Iraq could work if the steady success of its Kurdistan Region is supported and spreads throughout the country. GARY KENT reports from a fact-finding mission The Kurdistan region of Iraq enjoyed a head start over the rest of the country. Its 1991 uprising ousted Saddam’s genocidal forces which had murdered nearly 200,000 Kurds at...
Taking the temperature of Copenhagen’s climate
WILL BROWN reflects on the disappointing outcome to the climate change talks in Copenhagen The USA can’t commit to meaningful cuts in carbon emissions; China and other developing countries refuse to budge before industrialised countries have addressed their historic legacy of pollution; the small island, least developed and African nations insist on the need...
How to let a good crisis go to waste
Last year’s financial crisis presented an opportunity for fundamental reform, argues Will Brown. It’s one that’s already gone to waste. It’s now over a year since the world’s financial system went into meltdown in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. At the time, there was much talk of a...
Superpower headaches
Will Brown looks at the foreign policy agenda facing the Obama administration. The vitriolic healthcare debate in the US and ongoing economic problems may dominate President Obama’s current agenda but the first nine months of this administration have also put into sharp focus an exceptionally difficult range of US foreign policy problems. The inauguration...
Demos and disillusionment
PHIL DORÉ recounts his personal and painful journey from the Stop the War Coalition to Labour Friends of Iraq In March 2003, as the war began in Iraq, I found myself sitting in the middle of a road in Cardiff alongside hundreds of anti-war protestors. I was one of what the media had dubbed...
Is there a song for solidarity?
SARAH BRACKING unpicks the liberal agenda behind Live8 and the G8 summit. The majority of the people attending Live8, and the demonstrations surrounding the G8, wanted no more nor less than to reduce poverty. But helping poor people in other countries raises problems, particularly when the language of benevolence doesn’t explain the structural issues...
The end of Fukuyama
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS explains why the latest pronouncements from Francis Fukuyama miss the mark I have a feeling that it must have been a disappointing week for Francis Fukuyama, whose essay ‘After Neoconservatism’ (adapted from his upcoming book America at the Crossroads) was awarded seven pages in the 19 February 2006 New York Times Magazine. The...
A revolution in contraflow
IVAN BRISCOE listens to the voices of Venezuela’s unemployed, its mobilised, its empowered and its disillusioned to portray the hopes and paradoxes of Hugo Chávez’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’ He has lived on his homestead for only a year since staging a ‘sort of invasion’, but Jovito González is already enjoying the fruits of the Caribbean....
A million on the march
GARY KENT reports on a nine day fact-finding trip to meet trade unionists in Iraq It rarely makes the news here but a million trade unionists are on the march in Iraq. A new network of non-sectarian union federations, professional associations and civil society groups has emerged in Iraq, having been brutally repressed by...
An anti-Americanism of fools
Anti-Americanism must not become a pillar of left-wing thinking, says ALEX MILES Of all the clichés attached to the United States of America, one of those repeated most often is that it is a land of contrasts. Clichéd it may be, but the statement is also accurate. The ‘land of the free’ is also...
Iraq’s third big issue
We must look beyond the two issues that dominate discussions of Iraq, and unite in support of Iraq’s trade unions, says former MP HARRY BARNES In Britain, our minds are often focussed on two big issues concerning Iraq. First, should we have been involved in its invasion? Secondly, should our troops now be withdrawn?...
Beneath American skies
GARY KENT reports on the diversity of opinions he found on a recent State Department-sponsored trip to USA. The United States is not a uniform entity. Anyone who says, “America thinks this, that or the other” is just plain wrong. There is possibly more diversity of opinion in America than in Europe. Bush made...