En Passant

The last month saw a big spike in readers, especially from the US.  That increase has now dropped back so that the readership is leveling out at around its pre-spike levels.  The blog was ephemerally attractive to a wider audience.   Maybe the shock of the new wore off.  How to recapture the magic?

This piece, by Martin Hirst from Ethical Martini and the AUT, is reproduced with his permission. Here is a link. I spent an interesting 24 hours in Christchurch on Friday and Saturday as a guest of the New Zealand Broadcasting School. I was a speaker at the school’s conference to celebrate 25 years of turning […]

Geelong Council has sacked two workers after they filled in hazardous potholes in their lunchtime.

 There are strikes or threatened action in the following sectors in South Africa: Gold, Platinum, Coal, Municipal workers, Paper and Chemicals, Rail, Communications, Doctors, the SABC.  Couple this strike wave with the first recession since the downfall of apartheid and the anger in the townships over the conditions people are forced to live in and the situation […]

John has an article in the August edition of Socialist Alternative about Australian hypocrisy over the Rio Tinto arrests. It is based on Rudd gives China a Stern talking to on this site.

America is a country shaped and dominated by race.  That history will not disappear, as the arrest of African American Professor Harvey Gates for ‘breaking in’ to his own home shows. Conservatives argue that the election of Barack Obama means that the US is somehow a post-racialist society.  Certainly the American electorate rejected the overt racism of […]

Often seemingly appropriate policy responses can lead to tax rorts. Take section 23AG of our income tax laws. Back in the mid 1980s Australia moved from an exemption system for foreign taxed income to a foreign tax credit system (FTCS).  In essence under the FTCS Australian residents declare their foreign income and receive a credit […]

PRESIDENT BARACK Obama declared recently that there would no longer be junior and senior partners in the Americas but his actions are sending a different message.

The “terrorists” of today like Osama bin Laden were trained, funded and backed by US imperialism yesterday.

Any wage increase less than 4 percent in the coming year will be a real wage cut. Let unions fight to defend living standards.