Israel intensifies Gaza City assault, forcing mass displacement of Palestinians
Why Climate Activists Are Slashing JP Morgan’s Electricity Cables
https://novaramedia.com/2025/08/18/why-climate-activists-are-slashing-jp-morgans-electricity-cables
‘Open organising is impossible.’
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By 6am, while the workers that clean and service the City are hopping off buses and as security staff are performing their night shift patrols, Shut the System activists have sliced the electricity cables that control the gas supply at JP Morgan’s London office and superglued the cabinet that houses them shut – making a quick repair impossible.
In short, an act of sabotage against the single largest fossil fuel funder in the world. Researchers say that over the last four years, JP Morgan has pumped an eye-watering $192 billion into the industry.
[A short video appears at the original article]
Simultaneously, another group cut the earthing cable in the electricity box outside the Allianz office in near Liverpool Street. Shut the System sent Allianz an email warning them of the risk of electrical damage they face without earthing. An Allianz spokesperson told Novara Media that despite activists’ efforts, the action did not cause any disruption at the site.
Despite Günther Thallinger, a top figure at the insurer, warning recently that climate change is on track to destroy capitalism, Allianz still insures $26 billion of fossil fuel projects, according to Investing in Climate Chaos’ reporting.
Shut the System argues that Allianz is also complicit in the Gaza genocide, as it is an insurer for Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.
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Unlike Just Stop Oil – where the plan was often to get arrested, in a dramatic display of commitment to the cause – Shut the System activists don’t intend on ever getting caught.
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In these heady days, it’s not unreasonable to worry about Shut the System being proscribed, like Palestine Action recently was. It’s a way for the government to go after a group even if, like me, it has no idea who the members are.
Shut the System doesn’t seem too concerned. Not having targeted military bases, its activists think that’s a long way off for them. And it didn’t seem too fazed about public support for its actions either. Unlike many other groups, it isn’t actively looking for it.
Instead, it’s focused on its targets. And, it told me, those targets “should bear in mind that the longer they support genocide and climate collapse, the more people’s rage will build up against them.”
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Zack Polanski Has Started a Fight in the Green Party, and That’s a Good Thing
No more Mr Nice Guy.
The Green party leadership contest, which began in May with deputy leader Zack Polanski announcing he was contesting the top job, is rumbling to an end. Most observers agree that Polanski will win on 2 September. Whatever happens, he will have transformed his party in the process, turning a slow-moving, conflict-avoidant political vehicle into a battleground of ideas.
This has unquestionably been a bruising leadership campaign. Things got off to a testy start, with Polanski’s rivals Ellie Chowns and the incumbent Adrian Ramsay insinuating that Polanski’s leadership bid was an ambush (responding to this, Polanski told Novara Media: “I think people need to be careful that there’s not an entitlement that they deserve to always hand the leadership to the next person waiting”). One anonymous senior party member accused Polanski of launching a “hostile takeover” – quite an allegation against the current deputy leader. Ramsay suggested that Polanski didn’t know how to win elections, an accusation Polanski described as “rude and disrespectful”. Pressed by LBC’s Iain Dale on whether or not he liked Polanski (with Polanski sitting right in front of him), Ramsay struggled to answer. In the Guardian, Chowns criticised Polanski for being “polarising”. Though generally avoiding bad-mouthing his rivals, Polanski has offered occasional barbs of his own, implicitly accusing his rivals of “briefcase politics”.
Some in the party see all of this as embarrassing or even divisive and damaging. But this squeamishness about internal conflict is a mistake. In fact, having a barney has been great for the Greens.
Firstly, for shallow reasons: it has generated a hell of a lot of media attention. In fact I’m not sure the Green Party has ever had so much coverage, particularly from the mainstream media. The Greens’ obsessive niceness has historically made the party boring to journalists. Polanski – the charismatic outsider running against the party establishment – is TV gold, and clips of his broadcast appearances do not infrequently go viral. Unsurprisingly, multiple broadcasters have held leadership hustings. The Today Programme aired a debate between Ramsay and Polanski in a slot usually reserved for grilling government ministers. National newspapers like the FT, the Times and the Telegraph have been forced to stop ignoring the party.
This media coverage has ratcheted up interest in the party among the wider public. July 2025 saw more Google searches for “the Green party” from UK users than any month in the previous 20 years. Meanwhile, the party’s membership has surged: while we won’t know exactly how much until the end of the contest, my educated guess based on information leaked to me from regional officers is that it’s passed 70,000. For a party that’s heavily reliant on member subs for its income (unlike the Tories and Labour, who have big donors and unions to fall back on), membership growth is likely to significantly increase the party’s resources and therefore its activities, likely leading directly to electoral gains.
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Article continues at https://novaramedia.com/2025/08/18/zack-polanski-has-started-a-fight-in-the-green-party-and-thats-a-good-thing
Venezuela mobilizes 4.5 million militia members as US deploys troops to the Caribbean
Original article by Devin B. Martinez republished from peoples dispach under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Mobilization of the Bolivarian Militia in April 2025. Photo: Prensa Presidencial / Telegram
President Nicolás Maduro announced on Monday, August 18, that he is activating “over 4.5 million militia members across the entire national territory” of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in response to the US deployment of three Navy guided-missile destroyers and 4,000 military personnel to the Caribbean. The White House has described the deployment as an anti-drug trafficking operation in the region, while some analysts have called it a new threat against Venezuela – the country with the largest oil reserves in the world.
