Arab struggles
As Alex Davidson writes, "It was wonderful to see the peoples of the Arab world rise up against their dictatorial rulers/monarchs and their military machines. With great bravery they showed that they were unwilling to be ruled in the way they have suffered for decades".
However, as the West is dependent on Middle Eastern oil for consumption and huge profits and, the Suez Canal is a crucial trade and military route then Imperialism will do everything, including military action, to maintain control of the region.
The question Alex Davidson poses: "Will Imperialism retain its stranglehold on the region albeit with new puppets or will the people manage to break the centuries old exploitative grip?" has a considerable bearing for the rest of the world, not least the Palestinian people.
US-China Tensions
As China increasingly becomes a world power, challenging the power of the USA, the tensions between the two countries grow.
Alex Davidson, in the context of the Doha Round of the World Trade Organisation's negotiations, examines some of the points of tension including the US pressure on China to re-value the yuan and issues between China and Japan in which the US takes a very keen interest.
Austerity in Britain
In Britain the Coalition government's austerity programme is beginning to bite. Matthew D'Anconna in the London Evening Standard (10 January 2011) wrote, "the Prime Minister has already delivered an eye-wateringly tight plan for fiscal recovery, a dramatic blueprint for welfare reform and radical strategies for schools, higher education and the NHS.
There is plenty for true Conservatives to celebrate. Indeed, partnership with the Lib-Dems has arguably given the Tory party political cover to be much more ambitious and robust than if it were governing alone".
Deserving and Undeserving poor
As Tom Burden notes in his article, 'The "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor', the Coalition government's campaign is "part of a general ideological attack on the Welfare State".
Burden explores the notion of a distinction between two types of recipients of state benefits and services, the 'deserving'and 'undeserving' and traces the origins of the distinction back to the Tudor's and the 16th century. His argument is that these distinctions are used to assist in the conditions required for the maintenance of capitalism: keeping wages down; maintaining order; and, supporting capitalist values and ideas.
Housing
Part of the attack on the Welfare State is the continuing attack on social housing, which has been unrelenting since Mrs Thatcher's introduction of the 'Right-to-Buy' council housing. As Pat Turnbull reports in her article, "Housing Benefit: the baleful truth", there is a dire shortage of social housing. The changes to Housing Benefit and security of tenure now being introduced by the Tory-Lib Dem government will make matters worse. As Pat points out, it is not the poor who do well out of housing benefit but private landlords. Private landlords pocketed £8.5 billion in 2010 through housing benefit.
Israel and Apartheid
Ronnie Kasrils writing on the parallels between today's Israel and the apartheid regime of South Africa reminds us of 1948, an annus horribilis for both black South Africans and Palestinians.
In that year, in South Africa the election of an Afrikaner government, with an uncompromising and militant programme, introduced full-bloodied apartheid. "For Palestinians, 1948 ushered in a truly catastrophic era (the Nakba)..resulting in expulsion from a land they had inhabited for centuries, and their replacement by an exclusivist Jewish state". Kasrils examines the parallels between the two states and their collaboration during the years of apartheid.
He charges that, "Israel is as guilty in international and humanitarian law as the apartheid regime once was. Israel's illegal conquest and occupation..represented by its monstrous apartheid wall and the relentless expansion of its illegal settlement...has reduced the West Bank..to a mere 12% of the land that formerly constituted Palestine". The infamous Bantustan system under apartheid allocated 13% of the land to its indigenous people. Kasrils argues that, the CST (Colonialism of a Special Type) thesis provides the Palestinian national liberation movement with an inspirational analogy as well as potential strategy and tactics.
Turner Exhibition
It was most appropriate that Andrew Turner's retrospective exhibition, "The Pits and the Pendulum", should be hosted by the National Coal Mining Museum.
Turner's work covering a history of miners' lives and struggles is unsurpassed as a visual comment and history of the 20th century. His banners for many unions, representing their history of struggle, are also great works of art.
His "Ballads Moribundus", is a wonderful series depicting the beginning and, postulating, the end of capitalism. The drawing of two miners jigging to the caption, "The Nation Mourns the Death of Churchill", sums up Turner's art.
