As Colombia approaches presidential elections next year, the US decision to decertify the country in the war on drugs plays into the hands of its allies on the political right, writes NICK MacWILLIAM
The pick ’n’ mix politics of Christmas
Marxist theologian PROFESSOR JAMES CROSSLEY looks at how the story of the birth of Jesus was created from multiple sources and how the political class use and abuse it today
Boris Johnson addresses soldiers after serving Christmas lunch to British troops stationed in Estonia, December 2019
The move against alleged PKK members that sparked outrage as a community centre in north London was raided last year has now come to trial, writes TONY BURKE, but in the meantime, the peace process abroad has changed the situation almost entirely
A new report points a way to overcome complacent framing of climate issues, ‘by sparking a wider public reckoning with climate realities,’ and reconnecting with working-class people. IAN SINCLAIR reports
We cannot understand today’s world without understanding the rise of China – and we cannot understand China without understanding how it was shaped by the second world war, writes JENNY CLEGG
NICK WRIGHT reports from Italy, where 80 cities saw Gaza strikes as unions paralysed transport and massive crowds clashed with police in Milan — but France is also kicking off, and Westminster, in a very different way, is facing a crisis of legitimacy too
Escalating anti-China rhetoric from the West has a clear purpose – to manufacture consent for the new cold war, and potentially a hot one, argues CARLOS MARTINEZ
THE story of the birth of Jesus is found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
While they are both relatively light on the familiar Christmas details, both tell stories of the virgin Mary, Bethlehem and angels (though admittedly angels were understood as militaristic supernatural figures, rather than twee figures of more recent imaginations).
From Matthew’s Gospel we get the unnamed and unnumbered wise men from the east, the gifts (frankincense, gold and myrrh), the star over Bethlehem, Herod’s massacre of the infants and Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt with their baby.
More from this author
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
JAMES CROSSLEY charts how anti Jewish sentiment developed from ancient days and the dawn of Christianity to the Middle Ages, the birth of Protestantism and the sinister era of of the Nazis
The peasants’ leader has inspired centures of reformers and revolutionaries since his execution in the Middle Ages following the failed revolt with his vision of an England freed from the Church and aristocracy, writes JAMES CROSSLEY
The sight of Lib Dem politicians engaging in a patronising gesture to Muslim voters by jumping on the Ramadan fast really hollows out the meaning and content of the term ‘solidarity', observes JAMES CROSSLEY
