International Socialist Organization Australia

We continue our series on rebel newspapers with a look at Pravda, the paper of the Russian Bolshevik Party By Matthew Cookson PRAVDA, meaning truth, was a key part of the great wave of upheaval that swept Russia before the First World War. It played an important role in the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the paper of the revolutionary wing of the Russian socialist movement. Lenin was the major figure in this movement as a leader of the Bolshevik Party. Heavy repression under the Tsar, the Russian dictator, meant that the Bolsheviks had to produce illegal newspapers and […]

To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire they make a desolation and they call it peace. THESE WORDS were used by the Roman historian Tacitus to describe the devastation of Britain by the Roman empire in the first century AD. They find an echo in Iraq today. Suha al-Hayatti, a rich woman living in Baghdad, could have been speaking for millions of Iraqis when she said In a month Iraq has gone back centuries. The Americans came and promised everyone paradise, but where is it? This is hell. It is now more than a month since US-led forces […]

TIME MAGAZINE is running an online poll on the biggest threat to world peace. For some reason, they were foolish enough to include the US in the list of dangerous countries. At the time of printing, online polling has the United States way out in front on 82 per cent. More than 240,000 people have voted in the survey-a fairly representative sample of world opinion. But there’s a disclaimer saying this is “an unscientific, informal survey for the interest and enjoyment of TIME.com users and may not be indicative of popular opinion.” Who are they kidding?

BY THE beginning of the 20th century the South’s rulers had denied blacks the right to vote and had re-established legal segregation. This system of apartheid was known as the “Jim Crow” laws. There were 181,000 blacks in Alabama eligible to vote in 1900. Two years later there were just 3000. All-pervasive racism encouraged poor whites to identify with the system and laws banned them from meeting blacks. The period in which the US eclipsed Britain as the world’s biggest economic power also saw the imposition of officially sponsored racism across the US. Two of the most famous films from […]

MARK LATHAM’S election as Labor leader has stirred up the national debate. The view that Latham might offer a serious fight is giving confidence to everyone who wants to see Howard thrown out at the election. In contrast to the wooden gestures of Simon Crean, and Kim Beazley’s well known support for the US military alliance, Latham captured the anger people felt around the war on Iraq. He called Howard’s ministers a bunch of suckholes and labelled George W Bush, the most dangerous man alive. Latham’s message that Howard has taken out the rungs in the ladder of opportunity resonated […]