US blockade of Cuba is a crime against humanity

Joe Biden must not be let off the hook as his electoral promise to abandon Trump’s hostility has come to naught, argues KEN LIVINGSTONE

COUNTRIES around the world have again demanded at the United Nations that the United States lift the blockade of Cuba that it has been imposing since 1962.

On June 23 2021 in the 29th vote at the UN general assembly on the issue of the US blockade, 184 countries supported the Cuban resolution calling for its end.
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The IMF joins those working for imperialist ‘regime change’ in Venezuela

The world’s coup-plotters and warmongers haven’t given up on getting their hands on Venezuela’s oil, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) is poised to deny Venezuela over $5 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to bolster its reserves on the grounds that the elected President Nicolas Maduro is not the undisputed legitimate leader of the country.

The overall SDR fund, worth $650 billion (£459bn), is to be allocated to help emerging and low-income nations deal with mounting debt and the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Time for a border poll in Ireland

The people of Ireland have the right to shape their own future, as agreed in the Good Friday Agreement, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

LAST week saw the outcome of the inquests into the deaths of the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre.

The coroner found that all 10 of those shot dead between August 9 and 11 1971 — in the days following the introduction of internment without trial — were “entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.”
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Give Venezuela back its gold

KEN LIVINGSTONE writes on new revelations about previously denied collusion between the Bank of England and the Tory government to steal Venezuela’s gold in support of US-backed regime change

SHOCKING new evidence has emerged that the British government conspired with the Bank of England to deny Venezuela access to 31 tonnes of gold worth more than $1bn (over £800m) it had deposited with the bank.

The British government has always maintained that the Bank of England makes its own independent decisions about Venezuela’s gold deposits.
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When Hugo Chavez and the people of Venezuela beat the US empire

April 11 marks the anniversary of 2002 coup in Venezuela, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

NINETEEN years ago in Venezuela a right-wing military coup briefly unseated its elected President Hugo Chavez before loyal armed forces units and a popular mobilisation of Caracas’s barrios turned the tables and restored Chavez to the presidency.

The coup was mounted by a combination of industrialists, businessmen, media owners, the principal trade union movement’s leaders, Catholic bishops and conservative military officers, working closely with the US government.
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Turmoil in Honduras: solidarity with the resistance

As we approach 11 years since the US-backed right-wing coup in Honduras, resistance to neoliberalism continues, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

IN 2009, I was one of the co-founders of the Emergency Committee Against the Coup in Honduras and have tried to keep up to speed with developments and with the resistance movements there ever since. Despite the repression — including killings — the resistance has faced, it has continued.

Many of those opposing the coup regime may have felt vindicated when it was recently reported that US prosecutors have alleged in a major court case that the Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was a co-conspirator in his brother’s cocaine trafficking ring.
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Venezuela: UN special rapporteur’s report slams sanctions – but Biden retains them

We need to step up our campaign against the illegal US sanctions on Venezuela, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

AN overwhelmingly damning report by UN special rapporteur on human rights Alena Douhan has catalogued the massive harm inflicted on the Venezuelan people by the illegal sanctions imposed primarily by the US but also by Britain, the EU and Canada.

Yet less than a month after its publication in February, President Joe Biden has chosen to renew by executive order what the Obama administration in 2015 termed “a national emergency with respect to the situation in Venezuela,” on the absurd grounds that the country continues “to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
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Tory housing policies are a moral dereliction

This week the Museum of Homelessness (MoH) released the figure that 976 homeless people across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland died last year. KEN LIVINGSTONE reports on a government-made housing crisis

I HAVE written in my Morning Star column before how the homelessness levels in our country are a national scandal, and news this week confirmed the human costs of the Tories’ inaction in this area, as well as being a devastating indictment of 10 years of austerity cutting so many essential public services to the bone.
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Trump has gone – time to end US sanctions on Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela

Now is the time to step up international campaigning against illegal US sanctions in Latin America, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

THE United States has an extensive sanctions programme affecting two dozen countries across the globe, and three of those states singled out for coercive measures are in Latin America: Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. 

The cost to those three nations of US sanctions imposed allegedly “to counter threats to national security” are breathtakingly severe and must be stopped.
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Tory failures are throwing millions out of work

The left must respond by fighting for every job and arguing for massive investment in the economy, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

RECENT figures showing unemployment rising to 5 per cent in the three months to November 2020 were further evidence of the growing jobs crisis facing Britain.

Not a week passes by without more announcements of job cuts from household name companies, and many job losses of course do not even reach the headlines.
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