Who killed Mrs Gandhi? We know the name of the assassins, but did they act alone? In this fictional filmscript, Tariq Ali suggests that larger forces were at work, exploiting genuine Sikh grievances to settle their own score with a prime minister who, whatever her faults, was fiercely independent of Washington and safeguarded Indian sovereignty with a zeal inherited from her father. Provocative and suggestive, this script planned as the second of a series was never completed. The Assassination is published here for the first time and completes Ali's trilogy, with The Leopard and The Fox and A Banker For All Seasons.

MULE. Who created us? ROCINANTE. What kind of dumb question is that? The great master Cervantes, of course. Who else? MULE. God. ROCINANTE. Listen you obstinate fool. We're animals. We don't have to believe in God. That's meant for the superior species. MULE. Why did Cervantes create us? ROCINANTE. Because he was a genius. I think he made me a bit like himself. But those who ride us were not so lucky. Tariq Ali's latest play, The New Adventures of Don Quixote, can be read as homage to German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht as much as a playful tribute to Cervantes's masterwork. The central characters from the original novel, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, are mounted on their beasts of burden, Rocinante and the Mule, and Ali has them ride into the twenty-first century, where they are confronted by old vices familiar to them: war, greed, ethnic and religious prejudices, disappointed love, and economic crisis. Their story is satirical, and their songs are sad and angry. But there are odd moments of happiness for Quixote, when he imagines that a wounded US colonel is Dulcinea and allows himself to be seduced by her in a military hospital in Germany. Primarily interested in discovering the meaning of life and how it is molded by the world in which we live, Ali's theatrical device is the conversation between the two animals - Rocinante the philosopher and Mule the everyman who questions her relentlessly. Accompanied by numerous color performance stills of the play from its 2013 production in Germany, this volume is as intellectually stimulating as it is uproariously humorous.

The subject of numerous biographies and history books, Winston Churchill has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest of Englishmen. Even today, Boris Johnson in his failing attempts to be magisterial, has adopted many of his hero's mannerism! And, as Tariq Ali agrees, Churchill was undoubtedly right in 1940-41 to refuse to capitulate to fascism. However, he was also one of the staunchest defenders of empire and of Britain's imperial doctrine. In this coruscating biography, Tariq Ali challenges Churchill's vaulted record. Throughout his long career as journalist, adventurer, MP, military leader, statesman, and historian, nationalist self belief influenced Churchill's every step, with catastrophic effects. As a young man he rode into battle in South Africa, Sudan and India in order to maintain the Imperial order. As a minister during the first World War, he was responsible for a series of calamitous errors that cost thousands of lives. His attempt to crush the Irish nationalists left scars that have not yet healed. Despite his record as a defender of his homeland during the Second World War, he was willing to sacrifice more distant domains. Singapore fell due to his hubris. Over 3 Millions Bengalis starved in 1943 as a consequence of his policies. As a peace time leader, even as the Empire was starting to crumble, Churchill never questioned his imperial philosophy as he became one of the architects of the postwar world we live in today.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) is considered one of the great rationalist thinkers of the seventeenth century. His magnum opus, Ethics, in which he criticized the dualism of Descartes, solidified his reputation and greatly influenced the Enlightenment thinkers who would build from his work. Born in Amsterdam into a family of Sephardic Jews who had to take refuge there after they were expelled from Portugal, the precocious young scholar imbibed skepticism at an early age. By the time he was twenty-four, he had challenged what he called the "fairy tales" of the Old Testament and was excommunicated by the Synagogue. In this biographical play, Tariq Ali contextualizes Spinoza's philosophy by linking it to the turbulent politics of the period, in which Spinoza was deeply involved. Ali originally wrote The Trials of Spinoza as part of a series on philosophy for British Channel Four television, and this publication also includes a DVD of that original television production. This work will be welcomed as a testament to the continuing interest in and relevance of Spinoza's work and as an example of Ali's eloquent and always politically engaged writing.

