Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Almost a year ago, President Xi Jinping made a historic visit to Riyadh, followed by several landmark deals. Trade between the two reached $106bn in 2022 – almost double the value of Saudi Arabian-US trade. Recently, the central banks of China and Saudi Arabia have agreed on their first currency […]
A current fashion within the left is the championing of multipolarity. It assumes a bloc of states in different countries, some with more mixed economies than others, as objectively “anti-imperialist” insofar as they present a threat to the American hegemon. Some of this interpretation is jaundiced, especially when one considers […]
■ Carlos Martinez, The East Is Still Red (Glasgow: Praxis Press, 2023) The East Is Still Red is a very readable and able defence of the current People’s Republic of China. The basic argument of the book is that China is on the right path with regard to building socialism, […]
The threat to completely abandon what remains of Irish neutrality is a continuing and increasing one. The recent intervention of President Higgins may have slowed down Micheál Martin’s march to NATO, but the threat remains. Rather than applying for NATO membership immediately, the ruling class have set their sights as […]
On 15 May 2023, an interview with the French ambassador in Ireland titled “Ireland must ‘pull its weight’ on increasing defence” was published in The Irish Examiner. Most of the interview focuses on the perceived need for the European Union to reduce its industrial and energy dependence on other global […]
A recent article in Socialist Voice – entitled “Multipolarity and US Hegemony” – suggests that U.S. imperialism drives dollar dominance and that the dollar can only weaken by the political actions of countries like China. However, the risk to dollar dominance is unlikely to be determined in the last instance […]
The recent visit of the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan has sharply increased the prospect of war in the region. The Chinese government and people strongly believe Taiwan to be their territory; and the no. 3 official in the US government visiting Taiwan is […]
Does anybody know what real purpose Seanad Éireann serves? Not only is its membership appointed by a flawed and undemocratic process but its programme is erratic and tendentious and frequently overlooks crucial issues. Little illustrates this better than its agenda last month. While giving prejudicial vent to its hostility towards […]
Already the big intellectual guns of US imperialism—powerful professors and leading editorial writers—are being hauled out to tell us that there will not be a “new cold war” with China. Someone should have told the lackeys that their masters have actually increased the pace of the military, economic and ideological […]
The dog-whistle calls of “Freedom for Cuba” that reverberated round the world on 11 July, emanating from a mix of forces in Cuba, which were carefully manipulated and crafted by the CIA and US anti-Cuban forces abroad, shed a great deal of light not only on US foreign policy hypocrisy […]
According to its high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, the EU at present has 5,000 troops stationed around the world under its aegis.¹ Most of its operations are based in Africa (as shown in part 1 of this article). However, the EU’s most significant operation on the European continent […]
The article by Alan Farrell in the March issue under the heading “In defence of China” raises some extremely important questions but offers answers that are unsustainable. The writer asks three questions to represent the concerns expressed by many people, and proceeds to answer them. But the questions themselves are […]
This article seeks to explore the apparent contradictions inherent in China today and to examine the evidence relating to criticisms made of the Chinese state by some figures and organisations on the left. Broadly speaking, critiques of China from the left fall under three categories: that the rapid growth and […]
In 2008 the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, expressed his view that “the root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.”¹ This is an old right-wing libertarian talking-point: “When the state spends money to achieve social aims, it devalues money in general, which is an attack on people with lots of money.”
Governments in capitalist societies have given priority to protecting “the economy” before protecting the people’s health and well-being, while the covid pandemic has accelerated an existing deep global economic recession. Such countries as Cuba, Viet Nam and China, on the other hand, which have a fundamentally socialist-based economy, have given […]
WHATEVER WAY one looks at it, the reality is that this crisis, and its four forms— environmental, health, economic, and political—will prove to be worse than 2008. The fact that China’s economy has slowed down, for the first time in decades, only shows that this crisis will be a global affair, rather than a Western financial crisis, as happened in 2008. The 2020 crash will be a