The greatest threat to democracy may no longer come from political parties but from unelected tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and his powerful Silicon Valley network, argues JOHN GREEN
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If you are asking: ‘Where is all the protest music?’ you aren’t looking hard enough
If you’re prepared to look beyond guitar-based rock music, you’ll see the protest song is still alive and well, says IAN SINCLAIR
Today’s interconnected conflicts are enriching the arms industry while pushing the entire world towards permanent militarisation, argues ROGER McKENZIE
by Nana Backland, Merseyside Morning Star Readers & Supporters Group
The government’s Pip review looks like a carefully managed exercise in legitimising future cuts to disability support, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
Every now and then an opinion piece is published in the press lamenting the lack of political songwriting today.
A couple of assumptions lie behind this much repeated concern about popular music.
First, “political music” is taken to mean music giving voice to left-leaning, anti-Establishment politics — aka protest music.
Second, that the “golden age” of political music ran from the 1960s to the 1980s, from Bob Dylan’s broadsides against the military-industrial complex and US racism to John Lennon’s feminist Woman Is the Nigger of the World and a slew of anti-Vietnam war songs.
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New releases from Old Spot, Chris Marksberry, and Clementine Lovell
On January 2 2014, PJ Harvey used her turn as guest editor of the Today programme to expose the realities of war, arms dealing and media complicity. The fury that followed showed how rare – and how threatening – such honesty is within Britain’s most Establishment broadcaster, says IAN SINCLAIR
New releases from The Dreaming Spires, Bruce Springsteen, and Chet Baker
TONY BURKE revels in the publication of previously unreleased tracks by the great US folksinger