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• "This courage...has transformed Turkish politics" Tariq Ali offers solidarity with Taksim Gezi Square demonstrators

  In a message from Ankara, Tariq Ali offers solidarity with Turkish demonstrators occupying Taksim Gezi Park.

  By Huw Lemmey / 17 June 2013 / post comment

• "One shouldn’t imagine that it’s over": Tariq Ali on Thatcher's legacy

  
  
  Following the death of Margaret Thatcher, Tariq Ali discusses her legacy with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

  By Huw Lemmey / 09 April 2013 / post comment

• Tariq Ali: Hugo Chávez and me

  Once I asked whether he preferred enemies who hated him because they knew what he was doing or those who frothed and foamed out of ignorance. He laughed. The former was preferable, he explained, because they made him feel that he was on the right track. Hugo Chávez's death did not come as a surprise, but that does not make it easier to accept. We have lost one of the political giants of the post-communist era. Venezuela, its elites mired in corruption on a huge scale, had been considered a secure outpost of Washington and, at the other extreme, the Socialist International. Few thought of the country before his victories. After 1999, every major media outlet of the west felt obliged to send a correspondent. Since they all said the same thing (the country was supposedly on the verge of a communist-style dictatorship) they would have been better advised to pool their resources.

  I first met him in 2002, soon after the military coup instigated by Washington and Madrid had failed and subsequently on numerous occasions. He had asked to see me during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He inquired: "Why haven't you been to Venezuela? Come soon." I did. What appealed was his bluntness and courage. What often appeared as sheer impulsiveness had been carefully thought out and then, depending on the response, enlarged by spontaneous eruptions on his part. At a time when the world had fallen silent, when centre-left and centre-right had to struggle hard to find some differences and their politicians had become desiccated machine men obsessed with making money, Chávez lit up the political landscape.
  

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  By / 06 March 2013 / post comment