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
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China's Five-Year Plan goals being achieved despite Covid-19
by ROBERT GRIFFITHS
Tourists visiting Tiananmen Square
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
THE primary aim of China’s 13th Five Year Plan (2016-20) was to replace “unbalanced, unco-ordinated, and unsustainable growth” with innovative, co-ordinated, green, open and inclusive growth in order to create a “moderately prosperous society in all respects.”
The target was to achieve annual GDP growth of 6.5 per cent — amended upwards in 2016 for flexibility — which would double people’s average disposable income.
Despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, it remains possible that this can still be met thanks to slight overfulfilment during the plan’s first three years.
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