Articles by Frederic F Clairmont

The August referendum may have ratified the Chavez presidency, but a range of united forces continues to oppose the legally elected government in Venezuela. In this, the vested interests of big business, chiefly in oil and media, have been unabashedly supported by the US. But in spite of the long-running opposition to the Chavez presidency, recent months have seen an upsurge in support for the 'Bolivarian revolution'.

The incidents at Faluja mark the beginning of a new national consciousness in which Saddam and the Baathist ideology are wholly irrelevant. Men and women, shias and sunnis, Christians and Kurds fought side by side here demonstrating a new national consciousness that straddles religious, social and political divisions.

Events in recent months have highlighted the extent to which Tony Blair is a relic of the past, chained to his exterminatory evangelical dogmas, relentlessly bent on pursuing a course that has proved lethal for his victims and for his political career.

The Bolivian insurgency is but a part of the upsurge in the region. What is at stake is not merely the survival of the progressive movement in Latin America, but the survival of the creole oligarchy protected as it has been by US. The insurgency is the historical upshot of a far-reaching and sustained class struggle that has raged for months and would have been inconceivable without an ideologically coherent mass organised political base.

Stalingrad was more than a resounding triumph of Soviet strategy, technology, guts and endurance. It was the feat of an indomitable spirit whose goal was the wholesale destruction of fascism as the embodiment of the supreme counter-revolution.