Biden must end the US’s illegal sanctions on Venezuela

If he is to prove he is different from Trump, the new US president will have to change approach in Latin America, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

DESPITE enormous costs to its economy and its people imposed by illegal US sanctions, Venezuela has seen off President Donald Trump’s term in office and his clear goal of toppling the elected government of Nicolas Maduro.

From his earliest days in office, Trump had drastically ratcheted up the sanctions first levied against Venezuela by the Obama administration, increasingly meaning there is a full-on Cuba-style US blockade of the country.
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Time for a Zero Covid Policy and a People’s Plan

Other countries have enforced and completed successful lockdowns, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE — it’s time we followed these proven steps

NOW is the winter of our discontent — and the Tory government is entirely to blame.

More than nine months into Britain’s Covid-19 crisis, Boris Johnson and his ministers have failed utterly to protect public health and to drive down infections.

This is not just incompetence — although that has been in evidence — it is fundamentally a failure of policy.
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Victory for socialists in Bolivia – but the struggle continues

KEN LIVINGSTONE writes on the restoration of democracy in Bolivia

THE Movement Towards Socialism’s (MAS) victory in Bolivia’s presidential election, the first held since a military-led coup ousted legitimate President Evo Morales last November, offers a new way forward for the country out of the nightmare of the last year.

Under the coup regime led by Jeanine Anez, a wave of human-rights abuses took place, targeting trade unionists, indigenous activists and MAS supporters, with large-scale violation of people’s rights and the loss of lives.
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Now is the time to end homelessness

There needs to be real action to protect renters, end rough sleeping and stop a new homelessness crisis, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

THIS week, Labour, homelessness charities, housing campaigners and others have called for the government to repeat the Everyone In scheme from earlier this year to protect rough sleepers this winter as the country again enters lockdown.

As Labour’s shadow minister said, “On Saturday, the Prime Minister said: ‘From Thursday until the start of December, you must stay at home.’
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I have fought racism all my life – Statement from Ken Livingstone

I am proud of my record as an anti-racist and a leading campaigner against the far-right and their hate, from when I joined the Labour Party in 1969, through my life since, including serving as a local councillor, Greater London Council member, MP, Mayor of London and Labour National Executive Committee member.

I have always implacably opposed anti-Semitism. As a life-long anti-racist, I am deeply hurt by – and fully reject – the accusations again being circulated across parts of the media and by political opponents that I am anything but 100 per cent committed to fighting all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.
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Bring water back into public ownership

We all lose as water companies fail again, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

IT WAS recently revealed that London could face a “mass water shortage” by 2040 if urgent action isn’t taken to fix pipes.

For those of us who opposed Thatcher and the Tories’ privatisation drive, including water, initiated in 1989, and the love affair of all governments with privatisation and linked policies such as PFI and outsourcing ever since, this news may not have come as a surprise.
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Exposing Trump’s deadly sanctions on Venezuela

KEN LIVINGSTONE looks in-depth at the story of US sanctions on Venezuela

THE imposition of sanctions is just one of many weapons used by the United States in its war on Venezuela, but a particularly deadly one.

The ultimate goal is “regime change” — to bring down the country’s government and gain access to the wealth to be made from the largest oil deposits in the world.

Two legal mechanisms laid the groundwork for these long-running sanctions, which have been extended again and again during the Trump presidency.
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Transport should be run for people not private profit

The recent fare rises announced are yet more proof of the failure of railway privatisation, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

MUCH of the “mainstream” media has been woefully negligent in holding Boris Johnson and co to account for their disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic and deepening economic crisis. One element of this is that there has not been much attention drawn to the different aspects of a deepening cost-of-living crisis facing many people.
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Bolivia: repression is intensifying nine months on from the lithium coup

KEN LIVINGSTONE looks at the motivations behind the illegal ‘regime change’ in Bolivia last year

IN NOVEMBER 2019 President Trump welcomed the coup in Bolivia that toppled its democratically elected president, Evo Morales, as “one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.”

But, in fact, like the 1953 coup in Iran or the slew of other coups that the US has supported, funded or organised in the last seven decades, at stake was the control and exploitation of scarce natural resources — in this case Bolivia’s reserves of lithium.
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Why is Trump now ramping up his attacks on Nicaragua?

Sanctions and even interventions against the small Latin American nation are part of a pattern of desperation from an ailing US empire, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

A LEAKED document revealed by Nicaragua’s independent “Radio La Primerisima” has shown that the Trump administration is accelerating its plans — illegal under international law — to enforce “regime change” in Nicaragua.

The 14-page plan produced by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sets out how it expects a contractor to achieve or support a change in government that will be favourable to US interests.
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