Tweet The spectre of austerity haunts Europe. It poses no doubt an existential, as well as an economic, political and social threat. The take-up across the continent of impoverishment as an economic policy became a recipe for failure, as much of the trade these countries did between each other broke down. The seams of society [...]
Posts under ‘International’
Iraq ten years on: lessons still not learnt
Jun 14th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet The facts, no longer seriously in dispute, are stark. The US went to war over Iraq because of oil and to assure themselves of a platform for control of the Middle East region, as set out in the Project for the New American Century document published for the Bush election team in September 2000. As [...]
North Korea and the maturity of Japan’s ‘enfant terrible’
Jun 12th, 2013 by Jack Dunleavy.Tweet Ryu Murakami is apparently ‘the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature’. I suppose I should start this review of his four books translated into English this year by making general comments about the strangeness of Japanese culture. Yet such observations have been made ad nauseum, and only reflect the Westerner’s shock that anything exists outside their sphere of [...]
Whistleblowers v Big State and Big Tech: we still need Davids to bring down Goliath
Jun 11th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet There are several huge lessons that flow from this latest explosive story about the comprehensive range of the modern surveillance State. First, if we are ever going to know what is really going on behind the scenes and what government is getting up to, we are entirely dependent on the morality and courage of [...]
Britain’s human rights record: things can only get worse
Jun 10th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet The revelation that the US National Security Agency and FBI were enabled in a major international snooping operation to access the systems of 9 of the world’s biggest internet companies and then to share that information with GCHQ, the UK giant eavesdropping and security agency, without ordinary US and British citizens being aware that [...]
Abenomics: works in Japan, rejected by Osborne – and now Balls
Jun 8th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet Since Shinzo Abe came to power, the Japanese stock market has risen an astonishing 50% in 5 months, and the replacement of the fatalism which has dogged Japan’s economy by a new burst of policy activism has profound implications for the UK. There is another precedent for this policy activism other than the General [...]
Michael Meacher attacks the secrecy of Bilderberg
Jun 7th, 2013 by Newsdesk.Tweet But just so you know who was there: Bookmarks Hide Sites
Attacks on the International Brigades are symptomatic of the rewriting of history
Jun 7th, 2013 by Dominic Curran.Tweet In a shocking ruling the other day, a Spanish court endorsed the tearing down of a recently erected memorial to the International Brigades in Madrid, after much outrage from right wingers. This is an outrageous attack on those who sacrificed everything for democracy. The International Brigades volunteered to fight fascism at a time when British aristocrats [...]
Watch: activists say why they’re backing Lucy Anderson for London MEP
Jun 6th, 2013 by Newsdesk.Tweet You can see a list of left candidates for the Labour European selections here. Bookmarks Hide Sites
State of Play: Euro 2013, Football and Palestine
Jun 4th, 2013 by Mark Perryman.Tweet In the autumn of 2011 Philosophy Football met Honey Thalijeh, then captain of the Palestine Women’s Football team. Inspired by what she told us about what football meant to her country we promised that when Euro 2013 opened in Israel we would be in Palestine. From 5-18 June Israel hosts the second biggest international team [...]
