Month: January 2023

The struggle against US intervention in Venezuela continues, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

TWENTY-FIVE years ago later this year Hugo Chavez won the presidential election in Venezuela and paved the way to a sustained period — marked sometimes by setbacks of course, as any struggle is — of electoral victories by leftist forces in South America against powerful local elites buttressed by the United States.

As the annual Latin America conference meets today to discuss how progressive mass movements across the region are again resisting neoliberalism and US domination in their struggles for independence and sovereignty, Venezuela’s achievements in the Chavez period in this respect stand out as an example.
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This year must see determined resistance to Tory austerity, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

THE fact that, in a year in which will mark the 13th anniversary of the Conservative Party returning to office, we are discussing another crisis — and another round of austerity being introduced in the name of responding to it — is truly illustrative of both this government’s skewed priorities and its bankruptcy of ideas.

From the Cameron Cabinet with the Lib Dems (which made austerity its flagship policy) throughout the tenures of Theresa May and Boris Johnson (who continued it while talking about Brexit a lot), as well as the short-lived Truss era (when a particularly haphazard version of it was attempted) and Rishi Sunak today, making the majority pay in order to protect the wealth of the class which the Tories represent has been a thread of continuity.
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