SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
Latest editorial
Scandinavia and imperialism: why are Sweden and Finland now joining Nato?
by Prabhat Patnaik
INTO THE FOLD: Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, left, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde, right, and Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg attend a media conference after the signature of the Nato accession protocols for Finland and Sweden
RUBY ALDEN GIBSON believes Scottish parliament has enough powers to curtail Westminster Labour’s savage attack on welfare
KEVIN DONNELLY reports from Monte Faudo and its annual remembrance of the region’s WWII partisan anti-fascist battles
The Trump government is seizing overseas students from their homes and campuses and even off the streets, with no legal grounds and no due process, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
As global fascism grows, ROGER McKENZIE urges the left to reclaim May Day’s revolutionary roots — not as an act of nostalgia, but as fuel for building a ‘community of resistance’ against exploitation and the rise of fascism
Our unions need to make a firm stand against so-called ‘defence spending’: the boss class say there’s no magic money tree — and there should be no magic mushroom cloud either, argues NATHAN HENNEBRY
KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations
SO SCANDINAVIAN countries Sweden and Finland are joining Nato. There are many misconceptions about Scandinavian capitalism.
A common one is the belief that since the Scandinavian countries developed vigorous capitalist economies, without ever having acquired any colonies of their own, they refute the claim that capitalist development necessarily requires imperialism. This is based on a misconception, not just about Scandinavia but above all about imperialism itself.
Indeed, one may say many positive things about the concessions wrung out of capitalism by Scandinavian social democracy (although many of these are under threat in the current epoch of neoliberalism), but it represents a complete misreading of capitalism to say that Scandinavia constitutes an example of non-imperialist capitalism. The Scandinavian countries themselves may not have had colonies, but they have ridden piggy-back on the imperialism of other powers.
More from this author
Despite the US withdrawal from Ukraine and economic self-harm from sanctions, European centrists maintain their bellicosity to justify military spending and distract from neoliberalism's failures, writes PRABHAT PATNAIK
PRABHAT PATNAIK on how the military governments of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are securing control of their natural resources — a key priority for any truly independent state
In Ukraine recently, Volodymyr Zelensky urged visiting Indian leader Narendra Modi to join Western sanctions against Russia. PRABHAT PATNAIK takes a look at the whole issue of unilateral sanctions and why they can never be justified
President Javier Milei's push for dollarisation is a class attack on workers, exacerbating the economic crisis. These neofascist measures are quickly revealing the failure of neoliberalism rather than socialism, writes PRABHAT PATNAIK
