contributions

Speakers
Diane Abbott MP, Tariq Ali author, Tony Benn president Stop the War, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Lindsey German convenor Stop the War, Edward Horgan Peace and Neutrality Alliance, Ireland, Kate Hudson General Secretary CND, Joan Humphreys Military Families Against the War, Owen Jones author, Mother Agnes Mariam (…)

Predicting a Venezuelan apocalypse won’t make it happen: in this oil-rich country the only thing imploding is poverty
For more than a decade people opposed to the government of Venezuela have argued that its economy would implode. Like communists in the 1930s rooting for the final crisis of capitalism, they saw economic collapse just around the corner. How frustrating it has been for them to witness only two recessions: one directly caused by the opposition’s oil strike (December 2002-May (…)

A VAST WASTELAND OF EFFORT SPENT: AMERICA’S RAMPAGE THROUGH THE MIDDLE EAST
John Chuckman
I read that six thousand people have been killed by sectarian violence so far this year in Iraq, surely a good rough measure of what America’s invasion achieved there. In Afghanistan, America’s chosen man publically disagrees with America’s ideas of what withdrawal means, how many occupying American forces should remain, and the role the Taleban should play. Killing remains a daily occurrence, (…)

Two hundred and fifty years ago the people of America were subject to an unrepresentative government controlled by powerful commercial interests. They rebelled and formed their own government, which has now come to be controlled by powerful commercial interests. Once again, "these are the times that try men’s souls." What lessons can we learn from history to help us through this crisis?
Samuel Adams was the Father of the American Revolution, and it was his formation of Committees of (…)

By Nicola Nasser*
More than two years on since the “revolution” of Feb. 2011, the security crisis is exacerbating by the day threatening Libya with an implosion charged with potential realistic risks to the geopolitical unity of the Arab north African country, turning this crisis into a national existential one. Obviously the status quo is unsustainable.
“Libya is imploding two years after the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi” was captured and killed on October 20,” Patrick Cockburn (…)

Polling shows Bachelet with a significant lead over her closest competitor, Evelyn Matthei. The two women
share a history in Chile’s tragic past when the democratically elected Salvador Allende was overthrown in a bloody coup
that the U.S. supported and helped to plan. Michelle Bachelet’s father, Gen. Alberto Bachelet, who was loyal to
President Allende and the Chilean constitution and rule of law, was arrested by Augusto Pinochet on September 11 1973,
the first 9/11. He was (…)

The political coma of the U.S. government induced by Congress and its failure to represent those who elect it can ultimately be traced to the unfair and complex system of income taxation. Better for the country and more equitable for its taxpayers would be a toll tax on the movement of all money along the nation’s economic highway. Not a national sales tax, not a value-added tax, not a flat income tax, and not a speculation tax, but rather a slight levy should be imposed on every single (…)

Australia has shifted to the climate change denialist extreme right - it has a new extreme right wing, pro-war, pro-Zionist, anti-environment, anti-science, US lackey, war criminal, climate criminal Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Federal Government headed by PM Tony Abbott. This extreme right wing Coalition Government is currently held in check by a Labor plus Greens majority in the Senate but after mid-2014 a new Senate will have an extreme right wing conservative majority and (…)

The movie “12 Years a Slave” is receiving rapturous reviews for depicting the antebellum South less as a gauzy land of elegant plantations than as the raw backdrop of monstrous brutality.
It’s terrific that, in the 21st century, we can squarely face 19th-century slavery. But let’s also acknowledge the modern versions of slavery in the world around us — and, yes, right here at home.
The United States is home to about 60,000 people who can fairly be called modern versions of slaves, (…)

Imagine you awake to the sound of a machine noisily buzzing over your house, and another machine nearby in the sky, and another. These machines and others like them have been around for months. They never leave. While you live in the United States, the machines belong to the government of Pakistan. The machines are unmanned drones armed with missiles. Every once in a while they blow up a house or a car or a couple of kids playing soccer or a grandmother walking to the store, sometimes a (…)