‘Starmer Won’t Oppose War on Venezuela – But we must!
Against Trump’s war and coup – and Starmer’s disgraceful refusal to condemn it – we urge friends & comrades to join the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign here today & back these anti-war activities:
SUNDAY JANUARY 4 – Emergency online rally, 6pm.
MONDAY JANUARY 5 – Protests against war on Venezuela.
MONDAY JANUARY 19 – International Forum online, 6.30pm
1) ONLINE RALLY: No War on Venezuela
Online, Monday January 4, 18.00. Join on Zoom here.
Tariq Ali // Jeremy Corbyn MP // Richard Burgon MP // Lindsey German (STW) // Sophie Bolt (CND) & more.
Join an international forum one year into Trump’s 2nd Presidency against US war, intervention, xenophobia & military bases in Latin America. More speakers, supporting organisations & media partners tba.
Called by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign with Stop the War & CND + streamed by Arise. Free event but solidarity donations here essential to hosting costs & campaign actions.
2) PROTESTS: Take to the streets against Trump’s War!
Including at Downing St, Monday January 5, 18.00. More info here.
Hit the streets to demand the British government condemn he US attack on Venezuela, including in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester & Newcastle,
Check out info on all the protests & pickets as they are called here.
3) INTERNATIONAL FORUM: Trump’s War on Venezuela – US Hands off Latin America!
Online, Monday January 19, 18.30. Register here // RT here // FB share here.
Tariq Ali // Vijay Prashad // Carlos Ron (former Venezuelan Minister) // Walter Baier (European Left Party) // Jeremy Corbyn MP // Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla (Progressive International // Alex Main (CEPR, US) // Kate Hudson (CND) // María Perez Ramos (Mexico Solidarity) // Steve Howell (author, Cold War Puerto Rico) // Matt Willgress (Arise) // Louise Regan (NEU) // Myriam Kane (Black Liberation Alliance) // Sarah Woolley (BFAWU) // Francisco Dominguez (VSC) & more global voices tba.
Join an international forum one year into Trump’s 2nd Presidency against US war, intervention, xenophobia & military bases in Latin America. More speakers, supporting organisations & media partners tba.
Called by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign & streamed by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. Free event but solidarity donations here essential to hosting costs & campaign actions‘
That’s the news I got from an article from one of the defence newspapers that came up on my Google feed the other day. Not drones, but humanoid robots, which already makes it sound a bit too much like The Terminator. It also reminds me very strongly of the 2000 AD strip, ‘ABC Warrior’, about a band of robot soldiers fighting in a future war between the West and the Volgan Republic. Which is obviously a very thinly disguised metaphor for the Russians. The strip was created way back in the 1980s by writer Pat Mills and the late, very much missed comics artist Kevin O’Neil. And i9t now seems very prophetic, especially as in recent reiterations of the strip the world has hit peak oil and the West is tryiing to steal the Volgans; oil.
The strip had a touch of horror and the supernatural, as one variety of these robot soldiers were an order of robotic monks, monitoring the war from orbit in orbit to detect and prosecute war criminals. These had taken up mysticism and the occult and had developed supernatural powers. Captured war criminals were judged by the cowled androids, and when found guilty, were executed. But their leader, the very sinister Deathlok, was there to provide spiritual comfort by mediating with them before sending them on their great journey. Sadly, or perhaps mercifully, I doubt the new set of war robots will have anything like them.
This is a long piece explaining how Reform really aren’t a political party led by the grassroots representing the silent majority of ordinary Brits, but a private corporations led and run for its CEA, Farage, senior management and corporate donors. Who are actually a tiny group of three people.
‘Dear David,
Nigel Farage wants you to think he’s leading a grassroots rebellion. A party of ordinary people finally rising up against the establishment. But when you follow the money, the truth is a lot less romantic: in many ways, Farage is the establishment.
75% of all donations since 2019 have come from just three men: Christopher Harborne, Jeremy Hosking, and Richard Tice. Not three million ordinary contributors. Three millionaires.
It might be reasonable to bankroll a party because you like the cut of its jib. But when a party is reliant on a flood of cash from wealthy donors, the obvious question arises: whose interests does that party end up serving?
