30 January, 2012 // Category: Activism, Book Review, International
Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions, by Paul Mason, Verso, 2012, p237 Anyone who experienced first-hand the student occupations and protests at the back end of 2010 will find themselves – upon reading the chapter on that subject in Paul Mason’s new book, 'Why It's...
11 November, 2011 // Category:
In the rising wave of international protests happening under the Occupy banner, Cairo’s Tahrir Square has gained iconic status, frequently invoked by activists from New York and Oakland to Barcelona and London. The substantial differences between what is happening now in Zuccotti Park, or outside...
04 November, 2011 // Category: Economy, Employment & Welfare, Media, Politics
Former Guardian leader writer and regular political columnist Julian Glover recently left the paper to take up a post as speechwriter to David Cameron. Glover would probably be the first to accept that, given the nature of his political views, his departure will not necessarily be lamented by all...
11 September, 2011 // Category: Foreign policy, International, Terror/War
Acts of terrorism, by definition, are designed to elicit a response of shock, awe and fear in an audience, with the purpose of intimidating or coercing that audience into adopting a political response favourable to the terrorists’ agenda. My own immediate reaction to the al Qaeda attacks of 11...
04 September, 2011 // Category: Activism, Foreign policy, International, Terror/War
As was the case with his earlier articles for ZNet on the situation in Libya, our recent interview with Professor Gilbert Achcar of SOAS elicited a good deal of responses, both in the comments under the article and from commentators elsewhere. Here, NLP’s David Wearing asks Achcar a series of...
19 July, 2011 // Category: Corporate power, Media
Beyond the popular revulsion over the last fortnight at the criminal behaviour attributed to News International, there has also been a widespread sense that this is not how things are supposed to work in a liberal democracy. Under the balanced, pluralist system, politicians are supposed to...
01 May, 2011 // Category: Activism, Economy, Politics
The session of Prime Minister’s Questions held on 27 April is likely to be remembered for David Cameron’s casually sexist put-down of a Labour shadow minister during an exchange on health service reforms. However, the bigger story of the day, and a probable contributing factor towards...
19 March, 2011 // Category: Corporate power, Foreign policy, History, International, Politics, Terror/War
British foreign policy was big news in the first decade of the 21st century. The so-called “war on terror” brought us the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan – now in its tenth year – and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which precipitated one of the worst humanitarian disasters in living...
28 December, 2010 // Category: Activism, Economy, Education, Politics
When he praised the students’ movement as “magnificent”, and credited it with setting an example for the rest of the left to follow in the battle against the Tory-Liberal austerity programme, Unite leader Len McCluskey spoke for a great many of the government’s opponents who drew real hope...
25 November, 2010 // Category: Activism, Corporate power, Economy, Education
The following is the text of a talk I gave at a teach-in at King’s College, Cambridge last Sunday, organised by Cambridge Defend Education. So this hour is billed as a debate between myself and Richard Seymour on the topic of “Cuts – necessity or ideology?”. Well, in the first place,...
10 October, 2010 // Category: Europe, History
New Left Project’s David Wearing reviews two books exploring key episodes in French history, the revolutionary decade of 1789-1802 and the Paris Commune of 1871. The Oxford History of the French Revolution, by William Doyle (Oxford University Press, 496pp) The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the...
10 August, 2010 // Category: Activism, Corporate power, Economy, Employment & Welfare, Health
My own contribution to the NLP cuts debate (more of a discussion, as it turns out) comes in two halves. Other contributors have placed some focus on future activism, and the second half of this piece will offer a few points on that subject, specifically on the task of making the political argument...
06 June, 2010 // Category: Activism, Foreign policy, Terror/War
An estimated 20-25,000 people gathered in London yesterday to protest Israel’s attack on humanitarian activists bringing aid to the Gaza Strip last Monday, and of course to protest the siege of Gaza itself. I’ve been to a number of similar protests in London over the past ten years – be it...
05 May, 2010 // Category: Economy
In the final part of our last pre-election roundtable discussion, our panel responds to the following question: “The mainstream consensus is that the national debt is the main economic issue facing the country, and that this must be tackled primarily through cuts to public services. Is this...
04 May, 2010 // Category: Terror/War
Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, where he heads the Peace Studies Department. He has written extensively on terrorism and political violence, the Middle East, arms control and disarmament. His latest books are “Why We’re Losing the War on Terror” (Polity...
02 May, 2010 // Category: Corporate power, Economy, Employment & Welfare, Politics
Without prejudice to the outcome of this most unpredictable of elections, the task of surveying and assessing the legacy of Gordon Brown is certainly an important one. It is a task taken up - with wit, verve and erudition – by Christopher Harvie; senior academic, Member of the Scottish...
12 April, 2010 // Category: International
What does state-level democracy mean in a globalised world, where military, corporate and financial power is exerted across borders, unaccountable to electorates that can only vote for their own, national governments? That’s the big question raised by a provocative new campaign entitled Give Your...
26 January, 2010 // Category: Economy, Environment
Noam Chomsky, once described by the New York Times as “arguably the most important intellectual alive”, is one of the leading figures on the international left today. NLP’s David Wearing spoke with him about nuclear proliferation, climate change, Haiti and the financial crisis. David...
26 January, 2010 // Category: Economy
In the tumultuous days of autumn 2008, as the Western banking system’s clogged arteries precipitated a financial heart attack that sent the world economy reeling toward the abyss, newspaper op-ed pages and TV studios were gripped with giddy talk of the end of free market capitalism. One sober...
28 November, 2007 // Category: Racism
Much has been heard from Britain’s political class in recent years about the role of “values” in the fight against terrorism. The problem, we are told, is that the Muslim community in the UK is failing to integrate with British society and accept our nation’s intrinsic liberalism. The...
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