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In eight weeks’ time Americans go to the polls for the midterm elections. America’s had some corrupt presidents and quite a few incompetents, but there’s never been anything like the chaos in the White House today.
Former President Obama has delivered an aggressive attack on Trump and appealed to the voters to ‘restore a healthy democracy,’ saying Trump is an unprecedented threat to the country’s future “appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another, telling people that order and security would be restored if it weren’t for those who don’t look like us, or sound like us or pray like we do.” I have never heard a former president deliver such a scathing attack on his successor.
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This month marks 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers created the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, but governments have failed to make changes necessary to prevent a similar collapse.

Back in the 1930s, the US government responded to the Great Depression by introducing new laws that made it illegal for the local high street banks, in which we all deposit our own money, to make risky gambling decisions.
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The labour movement and all progressives must do more to expose the gutting of democracy and workers’ rights in Brazil, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

TWO years ago this week, President Dilma Rousseff was removed through a “parliamentary coup” in Brazil. The most extraordinary thing about it was that just 55 senators overturned the will of 54 million Brazilians at the ballot box who had re-elected her.

For those of us who expressed solidarity with activists against the US-backed dictatorship in Brazil from 1964-1985, and stood with the Chilean people against General Augusto Pinochet following the 1973 coup, alarm bells immediately rung at this right-wing attempt at regime change.
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The rising level of foodbank use and child poverty are a national disgrace, writes Ken Livingstone.

Recent weeks have seen the release of a number of reports and statistics that show the shocking extent of human suffering that Tory austerity is causing in Britain, but as we have come to expect in recent years they – and Labour’s policy alternatives to deal with spiralling levels of poverty and inequality – have received little media attention.
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100 years since the birth of Nelson Mandela KEN LIVINGSTONE writes on the fight to commemorate the revolutionary leader a short distance away from the British institutions that once ruled the African colonies.

THIS week would have been Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday, and here in London Nelson Mandela’s statue in Parliament Square stands as just one small testimony of the triumph of freedom and humanity over oppression that he led.

The unveiling of the statue, sculpted by the late Ian Walters, was one of my proudest moments as Mayor of London, and came after seven years of campaigning from myself, Lord Richard Attenborough, Wendy Woods (widow of anti-apartheid campaigner Donald Woods) and thousands of ordinary Londoners who supported the idea.
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We need to step up international solidarity campaigning for Lula’s freedom, and democracy and social progress in Brazil, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

As many Morning Star readers will know, Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been detained in jail since April 7.

This imprisonment has been widely condemned as politically motivated by the international labour and trade union movement, and this week Britain’s largest trade union Unite added its voice to those demanding Lula be freed.
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Progressive forces need to learn the lessons of history and stand strong against Trump’s intervention agenda in Latin America, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

THIS week marks the republication of a 2008 pamphlet by Richard Gott entitled The US War on Democracy in Latin America, which I have written the introduction for.

In three concise chapters Gott explains how United States intervention in Latin America has taken “many forms… appearing in different disguises… sometimes diplomatic persuasion… sometimes economic pressure… and on occasion military invasion.”

The clear intent of all these methods is to bring freely elected democratic governments to heel and ensure that any radical ambitions are curtailed.
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As you would have no doubt read by now, after much consideration, I have decided to resign from the Labour Party.

The ongoing issues around my suspension from the Labour Party have become a distraction from the key political issue of our time – which is to replace a Tory government overseeing falling living standards and spiralling poverty, while starving our schools and the NHS of the vital resources they need.
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KEN LIVINGSTONE writes on why the key political issue of our time is to end to the human catastrophe that is Tory austerity.

As Morning Star readers will no doubt have read, after much consideration I decided with great sadness to resign from the Labour Party this week.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Morning Star readers and thousands of others who have sent supportive messages and shared my social media posts this week to help ensure that hundreds of thousands of people have directly seen my reasons for taking this difficult decision.
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“After much consideration, I have decided to resign from the Labour Party.

The ongoing issues around my suspension from the Labour Party have become a distraction from the key political issue of our time – which is to replace a Tory government overseeing falling living standards and spiralling poverty, while starving our schools and the NHS of the vital resources they need.

We live in dangerous times and there are many issues I wish to speak up on and contribute my experience from running London to, from the need for real action to tackle climate change, to opposing Trump’s war-mongering, to the need to end austerity and invest in our future here in Britain.
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