When you look at what these men are known for, and you look at what Reform UK’s leadership has been saying and promising, the overlaps are hard to miss.
Let’s start with Christopher Harborne. He’s a major cryptocurrency investor, with reported interests linked to Tether, the ‘stablecoin’ giant. He gave Reform UK a record £9 million,the largest political donation from a living donor in the history of British politics.
What strings came attached?
Byline Times reports that Nigel Farage has been talking up Tether, urging Britain to “embrace” it and to become a global trading centre of stablecoins – mocking calls for caution from the Bank of England as the work of “dinosaurs.”
That’s the leader of a political party – currently in pole position for Downing Street – publicly advocating for a product and a sector directly related to his biggest donor’s financial interests. It was also revealed in November that Tether was used to facilitate the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine and assist Russians in evading Western sanctions.
Then there’s Jeremy Hosking, who has donated £1.7 million to Reform UK. He’s a wealthy investment manager, whose company Hosking Partners has at least $134m invested in the fossil fuel sector. Unsurprisingly, he has strong negative opinions about net zero.
Reform UK says it will scrap net zero and related subsidies, fast-tracking licences for North Sea drilling and test sites. That would be a complete 180 shift from Britain’s policy direction, and it just so happens that donors like Hosking stand to benefit tremendously.
While you can’t prove a quid pro quo – that Hosking donated to secure that policy – it does at least mean that Reform UK’s climate programme is perfectly tailored to the interests of fossil-fuel investors rather than voters.
And then there’s Richard Tice, a property tycoon and Deputy Leader of Reform UK, worth a reported £40 million.
Property and planning may sound less dramatic than crypto or oil and gas, but it’s where many fortunes are made in Britain. Planning policy determines who gets to build, where they get to build, and what they can extract from the public realm in the process. It’s also at the heart of the cost-of-living crisis we face today (the longest such squeeze on record).
Reform UK has plotted a major overhaul of the planning system, including fast-track planning for brownfield sites and a “loose fit planning policy” with pre-approved guidelines.
That’s certainly developer-friendly language. Britain needs to build far more homes, faster, and there is little denying that the current system is broken. But the issue is that when the party’s internal power structure and donor base includes a major property figure, the “Is this in the public interest?” question becomes inseparable from “Who stands to profit?”
The greater picture is clear: three wealthy men, operating in sectors where Government has always picked winners and losers, lining up with a party that explicitly plans to change policy in order to make them the winners.
Reform UK stands as the most dramatic example of how this broken system actually operates. A system where a handful of mega-donors can effectively underwrite a political project, and where the rest of the country is then asked to treat that project as the authentic expression of popular will.
While none of this is necessarily illegal, it exposes a very real problem: how power really works and the urgent need to fix our democracy before it breaks entirely.
Legality is a low bar. Perhaps a better metric is whether it’s utterly eroding people’s basic faith in democracy itself. Is our system about the needs and aspirations of voters, or just who writes the biggest cheques?
If a party is only viable because of three very wealthy men, then those three men and their financial interests matter. And the policies that overlap with their profits deserve vastly more scrutiny than they’re currently getting.
Ignore the culture wars, the red herrings and the dead cats thrown out to distract and derail debate. Britain has a growing campaign finance problem. And until we fix it, we’ll keep getting politics shaped by the people who can afford to buy it.
All the best
Conor
Conor McKenzie Digital Engagement Manager, Open Britain’
There you have it: What was cynically said about democracy applies to Reform: it’s the best political party money can buy.
The other day I put up a post strongly criticising the proposal by Justice Secretary David Lammy to abolish jury trials for all but the most serious offences. A trial by one’s peers has been one of the cornerstones of English liberty since the Magna Carta, if not before. Lammy claims it will help clear the backlog of court cases that has built up since Covid. Others fear that it is another step towards authoritarianism that has become a part of just about every government’s policy since Tony Blair and David Cameron.
The internet petitioning organisation 38 Degrees has put up this petition against Lammy’s proposals. If you share my concerns about this assault on fundamental British liberties, please sign it.
