A crunch point is approaching in the ongoing saga surrounding the highly-indebted Italian economy. This could spark a revival of the dormant euro crisis.

When Venezuelan oppositionist and newspaper editor Teodoro Petkoff died on October 31, at the age of 86, the world’s capitalist media and reactionary intellectuals on the continent piled in to sing his praises. However, to workers in Venezuela above a certain age, he is remembered as “Teochoro” (Teothief), the man who as Minister in the Caldera government in the 1990s carried out a brutal program of privatisations and above all stole the workers’ social benefits.