Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
The great balloon fiasco
While it is impossible not to see the absurdity of ever-escalating US claims over balloon spying – in the press, by the military and by politicians – they have deadly serious consequences and raise the risk of war, argues ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
In this image provided by the FBI, special agents assigned to the evidence response team process
material recovered from the high-altitude balloon recovered off the coast of South Carolina, at the FBI
laboratory in Virginia; and (right) the remnants of the large balloon drift above the Atlantic Ocean
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
KARL MARX famously said in the Eighteenth Brumaire that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
While there are many examples of this insight from history, Marx could not foresee how farce would become the staple of the US ruling class, how elites would defend what they see as their interests with a web of calculated deception extending beyond the limits of the absurd.
Like the mad General Jack D Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s great film, Dr Strangelove, a US Air Force four-star General, Mike Minihan, “sent a memo on Friday [January 27] to the officers he commands that predicts the US will be at war with China in two years and tells them to get ready to prep by firing ‘a clip’ at a target, and ‘aim for the head’,” as reported by NBC News.
Similar stories
In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
VIJAY PRASHAD examines why in 2018 Washington started to take an increasingly belligerent stance towards ‘near peer rivals’ – Russa and China – with far-reaching geopolitical effects
The Trump administration increases its interventionist rhetoric and actions regarding the Panama Canal, as China upholds its longstanding support of Panamanian sovereignty, writes TINGS CHAK
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY reflects on the lessons from two books looking at the US labour movement and the recent history of spontaneous mass uprisings – and finds two pernicious ideologies working against the interests of the people