontario Health and OntarioMD — allowing “vendors to potentially overstate their compliance with security and privacy requirements,” the auditor said.

“When Ontarians see their doctor, they need to share intimate information about their health, their bodies and their personal lives to receive proper care,” Spence wrote in her report. “Ontarians expect this extremely personal information to be kept private and confidential. Using AI to assist in providing health care must not come at the cost of compromising privacy.”

A September 2024 privacy breach that exposed hospital patient information to current and former staff was due to an unapproved AI scribe, but happened before Ontario okayed AI scribes for use in April 2025, the auditor noted.

Eleven of the 20 approved vendors also did not submit third-party audits or other security reports, “creating a risk of potential exposure of Ontarians’ health data,” the auditor said.

Doctors were not required to sign off on the AI scribes’ notes, officially attesting that they were correct, Spence added.

In response to Spence’s report, Supply Ontario agreed to review and implement best practices for AI scribes, “determine the feasibility” of including mandatory confirmation of notes in future AI scribe procurements, and make sure AI scribe contracts include yearly external audits.

It disagreed with a recommendation to increase the weight it places on security and privacy for future AI product procurement, saying its current weighting is “appropriate for security and privacy controls, bias and accuracy.”

Ask anyone who has followed news about Gaza with even a smidgen of critical thinking, and they will tell you: Media organizations are biased against Palestinians — and systematically favor Israel.

It’s easy to say but harder to prove. Doing empirical analysis that shows these biases is time-consuming and complex, full of pitfalls and nuances that can muddy the picture. Yet the double standards are everywhere — and there are ways to do sober, qualitative work that elucidates not only the differences in how Israeli and Palestinian life are covered, but also also in how other recent conflicts are covered.

For my new book “How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza,” I attempt to demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that U.S. media coverage of the war on Gaza was one-sided, racist, dehumanizing, and often veered into outright incitement.

[...]

The media’s penchant for invoking a nation’s “right to defend itself,” typically followed by the rationalization of mass civilian killing, was reserved almost exclusively for Israel. On CNN and MSNBC, guests, anchors, and reporters mentioned the right to self-defense for Israel 94 times more than they did for Palestinians. In print media, Israel was afforded this right over 100 times more frequently than Palestinians in Gaza.

“Human Shields” to Justify Killing Palestinians

News outlets frequently apply the term “human shields” to any instance where a guerrilla force operates near civilian infrastructure — a definition rejected by human rights groups, but used by partisans to explain away civilian deaths. That didn’t stop media outlets from invoking the term hundreds of times about civilians near Palestinian fighters, implicitly justifying their deaths in Israeli attacks. On the other hand, my analysis of TV news showed no mention at all of the Israeli military’s use of “human shields” — despite documented cases where Israel’s tactics meet the legal definition.

[...]

Campus Antisemitism vs. Killing Children in Gaza

For a poignant example of how Palestinians are dehumanized, consider the media’s treatment of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay in comparison to their coverage, or lack thereof, of the killing of Hind Rajab. Not long after Gay resigned under pressure from Congress amid a monthslong fixation on allegations of antisemitism on college campuses and allegations of plagiarism by Gay over 20 years prior, the Israeli military opened fire on a car carrying Rajab and her family and left the 5-year-old Palestinian girl to die. On the New York Times homepage, stories about Gay appeared in 15 of the 31-day period covering the height of the scandal, whereas Rajab didn’t appear once in the month that followed her death.

Nato is holding closed-door meetings with film and TV screenwriters, directors and producers across Europe and the US, the Guardian can reveal, prompting accusations the alliance is seeking to use the arts to generate “propaganda” for the bloc.

The alliance has held three meetings with film and TV professionals in Los Angeles, Brussels and Paris and is due to continue its “series of intimate conservations” next month in London, meeting with screenwriter members of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), which represents professional writers in the UK.

The planned meeting in London has caused consternation among some of those invited, who felt they were being asked to “contribute towards propaganda for Nato”.

The topic of conversation at the meeting, to be held under the Chatham House rule – in which participants are free to use information received, but identities of attenders are not revealed – will be the “evolving security situation in Europe and beyond”. Former Nato spokesperson James Appathurai, who is now deputy assistant secretary general for hybrid, cyber and new technology, is understood to be planning to attend, along with other officials from the alliance.

In a WGGB email seen by the Guardian, it was suggested that the meetings had already led to “three separate projects” in development, which were “inspired, at least in part, by these conversations”.

[...]

Alan O’Gorman, writer of the film Christy, which won best film at the 2026 Irish Film & Television Awards, called the planned meeting “outrageous” and “clearly propaganda”.

“I thought it was tone deaf and crazy to present this as some sort of positive opportunity. A lot of people, myself included, have friends and family or themselves come from countries that are not in Nato, that have suffered under wars that Nato has joined and propagated,” he said.

He thinks the meetings are an attempt by Nato to “get some of its messaging out there in film and TV”.

“I think there’s fearmongering throughout Europe at the moment that our defences are down,” he said. “I see it in an Irish context, where there’s been a push through some of the media and government to present Nato in a positive light and align ourselves more closely with them. I think the Irish people, for the most part, don’t want anything to do with wars on foreign lands.”

Defence spending in Ireland has increased to record levels following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has received cross party support and broad approval from the public, though support for joining Nato remains low. An Ipsos poll last year found, should a united Ireland be formed, that 49% half of all voters in the Republic of Ireland are opposed to joining the alliance, with 19 per cent in favour and 22 per cent not sure.

How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza https://www.plutobooks.com/product/how-to-sell-a-genocide/

On Tuesday, Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli stood at a press conference. The federal government, he announced, would “aggressively” pursue anyone who attacks capitalism, “our way of life, our system, which provides the best goods and services to the most people.” He was explaining why Chamel Abdulkarim, a 29-year-old warehouse worker from Ontario, California, faces federal arson charges carrying a potential life sentence.

Doctrine, not rhetoric.

According to the criminal complaint filed April 9th, Abdulkarim set fire to a Kimberly-Clark distribution centre in the early hours of April 7th, filming himself as he did it and posting the video to Instagram. The 1.2 million square foot facility burned to the ground. Estimated damage: $500 million. Eighteen co-workers evacuated safely. Abdulkarim walked two miles down the road, raised his hands when police approached, and said he was confessing. He had already texted his explanation to a co-worker:

“All you had to do was pay us enough to live. Pay us more of the value WE bring. Not corporate. Didn’t see the shareholders picking up a shift.”

What Abdulkarim thought he was doing, and why, is not ambiguous. The question is what the state’s response tells us about the political moment we are actually in.

[...]

Abdulkarim’s politics, such as they were, had no organisational form behind them. No union called this action. No collective demand was attached to it. He texted his co-worker at 1:33 in the morning and walked away alone. Sitting with that image long enough, you recognise something specific: this is what political fury looks like when the organisations that might have caught it and given it direction have been hollowed out over forty years of defeats. The Mangione reference confirms it. Mangione also acted alone, also articulated a coherent class analysis, also had no movement at his back. What both men represent is not an insurgency but an isolation, or what the Trotskyist tradition would call substitutionism, individuals substituting individual action for the collective agency that does not yet exist. That is a real political problem. It is not the problem Essayli was identifying.

Because what NSPM-7 does, and what this prosecution will do, is treat the sentiment as the threat rather than the symptom. Millions of people in the United States work six-day weeks for wages that do not cover rent. The Iran war has pushed fuel costs to levels that make the arithmetic of ordinary life impossible for a significant portion of the workforce. These are the conditions that produced Abdulkarim’s fury, and they will produce more of it, with or without an Instagram account. The security apparatus has decided that the correct response is to build a legal framework that criminalises the political expression of that fury, designating class consciousness itself as a terrorism indicator.

Essayli called capitalism “our way of life.” He meant it as defence. He was also, without intending to, providing the most precise description of what is actually at stake. The system is not being protected from a threat external to it. It is protecting itself from the people it depends on to function.

The UK flew a drone over Baalbek, Lebanon as Israel massacred 18 people and injured 28 others there on Wednesday, flight data shows.

The flight, first reported on by independent journalist Matt Kennard, left the RAF Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus at 8:22am local time, just hours before Israel’s massive and intense bombardment of civilian areas across Lebanon, which killed at least 303 people, including many children.

