The main outcome of the recent NATO summit was decision to launch a new ‘spearhead’ rapid response task force. This ‘achievement’ is something that NATO’s political and military leaders seem to be very proud about. In reality this new project is yet another landmark in the weakening of US imperialism, the crisis in world relations and the decline of the global capitalist system as a whole.

As politicans from across the world met at the NATO summit in Wales, the crisis in Ukraine saw an escalation in rhetoric. The same people who told us about Saddam’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” are now raising a hue and cry about thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Russian troops having invaded Ukraine and are demanding swift action to counter them.

Lal Khan analyses the modern resurgence of political Islam and religious fundamentalism, which has risen in conditions of ideological and political vacuum following the collapse of the Soviet Union. From the black reaction of ISIS to the ferociously bestial Taliban, these Frankenstein’s monsters created by imperialism in the past have wreaked havoc and are raising the spectre of barbarism in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.