ROGER McKENZIE looks at how US doublespeak on the ‘war on drugs’ is used to camouflage its intended grab for of Latin America’s natural resources
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Don’t mention the councils
The SNP's council election pitch had almost nothing to do with councils, saying little about education, housing or better pay for council workers — instead they are pushing ahead with the privatisation of social care, writes STEPHEN LOW
Plans to delay access to the universal credit health element until age 22 have triggered fierce opposition from disabled people’s groups, who warn it would deepen poverty and entrench discrimination against young disabled people under the guise of ‘encouraging work.’ DYLAN MURPHY reports
(March 1928 – December 2025)
Saluting an internationalist and a courageous and uncompromising seeker of the truth
The US assault on Venezuela is brazen and unlawful – yet our PM claims uncertainty. By refusing to confront Trump’s naked imperialism, Starmer abandons international law, mortgages British policy to Washington, and clears the ground for war, argues ANDREW MURRAY
RAINER RUPP examines former CIA analyst Larry Johnson’s description of the US operation to kidnap Nicolas Maduro as a tactically successful but strategically disastrous move, with shades of Bush’s disastrous intervention in Iraq
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Western outrage was absolute. Yet today, the tone is markedly more subdued regarding US aggression against Venezuela. The manner in which the media and politicians frame this invasion exposes a profound ideological double standard, writes MARC VANDEPITTE
UNUSUALLY for me, unusually for almost anyone really, but when the party political broadcast came on I didn’t immediately change channels. Instead I watched the SNP’s pitch. It was, I have to say, highly informative, but not perhaps in the way its producers intended.
A man walks through a rural landscape intoning a long list of Tory failings and misdeeds, almost all of which are well known to everyone who hasn’t been in a coma. The bearded protagonist points to an elderly woman, Betty, further up the hill he is climbing.
She, a trifle incongruously, is sitting in an armchair knitting. A waxwork with a blue rosette is brought into frame. Betty attempts and fails to throw the waxwork. Cut to “Vote SNP.” Remaining viewers are then told that was a party election broadcast for the Scottish council elections on May 5.
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