Feature

A year of the 'war against terrorism', and what has been achieved? Despite a year of conflict, repression and militant mobilisation we are on the edge of potentially the worst war for generations. As we approach the anniversary of 11 September, US troops are streaming towards the Middle East in preparation for war. All the talk is of an invasion of Iraq in order to effect 'regime change' against Saddam Hussein.

George Orwell famously said, 'Sport is war minus the shooting,' and there are many examples to back this up. The phrase 'nuclear cricket' was used to describe the test series between India and Pakistan in 1999, the year both nations became nuclear powers. The hysteria around Euro 96 was whipped up by the press showing English and German players in Second World War helmets. In 1980 and 1984 the Olympics was boycotted mutually by the US and the Russians because of imperialist tension over Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Angola.

Alarm bells have been ringing in recent months about a resurgence of anti-Semitism, particularly in Western Europe and the Middle East. Zionists have always dismissed criticisms of Zionism or of Israel with the claim that such criticisms represent anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism. So we need to disentangle the phony label of anti-Semitism--justifiable criticisms of Israel and Zionism--from the genuine article.

It's a man's world, as the saying, the song and women's direct experience all testify. It shouldn't be, of course. The old imagined world of 'femininity', where women were supposedly put on pedestals, where they waited at the hearth for men to come home, is long gone. Women are expected to work outside the home as well as in it. Their work has expanded at a truly terrifying rate. Around 65 percent of women with dependent children go out to work, including a majority with under 5s.

Once again trade unions are hitting the headlines. But no longer do journalists write about the death of the British trade union movement. Now all the talk is of the left winning union elections, trade union demonstrations and one-day strikes. Two key issues are fuelling this revival of class struggle at the moment. By far the most important is pay.

We are being told that we can breathe a sigh of relief. India and Pakistan, it seems, have stepped back from the brink of the worst human catastrophe since the Second World War. As so often in the past, people around the planet are being assured that they can 'learn to stop worrying and love the bomb'.

Unfortunately, a glance at the reality of the continuing south Asian crisis and the forces driving it forward leave no room for such complacency.

Apologists for Israel frequently boast that it is a cut above all other states in the Middle East on the grounds that it is a democracy. By this they mean that the Palestinian minority (nearly 20 percent of the total population) have the right to vote, unlike the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories or, indeed, the Arabs in the rest of the region. Moreover, since the late 1970s they have enjoyed the right to form political parties.

Just after the queen mother's funeral Jonathan Freedland of the 'Guardian' apologised for misjudging 'the public mood' and wrote that 'these are days for republicans to walk humbly'. Freedland likes swimming with the stream, and had picked up on a certain swing back to popularity for the monarchy.

By now you are probably sick of the hype surrounding the queen's golden jubilee. Even before the royal beano began, newspaper columnists talked of a country united. Many have evoked the celebrations that took place during the queen's silver jubilee in 1977. But the country was never united. One 7-inch single helped piss on the queen's parade.

After two decades of neoliberal dominance all kinds of divisions are emerging. The rise of the far right, and of racist and xenophobic movements in general, represents the political face of a process of capitalist modernisation based on the defeat of earlier waves of class struggle as well as changes in the social composition of the working class.