‘Our justice system is buckling, David, with a backlog caused by years of underfunding, staff shortages, cuts to legal aid and crumbling courts. Yet instead of fixing the real problem, the Government wants to kick ordinary people out of the courtroom by scrapping jury trials for sentences of three years or less. [1]
Juries aren’t just tradition, they’re a vital safeguard. They let ordinary people decide guilt or innocence and bring real-life experience and conscience into the courtroom. It’s one of our oldest public rights, rooted in the Magna Carta, and protected for centuries because it stops justice becoming a closed shop for the privileged. [2]
Even David Lammy, the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, once said that juries “act as a filter for prejudice” that can prevent miscarriages of justice. Now he’s proposing precisely the opposite.
Senior lawyers, civil liberties groups and even Labour MPs are sounding the alarm: the system is failing, but the answer isn’t fewer citizens in the room, it’s a Government that stops running it into the ground. [3]
That’s why we need to act. A huge petition signed by thousands of us, while the issue is high in the headlines, will show the Government that we want to save our juries, to keep justice fair, independent and in the hands of the people
So David, will you sign the petition to tell David Lammy to protect our juries?
Juries have defended communities and campaigners from unjust convictions for centuries. They’ve helped historically to acquit people who fought against racism, protected our planet as climate campaigners, and even those who opposed war – cases where a judge alone might never have seen the bigger picture.
Lammy believes judge-only trials will be faster, but experts say there are countless different factors at play including the increasing complexity of the law, digital evidence and cuts to legal aid. Scrapping jury trials won’t fix any of that.
So David, will you help protect fair trials and sign the petition today?
Centuries before the rise of Black transatlantic slavery, very many of the slaves imported into Europe where White slaves from eastern Europe, particularly Bosnia. There were so many, in fact, that the word ‘Slav’ is the origin of the English word ‘slave’, as well as the words in other languages – Sklawe in German, schiavo in Italian, for example. The Muslim empires and states also imported them, along with White Turks from the steppes and Black Africans. They were so numerous in al-Andalus, Islamic Spain, that one Moorish writer stated that there were three races there – Arabs, Mozarabs, the Christian Spanish population, and Slavs. These White slaves were called saqaliba, an Arabic term again derived from ‘Slav’. Despite their enslavement, these slaves could rise to position of considerable power and authority.
Bernard Lewis describes them thus in his The Muslim Discovery of Europe (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1982):
‘The two major sources of the slave population of Islam were the Eurasian steppes to the north, from which White slaves, mostly Turkish, were imported and used principally for military purposes, and tropical Africa to the south, from which Black slaves were captured or brought for domestic and other labor. There were, however, some secondary sources of recruitment and Europe was one of them. Naturally enough, slaves of European origin were more prominent in the western lands of Islam and especially so in Muslim Spain. As on the other frontiers they were at first recruited mainly by warfare. The infidel enemy captured on the battlefield is lawfully enslaves and, for a while, this sufficed to maintain the supply.
‘With the halting of the Islamic advance, followed by a period of stalemate and then by a gradual Islamic retreat, supplies of prisoners of war were no longer adequate, and those who were captured could be turned to better advantage by ransom or exchange. Slaves were then acquired by purchase, and a flourishing trade developed for the supply of European slaves, both males and female, to meet the domestic and other needs of Muslim Spain and North Africa. These white slaves in the Muslim west are collectively known as Saqaliba, the Arabic plural of Saqlabi or Slav; as in the language of Europe, the term Slav, slave, seems to have combined an ethnic with a social content. In the writings of the geographers, the term Saqaliba refers to the various Slavonic peoples of central and eastern Europe. In the chronicles of Muslim Spain, it becomes a technical term for the slave praetorians of the Umayyad caliphs of Cordoba, thus corresponding to the Turkish Mamluks in the eastern caliphate. The first Saqaliba in Spain appear to have been prisoners captured by the Germans in their raids into eastern Europe and sold by them to the Muslims of Spain. In time the range of meaning of the term was extended to include virtually all foreign White slaves serving in the army or in the households. The tenth-century Arabic author, Ibn Hawqal, a traveler from the east who visited Muslim Spain, remarks that the European slaves whom he encountered there came not only from eastern Europe, but also included natives of France, Italy and northern Spain. Some were still supplied by capture-no longer by military expeditions beyond the frontier but, now, mainly by raids from the sea. A commercial importation of slaves continued overland from France where, to borrow an expression from the Dutch historian Reinhart Dozy, there was an important “manufactory of eunuchs” at Verdun.
