The best antidote I have seen to the annual Sunday Times Rich List! A beautiful film illustration of the realities of wealth inequality. And in order to eliminate inequality, we don’t have to change the distribution to what most people regard as the ideal. We only have to change it to what people think it [...]
Posts under ‘US & Canada’
Korean Nuclear Crisis – time for Labour to call for dialogue to stop nuclear proliferation
Apr 13th, 2013 by Jenny Clegg.With tensions escalating on the Korean peninsula in what is possibly the most serious nuclear crisis since that over the Cuban missiles in 1962, PM David Cameron’s assertion that Britain’s possession of nuclear weapons ‘was necessary’, was not merely opportunistic and hypocritical but utterly dangerous. Whilst other world leaders Ban Ki-moon, the Russian and [...]
10 years on from Iraq: a violent country and a secretive state
Mar 18th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.At the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, it is said that the US won the war, Iran won the peace, and Turkey won the contracts. But did the US win the war? At a cost of £1.1 trillion and a death toll of 4,500 US troops, 32,000 wounded and with thousands [...]
On this day: the biggest women’s strike ever
Nov 23rd, 2012 by Jon Lansman.On this day, 23 November 1909, began a strike known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Over 20,000 Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly young women in their teens and twenties, launched a strike in New York’s garment industry. The strike lasted 11 weeks and remains the largest known strike by women in history. The morning after the [...]
Obama could yet make New Labour’s mistake
Nov 19th, 2012 by David Osler.MOST liberal post-mortems of the US presidential contest have been pretty upbeat; many comfortingly assert that the Republicans can never win again. The GOP is said to be irretrievably out of sync with the new America of openly lesbian senators, women who know their bodies cannot shut down rape pregnancies, and ever-increasing numbers of Latinos [...]
Why President Obama won (translating Slavoj Zizek)
Nov 14th, 2012 by Carl Packman.The radical French philosopher Alain Badiou was asked, after the 2009 US election, what he thought of the then President-elect Barack Obama, to which he responded, only partly amusingly: “Obama? As actor or as politician?” It wasn’t meant negatively, he went on to explain, but rather that Obama had convincingly pulled off a return to [...]
The demonisation of Bradley Manning shows need to protect whisteblowers
Nov 12th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.When Bradley Manning comes to trial on 4 February 2013, he will have been held in prison for over 2.5 years without trial. For up to 983 days detention he will not have been confronted with any of the evidence used to charge him. He is held responsible for a number of revelations published by Wikileaks [...]
Lessons from Obama’s victory
Nov 9th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.It’s not simply that Obama won, nor even that he won by a far larger margin than the media (ever eager to exaggerate electoral uncertainty to increase newspaper sales) had predicted. It’s the small print of the election which is so interesting. Social liberalism prevailed over hardline conservatism. Bookmarks Hide Sites
Polls: Obama would win a world vote, and might scrape home in the US too
Oct 12th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.A UPI/CVoter/Gallup poll of people in more than 30 countries shows U.S. President Barack Obama would win by 81% to 19% if they were allowed to vote in the U.S. election. The highest levels of support were in Iceland (98%), Netherlands, Portugal & Germany (97%), Ireland & Denmark (96%), and Switzerland, France and Finland (95%). The only [...]
George Galloway, the media, and the end of Respect
Sep 12th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.The departure of Salma Yaqoob and the withdrawal as a candidate by Kate Hudson may well mark the end of Respect. The Galloway hate-mongers seem to think the story is all about George Galloway. Galloway is “a sham”, Liberal Conspiracy has it, and Respect is a Galloway “ego-proxy” says Labour Uncut. George Galloway, warts and all, has [...]
