Barry Healy

  • Greek myths, folk opera and a post-apocalyptic USA

    Hadestown Anais Mitchell CD, Righteous Babe Records The “folk opera” Hadestown is an interpretation of the ancient Greek myth of the poet Opheus’ doomed quest to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld. It is set in a near-future post-apocalyptic US, beset by ecological and economic disaster. Orpheus, representing all poets, believes in the healing power of nature, but his wife is seduced by the promises of the huckster Hades.

  • Kent State massacre and ‘Ohio’

    On May 4, 1970, Ohio State National Guard military reservists murdered four students at Kent State University. The students were peacefully protesting against President Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. The killings stunned American youth into a convulsive protest movement that shook Nixon’s government and contributed to forcing the US ruling class to reverse its South East Asia war plans. The upsurge even found an expression on the pop music charts.

  • Twenty years of the Rosenberg Fund for Children

    On June 19, 1953, in a hideous example of US anti-communist hysteria, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed, accused of spying for the Soviet Union. They had two young children, six-year-old Robert and 10-year-old Michael.

  • The Texas schoolbook massacre

    Right-wing Republicans won an important battle in the “history wars” on March 12 when the Texas Board of Education approved a new social studies curriculum.

  • Black deaths in custody: a deadly emerging pattern

    In what is emerging as a deadly pattern in Western Australia, a 39-year-old Aboriginal prisoner died tragically in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital on March 22, after laying for several days in a brain-dead state.

  • WA: rally for secure jobs and public services

    Western Australian public servants are mounting an important battle to stop the government terminating their job security as part of an overall government assault on community services. Unionists say thousands of jobs are in danger and public services are threatened.