The General Atomics Protector RG1 drone circled in the sky near Baalbek for hours, data from AirNav Radar shows. The model is equipped with missiles and bombs and can be used for “surveillance, search and rescue, and armed operations”, according to the RAF’s website.

Prime minister Keir Starmer has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that the UK’s only involvement in the war in the Middle East since 28 February is defensive.

Wednesday’s drone flight appears to mirror a pattern first seen at the height of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, when Starmer’s government flew numerous surveillance flights over the enclave on behalf of the apartheid state.

Those flights led many observers to conclude that he was directly complicit in the atrocities in Gaza.

Wednesday’s attacks on Lebanon violated a ceasefire agreement reached just hours earlier between the US and Iran and prompted accusations of state-led terror by Israel.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention updated its Red Flag alert for Lebanon after the killings. The alerts serve as warnings for potential genocide in a given region.

“Today’s attacks on Lebanon were a clear atrocity crime no matter how Israel tries to justify it,” the institute said on Wednesday.

What do economics students learn – beyond models and methods?

This new study examines how economics education shapes students’ beliefs, biases, and openness to competing ideas. Drawing on a large randomised controlled experiment with economics students across 10 countries, the authors investigate how exposure to different framings and forms of “authority” in economics can influence students’ confidence, conformity, and willingness to engage critically with alternative perspectives.

The findings point to a deeper challenge facing economics education today: when mainstream authority is privileged and the discipline is taught as singular, neutral, and closed to contestation, students can be steered toward ideological narrowness – and away from critical inquiry, debate, and pluralism.

Excerpts from the report:

Educational processes in economics— including curricula, pedagogies, disciplinary norms, and broader mechanisms of academic socialization—play a central role in reproducing and legitimizing the field’s narrow intellectual boundaries. Drawing on a novel randomized controlled experiment involving 2,735 economics students across 10 countries, this study provides systematic empirical evidence of how students are conditioned to internalize the ideological and authority frameworks embedded in mainstream economics. We show that economics education does more than simply excluding alternative perspectives: it conditions students to associate credibility not with the substance of an idea, but with the perceived authority and ideological alignment of its source, often unconsciously. This conditioning normalizes and naturalizes a narrow “economics” mindset, fosters deference over critical inquiry, marginalizes alternative perspectives, and reinforces the illusion of neutrality and value-freeness at the heart of the discipline.

The role of ideology in economics has long been the subject of critical debate. A central contention in this literature is that mainstream economics, though often portrayed as objective and ideology-free, is shaped by powerful yet concealed ideological underpinnings, interpretive frameworks, and institutional practices4 (e.g., Avsar, 2011; Chang, 2014; Fine & Milonakis, 2009; Fullbrook, 2008; Galbraith, 1989; Javdani & Chang, 2023; Krugman, 2009; Kvangraven & Kesar, 2023; Rodrik, 2015; Romer, 2015; Stiglitz, 2002; Thompson, 1997). By monopolizing the terms of inquiry through a monolithic ideological apparatus, mainstream economics systematically marginalizes competing perspectives—such as feminist, ecological, Post-Keynesian, Marxist, and (old) institutional economics—that emphasize the broader economic, social, and environmental consequences of market-centric thinking rooted in a naturalized view of the market.

[...]

By providing systematic empirical evidence that exposes the mechanisms of ideological conformity, deference to authority, and the exclusion of alternative perspectives within economics education, we move beyond abstract critique—important as that remains— to reveal how ideology is operationalized and reproduced in practice. In doing so, we contribute to growing debates, both within the discipline and in broader public and policy arenas, calling for a more pluralistic, reflexive, and socially responsive economics (e.g., Carthcart & Nelson, 2024; Cœuré, 2014; Dow, 2017; Falk & Andre, 2021; Institute for New Economic Thinking, 2017; Katsomitro & Writer, 2024; The Guardian, 2024; Wolf, 2019).

