VIJAY PRASHAD looks at the web of militias and drug-trafficking gangs that emerged in the Sweida region through the Syrian civil war, and how they relate to recent clashes and Israel’s intervention

CHOLERA was the big and recurring disease of the 19th century. There was no full understanding of its cause and why it was spread until the 1880s.
Britain, along with the rest of Europe, saw several significant epidemics in 1831-2 and in 1848-9, in both cases also periods of revolutionary political changes.
The disease was held to be one of the lower classes, as indeed it mainly was, because of the insanitary housing conditions they had little choice but to live in.

KEITH FLETT looks at the long history of coercion in British employment laws

The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT

While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT

10 years ago this month, Corbyn saved Labour from its right-wing problem, and then the party machine turned on him. But all is not lost yet for the left, says KEITH FLETT