Although extremely opinionated, the Turtle aspires to be eclectic and non-sectarian in outlook. We would rather see a hundred flowers of criticism and discussion bloom than assert and defend a monolithic party line. The Turtle has no formal ties or associations with any political organisation, though our interest in and general sympathy for movements like the People's Global Action and The Cobbler newspaper in upstate New York, with which we frequently share material, is apparent . The Contributors to the Turtle are therefore a diverse bunch. They are all equally welcome in these pages, and we hope they feel at home here.
All contributions are voluntary.
The Turtle tries to live outside the cash economy as much as is possible, and is neither willing nor able to pay our contributors for the articles published. We are therefore enormously grateful for the time and energy the Friends of the Turtle have put into the site over the years, and extend our thanks to them once again here. The Turtle was founded in Oxford University in 1993 by Ben Fender, and enjoyed a haphazard existence for two years as an irregularly-published series of six little red books, memorialised in the Turtle's Graveyard . Briefly defunct from 1995-1998 after the writers and editors had mostly graduated, the Turtle was revived and resusciated, and relaunched onto the worldwide web in the Summer of 1998. A Re-founding Manifesto was issued to guide our activity, which remains a surprisingly accurate statement of what we are still doing two years later, now that the site has published more than two hundred pages of words.