Our findings provide compelling evidence that students’ evaluations of economic ideas are significantly biased by the ideological orientation and mainstream status of the sources to which those ideas are attributed. Specifically, when a statement’s attribution is switched from a mainstream to a non-mainstream source, or removed entirely, students’ agreement with the content declines substantially. This pattern suggests that rather than engaging critically with the substance of arguments, students rely heavily on perceived authority and ideological alignment to assess validity. Notably, this tendency persists even though 67 percent of students claim that they evaluate ideas based on content alone. The effects are especially pronounced among PhD students—nearly twice as large—indicating a deepening of ideological conformity associated with prolonged exposure to mainstream economics, as well as self-selection mechanisms that reinforce conformity by filtering out those who fail to adopt the dominant posture—what it means to “think like an economist.”

After the US cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1961, the British embassy in Havana functioned as a proxy for US covert action and intelligence gathering against Castro’s government.

British operations, undertaken by the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD), were designed to delegitimise Cuba’s promotion of wealth distribution and to support US attempts to overthrow Castro.

The IRD, a cold war propaganda unit, sought to censure key Cuban officials and even plotted to spread homophobic rumours about Fidel’s second in command and brother, Raúl Castro.

Newly-released British files also show that during the 1970s, the IRD produced forged documents in an attempt to attack Cuba’s anti-apartheid campaigns in Africa.

[...]

While the US effort to overthrow Castro is infamous, very little is known about British operations in Cuba.

In August 1962, Leslie Boas, Britain’s regional information officer for Latin America based in Caracas, Venezuela, circulated a report on the leading political personalities in Cuba. “Having read the report”, Boas noted, “it has occurred to me that we could make effective use of some of the information it contains for propaganda purposes”.

He continued: “We could put out, in a completely unattributable fashion, a leaflet entitled ‘Personalities of the Cuban Revolution’ in which the more dubious aspects of the leading figures in the Cuban scene would be highlighted”.

The IRD was asked to “do some research” in order to produce additional “ammunition” on Castro’s aides.

To this end, senior IRD official Rosemary Allott suggested the unit “might include suitable stories circulating in Cuba (I heard one in Havana – since forgotten – on Raul Castro as a homosexual). In fact we might ask Havana for other purposes to send us all counter-revolutionary jokes and stories”.

[...]

In March 1962, shortly after the US initiated Operation Mongoose, a British embassy official in Washington wrote to the Foreign Office in London about a meeting with the US State Department and “our Friends”, a reference to the CIA.

“They would… be very grateful for facts on what is going on in Cuba which they can use in their propaganda and any suggestions the Embassy in Havana may have on useful topics and themes”, the British embassy official noted.

In a document marked Top Secret, Foreign Office official Robert Marrett noted that: “It seems to me to be a sound idea that our Embassy in Cuba should also assist the Americans discreetly by supplying anti-Castro material”.

By June 1962, an operation to send “useful items to the Americans for propaganda purposes” had been “approved by the Foreign Office”.

More than 2,000 Britons served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) during the Gaza genocide, it can be revealed.

The information was obtained by Declassified via a Freedom of Information request issued to the IDF by lawyer Elad Man from the NGO Hatzlacha.

The data outlines the number of people with dual and multiple nationalities who were IDF service members as of March 2025.

It shows how 1,686 British-Israelis and a further 383 people with British, Israeli, and another nationality served in the IDF amid the annihilation of Gaza.

They were among over 50,000 IDF soldiers with Israeli and at least one other nationality.

The largest cohorts come from the US, Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany.

Prior to this, data was only available on the number of Britons without Israeli citizenship serving in the IDF, so-called lone soldiers, a figure that was as low as 54. The revelation that far more UK passport holders served in the IDF will raise serious legal questions for the British authorities, which have thus far failed to prosecute any citizens returning home after fighting in Gaza.

Paul Heron, a lawyer with the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), told Declassified: “There must be no impunity where credible evidence links British nationals to grave breaches of international law.

“The UK has clear duties to prevent genocide and avoid assisting unlawful military action.

“Where dual nationals have served in units implicated in atrocities, the authorities must investigate promptly and, where the evidence meets the threshold, pursue arrest and prosecution like any other serious crime”.

Declassified contributor Hamza Yusuf previously exposed how Britons were serving in some of Israel’s “craziest” combat units in Gaza where they viewed Palestinian fighters as “rats” and “animals”. Among the Britons identified by Yusuf was Levi Simon, who was seen “rummaging through the underwear drawers of Palestinian women forced to flee their homes” in Gaza.

