Class Struggle
n°21
July 1998
- 1
Britain - The minimum wage and the pay squeeze
On 18 June, the government finally announced its long-awaited plans concerning the minimum wage promised by Blair in the run- up to the last general election. On the whole, thanks to the psychological build up engineered by Labour's spin-doctors over the past months and the constant flow of speculative, … - 2
Britain - Genetically engineered food - inedible arguments
At the beginning of June this year, the giant chemical multinational, Monsanto, launched a £1m advertising campaign in Britain aimed at promoting the advantages of genetic engineering of plants. This provoked Prince Charles, the most famous (and probably the richest) organic farmer in the country, to declare in an article … - 3
Indonesia - The fall of Suharto
On Thursday May 21, 1998, Suharto, the Indonesian president, announced his resignation after a thirty-year reign as leader of one of the most heavily populated countries in the world: a population of 202 million for a surface area of 1.9 million square kilometres divided up between some 14,000 islands, the … - 4
India-Pakistan - Nuclear overbidding, reactionary drift and western hypocrisy
On 11 and 13 May, India carried out five nuclear explosions at a site located near its border with Pakistan. Just over two weeks later, on 28 and 30 May, Pakistan retaliated with another set of nuclear tests. This time, although several seismologists disputed this, Pakistani government sources claimed that … - 5
Russia - Crises in the former soviet union
At the end of May, the Moscow stock exchange collapsed, sending a wave of panic through financial and political circles, and not only in Russia. While the stock exchange index lost half of its value in the space of a few days, the prospect of a severe devaluation of the …