There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Christmas is cancelled: Now it’s time for action, time for sanctions
HUGH LANNING on why our new year task and resolution must be to turn the massive public support and sympathy for Palestine into a veritable political tsunami to shift Western politics
Trade unionists and protesters form a blockade outside weapons manufacturer BAE Systems in Rochester, Kent, in protest over the Israel-Gaza conflict and calling for an immediate ceasefire
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
CHRISTMAS is cancelled. The Bethlehem municipality confirmed last month that all festivities have been scrapped ahead of December 25.
“The reason is the general situation in Palestine; people are not really into any celebration, they are sad, angry and upset; our people in Gaza are being massacred in cold blood,” a spokesperson said.
I was in Bethlehem one Christmas Eve and phoned my mother — a good Catholic. She said: “How lovely dear.” I first had to explain that it was Orthodox Christmas Eve — January 5 or Twelfth Night — and the reality of Bethlehem today, rather than the Bethlehem of myth and religion. Walled in and walled off from Jerusalem, shops and hotels closed down — the only tourists were Americans bussed in to the “manger” and out by Israeli tourist companies with commentaries from Israeli guides.
More from this author
Israel’s messianic settler regime has moved beyond military containment to mass ethnic cleansing, making any two-state solution based on differential rights impossible — we must support the Palestinian demand for decolonisation, writes HUGH LANNING
The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Starmer is going to go down in Labour history as as much a warmonger as Tony Blair – and the issue will prove his nemesis, says HUGH LANNING
Labour must recognise Israel’s true aims of total colonisation of Palestine and massive regional expansion — and therefore end the arms sales and trade deals that enable the destruction of any two-state solution, writes HUGH LANNING
