This image from video posted on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s X account, and partially redacted by the source, shows an oil tanker being seized by U.S. forces off the coast of Venezuela, December 10, 2025. Photo: U.S. Attorney General’s Office/X via AP
VENEZUELA has lodged a complaint to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) about the US seizure of an oil tanker in the Caribbean.
The Venezuelans filed the complaint on Thursday to the London-based IMO over what many observers have labelled an act of piracy by the US on Wednesday.
The country’s Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez said she had communicated with IMO executive secretary Arsenio Dominguez, with the aim of “formally and legally addressing this serious situation.”
VP Rodriguez described the incident as a blatant robbery and said the action “exposed the true interests of the US in its ongoing aggression against Venezuela.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon arrives at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, London, November 4, 2025
ANTI-RACISTS, many of them Christians, will challenge far-right agitator “Tommy Robinson” over his attempt to identify Christianity with his message of hatred this weekend.
Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) hosting a carol service is a surreal contrast to his normal routine of bigoted rants and spontaneous punch-ups.
He supposedly found God while in prison for contempt of court for repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee, though he hasn’t shown much contrition for his violation of the Ninth Commandment since. Indeed this is hardly a Damascene conversion given Robinson’s priorities (railing against immigrants and Muslims) seem exactly the same as before.
The recent emergence of Christian nationalism in Britain may have less to do with Robinson’s spiritual journey than with the influence of Donald Trump’s United States over the global far right.
Robinson is always acutely alert to where the money is and the US Christian right is awash with it. We also know, from the White House’s new national security strategy, that it hopes to reshape Europe in its own image.
It declares Europe at risk of “civilisational erasure” from immigration, commits itself to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” and identifies the “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” as the means to do so.
This is a potentially huge boost to the far right in countries like Britain. But it can be turned into a weakness.
A boost, because resources matter.
Robinson has already had legal fees paid by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who addressed the huge far-right demonstration held in London in September.
Their movement will have access to enormous funds, enabling effective propaganda operations and paid organisers.
It’s backed by the most powerful country on Earth — something we saw hints of in the succession of far-right figures hosted by US Vice-President JD Vance on a so-called holiday in England last summer, under the very noses of the supposedly allied British government he was working to undermine.
A factor which again benefits the far right: the liberal Establishment cannot conceive of a breach with Washington, and continues to lick the boots that are kicking it in the ribs. Most recently with a craven surrender to US demands over NHS drug pricing, which will raise the cost of medicine and cost British lives.
But that’s why the apparent asset of being a US asset can be turned against the insurgent right.
Robinson is not the only recipient of US largesse. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is also linked to the US “Maga” movement (he has received free services from the PR firm Capital HQ, linked to Steve Bannon, and is notorious for his frequent transatlantic trips).
Its economic priorities, in particular an acceleration of healthcare privatisation by proposing vouchers allowing access to private providers, align with the US aim — openly avowed in documents like Project 2025 — of turning the NHS into a cash cow for US companies.
We should expose the foreign money behind these so-called “patriotic” movements — and the similarity between the far right’s fixation with privatisation and deregulation with that of Tory and Labour governments. The flood of ex-Tories joining Reform do so because it is a Tory party: it is not “anti-Establishment” at all.
And our message in calling out Robinson’s perversion of the Christian spirit needs to look beyond him to the normalisation of cruelty in the political mainstream.
At Christmas Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, born in a stable, child refugee from King Herod, who urged his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger and visit the prisoner.
That message damns a government that cuts benefits, hounds asylum-seekers and is ready to let eight brave hunger-strikers, some jailed for over a year already though none have faced trial, starve to death rather than address the injustice it has done them.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Junior doctors and members of the British Medical Association (BMA) outside Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, January 3, 2024
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NHS campaigners issued a furious response after he told LBC: “I cannot guarantee, I honestly don’t want to catastrophise or sensationalise, I cannot sit here and look you in the eye and tell you that no patient will come to harm.”
BMA resident doctors’ committee chair Dr Jack Fletcher said: “Ultimately, the health secretary has far more power to prevent NHS strikes than he gives himself credit for; not through confrontation, but by rebuilding trust and putting an offer on the table that creates sufficient brand-new training places for doctors, not changing the names of existing roles.
“His current offer does not create any more capacity for us to treat patients, or do anything to help clear waiting lists; let’s be clear about that.”
