Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
There is a sense of déjà vu in the events that took place in Afghanistan, reminding us of what happened in 1975 when the United States was defeated in Vietnam. However, the outcomes are as different as chalk and cheese. If the outcome in Vietnam was a socialist government, which […]
In this seemingly never-ending “Decade of Commemorations,” with such highlights as the recent commemoration of partition (!), some things seem to get forgotten (besides truth and common sense)—things close to home and things far away. Close to home, here in Galway, it won’t be the execution of Commandant Liam Mellows […]
On 18 May the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications issued a policy statement on the importing of fracked gas, in which it was noted that the Programme for Government contained a commitment to banning it. The press release stated that because of EU membership, in particular EU Directive […]
This year is the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Internment League, founded in London after the introduction of internment in the North of Ireland in 1971. The League, which brought together Irish and British left-wing campaigners, had two core demands: the immediate release of all internees, and the immediate withdrawal of […]
Following its most recent meeting, the National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland, is calling upon the trade union movement and progressive forces to demand that the Government break with the failed approach of allowing the EU Commission to control vaccination strategy and instead to obtain additional supplies […]
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 […]
Narcotics are, in some ways, just like any other commodity. Be it oil, natural gas, sugar, or coffee, under capitalism their purpose is to allow profits to be made. Hyper-consumerism has led to unequal levels of development in the Global North and South, social alienation in domestic markets, and environmental […]
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 […]
Rich countries, with 14 per cent of the world’s population, have secured 53 per cent of the “Western” covid vaccines. Meanwhile you have to search hard for information on vaccines being produced or tested in other countries, including Russia and Cuba. Almost all the Pfizer-Biontech vaccines will go to rich […]
Dialectics says that everything is changing and everything is evolving. Capitalism is no exception—so can tactics for abolishing capitalism be the same? Capitalism was nascent during Marx’s time; and by the time Lenin arrived it had evolved into imperialism, which he said is the highest stage of capitalism. Marx’s assessment […]
You don’t need to have an ideological position to recognise that capitalism is rotten to the core. It is a massive lie from start to finish; but, like any lie that is repeated time and time again, the lies become “truth.”
Whether you are in the middle of a supermarket or the middle of a war, you are surrounded by a cushion of lies, designed to both confuse you and comfort you and always aimed to make you believe that you have no power.
NEXT YEAR the unashamedly right- wing and sectarian Orange Order will mark the centenary of the creation of the Northern Ireland statelet with “a massive number of events,” the centrepiece of which will be a huge parade from Stormont in May 2021.
It’s a familiar story: Western imperialist forces are orchestrating another coup in a sovereign state while the bourgeois media in Ireland bombard us with sympathetic coverage of anti-government protesters and the “democratic opposition,” whose ranks are brimming with the most vicious reactionaries. Behind the scenes, the United States and the […]
Max Blumenthal, The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump(London and New York: Verso, 2019).
THIS IS A valuable book, as it charts how the United States, since the late 1970s up until today, has deliberately funded and supported Islamist jihadists to obtain foreign-policy goals.
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
HIS QUESTION Is often posed to those who even dare suggest the possibility of a socialist future.
In today’s marketised business world we’ve been conditioned into nihilism, a belief in Man’s inherent evil, and to expect nothing more than what we get; it’s essentially Christianity without Heaven at the end. “Socialism” and “revolution” are merely idealistic dreams from the past. But the cynics do ask a fair question: When will the working class take ownership of the state and society?