Tariq Ali revisits his formative years as a young radical. Reissued for the 1968 anniversary, Street-Fighting Years captures the mood and energy of the era of hope and passion as Ali tracks the growing significance of the nascent protest movement. Through his own story, he recounts a counter history of the 60s rocked by the effects of the Vietnam war, the aftermath of the revolutionary insurgencies led by Che Guevara, the brutal suppression of the Prague Spring and the student protests on the streets of Europe and America. It is a story that takes us from Paris and Prague to Hanoi and Bolivia, encountering along the way Malcolm X, Bertrand Russell, Marlon Brando, Henry Kissinger, and Mick Jagger. This edition includes a new introduction, as well as the famous interview conducted by Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1971.

The subject of numerous biographies and history books, Winston Churchill has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest of Englishmen. Even today, Boris Johnson in his failing attempts to be magisterial, has adopted many of his hero's mannerism! And, as Tariq Ali agrees, Churchill was undoubtedly right in 1940-41 to refuse to capitulate to fascism. However, he was also one of the staunchest defenders of empire and of Britain's imperial doctrine. In this coruscating biography, Tariq Ali challenges Churchill's vaulted record. Throughout his long career as journalist, adventurer, MP, military leader, statesman, and historian, nationalist self belief influenced Churchill's every step, with catastrophic effects. As a young man he rode into battle in South Africa, Sudan and India in order to maintain the Imperial order. As a minister during the first World War, he was responsible for a series of calamitous errors that cost thousands of lives. His attempt to crush the Irish nationalists left scars that have not yet healed. Despite his record as a defender of his homeland during the Second World War, he was willing to sacrifice more distant domains. Singapore fell due to his hubris. Over 3 Millions Bengalis starved in 1943 as a consequence of his policies. As a peace time leader, even as the Empire was starting to crumble, Churchill never questioned his imperial philosophy as he became one of the architects of the postwar world we live in today.

The NATO occupation of Afghanistan is over, and a balance-sheet can be drawn. These essays on war and peace in the region reveal Tariq Ali at his sharpest and most prescient. Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Compared to Iraq, Afghanistan became the 'good war.' But a stalemate ensued, and the Taliban waited out the NATO contingents. Today, with the collapse of the puppet regime in Kabul, what does the future hold for a traumatised Afghan people? Will China become the dominant influence in the country? Tariq Ali has been following the wars on Afghanistan for forty years. He opposed Soviet military intervention in 1979, predicting disaster. He was also a fierce critic of its NATO sequel, 'Operation Enduring Freedom'. In a series of trenchant commentaries, he described the tragedies inflicted on Afghanistan, as well as the semi-Talibanisation and militarisation of neighbouring Pakistan. Most of his predictions proved accurate. The Forty Year War in Afghanistan brings together the best of his writings and includes a new introduction.

During the late Seventies and Eighties a new logo began to jostle for space with the more traditional landmarks on high streets throughout Britain. It was the badge of a remarkable Third World Bank...the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International).BCCI soon become a global corporate empire with former US Presidents, ex-British Prime Ministers and a range of dictators on its payroll, all helping with promoting the company. Tariq Ali was the first public voice to warn that the Bank was not all it seemed to be. Indeed, many of its own employees called BCCI the "Bank of Crooks and Cheats Incorporated". Some political analysts also predicted the companys collapse. The Bank finally imploded amidst a welter of scandal. This revealing screenplay presents an account of the rise and fall of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Here, Ali reveals how BCCI lasted so long, how financial regulators failed to see what was going on and how BCCI pioneered a mode of operation that prepared the way for an even greater financial cataclysm, the fall of Enron.

In this novel from esteemed political writer Tariq Ali, a father, Vlady, loses his job when he refuses to renounce socialist beliefs in the newly unified Germany--and as a result wants to explain to his alienated son what their family's long and passionate involvement with communism has really meant. The story he tells is of Ludwik, a Polish secret agent and Gertrude, Vlady's mother, whose desire for Ludwik is matched only by her devotion to the communist ideal. As the plot unfolds through the political upheavals of the twentieth century, Vlady describes the hopes aroused by the Bolshevik revolution and discovers the almost unbearable truth about the family's betrayal. Written with deep political insight and sensitivity, Fear of Mirrors relates the extraordinary history of Central Europe from the perspective of those on the other side of the Cold War. "Ali folds his drama around the tight, cultlike atmosphere of Communist Party life, peopled by idealists who find their lives encumbered by betrayals, power grabs, and corruption and who, in the post-Communist era, must come to terms with their complicity with Stalinism. . . . This is a valuable book, especially for those interested in the current thinking of the European left."--Publishers Weekly, on the first edition

The BBC commissioned Tariq Ali to write a three-part TV series on the circumstances leading to the overthrow, trial and execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the first elected prime minister of Pakistan. As rehearsals were about to begin, the BBC hierarchy--under pressure from the Foreign Office--decided to cancel the project. Why? General Zia ul Haq, the dictator at the time, was leading the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He was backed by the USA. According to expert legal opinion, there was a possibility of a whole range of defamation suits from the head of state to judges involved in the case. In consequence, it was decided not to broadcast this hard-hitting and provocative play. The Leopard and the Fox presents both the script and the story of censorship.

