Donald Trump, the buddy of Putin, Erdogan, Sisi and Duterte, now calls Venezuela a “dictatorship” and slaps sanctions on President Nicolás Maduro. All this proves is that Maduro is more useful to Trump as an external demon. Can we oppose Maduro’s power-grab without legitimizing Trump’s hypocrisy?
There is an unseemly tone of gloating to conservative commentary on the crisis in Venezuela, with pundits pointing to the current chaos as evidence that "socialism" doesn't work. But a case can be made that, contrary to conservative and mainstream assumptions, the problem is precisely that the Bolivarian Revolution has been insufficiently revolutionary and socialist.
Venezuela's marginal but growing independent left has staked out a position rejecting Maduro's constitutional reform but also rejecting the right-wing leadership of the opposition. The Chavismo Crítico current held a press conference before the vote, pledging to struggle "for the re-establishment of the validity" of the 1999 constitution, the "rescue of the best of our revolution," and "overcoming the grave errors and deviations of those who pretend to serve as its political leadership."
Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement comes just as an unprecedentedly huge piece of Antarctica’s ice shelf is on the verge of breaking off from the continent. (Map: Geology.com)
Under diplomatic pressure, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed the Fairbanks Declaration on Arctic climate—but with caveats about how the US will not "rush" to change policy.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to lift restrictions placed on offshore oil drilling by the previous administration, opening vast areas to exploitation.
Is Trump's breach with Putin real, or is all the sudden sabre-rattling part of an elaborate charade to throw Congress off the scent of ongoing Trump-Putin collusion?
Amid growing crisis in Venezuela, it emerges that the country's state oil company, heavily indebted to Russian giant Rosneft, made a big donation to Trump's inauguration festivities.
Most of Barack Obama's actions to forestall climate change were wiped out as Trump revoked limits on emissions from power plants and opened federal lands to coal mining.
An Under Secretary of State issued a permit for the Keystone Pipeline, after State Department chief and ex-Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson recused himself from the decision.
Trump's approval of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines comes just as he has withdrawn the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a seeming contradiction in his agenda.
Several states across Mexico have been shaken by days of angry protests in response to a jump in the price of gasoline sparked by a new deregulation policy.
