Jonathan Strauss

  • INDIA: Scenes from a renewed class struggle

    "We have a chance to fight ... to present a unified picture of workers", said N. Vasudevan, general secretary of the Federation of Blue Star Workers Unions, as I talked with him in the union's office in Mumbai. Behind him were

  • EUROPEAN UNION: Left discusses European integration

    COPENHAGEN — "We want a totally different agenda", Enhedslisten (Red-Green Alliance) MP Karl Albrechtsen, from Denmark, told the "Europe after Nice" conference held here on March 3-4. Attended by 160 delegates from 31

  • PORTUGAL: United left surges ahead

    LISBON — In the last 10 years Portugal's Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc) has increasingly brought together some of the most important forces on the Portuguese radical left, including three groups (one Trotskyist, one formerly

  • CUBA: 'We will conquer injustice'

    PORTO ALEGRE — Cuban National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcon reaffirmed the internationalist and socialist perspective of the Cuban Revolution in a speech from the chair of a thematic panel at the World Social Forum

  • The lions must shake off their chains

    Rise Like Lions: The Hijacking of Australian HistoryBy Steve DavisGinninderra Press, 2000138pp., $19.80 (plus $3.30 postage)Order from PO Box 53, Charnwood ACT, 2516. The cover of Steve Davis' Rise Like Lions: the Hijacking of

  • Comic note off-key but tickles fancy

    Rough CrossingBy Tom StoppardDirected by Lloyd KingNew Theatre, SydneyThursday to Sunday until December 23$22/$15, bookings 9873 3575 Since the New Theatre's establishment in 1932, much of Sydney's alternative and radical

  • Tales of the holy ghost and the haunting spectre

    As John Howard's federal Coalition government faces increasing public criticism over its cuts to welfare, employment services minister Tony Abbott has resorted to invoking both the Pope and Karl Marx in defence of the

  • Health cartels merge: more profits, less service

    The recent purchase by Foundation Health Care of the Medihelp medical centre chain means 1000 general practitioners, about 5% of all those in Australia, will be contracted to Foundation. Foundation managing director Ken Jones

  • Lessons of CPA history

    SYDNEY — The 70 people who attended a seminar entitled "The Communist Party of Australia: Lessons for the 21st Century" on October 22 agreed that an anti-capitalist movement can be built: the September 11-13 (S11) protests in

  • One law for Reith, another for the poor

    It seems that the federal government believes some apparent abuses of government expenditure should be public knowledge, while others should not. The provision by Peter Reith, now employment and workplace relations minister,

  • Censorship no answer to racism

    Democratic Socialist Party national executive member Peter Boyle has questioned the October 10 ruling by Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner Kathleen McEvoy against the far-right Adelaide Institute's web site.

  • Journalists resist Fairfax

    SYDNEY — Journalists, photographers and artists at the highly profitable John Fairfax Holdings, publishers of the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, Business Review Weekly, some regional and