The revolutionary world leader's extraordinary life, published for the centenary of Lenin's death Commissioned by Oliver Stone in 2015 to commemorate the Russian Revolution, Tariq Ali's captivating screenplay of the life and times of Vladimir Lenin puts flesh on the bones of the historical record and gets its pulse racing. From the author of The Dilemmas of Lenin, the drama captures the enigma of its central character. Ali shows Lenin in his rush from Switzerland to Petrograd by train to grasp his moment in history and the force of his personality on the tumult he found there. He made a revolution and remade a nation. Interwoven with the politics is an exploration of Lenin's personal life, especially his love for Inessa Armand. In the introduction, Ali argues that, despite the difficulties, a serious cinematic assessment of Lenin is still needed. Unfortunately, two very different attempts to film one failed. This first draft provides the basis for something on a grander scale at some stage in the future. Praise for The Dilemmas of Lenin: 'Aims to rescue Lenin from both liberal caricature and Soviet hagiography by recovering the realism and dynamism of his political thought' David Sessions, Nation 'An incredibly powerful, panoramic, and insightful study of the central revolutionary figure of the twentieth century' Paul LeBlanc, author of Lenin and the Revolutionary Party

Ken Livingstone is a product of the political changes that have already taken place in the Labour Party. As Leader of the Greater London Council he has provided a voice and a vision for tens of thousands of party activists and Labour supporters, in the process implementing a set of measures that indicate the possibilities of a real alternative to Thatcherism. His determined opposition on the Falklands War, subsidised public transport, Ireland, the 1984 miners strike, sexual liberation and racism has made him a far more effective spokesperson for Labour than the shadow luminaries who occupy the front benches in the House of Commons. In these fascinating conversations with Tariq Ali, the Marxist writer and activist debarred from the Labour Party by Kinnock/Hattersley, the two men discuss the future of Labour and socialist politics in Britain. What emerges is a picture of Livingstone as a formidable socialist politician and an adroit tactician, who displays a refreshing ability to discard the stale and battered formulae of traditional Labourism. Socialism is defended with humour, warmth and passion in a discussion that ranges from the merits of proportional representation to the delights of herbaceous borders in London's parks. In a polemical introductory essay, 'Labourism and the Pink Professors', Tariq Ali contests the views of Bernard Crick and Eric Hobsbawm, which have become the 'common sense' of the consensual Establishment in the Labour Party and the liberal media.

We are living in an age of crisis-or an age in which everything is labeled a crisis. Financial, debt, and refugee "crises" have erupted. The word has also been applied to the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Brexit, the 2016 U.S. election, and many other international events. Yet the term has contradictory political and strategic meanings for those challenging power structures and those seeking to preserve them. For critics of the status quo, can the rhetoric of crisis be used to foment urgency around issues like climate change and financialization, or does framing a situation as a "crisis" play into the hands of the existing political order, which then seeks to tighten the leash by creating a state of emergency? Critical Theory at a Crossroads presents conversations with prominent theorists about the crises that have marked the past years, the protest movements that have risen up in response, and the use of the term in political discourse. Tariq Ali, Rosi Braidotti, Wendy Brown, Maurizio Lazzarato, Angela McRobbie, Jean-Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, Jacques Ranciere, Saskia Sassen, and Joseph Vogl offer their views on contemporary challenges and how we might address them, candidly discussing the alternatives that new social movements have offered, alongside an exchange between Zygmunt Bauman and Roberto Esposito on theories of community. Sparring over crucial developments in these past years of catastrophe and the calamity of everyday life under capitalism, they shed light on how crises and the discourse of crisis can both obscure and reveal fundamental aspects of modern societies.

