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Imperialism Letters

Letter – Humanitarian intervention

Thanks to SV for disclosing the truth about Samantha Power. Biden is making many hawkish appointments to his foreign policy team. Power is one of them, though she always proclaims her alleged “humanitarian” motives. The Agency for International Development, which she will head, funds many US interventions in the Third […]

Ireland

What type of united Ireland do we want?

It’s easy to misinterpret what’s published in newspapers, and particularly so when the narrative appears favourable to a reader’s own point of view. However, when three pillars of the British establishment’s conservative press publish articles raising doubts about Northern Ireland’s future within the United Kingdom, and all published within the space of one week, it is at least worth reflecting on the significance of this phenomenon.

Current Affairs International

Whatsapp in pursuit of monopoly, and the alternative

For almost a decade Facebook has aggressively set out to acquire a monopoly in the field of social media communications. Popular communications platforms, such as Instagram and Whatsapp, which rivalled Facebook’s own services, were acquired (in 2012 and 2014, respectively), to consolidate the market and ultimately to profit from a captive audience locked behind “walled gardens” and unable to communicate between platforms.

International

Let’s move forward!

Scientists and environmentalists, decades ago, warned the world of an impending global pandemic. Those in the corridors of power who paid no heed to it are now surprised and shocked. Scientists have raised the alarm over a greater catastrophe endangering our very survival on this

Imperialism Ireland

Brexit and national unity

After nearly half a century of membership of the EEC and then the EU, Britain finally left on 1 January 2021. The period leading up to its departure was heavily choreographed, with displays of brinkmanship, the stock in trade of the European imperial powers of Britain, France and Germany and the other old imperial states of Europe that make up the core of the EU.

The fact that the particular characteristics of Brexit arose out of an inter-imperialist conflict and were determined by the most right-wing forces in Britain may have significantly

Current Affairs Ireland Socialism

Capitalism is bad for our mental health

Ireland’s mental health crisis was already in a bad way before covid; now it’s getting even worse. Covid has not caused the crisis, it has only made it even more serious.

As quarantine conditions worsen, it’s becoming more apparent that isolation and alienation are a serious danger to human beings. Yet alienation is a central component of capitalism as a system.

Political Economy Socialism

Work, our mental health, and the disease of neoliberalism

Even our primate ancestors “worked”; they had “jobs”—not as we know them today but jobs nonetheless. And they “worked” to feed themselves and their offspring, just as we must do today. But of course they worked only to satisfy their needs: there was no working for someone, or being exploited.

Early human farming too was to survive; but then, with improving farming techniques, not only did…

Obituary

Mel Corry (1964–2021)

Mel Corry, who died on 13 January, was a lifelong trade unionist, a member of the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum, and a former member of the National Executive Committee of the CPI. A native of Lurgan and former textile worker, from 2008 he was a tutor with Trademark in […]

Campaigns Political Economy Socialism

Water is a human right

At the end of 2020 the water “futures” of California, the largest state in the United States in population and economy, were floated on Wall Street for the first time, under the banner of Nasdaq Veles California Water Index.1 It was the first flotation of its kind, offering potential investors the opportunity to hedge against the future availability of water in California: in simple terms, to get rich from the scarcity of the most important substance for all human, animal and plant life to survive.

Current Affairs International

Social media immoderation

Modern on-line social media are a continuing large-scale social experiment as much as we want to consider them a norm of modern life.

Whenever the debate on the effects, drawbacks or benefits of on-line social media arises, there is always an attempt to draw analogies with physical social spaces, such as a public square or perhaps the village community centre.