‘The peculiar structure of Muslim society, which allowed slaves to occupy positions of great influence and power, enabled the Saqaliba in Muslim Spain to become a very important element in Spanish-Arab society. We find them serving as generals and as ministers, possessing great wealth, and sometimes owning estates and slaves of their own. Adopting the Arabic language, they even produced scholars, poets, and scientists in such numbers, and of such significance, that one of these during the reign of Hisham II (976-1013) composed a whole book on the merits and achievements of the Slavs of Andalusia. No copy appears to have survived.
‘When the Fatimids established their caliphate in Tunisia, in the early tenth century and advance eastward to the conquest of Egypt some fifty years later, Slavonic slaves played a role of some importance in their successes. Jawhar, who commanded the armies which conquered Egypt and ranks as one of the founders of Cairo, may have been a Slav.’ (pp. 188-9)
It’s a pity that the book celebrating the achievements of the Saqaliba has not survived. Unfortunately, slavery in some parts of eastern Europe survived into the early 20th century., Northern Macedonia only outlawed it in 1909.
A few days ago I had an article come up on my Google news feed remembering George Harrison’s benefit concert for Bangladesh way back in 1971. It was a pivotal moment in the history of pop, as it was the very first of the massive international aid charity concerts that culminated in the 1980s with Live Aid. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find that particular article again, but I did find this piece, ‘On This Day in 1971, George Harrison Made History With The Concert for Bangladesh’. by Melanie Davis, published on American Songwriter on the first of this month. I’m putting it up because I know that some of the great readers and commenters on this blog are great fans of the Beatles and have fond memories of the concert. It’s a short article, which really just gives an overview of the event and its importance, noting that Harrison staged it in partnership with the great sitarist Ravi Shankar and that it was a great success. It also notes that it came after the country’s war of liberation against Pakistan. One of the lecturers in Islam at my old college was Bangladeshi, and remembered the bombers flying over the villages during the war, a terrifying experience. At the moment we have the war in Gaza, Ukraine and I gather that Thailand and Vietnam have started fighting each other. As if our planet hasn’t suffered enough war and bloodshed over the millennia. I hope the world’s leaders see sense, and get a bit of the spirit of Harrison and Lennon and ‘ give peace a chance’.
The article begins
‘On August 1, 1971, George Harrison made history with The Concert for Bangladesh, a two-performance event that would set off a new wave of musical philanthropy for years to come. Harrison, in partnership with sitar player Ravi Shankar, organized the event to raise funds for East Pakistani refugees on the heels of the Bangladesh Liberation War and the 1970 Bhola cyclone.
Just two short years after the Beatles officially split, George Harrison embarked on a massive solo project unlike anything the Fab Four had ever done previously. Harrison took the initial benefit concert plans of his friend and colleague, Ravi Shankar, and elevated them further. Shankar hoped to raise $25,000 for the people of Bangladesh, who were suffering in the aftermath of a deadly natural disaster and wartime genocide.
Even if he wasn’t a Beatle, Harrison still had access to Apple Corps resources, which he happily employed for the sake of his friend and his cause. The pair scheduled the two-concert event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, and Harrison began making phone calls. Fortunately for Harrison, most of the people he called needed little convincing to hop on the bill. Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Badfinger, Eric Clapton, and Leon Russell were among the first to commit.’
This was another letter writing campaign I joined a few weeks ago. This was in support of an early day motion by Diane Abbott against Starmer cutting welfare support and the money going to foreign aid in order to support his plan for an international force to aid Ukraine’s defence against Putin. I got this reply from Karin yesterday.
‘Dear David,
Thank you for contacting me about the aid budget.
For many the Aid Budget reflects our own compassion, concern for others, and sense of obligation to people beyond our own shores. We should be proud of the work we have done, as a nation, to help people after natural disasters, conflicts, famines, and terrorism.
