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Political Economy

Who said that?

“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”—Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, responding to a critic who pointed out (correctly) that the US regime organised a coup in Bolivia to secure lithium for the Musks of this world. “The US military has its knee on the throat […]

Letters

Letter – The health of the nation

In response to the letter by Jim Quinn to SV regarding my recent article “The health of the nation,” it seems Jim Quinn has also failed to join up the dots of the statistics and research in the article. The key point to the article is that the socio-economic failure […]

Culture

Writing at a time of plague

The Black Death was the most devastating pandemic ever recorded, resulting in the death of between 75 and 125 million people. It reached its peak in Europe between 1347 and 1351, having come on Italian merchant ships from Asia via the Silk Road. In fact the idea of quarantine originates […]

Ireland Political Statements

New “Programme for Government”: a new three-party government with the same old policies

Statement by the National Executive Committee, CPI 11 June 2020 The formation of the three-party coalition government in Dublin, and their agreement on a “programme for government,” is a case of more of the same—a continuation of the same old polices that favour the rich and powerful, policies that are […]

International Letters

Letter from the president of Cuba to the secretary-general of the United Nations

Havana, June 26, 2020 Year 62 of the Revolution His Excellency Mr. Antonio Gutérres United Nations Secretary-General New York Your Excellency: Seventy-five years after the member states of this organization signed the United Nations Charter, strict adherence to its purposes and principles, to international law and the preservation of multilateralism […]

Culture

The Wasp Network

The film Wasp Network has recently arrived on Netflix. It tells the story of the heroes known as the Cuban Five who successfully infiltrated anti-communist terrorist groups in Miami. The Wasp Network (La Red Avispa) was a creation of Cuban intelligence to thwart the efforts of such groups as Alpha […]

Culture

An Irishwoman’s novel of revolutionaries

■ Ethel Voynich, The Gadfly(1897) Liam Mellows read this novel while awaiting his execution, along with the other condemned men imprisoned by the Irish Free State during the Civil War (1922–23) for opposing the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which gave Ireland dominion status within the British Empire, rather than establishing an independent […]

Political Economy

Economic update: July

We are in the first moments of an economic crisis more serious than anything experienced in living memory. The World Bank’s “baseline forecast” envisages a “5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020—the deepest global recession in eight decades.”[1] Even that assumes we are living through the most optimistic scenario. […]

Political Economy

Who said this?

“By sowing chaos [abroad], they’ve got chaos at home. Everything they’ve been embedding into the world’s consciousness—they’re reaping it now.”—Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, on current events in the United States. “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”—African proverb […]