New Book

A revolution is moving across Latin America.

Since 1998, the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela has brought Hugo Chávez to world attention as the foremost challenger of the neoliberal consensus and American foreign policy. While Chávez's radical social-democratic reforms have brought him worldwide acclaim among the poor, he has attracted intense hostility from Venezuelan elites and Western governments.

Drawing on first-hand experience of Venezuela and meetings with Chávez, Tariq Ali shows how Chávez's views have polarized Latin America and examines the aggression directed against his administration. Ali discusses the enormous influence of Fidel Castro on both Chávez and Evo Morales, the newly elected President of Bolivia and, reflecting on a recent trip to Havana, contrasts the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutionary processes.

Pakistan is in the throes of a new crisis: daily battles on the Afghan border, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the farcical and grotesque succession ceremony in Sind. Tariq Ali has been visiting Pakistan regularly and writing for the London Review of Books. He is at work on The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American Power to be published by Scribner later this year.

Robert Fisk in The Independent:
'Only a few days ago - in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year - Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: Daughter of the West. In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi.

'Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister - and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post.

'In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation - false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated - a policeman killed who they feared might talk - made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level."'

3 May, 2008
London School of Economics

16 May, 2008
Curzon Soho Cinema, London

London elections 2008: 'Livingstone for peace'

The legacy of 1968 (Also in Spanish and German)

'Why I will not participate in the 2008 Turin Book Fair'
(Also in Italian)

'Where were they when Musharraf sacked the judges?'
(Also in Spanish)

Mid-Point in the Middle East? (editorial) (Also in Arabic)

The New Furies

Remembering Edward Said

Re-Colonizing Iraq

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