Month: September 2010

First published: 21 August 2006 If any further indication were required of the terrorist character of the Israeli state it is merely necessary to take the Palestinian casualty figures since mid June. [Read more]

First published: 13 June 2006

One of the chief areas where David Cameron has attempted to ‘rebrand’ the image of the Conservative Party is regarding women. This is unsurprising. The decline of support for the Tory party among women has been its single biggest loss of electoral support in the last two decades.

For most of the 20th century women were an electoral bastion of the Conservative party. From when women first won the vote in 1918 until the 1990s, they systematically voted in higher proportions for the Tories than did men. However this lead gradually eroded during the second half of the 20th century. From the 1990s onwards a higher proportion of women than men began to vote ‘left’ – i.e. for Labour rather than the Tories. This ran in parallel with the development in the US where more women than men now vote Democrat than Republican.

First published: 23 October 2006

Lenin, in The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, gave the classic formulation of the relation of Marxism to previous thought: ‘the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism… (it) provides men… with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced.’ (Lenin, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 19, pages 21 –28.)

First published: May 1989 ‘Despite the revulsion incest has provoked, it opens a frightening but vital line of questioning about ordinary family relations. It identifies tensions between family solidarity and individual autonomy [Read more]

First published: May 1990

The return of the ballot box in several key Latin American countries (a rarity in the last ten years) has been hailed as the return of democracy in the continent.

This is less than half the truth. While some of the most vicious dictatorships have gone, in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, and others have either been severely weakened or thrown into total disarray as in Paraguay and Haiti, this ‘democratic’ wave has not touched the decisive countries in Central America such as Guatemala and El Salvador, and the policies of the new civilian governments are determined by strict limitations imposed by the outgoing military and the utterly capitulating character of the parties coming to office. Besides, the ‘democracy’ that has been introduced is severely faulty, to put it mildly.

First published: Dec 1999

The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia set a precedent for unilateral military action by the United States and its allies outside of any framework of international law – making clear that such wars would not be subject to vetoes by China or Russia within the United Nations Security Council. This was not an ‘accident’ necessitated by the urgency for humanitarian intervention, as NATO claimed. The bombing was meticulously planned many months in advance. The destruction of the post-World War Two international political order was rather a central goal of the bombing and the way in which it was launched.