Is New Labour illegally incarcerating ‘enemy combatants’? That is the question Tam Dalyell MP put to the government after the Washington Post and Time magazine reported that the British island of Diego Garcia was being used by the US government to hold ‘Al Qaida suspects’ and Iraqi prisoners en route to Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile the former inhabitants, evicted 30 years ago for the benefit of the US military, are still refused entry on ‘security grounds’.
George Bush’s much-vaunted love of freedom was in evidence once again when he held a pep rally in a giant aircraft hangar with troops from Fort Carson. The press guidelines were: ‘No talking to the troops before the rally. No talking to the troops during the rally. No talking to the troops after the rally.’ So, no problems with morale then?
The Ministry of Defence has applied to register the trademark ‘British Army’ for Xmas decorations. Presumably we can expect cluster bomb shaped baubles in the near future…
In November of last year, there was a brief moment of light amid the darkness that was 2020. Scotland became the first country in the world to make period products free for all. Just as the weekend and the eight-hour-day are now regarded by many as a given, future generations may be in disbelief that...
On 4 November last year, when many of us were watching the aftermath of the American presidential election, the US formally left the Paris Climate Agreement. Written in 2015 at the United Nations’ COP21 climate conference in Paris, the agreement is often considered to be the most significant document of international climate cooperation. Back then,...
To say 2020 was dramatic would be an understatement. The world situation has been completely transformed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the inadequacy of governmental and state responses. As we head into 2021 it feels like we are entering uncharted territory. To make specific predictions would be unwise. But the Covid-19 crisis raises fundamental questions...
The 2020 crisis we’ve endured isn’t an aberration of the system but, as Alex Callinicos argues, an aspect of its permanent crisis.
