From London’s holly-sellers to Engels’s flaming Christmas centrepiece, the plum pudding was more than festive fare in Victorian Britain, says KEITH FLETT
Venezuela: Chavismo on course to another victory
While president Maduro commits his government to greater social progress from wages to housing, the extreme right-wing opposition are calling upon Washington to intervene and impose more sanctions, reports FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ
DESERVED ADULATION: A supporter dressed as ‘Super Bigote / Super Moustache’ a joyful reference to Nicolas Maduro’s ‘stash’ - the cartoon superhero appeared at a campaign rallyin Caracas, Venezuela, July 18 2024
[AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos]
Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
From a lockdown digital project to a vital tool for class solidarity, ROBERT POOLE and HENRY FOWLER reflect on half-a-decade of struggle
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
VENEZUELA’S election this weekend takes place in a context dominated by Venezuela’s robust economic recovery, which, considering the calamitous situation the country found itself as late as the end of 2020, the 1 per cent rate of inflation June this year and an expected rate of growth for 2024 of between 5 to 8 per cent, is near miraculous.
This is despite the application of 930 unilateral coercive measures (aka “sanctions”) that caused havoc in the period 2015-23. A confirmation of this recovery is the return of nearly a million Venezuelans who were persuaded with false promises and as part of psychological campaign of fear to leave the country during the worst moments of the effects of the aggressive and brutal US sanctions against this South American nation.
Additionally, the high and enthusiastic levels of mass mobilisation of pro-Maduro forces contrasts sharply with the rather weak rallies of opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, supported and literally handled by extreme right-wing politician, Maria Corina Machado, with people being bussed around the cities where they have been held.
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Far-right forces are rising across Latin America and the Caribbean, armed with a common agenda of anti-communism, the culture war, and neoliberal economics, writes VIJAY PRASHAD
The global left must be unwavering in it is support for Venezuela as Washington increases its aggression, and clear-eyed about the West’s cynical motives for targeting it, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
With its track record of leveraging cultural power for US gain and barely concealed promotion of coup attempts, the US Agency for International Development will not be mourned among the US’s southern neighbours, write JOHN PERRY and ROGER D HARRIS
FIONA SIM of the Black Liberation Alliance reports on a whirlwind week in Caracas, including President Maduro’s inauguration