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Casting about for the truth of 9/11: Don DeLillo's Falling Man

Parts of Falling Man are moving, and one can learn something about the reactions of a particular social layer in New York at the time. The novel, though, does not succeed as a unified work of art. It falls short of the significance of the events themselves.

The Obama candidacy and the new consensus on Afghanistan

The statements made by Barack Obama during his visit to Afghanistan over the weekend verify that his campaign for president is the mouthpiece for a significant section of the American ruling elite that is insisting on a shift in US policy in the Middle East and Central Asia. Far from proposing any retreat from militarism, Obama is arguing for a faster drawdown of troop numbers in Iraq and a reduction in tensions with Iran, only in order to facilitate a major escalation of US military operations in Afghanistan, potentially extending them into Pakistan.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq: A debacle for US imperialism

Five years after Washington inaugurated its “shock and awe” campaign, striking Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, it has become abundantly clear that the war of aggression against Iraq has produced the greatest geo-political disaster in American history.

ISSE demonstrates in New York to demand release of jailed Iranian students

The International Students for Social Equality held a demonstration Saturday, February 16 to protest the Iranian government s arrest of more than 40 left-wing students and demand their immediate release.

New Hampshire primary foreshadows protracted contest for US presidential nominations

The outcome of the Democratic primary suggests that Clinton benefited from a growing concern among working class voters over the state of the US economy. Clinton was the only candidate to raise the growing danger of recession in Saturday s televised debate, and exit polls showed that the economy was the number one issue of those who turned out to vote, whether they cast a Democratic or a Republican ballot.

Seventy years since Stalin’s year of terror: a review of two Trotsky biographies

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the most terrible year in the history of the Soviet Union. Having staged in August 1936 a political show trial in Moscow that provided a pseudo-judicial cover for the murder of Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Ivan Smirnov and other leaders of the October Revolution, Stalin launched in 1937 a campaign of terror whose goal was the destruction of all remnants of Marxist political thought and culture in the Soviet Union.

The French '"far lef" learns nothing from the presidential election

Initial statements issued by the Ligue communiste r volutionnaire (LCR Revolutionary Communist League) and Lutte Ouvri re (Workers Struggle), components of the so-called far left in France, indicate that these organizations have neither understood nor learned anything from the presidential elections.

Iran's release of sailors: A humiliating episode for Britain

Iran s release of the 15 British naval personnel captured in the Gulf is the d nouement of a humiliating episode for the Blair government and for British imperialism. Since they were captured by Iranian naval forces in the Shatt al Arab waterway, the sailors and marines have come to epitomise the gap between Britain s pretensions as a world power and its actual capabilities.

Britain heightens confrontation with Iran over detained sailors

The Blair government, backed by the Bush administration, yesterday stepped up diplomatic pressure for the release of 15 British sailors and marines detained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG) last Friday. In an already tense situation in the Persian Gulf, US aircraft carrier battle groups have held a major military exercise over the past two days, while British ministers in London called for Iran to be further diplomatically isolated.

The US attorneys

The supposed constitutional showdown between the Democratic-led Congress and George Bush s White House over the firing of eight federal prosecutors has served primarily to shift the focus of media attention and official public debate away from the war in Iraq.