SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
AT the age of 84, Colin Powell has died. He had the image of a dove, but war crimes were hidden behind it.
Powell was national security adviser to Ronald Reagan and the first black commander-in-chief of the US military. In 2001, he became the country’s first black secretary of state.
In personal dealings he was described as a “pleasant” and a “nice” man. To many blacks he was also a role model. That may all be true, but those things do not prevent him from having an extremely bloody track record, laced with war crimes.
PATRICK CHURA reflects on the mass murder of civilians in wartime and his own visit, 10 years ago, to My Lai where US soldiers slaughtered over 500 men, women, children and infants
ANDREW MURRAY looks back on the ignominious career of the former US vice-president, who died earlier this week
SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war



