The riot started, last December, in the wake of a simple pay dispute at a small Chinese factory that manufactured cheap suitcases. Orders had been dropping, and the factory closed down without...

Read more about Taking the Bosses Hostage: China goes into reverse

Where do we go from here? It’s pretty clear that Gordon Brown doesn’t know and that Alistair Darling and the other members of the cabinet don’t either. Nor, it seems, does...

Read more about Will We Care When Labour Loses? Gordon Brown’s Failures

Many people in Washington were surprised when the Obama administration tapped Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, the body that oversees the production of National...

Read more about The Lobby Falters: Charles Freeman speaks out

An Invertebrate Left

Perry Anderson, 12 March 2009

The Italian left was once the largest and most impressive popular movement for social change in Western Europe. Comprising two mass parties, each with its own history and culture, and each...

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By the time Friedrich Engels arrived in England in the winter of 1842, the country already had a class warrior of its own. One of Engels’s new neighbours in downtown Manchester had spent...

Read more about Dig, Hammer, Spin, Weave: Richard Cobden, Class Warrior

In 1992-94 Italy was widely held to have been reborn. The parties that had long ruled – latterly misruled – the country were all but wiped out, after their corruption had been exposed...

Read more about An Entire Order Converted into What It Was Intended to End: Italy’s Decline

Return to Gaza: After Gaza

Amira Hass, 26 February 2009

On Friday, 16 January, Mohammed Shurrab and his two sons, Kassab and Ibrahim, took advantage of the daily lull in the Israeli assault – the ‘three hours’ promised by the IDF...

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Diary: Publishing’s Demise

Colin Robinson, 26 February 2009

I’d hardly settled behind my desk when one of my bosses asked if I would join her in the corner office. ‘Please close the door,’ she said as I entered the room. Seldom a good...

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Short Cuts: the Blessed Obama

Adam Shatz, 12 February 2009

Barack Obama is the first American president who has made history simply by being elected. His Swahili first name – which is derived from the Arabic baraka, or spiritual wisdom –...

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Short Cuts: the demise of Woolworths

John Lanchester, 29 January 2009

Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of the UK’s biggest trade union, Unite, has warned of apocalyptic consequences if the government doesn’t pump some money into the UK car...

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Israel’s Lies

Henry Siegman, 29 January 2009

Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that...

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LRB contributors

LRB Contributors, 29 January 2009

Tariq Ali A few weeks before the assault on Gaza, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army published a levelheaded document on ‘Hamas and Israel’, which argued that...

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Diary: the Theft of Iraq’s Antiquities

McGuire Gibson, 1 January 2009

Midway through the 2003 invasion, an American officer was shown on TV directing tank crews away from the site of Babylon, explaining to them that it was an important part of Iraq’s...

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If Gaza falls …

Sara Roy, 1 January 2009

Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last...

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Short Cuts: The Greek Uprising

Adam Shatz, 1 January 2009

On 16 December, ten days into the unrest in Greece sparked by the killing of a 15-year-old boy by the police, a group of Greek students occupied the National Broadcasting Network. Interrupting a...

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Israel’s Message: Gaza

Ilan Pappe, 1 January 2009

In 2004, the Israeli army began building a dummy Arab city in the Negev desert. It’s the size of a real city, with streets (all of them given names), mosques, public buildings and cars....

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America Concedes

Patrick Cockburn, 18 December 2008

On 27 November the Iraqi parliament voted by a large majority in favour of a security agreement with the US under which its 150,000 troops will withdraw from Iraqi cities, towns and villages by...

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At five o’clock in the morning on 21 September 1809, two men set out from London in two carriages and headed for Putney Heath. They brought two seconds, two sets of pistols, two hatreds and...

Read more about Incompetence at the War Office: Politics and Pistols at Dawn