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 slogan “Neither Washington nor Beijing” relies largely on the premise that China is imperialist, and that the new cold war is an inter-imperialist war — a war in which the antagonists are fighting over their share of the spoils from the exploitation of foreign countries.
If China isn’t imperialist, and if the new cold war isn’t an example of inter-imperialist rivalry, the “third camp” position is simply not viable.
We have to start by attempting to define imperialism. In his classic work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism — the first serious study of the phenomenon from a Marxist perspective — Lenin states that, reduced to its “briefest possible definition,” imperialism can be considered simply as “the monopoly stage of capitalism.”

From anonymous surveys claiming Chinese students are spying on each other to a meltdown about the size of China’s London embassy, the evidence is everywhere that Britain is embracing full spectrum Sinophobia as the war clouds gather, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ

The US’s bid for regime change in the Islamic Republic has become more urgent as it seeks to encircle and contain a resurgent China, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ

