En Passant

As capitalism burns itself out (literally and economically) the liberationist project becomes not only more important but a necessity for our survival as a species.

A headline from today’s Australian: ‘Wikileaks may have blood on its hands already, says Gates.’ What, unlike Gates and Obama?

I will be talking about the elections at the University of Canberra on Wednesday 18 August at 1 pm in 22 B 25 (ie room 25 on level B of Building 22 above the retro cafe). Election 2010: There is no choice – build a socialist alternative.

Evidently there is an election on in Australia at the moment. I only know this because robot men and women are criss-crossing the country speaking in platitudes and offering to do nothing about war, racism, climate change, gay marriage, jobs, pay increases, taxing the rich … Hit the comments button and have your say on [...]

Evidently Julia Gillard has the interests of working people and retirees at heart.  So I ask her to explain her role as Employment and Workplace Relations Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for almost 3 years in addressing the gender pay gap? Under Labor it actually increased to 18.2%. So apart from platitudes, what will Prime Minister [...]

Nicole Colson in the US magazine Socialist Worker explains why the classified Pentagon documents on Afghanistan released by WikiLeaks present a damning portrait of who is suffering from the U.S. war. THE RELEASE of more than 92,000 classified documents relating to the war in Afghanistan by the muckraking Web site WikiLeaks has left the Obama administration [...]

This is the Coke and Pepsi election. There is no substance; there are no substantial differences. There is a lot of mindless advertising to persuade us to choose one brand over the other, and puerile attempts at differentiation, but the end result is the same – fizzy and sugary no matter what the choice and of no [...]

Whether it’s about refugees, the war on Afghanistan, political correctness, same-sex marriage or the mining tax, in the month since Gillard won the Prime Minister’s job, she has continued, if not actually worsened, the rotten rhetoric and practice of her predecessor, Kevin Rudd. Gillard’s attacks on refugees have garnered the government the support of some [...]

It’s far easier for the two major parties of capital to rail against immigrants and asylum seekers than to do anything that would actually address the real problems of overcrowding and congestion.

Fair dinkum, I despair. The platitude twins talked in similar terms about boats, population and sustainability; about doing nothing on climate change; about health and education; about killing Afghans; about mom and apple pie. Well maybe not the latter exactly, but certainly there were lots of Australianisms and appeals to nationalism.  The differences were minor. [...]