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Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr Tony O’Sullivan told the Morning Star: “It is the height of irresponsible behaviour from the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, to go to war with doctors and the BMA amid the flu epidemic and this, the second winter crisis since the Starmer–Streeting administration took office.
“The government cannot pretend that they had no warning, that they didn’t see it coming. Nor should they deny that it is their responsibility to deal with it.
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“The government must take action to give NHS resident doctors, and other staff, the remuneration they deserve.
“But instead, as with the scapegoating of migrants and asylum-seekers as the cause of multiple ills, the government’s self-serving reaction is to scapegoat doctors and their union, the BMA, for the NHS crisis Labour was voted into office to solve.”
US President Donald Trump ‘dances’ to music after speaking at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, Decembe 9, 2025
EVERYBODY gets it except Keir Starmer. Labour MPs, including those traditionally on the right, are clear that the basis for Britain’s alliance with the USA is collapsing.
The new US national security document — itself dismissive of Britain — is a manifesto for the advance of far-right and fascistic forces across Europe.
As Liam Byrne MP told the Commons, the strategy is saturated with far-right tropes from the 1930s. “The language of the US national security strategy was deeply regrettable and, frankly, it was not hard to see the rhymes with some extreme right-wing tropes that date back to the 1930s,” he said.
And Matt Western MP, chair of the joint committee on national security strategy, said the Commons “should be under no illusion, the United States consensus that has led the Western world since the second world war appears shattered.
“The prospect of United States interference in the democratic politics of Europe is chilling. Given certain UK dependencies on the United States, this leaves the United Kingdom especially vulnerable,” he added.
They are right. Alongside pursuing untrammelled hegemony through aggression in the western hemisphere, while seeking to pressure China economically, plunder Africa and centre the Middle East around Israel and the reactionary Gulf dictatorships, the Trump administration wants to impose its own far-right agenda on Europe.
And, as Washington’s strategy makes clear, it is willing to back far-right parties like Britain’s Reform UK in order to bring the continent into line, rhetoric about respect for national sovereignty notwithstanding.
This is a menace to democracy, an interference in our internal political affairs and a brazen plan to leverage the immense power of the US to gain advantage over its nominal “allies.”
Yet Starmer and the rest of the government profess that there is nothing to see here, that it is all business as usual. Hypocritically, they even praise Trump for “working for peace,” when Starmer is actually working might and main to obstruct the US push to end the war in Ukraine.
It seems that the government simply cannot acknowledge the enormity of what is happening, since the entire strategy of the British state has pivoted for the last 80 years on the purported ”special relationship” with Washington.
Indeed, there are core functions which might seize up without US support, so deeply embedded has Washington become in the British state.
Yet the global drive towards a 21st-century form of far-right authoritarianism, now powered from Washington, demands a clear rupture with Trump and all his works.
Starmer’s mealy-mouthed evasions demean our democracy and only invite further pressure from over the Atlantic. Trump should be called out as the proto-fascist he is, and the US told that it can rely on British support for its adventures no longer.
Enough with the fawning. It is time to stand up for democracy.
Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy (left) and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during the Labour Party Conference at the ACC Liverpool, September 28, 2025
LABOUR is failing to uphold basic rights, the new head of the official equalities watchdog has warned.
Protesters, migrant workers and disabled people have been particularly targeted by the government, Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) chairwoman Mary-Ann Stephenson has told ministers.
Dr Stephenson, who took up her role at the start of the month, urged the government to “ensure rights are protected across the nation.”
Her warning comes as PM Sir Keir Starmer is looking to persuade other European leaders to dilute the European Convention on Human Rights to make it easier to block refugees.
Dr Stephenson highlighted areas where “key human rights” are not being guaranteed.
She said: “The government has made commitments to protect everyone’s fundamental human rights.
“While there has been progress in some areas, it is failing to uphold basic rights in others — particularly by permitting heavy-handed responses to peaceful protests, failing to ensure disabled people can access healthcare on a level playing field with others, and allowing labour exploitation to go unchecked for certain workers.
“This failure to uphold key human rights is concerning for each and every one of us.
“That’s why we’ve written to ministers to urge them to review our new report and ensure rights are protected across the nation.”
The warning echoes complaints made by her predecessor, Kishwer Falkner, about “heavy-handed policing” of Gaza solidarity demonstrations which she said risked a “chilling effect” on protest rights.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
This image from video posted on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s X account, and partially redacted by the source, shows an oil tanker being seized by U.S. forces off the coast of Venezuela, December 10, 2025. Photo: U.S. Attorney General’s Office/X via AP
