The anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks coincides with a resurgence in 'liberal interventionism'. James Turley evaluates the bloody harvest of both (first published here) On September 11 2001, a motley crew of Islamist militants hijacked four planes in US airspace. Hours later, the tallest buildings in the country had been demolished, and thousands of ...
James Turley examines the unravelling Stanford fraud affair When he first entered British consciousness in any serious way, Allen Stanford was hard to miss. Here was a Texan billionaire, ostentatiously arriving in a monogrammed helicopter to discuss - of all things for a Texan billionaire - a sponsorship deal with the England and Wales Cricket Board ...
Ted North watches a new US administration takes shape The widespread rejoicing at the election of Barrack Obama, including by some on the left, can now be put into context as his incoming administration takes shape. Soon to be key figures are emerging from the competing mass of careerists, lobbyists, and various other undesirable kinds of ...
How deep is official anti-racism? James Turley examines the question There can be few constituencies in America which have received the results of the November 4 presidential election as favourably as the nation’s black voters. Always a reliably Democrat demographic, 96% of African-Americans cast their ballot for Obama, with only 3% voting for McCain. The most obvious ...
James Turley sees the illusions of millions reflected in the left A couple of years ago, I spent an overly large part of my life in endless polemics with various rank-and-file leftists on internet forums, mostly of American extraction. I was particularly harsh on the US International Socialist Organization, formerly the franchise of the British Socialist Workers ...
The right's criticisms of 'greedy spivs' are a cynical cover to maintain the system of capitalism, reckons James Turley. So why do they find an echo on the left? The world’s financial markets were thrown into turmoil by the House of Representatives’ unexpected rejection of the George Bush-Hank Paulson $700 billion bail-out plan. As I write, ...
Delegates at the National Union of Teachers' conference voted yesterday to "support teachers and schools in opposing Ministry of Defence recruitment activities that are based upon misleading propaganda". The motion also called for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for protests if there is any attack on Iran. Check out these ...
Hat-tip to Dave Broder and the Workers Liberty-sponsored Middle East Workers' Solidarity group. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union recently passed a motion calling for industrial action to protest the continuing assault on Iraq and Afghanistan. The motion calls the war 'bipartisan' and criticises both the main bourgeois parties in America, and proposes an 8 ...
A sit-in protest last Thursday (November 1) at Morton West High School in Illinois has ended disgracefully with 37 students on the expulsion chopping block. For "gross disobedience and mob activity", it says here. While in the grand scheme of the vile crimes perpetrated by the American State on dissidents, expulsion counts somewhat ...
It may have escaped your attention, but yesterday was labor day in the USA. Comrades can be forgiven for missing it, since the unions in the world's strongest and most advanced capitalist country are notoriously small and politically weak (quite a coincidence!). Only 12 per cent of workers are unionised, and labor day has become ...