The Government has announced the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, reflecting the security emergency we are facing. Ministers have announced defence spending will increase to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, with an ambition to reach 3% in the next parliament. Part of this investment in rearmament will be met by diverting some of the aid budget to defence spending. Other sources of funding for the defence of Ukraine include extending UK export finance, and reallocating frozen Russian financial assets towards Ukraine.
The Government is working hard to create a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine, to secure Europe’s borders, and to ensure a lasting peace in the Russia-Ukraine war. Ministers have made it clear that the peace deal must be strong, lasting, and rest on Ukrainian sovereignty. We must never forget that this whole situation was caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We should be in no doubt that if Putin’s forces succeed in Ukraine, then other European sovereign states will also face invasion, bloodshed, and occupation.
The UK currently spends £13.4 billion on overseas aid. Based on current estimates, we will still be spending around £9bn on overseas development assistance in 2027. In recent years, the development budget was redirected towards asylum backlogs, paying for hotels, so as the Government is clearing that backlog at a record pace, there are efficiencies that will reduce the need to cut spending on our overseas programmes.
We will continue to work with international partners to make a difference through development across the globe. We will focus on humanitarian support to war-torn regions including Gaza, the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine. We will also continue work to tackle the effects of climate change and support multilateral efforts to improve global health, including through vaccinations.
Labour Governments have a pioneering record on development, creating departments for overseas development in the 1960s and 1990s, and I remain committed to rebuilding our development capability when economic and fiscal conditions allow, as per the manifesto I stood on.
Thank you for contacting me on this difficult and vital issue
ours sincerely
Karin Smyth MP Labour MP for Bristol South’
As you can see, the reply is all about the extensive efforts Britain will still make to support developmental and health initiatives around the world, while diverting comparative little from money from the budget to supporting Ukraine’s defence.
It says zilch about the cuts to the welfare budget, which suggests to me that despite Starmer banging on about his moral mission to deny genuinely life-saving financial support to the disabled in order to get the welfare bill down, Smyth know the policy is not just deeply unpopular but indefensible.
I am writing from the heart of the storm, just metres away from where President Zelensky is meeting with Europe’s top leaders right now.
Last week — still reeling from what had unfolded in the Oval Office and terrified by the thought that Ukraine and all of Europe might be left to stand alone — someone in the Avaaz team looked up and simply said: “We have to show up.”
So we printed a massive 500m² banner, grabbed train tickets to Brussels and sent an urgent call to our community: Let’s stand with Ukraine.
48 hours later, that giant flag started to unfold in front of the world held by hundreds of hands. Ukrainians started to sing, and without even realising it, we began to smile. Because something was shifting. A pulse of connection and hope. And for a moment, the heartbreak, the rage, the weight of it all, eased.For a minute, we had defeated fear.
The next morning, we woke up to find our message echoing across the world.
The action made the front pages of the New York Times, La Repubblica, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, Der Spiegel… all carried our call to protect Ukraine and stand up against tyranny.
A reminder, to ourselves and to our leaders, that history is not yet written. And that we, the people across the world united by our care for justice and peace, will never give up.
With love, with fear, with everything in between, and with enormous gratitude for each of you, from Brussels,
Patri, Julian, Harriet, Nick, Patti, Pascal and the entire Avaaz team
PS: Everyone receiving this message has signed campaigns and/or donated for Ukraine over the past years – thank you so much!
Did you enjoy this email? We’d love your feedback!
Starmer’s dramatic increase to the ‘defence’ budget announced this week was a cynical move to curry favour with Trump in advance of his meeting at the White House. It will do nothing to provide security at home, will have a limited impact on jobs and waste billions of tax payers money in a time of austerity.
Labour’s plans will not only be at the expense of overseas aid, but will also lead to further cuts to public services at a time when they are close to collapse. Although some in the media and parliament have raised their voices about making the world’s poorest pay for this massive hike in military spending, including Annaliese Dodds, International Development Minister, who resigned earlier today, few have spoken against the principle of spending additional billions on weapons of war.