Throughout the ages and across every continent, people have struggled against those in power and raised their voices in protest-rallying others around them or, sometimes, inspiring uprisings many years later. This anthology, global in scope, presents voices of dissent from every era of human history: speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos. Every age has its iconoclasts, and yet the greatest among them build on the words and actions of their forerunners. The Verso Book of Dissent should be in the arsenal of every rebel who understands that words and ideas are the ultimate weapons.

In the classic tradition of the philosopher - activist, Daniel Bensaid tells the story of a life deeply entwined with the history of both the French and the international Left. From his family bistro in a staunchly red neighborhood of Toulouse to the founding of the Jeunesses communistes re volutionnaires in the 1960s, from the joyous explosion of May 1968 to the painful experience of defeat in Latin America, from the re-reading of Marx to the Marrano trail, Bensaid relates a life of ideological and practical struggle in which he unflinchingly sought to understand capitalism without ever succumbing to its temptations."

Night of the Golden Butterfly concludes the Islam Quintet-Tariq Ali's much lauded series of historical novels, over twenty years in the writing, which has been translated into a dozen languages Completing an epic panorama that began in fifteenth-century Moorish Spain, the concluding novel moves between the cities of the twenty-first century, from Lahore to London, from Paris to Beijing. The narrator is rung one morning and reminded that he owes a debt of honour. The creditor is Mohammed Aflatun-known as Plato-an irascible but gifted painter living in a Pakistan where "human dignity has become a wreckage." Plato, who once specialized in stepping back from the limelight, now wants his life story written. As the tale unravels we meet Plato's London friend Alice Stepford, now a leading music critic in New York; Mrs. "Naughty" Latif, the Islamabad housewife whose fondness for generals forces her to flee to the salons of intellectually fashionable Paris, where she becomes an overnight celebrity, hailed as the Diderot of the Islamic world; and there's Jindie, the Golden Butterfly of the title, the narrator's first love. The daughter of a Chinese family long settled in Lahore, Jindie is now married to his best friend, a Republican heart surgeon in DC, whose children cannot forgive him for saving the life of a much-despised politician. Interwoven with this chronicle of contemporary life is the turbulent history of Jindie's family. Her great forebear, Du Wenxiu, led a Muslim rebellion in Yunnan in the nineteenth century and ruled the region from his capital Dali for almost a decade as Sultan Suleiman. Night of the Golden Butterfly shows Ali in full flight, at once imaginative and intelligent, satirical and stimulating.

The fourth novel in Tariq Ali's 'Islam Quintet' charts the life and loves of the medieval cartographer Muhammed al-Idrisi. Torn between his close friendship with the sultan and his friends who are leaving the island or plotting a resistance to Norman rule, Idrisi finds temporary solace in the harem; but his conscience is troubled... A Sultan in Palermo is a mythic novel in which pride, greed, and lust intermingle with resistance and greatness. It echoes a past that can still be heard today. Praise for the Islam Quintet: "A richly woven tapestry that even before its completion merits comparison with Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo trilogy." Kirkus Reviews

Written early in 2010 and initially published in September 2010, "The Obama Syndrome" predicted the Obama administration's historic midterm defeat. But unlike myriad commentators who have since pinned responsibility for that Democratic Party collapse on the "reform" president's lack of firm resolve, Ali's critique located the problem in Obama's notion of reform itself. Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency by promising to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and his economic team brought the architects of the financial crisis into the White House. Small wonder then that the "War on Terror"--torture in Bagram, occupation in Iraq, appeasement in Israel, and escalation in Pakistan--continues. And that Wall Street and the country's biggest corporations have all profited at the expense of America's working class and poor.
Now a thoroughly updated paperback continues the story through the midterms, including a trenchant analysis of the Tea Party, and Obama's decision to continue with his predecessor's tax cuts for the rich. Ali asks whether--in the absence of a progressive upheaval from below--US politics is permanently mired in moderate Republicanism. Already called "a comprehensive account" of the problems with Obama ("The Huffington Post"), this new edition is sure to provide a more "powerful boost to Obama dissenters on the left" ("Pittsburgh Post-Gazette").

