Gaza’s collective sumud has proven more powerful than one of the world’s best-equipped militaries, but the change in international attitudes isn’t happening fast enough to save a starving population from Western-backed genocide, argues RAMZY BAROUD
The British empire: culture war and actual war
The flurry of criticism and counter-outrage over the classical colonial era is no mere academic matter, warns ANDREW MURRAY: what is being debated is whether fresh imperial slaughter can be sold to the public
This century, the 'bring back the empire' brigade had its way with Afghanistan and Iraq. Twenty years on from the start of the Afghan occupation it ended in utter ignominy.
Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT
JOHN PERRY, BECCA RENK and ROGER D HARRIS offer a corrective to the idea that Latin America still lags far behind the West on women’s rights by looking at the region’s significant feminist gains now stretching back decades
Danni Perry’s flag display at the Royal Opera House sparked 182 performers to sign a solidarity letter that cancelled the Tel Aviv Tosca production, while Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Tel Aviv hotels, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT
STEPHEN ARNELL casts a critical eye over the sudden rash of challenges to the two-party system on both sides of the Atlantic, noting that today’s performative populist politics sadly lacks Roosevelt’s progressive ‘Bull Moose’ vision of the early 20th century
THE British empire is one of the front lines in the culture war. Few things make Establishment academics and pundits angrier than the critical scrutiny British imperialism is increasingly subjected to, particularly by scholars that aren’t white, male and privileged, the characteristics hitherto regarded as essential for holding an opinion on the subject.
Historians like Niall Ferguson and Robert Tombs argue that the empire wasn’t such a bad thing overall, a few undeniable excesses notwithstanding, or, as a fallback, too complex to pass judgement on. They are keener on emphasising Britain’s role in abolishing slavery than its prior record of promoting and profiting from it, and its foundational part in the development of capitalism.
They also disdain the intrusion of new scholars onto their terrain. In one especially unpleasant article, Tombs singled out three for the sin of exploiting “the fashionable theme of ‘anti-colonialism’,” as if hostility to colonialism was a priori a historical disability.
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Corbyn and Sultana commit to launching new socialist party
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Starmer doubles down on witch hunt by suspending the whip from Diane Abbott
