En Passant

The police are the front-line enforcers of the current system, and as such are implacable and dangerous opponents of any movement for justice and social change. We should treat them as such.

The soldiers in Afghanistan are fighting and dying to protect the Alan Joyces of the world and their right to make profits off our labour; their right to attack our wages and jobs; their right to lock us out.

They are fighting and dying for the one percent.

QANTAS workers are fighting the one percent. They are fighting for job security and better pay. They are fighting to put people first. We must support them. Victory to QANTAS workers.

The one percent in the US have now turned their brutality against their own 99 percent and have tried to shut down the Occupy movements. They savagely attacked protesters in Oakland, including an Iraqi vet who was hit in the head and critically injured by a tear gas canister.

People are now beginning to draw the obvious conclusions; the real enemy is the one percent. Not Iraqis, or Afghans but the US one percent and their paid politicians.

Ideas like those espoused by Ron Paul and his libertarian supporters, such as opposition to government social programs, are the opposite of what the Occupy movement is about. We need more taxes on the rich and corporations, with the money devoted to helping workers and the poor, by increasing the quality of public schools or providing an effective social safety net.

Likewise, there is no place for ideas that divide us and make our movement weaker by vilifying undocumented immigrants or trade unions. We need political discussion and participation that builds solidarity and unity within the Occupy movement.

A refugee is dead. A protester has spent 24 hours in jail for being in the middle of Perth. And a war criminal walks among the other ‘dignitaries’ at CHOGM. The wrong people were imprisoned; the criminal is free.

The system is crooked, brutal and inhuman.

The war criminals are part of the one percent; that one percent looks after its own when it suits them.

So, as you break your own chains and build your own effective resistance against corporate tyranny, we ask you to demand a just peace for all the peoples in the Middle East, based on international law and equal human rights.

Qaddafi was a tyrant whose corrupt rule served to enrich the tiny circle around him, while the mass of Libyans endured poverty and repression. No one should shed a tear that he is gone.

But the U.S. government has advanced its imperial interests with its role in Qaddafi’s death and the overthrow of his regime. All those opposed to war and oppression need to speak out against U.S. attempts to determine Libya’s future–and to curb the Arab revolution.

Next time, to beat the cops back, we need thousands upon thousands of protesters. Partly that will happen when the economic crisis arrives in Australia. But partly it is the task of socialists to point out the need to build an organisation of the working class to take on the one percent and free the rest of us from our economic slavery.

It is and will be a hard road. But we are in this for the long haul. Join us in the fight for a world where all are equal and we share democratically in the wealth we as workers create.

The reality is that police forces around the world help perpetuate the greatest crime possible: maintaining the murderous system of capitalism.