Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The New Year and the annual (temporary) surge in gym membership, attendance at diet groups and body-shaming begins anew. In the coming days and weeks women (and, increasingly, men) will be cajoled or bullied by television programmes, magazine covers, newspaper articles and advertisers to lose a dress or trouser size, […]
The Anthropocene is the term used to describe the geological period in which human activity has been the main determining factor in the Earth System. This influence has been overwhelmingly negative and has led the Earth into its sixth great extinction event. While capitalism will portray this as the fault […]
Palestinians have called on members of the European Broadcasting Union to boycott the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest if it is hosted by Israel, regardless of where it is held.
This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Fidel Castro declared at the time: “Tyranny has been overthrown. The joy is immense. And yet, much remains to be done.” Despite the decades-long blockade imposed on Cuba by the United States, and its long […]
The Ministry of Public Health of the Republic of Cuba, committed to the solidarity and humanistic principles that have guided Cuba’s medical co-operation for fifty-five years, has been participating in the programme More Doctors for Brazil since its inception in August 2013. This initiative, launched by Dilma Rousseff, who was […]
Russian cinema today explores capitalism against the backdrop of a past socialist experience. Open-minded visitors to former socialist states, and particularly to Russia, will come across this living memory and frequently an acknowledgement of the loss of humanist values since the defeat of socialism in Europe. It is interesting too, […]
The dominant ideological story of central banks is that removing them from the control of governments depoliticised them and made them neutral, “scientific” actors in the economy. The argument goes that, as economics developed into a science, with the primary aim of keeping inflation low, making central banks independent allowed […]
Global debt is now becoming a major factor in the instability of the system of capitalism. Figures show that in the second quarter of 2018 global debt reached a new record, rising to $260,000 billion. Of this total, 61 per cent—$160 trillion—is private debt of the non-financial sector, while 23 […]
“Oxford Union votes down motion on reunification of Ireland” read a recent headline in the Belfast Telegraph. It was the type of news story guaranteed to warm the hearts of delegates gathering in Belfast a few days later for the DUP’s annual conference. Coupled with the attendance at the event […]
Communist movement gaining in strength globally In late November the 20th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties took place in Athens. These meetings have proved very important gatherings, invaluable in pulling together the communist parties around the world after the overthrow of socialist power in the former socialist countries. […]
Peace activists from around the world gathered in Dublin from 16 to 18 November for the First International Conference Against US and NATO Military Bases, organised by the Global Campaign Against US and NATO Military Bases. The meeting was supported by the US Peace Council and the World Peace Council […]
It was this writer’s privilege and pleasure to attend the 55th congress of the Communist Party of Britain, held in London on 17 and 18 November, as a guest and representative of the Communist Party of Ireland. Well attended by comrades from England, Scotland, and Wales, there were also numerous […]
Empathy is most often discussed in examples of its absence. The idea of a human as unempathetic is the stuff of nightmares, horror films, and late-night true-crime documentaries: the psychopath motivated to kill by an innate evil impulse. Like most dramatic pop psychology, this is an oversimplification. Psychopaths are as […]
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o turned eighty this year. He has written prolifically. Arguably his most famous (non-fiction) book is Decolonising the Mind, about the constructive role that language plays in national culture, history, and identity. The reclaiming of African languages as keepers of memory, of African history, became central to Ngũgĩ’s […]
Speech at the international communist meeting, Athens, by Eugene McCartan, general secretary, CPI Comrades, Imperialism is mired in an ever-deepening crisis. At the global, regional and national levels the system is now enmeshed, through its contradictions, in several interconnected crises—economic, political, environmental, cultural, and moral. It is the role of […]
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland 9 November 2018 This November is the centenary of the ending of the Imperialist War, 1914–1918, fought between British imperialism and its allies on the one side and German imperialism and its allies on the other. It is believed that more than 10 […]