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The Earth tilts, Europe trembles
The annual Fenner Brockway Lecture, hosted by Liberation, was delivered this year by Peter Mertens, Chair of the Workers’ Party of Belgium. STEVE BISHOP reflects on some of the highlights of Mertens’ address
CLASS ISSUES: People chant
while marching during a ‘march
to stop the cuts’ demonstration
in New York, March 15 2025
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Born on this day in 1931, the heroic revolutionary faces a dangerous new wave of White House aggression. We must treat his birthday as a rallying cry to resist the illegal siege of Cuba, writes ROGER McKENZIE
RAMZY BAROUD decries the rats of Gaza, the rodent and human type. Both abound as profiteering from tragedy reaches obscene levels
PETER MERTENS delivered the annual Fenner Brockway lecture, The Earth Tilts, Europe Trembles, based upon his book of the same name, written in September 2023. Indicating key “tilts” in the world political scene, Mertens went on to elaborate on the implications of each for the political map of Europe and more widely, for world peace.
The first tilt Mertens identified was the shifting global order, stating that: “The most fundamental shift we are witnessing is the change in the global economic centre of gravity towards Asia, and more specifically towards China (and India).”
China in particular is identified as a global economic force “a rising superpower in full development” unlike the US which, “while still a formidable force, is in the early stages of decline,” or the European Union, an “old” superpower “on a downward trajectory.”
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