The US military deployment comes after Washington raised its bounty on the Venezuelan president from USD 25 million to USD 50 million, alleging links to drug cartels.
The “extravagant, bizarre, and outlandish threats” of the United States have been firmly rejected by the Venezuelan government.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Yván Gil described the accusations as a sign of desperation, revealing Washington’s “lack of credibility and the failure of its policies in the region”. He also pointed out that Venezuela has made major gains against drug trafficking after expelling the United States’ Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) – who many Venezuelans call “the planet’s chief drug traffickers” – from the country in 2005.
No US agency or international body has produced concrete evidence of drug production and distribution being concentrated in Venezuela or linked to Maduro. In fact, available global drug data makes almost no mention of the Caribbean nation or the alleged “Cartel of Suns” at all. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the epicenter of activity is in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, with the US identified as the main destination for distribution, recording the highest level of drug consumption in the world.
UNODC data reports that only 5% of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela, and that the country is free of coca leaf cultivation, and marijuana and cocaine processing. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has maintained its position that the Venezuelan government is a “narco-terror cartel”.
Venezuela mobilizes as the US bares its teeth
Last week, mass protests across Venezuela denounced the “interventionist policies of the US government” following the bounty increase on Maduro and the accusation of cartel ties. However, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the deployment of US troops to the region on August 14. On Tuesday, August 19, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked if the administration was open to “boots on the ground” in Venezuela, to which she responded, “[Trump] is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country.”
This week, Venezuela’s “prepared, activated, and armed” militia members are being deployed “throughout the entire territory, and meticulously, sector by sector”, as part of what the government is calling a peace plan to defend the principles of sovereignty and shared economic development.
“The Bolivarian National Militia is the people in arms, it is the genuine expression of civic-military union,” said Maduro in 2019, as he announced the incorporation of the militia that Hugo Chávez created – which has surged to nearly 5 million members, according to the government – into the Armed Forces as an official “combat unit”.
“We are also deployed throughout the Caribbean,” Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello reminded the public. “Our sea, which is Venezuelan territory.”
The Venezuelan government is not alone in speaking out against the escalation of tensions in the Caribbean. When asked about the US military deployment during a regular press conference, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico’s message to the region is, “No to interventionism. This is not just a conviction, it’s in the Constitution.”
To this day, the US does not recognize President Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the July 28 elections in Venezuela, claiming that opposition figure Edmundo González is the true president. In the months following the election, Washington targeted dozens of officials in the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) and other government departments with sanctions and visa bans, on top of the long-standing US economic blockade of the Bolivarian nation.
Despite the mounting pressure, Venezuelan officials are confident that the nation can defend its sovereignty. “It’s not about Maduro, it’s about the ordinary people, the people in the neighborhoods, the communities,” says Nahum Fernández, head of government in Caracas.
“This country belongs to Venezuelans; in the face of any threat, the Venezuelan people will not remain silent.”
David Lammy held off the books meeting with pro-Israel lobbyist
https://www.declassifieduk.org/david-lammy-held-off-the-books-meeting-with-pro-israel-lobbyist
We asked Sir Trevor Chinn why he’s donated so much money to Labour, after he held an undisclosed meeting with Britain’s foreign secretary.
David Lammy held an off the record meeting with Sir Trevor Chinn, an influential businessman and one of Britain’s leading pro-Israel lobbyists, Declassified can reveal.
The meeting took place on 11 February 2025 but was not recorded in official transparency data published by the Foreign Office.
Lammy’s sole public appointment on that day was a meeting with the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator to discuss “humanitarian crises around the globe” including the situation in Gaza.
The Foreign Office only released details about Lammy’s meeting with Chinn in response to a Freedom of Information request issued by Declassified.
It said this was a “political meeting” and no minutes from the discussion were taken.
The Foreign Office also disclosed that Middle East minister Hamish Falconer met with Chinn on 18 March 2025 in another rendezvous that was not recorded in transparency data.
Lammy, Falconer and Chinn did not respond to questions about whether the meetings focussed on Israel.
Chinn said in 2013: “I’ve spent my entire life working for Israel”. Since the 1980s, he has funded Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel.
He has played a leading role in Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), previously described by the Guardian as “Britain’s most active pro-Israel lobbying organisation”.
Doorstepping Chinn
Declassified recently revealed that Chinn – now 90 – met with a top British diplomat to discuss arms exports to Israel despite the government initially claiming the purpose of the meeting was “to discuss geopolitics”.
Chinn did not respond to Declassified’s request for comment on that story. So when we saw him disembarking a taxi outside the Chatham House think-tank in London last month, we quickly asked him for an interview.
Chinn, gripping a copy of the Financial Times, declined our request.
“You’re a very generous benefactor to the Labour Party,” we said as he was ushered inside. “What do you think about the situation in Gaza at the moment? Why do you donate so much money to the Labour Party?”
He ignored our questions, which related to his £50,000 donation towards Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership campaign in 2020.
Chinn’s donation was not disclosed until after the election had taken place.
He has also donated to key members of Starmer’s cabinet including chancellor Rachel Reeves, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, health secretary Wes Streeting, education secretary Bridget Phillipson, culture secretary Lisa Nandy, and Lammy.
Chinn entered the building on the heels of Israeli opposition politician Yair Golan, who was in the capital for meetings with politicians, including Falconer, and local Zionist organisations.
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Article continues at https://www.declassifieduk.org/david-lammy-held-off-the-books-meeting-with-pro-israel-lobbyist