Another was master sergeant Sam Sank from London, who filmed himself fighting in Gaza between December 2023 and January 2024. Sank had told The Times that “based on the number of his friends in the IDF, which includes a Scot in his own small unit, [he] believes there are hundreds, if not thousands, more Britons fighting in Israel.” His estimates match with the data Hatzlacha has now obtained from Israeli authorities.

On Friday, I testified in front of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s “Illinois Accountability Commission,” the state government body he set up after the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” attack on Chicago last summer and the precursor of the even larger federal occupation of Minneapolis that we’re experiencing now. The body’s goal is to both document what happened to Chicago, with an eye on future prosecutions, understand the role of various Trump officials in this federal occupation, and offer recommendations about how to fix immigration enforcement going forward.

I was called as the commission’s expert witness on the history of problems, corruption, and training within CBP and ICE — a story I’ve covered for more than a dozen years, as regular readers of this newsletter know. To prepare, I spent the last week re-reading and re-familiarizing myself with DHS scandals and waves of corruption and mismanagement — and found myself horrified anew.

[...]

As I told the commission, “US law enforcement has never experienced a scandal as big, as far-reaching, destructive, and as far-lasting as the wave of corruption and criminality that has overtaken CBP and the Border Patrol since 2005. It’s a story that too much of the public still doesn’t know and too many policymakers still don’t understand.”

From the testimony given to the hearing:

What I hope you will take away from my testimony today is that the problems, abuses, scandals, and controversies involving CBP and ICE that have been on display over the last year in far too many American cities and social media feeds — from deadly shootings and agent brutality to the routine abuse of Constitutional and civil rights and liberties — is entirely consistent with long-identified problems in CBP and ICE that have gone ignored and uncorrected both by a generation of Congress and multiple Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

These are not aberrations — these incidents are the entirely foreseeable consequence of specific funding and management decisions and how the nation has approached immigration enforcement since 9/11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

In particular, CBP has been likely the deadliest and certainly the most troubled federal law enforcement agency for the better part of two decades now. Since 9/11, the culture of ICE and CBP has meant that the agencies have been what you might call a fascist-secret-police-in-waiting, troubled agencies simply waiting for an ambitious would-be authoritarian.

Video of the statement can also be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/live/Cu7uMFfFpIk?t=1995

U.S. Agency for International Development staffers in early 2024 drafted a warning to senior officials in Joe Biden’s administration: Northern Gaza had turned into an “Apocalyptic Wasteland” with dire shortages of food and medical aid.

Three months after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and Israel's incursion into the Gaza Strip, the internal message laid out in gruesome detail scenes observed by United Nations staff who visited the area on a two-part humanitarian fact-finding mission in January and February.

The staff reported seeing a human femur and other bones on the roads, dead bodies abandoned in cars and “catastrophic human needs, particularly for food and safe drinking water.”

But the U.S. ambassador to Jerusalem, Jack Lew, and his deputy, Stephanie Hallett, blocked the cable from wider distribution within the United States government because they believed it lacked balance, according to interviews with four former officials and documents seen by Reuters.

[...]

Reuters saw one of those cables. The other four, also blocked by Lew and Hallett because of their concerns about balance, were described by four former officials.

Three former U.S. officials said that the descriptions were unusually graphic and would have commanded the attention of senior U.S. officials had the message been widely circulated within Joe Biden’s administration.

It would have also deepened scrutiny of a National Security Memorandum, issued by Biden that month, which conditioned the supply of U.S. intelligence and weapons on Israel’s compliance with international law, they said.

"While cables weren't the only means of providing humanitarian information ... they would have represented an acknowledgement by the ambassador of the reality of the situation in Gaza,” said Andrew Hall, then a crisis operations specialist for USAID.

The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem oversaw the language and distribution of most of the cables about Gaza, including those from other embassies in the region.

One former senior official said Lew and Hallett often told USAID leadership that the cables included information that had been widely reported in the media.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and representatives for former President Joe Biden did not respond to requests for comment about the fact that the cables never reached upper leadership of the U.S. government.