Israel lobbyist funded Labour’s new leader

23 April 2020 — The Electronic Intifada

Asa Winstanley

Trevor Chinn (left) at an event he co-hosted in 2018 with Israeli ambassador Mark Regev (second left). Chinn for years funded anti-Corbyn efforts. (UJIA)

A multi-millionaire pro-Israel lobbyist donated $62,000 to help Keir Starmer win the UK Labour Party’s leadership election, it was revealed last week.

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“The struggle to tell the truth through stories”: An interview with British film and television producer Tony Garnett—Part 1

23 October 2013 — WSWS

Part 2 Here

In a retrospective this summer, “Seeing Red,” the British Film Institute (BFI) celebrated the work of veteran film and television producer Tony Garnett. The BFI described Garnett as one of television’s “most influential figures,” who “produced and fostered a succession of provocative, radical and sometimes incendiary dramas.” Continue reading

Are we being served? By William Bowles

21 October 2013

Central to us on the left is the dilemma of a seemingly indifferent working class to the changes that impact directly not only on our material well-being but on the corporatisation of our cultural lives. Some argue that it’s down to the prevailing sense of powerlessness as the gulf between those who govern and the governed, deepens and widens. But there is perhaps another explanation for our disenfranchisement; the role of the ‘middle class’ as a mechanism of social control.

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Book Review: The talented and reviled Mr Pepper (Comintern agent) By Dan La Botz

20 October 2013 — New Politics

The great European revolutionary epoch of the post war period from the 1910s through the 1920s provides endless biographical material revealing all that is best and worst in the human material of revolution, the Russians having been the most studied, providing shelves of biographies of Lenin, Bukharin, Stalin and Trotsky. Continue reading

Climate change: What would Frederick Engels say? By Martin O'Beirne

30 September 2013  — The Ecosocialist

We had not yet destabilised the climate and trounced other planetary ecological boundaries back in 1876 when Frederick Engels wrote these passages in his unfinished The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man. But it is clear that back then Engels had established a biophilous ethic, or in his words: Continue reading

A Brave New Transatlantic Partnership: The Social and Environmental Consequences of the Proposed EU-US Trade Deal

14 October 2013 — corporateeurope.org

As the second round of negotiations on the EU-US trade agreement kick off in Brussels next week, a new report published by members of the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B), including CEO, reveals the true human and environmental costs of the proposed deal.

Contested Reproduction and the Contradictions of Socialism By Michael A. Lebowitz

13 September 2013 — The Bullet • Socialist Project E-Bulletin No. 877

Some Explanations About the Fall of ‘Real Socialism’

Why did ‘real socialism’ and, in particular the Soviet Union, fall? Let me note a few explanations that have been offered. With respect to the Soviet Union, one very interesting explanation that has been suggested is that it’s all the fault of Mikhail Gorbachev. And not simply the errors of Gorbachev but the treachery. Those who offer this explanation rely in particular upon a document which is sometimes described as his confession. This document begins as follows:

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Asleep on the job – England’s young doctors and the NHS reforms By Guddi Singh

4 September 2013 — OurNHS

Great tides of people press against me, hands outstretched, faces questioning. They wait for something – a doctor? Anguish ripples through the crowd. Those without the right colour passport are turned away. Countless others shake out their pockets: desperate for pennies; desperate for treatment. Their eyes fill with reproach once they recognize I am a doctor. Their searing gaze brands my guilt.

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London Underground prepares mass closure of ticket offices By James Hatton and Paul Bond

3 September 2013 — WSWS

Recent disclosures have again confirmed London Underground management is planning to close all its 268 ticket offices over the next two years. Around 2,000 jobs are expected to be lost during that period, with job losses across the rail and underground network rising to 6,000 by 2020. The job losses are part of Transport for London (TfL) and London Conservative mayor Boris Johnson’s £7.6 billion cuts programme to the London transport budget.