The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela has brought Hugo Chavez to world attention as the foremost challenger of the neoliberal consensus and American foreign policy. Drawing on first-hand experience of Venezuela and meetings with Chavez, Tariq Ali shows how Chavez's views have polarized Latin America and examines the hostility directed against his administration. Contrasting the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutionary processes, Ali discusses the enormous influence of Fidel Castro on Chavez, President of Bolivia Evo Morales and, in this fully updated edition, the newly elected President of Ecuador Rafael Correa, the latest addition to the "Axis of Hope." Infused with references to the culture and poetry of South America, Pirates of the Caribbean guides us through a world divided between privilege and poverty, a continent that is once again on the march.

The aerial attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, a global spectacle of unprecedented dimensions, generated an enormous volume of commentary. The inviolability of the American mainland, breached for the first time since 1812, led to extravagant proclamations by the pundits. It was a new world-historical turning point. The 21st century, once greeted triumphantly as marking the dawn of a worldwide neo-liberal civilization, suddenly became menaced. The choice presented from the White House and its supporters was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against terrorism or be damned.

Tariq Ali challenges these assumptions, arguing instead that what we have experienced is the return of History in a horrific form, with religious symbols playing a part on both sides: 'Allah's revenge, ' 'God is on Our Side' and 'God Bless America.' The visible violence of September 11 was the response to the invisible violence that has been inflicted on countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine and Chechnya. Some of this has been the direct responsibility of the United States and Russia. In this wide-ranging book that provides an explanation for both the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and new forms of Western colonialism, Tariq Ali argues that many of the values proclaimed by the Enlightenment retain their relevance, while portrayals of the American Empire as a new emancipatory project are misguided.

Karl Marx was not only the great theorist of capitalism, he was also a superb journalist, politician and historian. In these brand-new editions of Marx s Political Writings we are able to see the depth and range of his mature work from 1848 through to the end of his life, from The Communist Manifesto to The Class Struggles in France and The Critique of the Gotha Programme. Each book has a new introduction from a major contemporary thinker, to shed new light on these vital texts. Volume 3: The First International and After The crucial texts of Marx s later years notably The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme count among his most important work. These articles include a searching analysis of the tragic but inspiring failure of the Paris Commune, as well as essays on German unification, the Irish question, the Polish national movement and the possibility of revolution in Russia. The founding documents of the First international and polemical pieces attacking the disciples of Proudhon and Bakunin and the advocates of reformism, by contrast, reveal a tactical mastery that has influenced revolutionary movements ever since. In a new introduction the renowned Marxist David Harvey sheds light on the evolution of Marx s notions of democracy and politics.

More than a decade after the birth of contemporary social movements in the Middle East and North Africa scholars are asking what these movements have achieved and how we should evaluate their lasting legacies. The quiet encroachments of MENA counterrevolutionary forces in the post-Arab Spring era have contributed to the revival of an outdated Orientalist discourse of Middle East exceptionalism, implying that the region's culture is exceptionally immune to democratic movements, values, and institutions. This volume, inspired by critical post-colonial/decolonial studies, and interdisciplinary perspectives of social movement theories, gender studies, Islamic studies, and critical race theory, challenges and demystifies the myth of "MENA Exceptionalism". Composted of three sections, the book first places MENA in the larger global context and sheds light on the impact of geopolitics on the current crises, showing how a postcolonial critique better explains the crisis of democratic social movements and the resilience of authoritarianism. The second section focuses on the unfinished projects of contemporary MENA social movements and their quest for freedom, social justice, and human dignity. Contributors examine specific cases of post-Islamist movements, the Arab youth, student, and other popular non-violent movements. In the final section, the book problematizes the exceptionalist idea of gender passivity and women's exclusion, which reduces the reality of gender injustice to some eternal and essentialized Muslim/MENA mindset. Contributors address this theory by placing gender as an independent category of thought and action, demonstrating the quest for gender justice movements in MENA, and providing contexts to the cases of gender injustice to challenge simplistic, ahistorical and culturalist assumptions.

In working together on two challenging new documentaries - South of the Border and the forthcoming Untold History of the United States - Oliver Stone, the filmmaker, engaged with author and filmmaker Tariq Ali in a hard-hitting conversation on the politics of history. Their dialogue brings to light a number of forgotten - or buried - episodes of history. From the U.S. intervention against the Russian Revolution to the connections between Presidents and the Saudi royal family, no stone is left unturned and no topic is sacred in this insightful exchange.