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
Taliban takeover is a win-win for US imperialism
Natural resource grabbing and political destabilisation of the region are the crux of US medium-term ‘game’ in Afghanistan, argues LIZ PAYNE
PILLAGING AFGHANISTAN: Lithium
[(L to R) Dnn87 / Raimond Spekking/both Creative Commons] 
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
FOUR decades ago, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was in power. The government was secular not religious and the country a republic.
The advances the PDPA government made in the late 1970s and 1980s for the people of Afghanistan, and for women in particular, were enormous — before the US and its allies, including Britain, Nato, the theocratic dictatorships in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the secret services of Pakistan, together with the most reactionary forces in Afghanistan, so shamefully brought it down in 1992.
Moves to release women from centuries of feudal subjugation and less than human treatment had begun in earnest in the 1920s, profoundly influenced by the 1917 Revolution which replaced the tsar’s Russian empire with a socialist republic, with which Afghanistan signed a friendship treaty in 1921.
More from this author
LIZ PAYNE condemns how Labour backs war in Gaza and Ukraine, and massive funding for Trident’s nuclear bombs, when billions are needed just to restore public services
If we want to take on war in 2025, we must take on our own governments in the West, and most of all, take on Nato, writes the convener of the British Peace Assembly, LIZ PAYNE
LIZ PAYNE draws the parallels between 1945’s atomic horrors and today's conflicts, calling for mass resistance to Western aggression and a renewed push for global disarmament
LIZ PAYNE explains that the only valid political demand over the conflict in Ukraine is that it is brought to an end as quickly as possible
