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Anatomy of the UK's new crossbreed government, and the uneven electoral geography that produced it. Amid the ruins of New Labour's economic model and spreading Euro-turbulence, what prospects for resistance to austerity's impending axe? Adapted from the source document.

Compares the 2008 financial crisis with trajectories & outcomes of the 1873 railroad crisis, the 1929 stock exchange collapse, & the "great panic" of 1907 to consider what remains of the program &ideology of neo-liberalism, distinguished by its US leadership, its enemies (organized labor, state socialism), & its success. US Treasury & Federal Reserve intervention in the current crisis that supposedly saved the system from devastation is examined, along with how this "bailout" differed from responses to past financial crises; the unstable nature of the recovery; & the mistaken belief that the American economy was sound prior to the crisis. Conditions of capital accumulation, labor supply, & world trade that caused past financial crashes are viewed alongside comparable conditions today. Although neo-liberalism has advanced through the crisis, it is contended that the huge transfer of wealth from labor to capital "may now be starting to undermine the system itself." Implications of the neo-liberalism crisis for the New Left Review (NLR) are discussed & a future research agenda is suggested. Adapted from the source document.

The economic crisis has taken precedence over US considerations of war on Iran, but President-Elect Barack Obama has vowed that he will stop Iran's enrichment program no matter what it takes. He has European support, at least from French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, & a legal pretext provided by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This paper addresses two issues in this regard: (1) the political history of the NPT as an international agreement -- ie, which states conceived it & why, which accepted it & why, & which have rejected it & with what result; & (2) the effect of the NPT in world politics, viewed as an arena of conflicts among states, movements, & ideals. It is concluded that the NPT would better be called the Treaty of Non-Protestation. It is a pacifier to stop the cry of public opinion. It lulls the people while violence is committed in its name. If there is ever to be nuclear disarmament, it will not be through this instrument. S. Stanton

In the UK, the writing of Doris Lessing has frequently been associated with left–wing politics and the second–wave feminist movement. Critics have concentrated primarily on issues of class and gender and have focused their attention on novels published in the 1950s and 1960s. This essay suggests that Lessing's work is over–ripe for reassessment in relation to ideas from post-colonial theory. Her writing repeatedly addresses questions about national identity and its imbrications with 'race'. These ideas intersect in complex ways with her more familiar analysis of gender and class. This essay discusses Lessing's recent novel The Sweetest Dream (2001), which was widely read as an attack on the political idealism of the 1960s. It relates the novel to her collection of essays, African Laughter (1992), her recent essay on the situation in Zimbabwe, 'The Jewel of Africa' (2003) and the second volume of her autobiography, Walking in the Shade (1997). Zimbabwe (previously Southern Rhodesia) is of crucial importance in these works. The article explores how Lessing makes use of notions of city, home and memory that can be instructively compared with some of Toni Morrison's ideas in her novel Beloved (1987) and the essays 'Home' (1998) and 'The Site of Memory' (1990). Lessing revises the notion of 'home' so that it becomes capable of both recognizing racial and national differences and moving outside them. She also interprets memory as productive for the individual and the nation only when it becomes, as Morrison would say, 'rememory': when it can acknowledge the importance of imagination in dealing with trauma and thus suggest the fluctuating, mobile status of identity. The article demonstrates that similar ideas about home and memory are present in her fiction, essay and autobiography, indicating that her intention is to explore generic classification and blur the boundaries between different methods of writing personal and political history. Lessing's work strongly suggests the possibility that apparently 'fictional' writings may be more fruitful than ostensibly factual ones in allowing individuals and nations to make sense of their immediate pasts.

Discusses the nature, implications, and possible consequences of upsets within the European Union (EU) that occurred during the summer of 2005 when France and the Netherlands rejected the EU constitutional treaty. The campaigns for approval of the constitutional treaty and factors that led to mobilizations for a "No' vote in France and the Netherlands are described to argue that they exposed Europe's new political landscape of divergent economies and rival state interests. An overview of the post-Cold War evolution of the EU suggests that a "Yes' vote would have effectively ratified such developments as a free-market agenda, the EU's eastward expansion, and a common foreign policy in relation to wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is concluded that the downfall of the European Constitution has dismissed the illusion of the EU as an independent power offering a more humanitarian social-democratic alternative to the US and affirmed that the EU plays a subordinate role within the US hegemonic system. Prospects for the future of the EU are discussed.