The voice of Stop the War is needed now more than ever – click on the button below and listen to Lindsey German speak about the danger of Starmer’s warmongering.
Starmer’s proposal for sending British troops to Ukraine may have won him favour in Washington, but it would be a hugely provocative act. His meeting with Trump on Thursday was an international embarrassment with the Prime Minister at his sycophantic best. Ukraine was top of the agenda and not surprisingly the President welcomed Starmer’s proposals to deploy UK troops, but the all important ‘security backstop’ Starmer sought failed to be secured. President Zelensky has his turn with Trump today, where no doubt the peace deal, resource stripping of Ukraine and any security arrangements going forward will become clearer. A general ramping up of war and arms across Europe is on the cards.
The anti-war movement must take action. This weekend we are urging all our groups to organise street stalls and events to set out the case against this dangerous, increasing militarism. We have produced a petition ‘No troops to Ukraine: Welfare not Warfare’ which you can download here. Please use in workplaces, colleges, communities and on the streets.
The Prime Minister has tried to sell his weapons programme as a job creation enterprise, but as Andrew Murray said in his recent article, ‘trade unions should not fall for it’. Large amounts will be spent in the US, and in the UK the money could more efficiently be spent creating jobs that benefit society rather than feeding the arms industry.
Unions and workers should reject Labour’s military surge. Propose our new model resolution Oppose Starmer’s Military Spending – Welfare not Warfare at your local trade union branch and demand a policy of peace through security for all.
Last night we held a fantastic webinar attended by almost 300 people on Trump and the New World Disorder. We heard superb contributions and insightful analysis from Tariq Ali, Medea Benjamin, Matt Kennard, Alex Gordon and Lindsey German. You can watch back by clicking on the button below.
National Palestine Demonstration – Saturday 15 March
The next national demonstration for Palestine is on 15 March. The West Bank is under attack and the release of the disgusting Trump-Gaza video revealed all we need to know about Trump’s plans for Gaza. We must keep on demonstrating and make sure the next march is huge. Thousands of leaflets are available from the office – Londonders please come and collect leaflets ASAP, others get your orders in and we will send them out to you. Please email the office.
LocalMeetings
Numerous Palestine – Defending the Right to Protest. meetings have taken place up and down the country. They have been widely supported and very well attended. We are now encouraging groups to organise follow-up meetings on Trump’s New World Disorder: Hands off Gaza – No to Starmer’s Military Spending – Welfare not Warfare. Feel free to contact the office for assistance with speakers. It’s urgent we organise and continue to build the movement.
To find a local meeting near you click on the link below.
We’ve added some new lines to our online store, including a new “Wanted for Genocide’ t-shirt and some warm hats for those cold protest days. Check out our merchandise by clicking the button below.
‘Trump’s New World Disorder – Online Meeting 27/02/25
Donald Trump has torn up the post Second World War order by threatening to pull support for NATO and holding unilateral peace talks with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.
If it comes, an end to the war in Ukraine would be welcome. But Trump’s aggressive nationalism will increase instability and accelerate the drive to war as evidenced by European governments immediate calls for increased arms spending. Meanwhile Trump’s monstrous plans for Gaza threaten further catastrophe for the Palestinians.
Stop the War has organised a zoom webinar with key activists and commentators to discuss the dangers posed by Trump and Trumpism. Please register now
Starmer’s plans to send troops to Ukraine and increase arms spending must be opposed. Sending British troops to Ukraine would be a provocation and upping arms spending will lead to further cuts at a time when services are already close to collapse.
We have produced a petition ‘No troops to Ukraine: Welfare not Warfare’ to be used in workplaces, colleges, communities and on the streets. We are urging all our groups to organise street stalls this weekend to put the case against increasing militarism.
National Demonstration for Palestine – Saturday 15 March
Leaflets for the 15 March Palestine demonstration are available from the office.
We need to make sure the next Palestine demonstration is huge. Londonders please come and pick up leaflets ASAP, others rush orders in and we will send them out to you. Let us know!
Meanwhile, if you are not already a member, please join Stop the War, it is absolutely clear we are going to need your support and active participation in the weeks and months ahead.’
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