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Diarmuid O’NeillAn inquest into the death of Diarmuid O’Neill, gunned down in Hammersmith in 1996 by police marksmen, found – by majority verdict – that Diarmuid was “lawfully” killed. It seems that the police have licence to kill anybody if they claim that they believe him to be armed, however incorrect the alleged belief!Gerry Kelly, … [Read more…]

In an interview he gave on Turkish radio recently, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former General Secretary of the CPSU and President of the Soviet Union, made the shameful admission that his ambition, all along, was“to liquidate communism”.We publish below the transcript of Gorbachev’s interview from the latest edition ofNorth Star Compass, organ of the Canadian based … [Read more…]

a mirror of imperialist racismFollowing the Austrian general election last year, Jörg Haider’s far right Freedom Party, which increased its share of the vote from 5% in 1986 to 27%, joined with the centre-right People’s Party to form a coalition government in which each of these two parties has an equal number of ministers. Haider, … [Read more…]

IraqHans von Sponeck, head of the UN’s oil-for food programme and its top official in Iraq, and Jutta Purghart, head of the UN World Food Programme in Iraq, have just resigned from their posts. The resignations were in protest at the impossibility of implementing the UN’s humanitarian programmes under the sanctions regime. Both UN officials … [Read more…]

faithful service to imperialismThere are people in the left movement, including some calling themselves communists, who make the assertion that the Labour Party is a party of the British working class, which can be an instrument of socialism in Britain. They are wrong. The purpose of this 2-part article is to demonstrate that Labour right … [Read more…]

Referring in the nomination of their respective candidates for the post of London mayor, theFinancial Timeseditorial of 29 February 2000 correctly observed that“the process of selecting both the Labour and Conservative candidates was a farce.”In Labour’s case, this process, accompanied as it was by the skulduggery and back stabbing which is characteristic of bourgeois parties … [Read more…]

Victoria Brittain’s contribution to the fringe meeting at the SLP Congress, November 6th 1999. In the previous issue of the paper, the Congress report was included but due to shortage of space we were unable to include this article. It is reproduced below as we promised last time.I’ve chosen these two countries – both today … [Read more…]

by Zane CarpenterEveryone is now aware that the Labour Home Secretary, Jack Straw, ‘has a mind to release’ the mass murderer, General Augusto Pinochet. But what has led Mr Straw to be so ‘minded’?The official reason is medical advice, intended to have been kept secret, which, supposedly, casts doubt on the ability of Pinochet to … [Read more…]

US stock marketMichael Mussa, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is reported in theFinancial Timesof 25 February 2000 that current overvaluation of the US stock market“may be greater[than at the time of the 1987 Wall Street Crash]and a larger and more prolonged correction may be appropriate”.

In the last article in this series we detailed the cruelty and inefficiency that characterised the anachronistic feudal Tibetan regime at the time of the Chinese Revolution. The inefficiency of the system meant that Tibet could not produce nearly enough of the necessaries of life to meet the needs of the masses of Tibetan serfs … [Read more…]