The massacre at Qana is typical of the malicious brutality with which Israel has conducted all its wars, not just the present one. It poses the perennial question of how Israel can ever coexist peacefully with the rest of the Middle East.
Today in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan we are experiencing a test in the limits of imperial power. On the face of it, the military might that Israel is projecting at Lebanon is overwhelming in its capacity to pulverise solid infrastructure and soft human bodies.
The Westminster village has moved remarkably quickly to bury the parliamentary by-elections in Blaenau Gwent and Bromley & Chislehurst on Thursday of last week. That is because they contradict the official story about where British politics is going.
During the dark years of the 1990s, there were a few signs that new movements of resistance were about to emerge. One of the most important was the formation in France in 1998 of Attac.
A year ago many of us were gearing up for the protests at the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland. We were doing so in a climate of great optimism that the summit would achieve real improvements for the poor of the world, especially in Africa.
"Market volatility". This is the conventional description of the period of intense turbulence that financial markets have been going through these past few weeks. The main stock markets saw share prices fall sharply, though these subsequently recovered most of what had been lost.
Over the past few weeks much attention in the media and on the web has been devoted to a document called the Euston Manifesto, which was finally launched on Thursday of last week.
It's good that the trade union leaders have said they won’t let the closure of Peugeot’s Ryton plant go through without a fight. Last week the Peugeot bosses admitted they could build a new model in Ryton profitably – though not as profitably as in a new plant they are building in Slovakia.
The media blackout on Respect’s breakthrough in the local elections is, I suppose, par for the course in the era of Tony Blair, the master of the sincerely uttered Big Lie. But simply ignoring the results is only one way of dismissing Respect’s achievement.
"Maoism Rises Again" lamented a Financial Times editorial a few weeks ago.
Why are Britain and France so different? This question is back in the air. Trade union officials have been complaining that Britain’s flexible labour laws made it easier for Peugeot bosses to shut down their car plant at Ryton rather than any of its French counterparts.
Half a million marching in defence of immigration in Dallas, Texas, last Sunday. Hundreds of thousands more the next day in more than 60 other cities. Half a million in Los Angeles a few weeks ago… something big is happening in the US.
