How’s this for your Sunday read? A splendid account, detailed but never dry, of Afghanistan’s people and history. First published in The New American Cyclopaedia, Vol. I, 1858 – and in 2005 transcribed by Andy Blunden at www.marxists.org – its author needs no introduction, though the … Read More »
Tom Fowdy writes in RT, August 27: It’s wrong to say China is heading for socialism: it never abandoned it Western coverage of events in China is highlighting a lurch leftwards by Xi Jinping. But this misunderstands Beijing’s approach and … Read More »
The Boss nailed it: Got in a little hometown jam … I was bought in the USA, I was bought in the USA … Capitalism – it’s an institute you can’t disparage. *
Last night I watched for the second time an episode of Accused, the 2010 series from the pen of Jimmy McGovern, now on Netflix. Here’s an abridged Wiki synopsis of Frankie’s Story: Frankie and Peter join the army to get … Read More »
Wall Street Journal, August 25: Erik Prince is no stranger to monetising human suffering. He founded Blackwater, whose antics in Baghdad in 2007 drew down a search beam on the world of Western ‘security’ firms in post invasion Iraq. These … Read More »
Capitalist pharmacy produces suboptimal health outcomes, if not outright harm. Seeing the problem as production for private profit, under governments led by plutocrats, is the first step to a solution. A second is seeing that planned production by publicly owned … Read More »
My two links are, respectively, to this post and this one. *
The real Xinjiang story is not so difficult to understand: The rise of Xi Jinping and the Belt & Road Initiative posed a serious challenge to American supremacy much earlier than they were expecting, so the US amped up their … Read More »
In his book, Bad Science, Ben Goldacre, who used to have a Guardian column of that name, does three things. He: targets the shoddy thinking (at best) used to promote ‘alternative medicine’; targets the even bigger health risk posed by … Read More »
Until you realise the Western world is ruled by criminals, and that corporate media’s first loyalty is not to truth but – via market discipline and beneath a show of fiery independence on lesser issues – to those criminals, you … Read More »