By Michael Faulkner - 01.18.15

The article that follows was written just before the news broke of the murderous assault on the offices of the Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by Islamist terrorists. It is hoped that this column will be able to return to that event and consider its consequences and wider significance in the next posting of TPJ Magazine.

Any claim to express a view “from the left” is not as straightforward as it may appear. What is to be understood by ‘the left’? According to the tenets of the mainstream media in Britain, “the left” encompasses the Labour Party, some representatives of liberal opinion and possibly sections of the trade union movement.

By Mike Faulkner - 12.14.14

 “Cuba and the United States have quite a curious – in fact, unique status in international relations. There is no similar case of such a sustained assault by one power against another – in this case the greatest superpower against a poor, Third World country – for forty years of terror and economic warfare.”                                                                                                                                                                   Noam Chomsky. Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. 2000.

By Michael Faulkner - 11.09.14

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, was launched sixty five years ago following the signature of the Atlantic Pact in 1949. The original member states that came together under US tutelage claimed that their alliance was dedicated to the preservation of peace and to the defence of Western Europe against the supposed threat of military aggression.  It is noteworthy that the launch of NATO coincided with the intensification of...

By Michael Faulkner - 10.12.14

Nothing has exposed the bankruptcy of the main Westminster political parties as starkly as the recent referendum on Scottish independence. So confident was prime minister Cameron that the Scottish electorate would resoundingly reject the Scottish National Party’s case that he refused to allow a “devo-max” option to be included on the ballot paper. It had to be a straight Yes/No choice for or against independence. During the final weeks of campaigning the gap between the “yes” and “no” camps...

By Michael Faulkner - 09.14.14

Discussion of female genital mutilation (FGM) has often been bedevilled by accusations of racism and Eurocentric insensitivity levelled against its critics.  Some years ago the well-known feminist writer and academic, Germaine Greer, accused those who wanted to outlaw the practice, of meddling in “traditions they didn’t understand.” Their hostility to FGM was, she said, “an attack on cultural identity.”  In similar vein, albeit rather more cautiously, a newspaper that considers itself to be on the revolutionary left recently tiptoed gingerly around the subject following  a widely supported campaign against the practice initiated by Fahma Mohamed, a seventeen-year old Bristol school-girl. She had gained over 250,000 signatures for a petition