WE CLOSE this conference in London — the old imperial capital — with two truths that have echoed through every contribution, every workshop, every comrade who has spoken here today.

Firstly, the so-called “rules-based international order” has collapsed under the weight of its own hypocrisy.

Western leaders may dress it up in the language of stability, security, and shared values, but as the Canadian PM Mark Carney himself admitted in Davos, the entire system was always a fiction — a “useful” one for those who benefited from it, but a fiction nonetheless.

But “useful” for whom?

For the global North. For the imperial core.

For those who claimed universality while practising exceptionalism.

But for the global South — for Latin America, for Palestine, for Africa, for Asia — this order was never rules‑based.

It was power‑based. It was hierarchy‑based. It was violence‑based.

And the moment that fiction stopped serving Western interests — not when Gaza was destroyed, not when Iraq was invaded, not when Libya was shattered — but when the US threatened Greenland, itself a colony of a Western imperialist power, suddenly the “rupture” became visible.

That tells us everything.

The suffering of the global South was tolerable.

The suffering of Europeans was not.

Comrades, this is the moral architecture of the world we are fighting.

The second truth we have heard repeatedly today, with clarity that no longer can be ignored, is that we are living through the age of hyper‑imperialism.

Not the imperialism of the past — but something sharper, more violent, more all-consuming.

A system that demands obedience, punishes sovereignty, and disciplines the global South with sanctions, blockades, coups and war.

And nowhere is this clearer than in Venezuela.

Just weeks ago, the world watched as US forces invaded Caracas, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, attacking the city, and killing scores of Venezuelan and Cuban personnel.

This was not an isolated act; it was not a “crisis” moment.

Rather, it was the latest chapter in a 25‑year campaign of collective punishment against a people who dared to chart their own course. 

Why?

Because Venezuela proved that another world was possible.

It nationalised its oil.

It invested in public health, housing, education and food for its people. 

It built the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba) and Petrocaribe — regional alternatives rooted in solidarity, not subordination.

It showed that the wealth of a nation could serve its people, not ExxonMobil and American imperialist interests.

And for Washington, that was intolerable.

A successful alternative in one country might be a threat, but a regional alternative is an existential challenge.

And so the old colonial playbook returned: destabilisation, economic strangulation, manufactured crisis and finally open attack. 

This is the so-called Donroe Doctrine — Trump’s declaration that “this is OUR hemisphere” — the supremacist belief that Latin America’s resources, governments, and futures belong to Washington.

But comrades, this is not just about Venezuela.

This is the very architecture of hyper‑imperialism.

A rotten neocolonial system that uses financial coercion and military force to demand global obedience.

It creates permanent war — from Gaza to Caracas, from Yemen to Iran — because domination requires violence.

And yet, empire fears something far more powerful than its own arsenal:

It fears organised people.

It fears conscious people.

It fears people who know their own strength.

Latin America has shown this for generations.

Palestine shows it every day.

And Ireland — my own country — speaks this truth still.

Because Ireland’s struggle for freedom is not complete.

It is a living fight for sovereignty, unity, and the right of our people to shape our own destiny free from imperial interference.

So when Ireland stands with Latin America, when Ireland stands with Palestine, it is not sentiment — it is solidarity born of shared experience.

We know occupation.

We know dispossession.

We know the prison cell and the hunger strike.

We know what it means to resist an empire that insists it owns your future.

And we know — as every campesino movement knows — that liberation is built from below.

Comrades, today let us also speak a third truth:

We cannot defeat hyper‑imperialism with isolated struggles.

We defeat it by building a global bloc of peoples who refuse to bow.

From the encampments of the MST, to the barrios of Caracas; from the resistance committees of Palestine, to the streets of Belfast and Derry, to the migrant communities of this very city.

Because when Latin America and Palestine speak with one voice, when Ireland’s centuries long struggle for freedom joins that chorus, when Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean rise together — then empire trembles!

So as we leave here today, let us to do so with clarity:

• Hyper‑imperialism is the enemy of humanity
• Sovereignty is non‑negotiable
• Internationalism is not charity — it is strategy
• The future belongs to organised peoples.

Let us also call for:

• The immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores
• An end to the criminal blockade of Cuba 
• And the unity of our struggle against imperialist aggression.

Let us commit ourselves:

• To defend Venezuela, Cuba, and every nation punished for choosing dignity
• To stand with Palestine until liberation is won
• To advance Ireland’s own unfinished struggle for freedom
• To build movements rooted in land, community, and popular power
• To construct a new world beyond the reach of empire.

Because the future does not belong to the conquerors.

It belongs to those who resist; who organise.

To those who dream beyond the limits empire sets for them.

From the Andes to the Sierra Maestra,

from Ireland to Palestine,

from every land where people rise —

Let us stand together.

Let us struggle together.

Let us win together.

Go raibh mile mile maith agaibh.

Venceremos — ar son saoirse, ar son an phobail!