AS SOON as the scale of Labour’s shattering defeat began to emerge last night, pundits began to push the line that this was not just about Brexit but about Jeremy Corbyn, and more broadly the Labour Party’s significant shift towards socialism under his leadership.
No election is just about one issue — but the evidence backs up the argument strongly made by Labour MPs like Ian Lavery and Richard Burgon that Brexit was the defining factor.
WHEN THE dust settles on Britain’s first December election in a century the left and labour movement cannot afford a moment’s rest.
The Morning Star’s print deadlines mean voting is still ongoing as we head for the presses — but however the chips fall we are in for a tremendous struggle. In four-and-a-half years the state of the left has been transformed.
Two completely contrasting visions for our future were on the ballot paper. Labour’s offer went further than two years ago, it stood on a more detailed and more radical platform and has a programme that can not only make an immediate difference to the most vulnerable but presages a more permanent democratisation of our society.Read More »
This was an election of two illusions.
The first helped persuade much of the British public to vote for the very epitome of an Eton toff, a man who not only has shown utter contempt for most of those who voted for him but has spent a lifetime barely bothering to conceal that contempt. For him, politics is an ego-trip, a game in which others always pay the price and suffer, a job he is entitled to through birth and superior breeding.
The extent to which such illusions now dominate our political life was highlighted two days ago with a jaw-dropping comment from a Grimsby fish market worker. He said he would vote Tory for the first time because “Boris seems like a normal working class guy.”Read More »
Employers are increasingly preventing employees from forming unions in the workplace, according to a new report – U.S. employers are charged with violating federal law in 41.5% of all union election campaigns – by Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, Julia Wolfe, Ben Zipperer, Gordon Lafer, and Lola Loustaunau (December 11, 2019) from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank.
What’s more, the report finds, many of these efforts are illegal.
Employers were found with violating federal law in roughly 42% of all union election campaigns, with 20% involving a charge that a worker was “illegally fired” for union activity. But these numbers only represent elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).Read More »
Argentina is taking measures to fight out debacles created by implementation of neoliberal policies for years in the country. The measures may appear unusual to many. But the measures show a political leadership’s effort to fight out poverty, lack of medicare for common people. There is also a plan to make current laws related to health and social emergencies ineffective on January 31, 2020.
Argentina’s President Alberti Fernandez on December 12, 2019 summoned the Chamber of Deputies to approve the necessary laws to declare economic, health and social emergencies. In order to carry out this decision as soon as possible, a well-defined schedule of meetings and events has also been set up.Read More »
US imperialism’s Afghanistan War reveals imperialism’s limit. It’s, as Mao said decades ago, a paper tiger. The war is the evidence.
The just published The Washington Post report – “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war, At war with the truth”, (by Craig Whitlock, December 9, 2019) – carries the story of this limit. It’s, to some, a story of corruption. To another section, the war is mismanaged, which is inefficiency, wrong planning, etc. But, the root of the failure is in the deep: Imperialism’s characteristic.Read More »
In 1781, the Bolivian indigenous leader Tupac Katari led a rebellion in which La Paz, the Spanish colonial capital of “Upper Peru,” was besieged for 109 days. The siege ended with the arrival of a Spanish army. Katari was captured, he and his wife, Bartolina Sisa, were gruesomely executed, and thousands of indigenous people were massacred.
For many years, this was treated as a minor event in history books, but in the latter half of the twentieth century Katari and Sisa have been celebrated by the indigenous majority as symbols of resistance to oppression, and as martyrs in a national revolution whose time has finally come.Read More »
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) dispute appeals system has collapsed. The body has collapsed due to U.S. blocking of appointments.
Roberto Azevedo, the WTO Director-General, said on Tuesday he was “very hopeful” that WTO members could conclude by mid-2020 talks on cutting fishing subsidies, seen by many as essential for the Geneva-based body to remain relevant, among other deals.
Speaking after the collapse of the WTO’s dispute appeals system due to U.S. blocking of appointments, Azevedo pledged to start immediate efforts to find a “permanent solution” for the Appellate Body.
Without naming any countries, he also urged members to refrain from unilateral measures that could harm the global economy in the meantime.Read More »
In the preliminary report on the performance of Latin America and Caribbean economies in 2019, the United Nations agency indicates that in 2019 the region will grow only 0.1% on average, while growth projections for 2020 will remain low, around 1.3%. As a result, 2014-2020 would be the period of lowest growth for the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean in the last seven decades.
Directed in detail by the National Security Council at the White House, the campaign has the active participation of Senators and Representatives associated with the anti-Cuban mafia in Florida and rabid State Department officials.
Journal of People 