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The Gentification of the Left By Mike Wayne, Deidre O’Neill

19 August 2013 — New Left Project

The post-colonial philosopher Gayatri Spivak once famously asked: ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ Colonialism though is not just about race, it is also about that great unmentionable, class. And class colonization is one of the most central features of British social and political life. Continue reading

SYRIZA: The Great Social and Political Movement of Subversion

7 August 2013 — The   B u l l e t • Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 860

Political Resolution, First Congress of SYRIZA

1 The Conference of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) is a continuity and a breakthrough in its course, which started in 2000, continued with its official founding in 2004, and was sealed when it took on the historic responsibility to deliver the Greek people from the catastrophic neoliberal memoranda policies that have turned our country into a debt colony and led its creative, social, and productive forces to marginalization.

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Alter Summit: A People’s Manifesto

8 June 2013 — The Bullet • Socialist Project E-Bulletin No. 835

Our urgent common priorities for a democratic, social, ecological and feminist Europe.

Roll Back Austerity and Claim Real Democracy!

Europe stands on the edge of a precipice, looking into the abyss. Austerity policies drive the people of Europe into poverty, undercut democracy and dismantle social policies. Rising inequalities endanger social cohesion. Ecological destruction is worsening while acute humanitarian crises devastate the most affected countries. Women and young people are hardest hit.

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My Big Fat Greek Minister By Greg Palast

20 May 2013 — Vice Magazine

It wasn’t too difficult picking out the Fat Bastard in the crowd of Russian models, craven moochers and media mavens. Besides, Fat Bastard and I were both desperate for coffee and heading for the same empty urn.

(We’d both signed on for Kazakhstan’s annual Eurasia Media Forum, a kind of Burning Man festival for Eastern oilgarchs and their media camp followers.)

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South Africa: Pro-government faction attacks COSATU's Zwelinzima Vavi By Benjamin Fogel

12 April 2013 — Amandla!

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is in the midst of the biggest crisis in its 27-year history. This crisis has arisen from a South African Communist Party (SACP)-driven attempt to oust democratically elected COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, under the guise of corruption charges. The conflict’s roots are in longstanding political contradictions and ideological tensions between COSATU and its Alliance partners – the ruling African National Congress and the SACP. At stake is not only the leadership of COSATU, but its political and moral direction.

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New World Order Political Puppets: How Thatcherism Paved the Way for Tony Blair and “New Labour” By Colin Todhunter

16 April 2013 — Global Research

Blair's Journey:  Questions Before Charge

Most people are already aware that there were many similarities between Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher. Both were conviction politicians, both had political love-ins with US presidents and both liked to talk tough. Affable Tony could always ham it up with a good dose of media-friendly mock sincerity and tough talking. Thatcher and her PR people cynically forged the template for that. And both had a tendency to ignore that damned nuisance called public opinion and to land the country into a gruesome mess not of its own choosing.

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A Return to Marx’s Ecological Critique By Simon Butler

9 April 2013 — Green Left Weekly

Karl_Marx_posing1.jpg

Do oil spills make good economic sense? A witness called by Canadian firm Enbridge Inc. – which wants approval to build a $6.5-billion pipeline linking Alberta’s tar sands with the Pacific coast – told a recent hearing in British Columbia (BC) that the answer is yes. He said oil spills could benefit the economy, giving business new opportunities to make money cleaning it up. He told Fishers Union representatives that an oil spill in BC might indeed kill the local fishing industry, but their lost income would be replaced by compensation payouts and new career prospects, such as working for oil cleanup crews.

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“Let us glory in our inequality.” By Michael Hudson

8 April, 2013 —

Failed Privatizations – the Thatcher Legacy

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond”.

This is from my book on privatization, written some 15 years ago, never published.

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The actuality of a successful capitalist offensive By Richard Seymour

29 March 29, 2013 — Lenin’s Tomb

We’ve been waiting five years for a coherent left-wing response to the recession. We’ve been waiting three years for a coherent left-wing response to the cuts. Two years ago, I was asked at a talk how we could communicate the socialist solution to the crisis; I said it would be nice if we had one. It would still be a step forward today. If the extant strategies, groups or alliances were sufficient to deliver this, we would have it by now.

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