The National Education Union general secretary speaks to Ben Chacko on growing calls to protect children from a toxic online culture
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Trump's White House running scared of socialism
Capitalism's lackeys shoot — and miss — in a bizarre outburst that only serves to cement the rising red star of socialism in the United States, writes IAN GOODRUM
A scene from Donald Trump's fevered dreams
While Iranians take to the streets en masse to protest sky-high inflation, Trump and Netanyahu are threatening military intervention. The Iranian population is trapped between a repressive regime, a suffocating economic war from the outside, and a history of dark alliances, argues MARC VANDEPITTE
Unison Scotland’s BRENDA AITCHISON says her union won’t tolerate further cuts to public services
The Danish Communist Party’s Lotte Rortoft-Madsen assesses the fallout from US threats to annex the huge Arctic island
Trump threatens war and punitive tariffs to recapture Iranian resources – just as in 1953, when the CIA overthrew Mossadegh and US corporations immediately seized 40% of the oil, says SEVIM DAGDELEN
Once derided by Farage as a ‘fraud,’ Jenrick has defected to Reform, bringing experience and political ruthlessness to the populist right — and raising the unsettling prospect of a Farage-led movement with a seasoned operative pulling the strings, says ANDREW MURRAY
SINCE his inauguration, President Donald Trump has been fighting a non-stop battle against enemies both real and imagined and his latest offensive is something special.
The Opportunity Costs of Socialism, published on Tuesday by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, attempts to smear socialism — worker ownership of production — as a bankrupt ideology. The 72-page paper uses the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth as a jumping-off point for condemning everyone who doesn’t pray at the altar of the free market. Not even capitalist social democracies like Norway and Sweden are spared from blistering attacks.
The paper itself is nothing new. It’s a regurgitation of old narratives deployed against socialist projects, meant to convince workers in capitalist countries there is no meaningful alternative to their being exploited. It applies an academic veneer to arguments we’ve heard a million times before and cites historians and researchers with reputations as staunch anti-communists. In doing so, the document distorts socialism’s record and deliberately avoids painting a clear and complete picture.
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Lenin’s theory of the weakest link shifted the centre of gravity of the proletarian revolution towards peoples’ struggles in the developing world, contrary to the expectation of Marx and Engels. The effect was to hinder the cause of socialism by decades. Time bring it back to its natural home, argues FAWZI IBRAHIM