Saturday’s socialist speak out
Posted by John, September 15th, 2012 - under Saturday's socialist speak out.
Australia flew out the first group of asylum seekers to Nauru on Friday. The 30 Sri Lankan detainees, who presumably are Tamils fleeing genocide and brutal repression in their home country, have been charged with no crime and committed none in seeking refuge in Australia.
Asylum seekers in tents in Nauru
They will live in tents. The no disadvantage test means that even if they are found to be genuine refugees (almost all are) they will be imprisoned offshore for an indefinite period.
Effectively, people fleeing war, genocide, rape and death are receiving ten or 20 year jail sentences for the ‘crime’ of seeking asylum in Australia.
I do not intend to or want to demean the horror of the Holocaust and the Nazi filth who killed 6 million Jews, but Auschwitz was the end result of a long process that included first arresting and imprisoning communists, social democrats, Roma, homosexuals and other ‘undesirables’ shortly after Hitler came to power.
Auschwitz
In the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
I will continue to speak out for refugees and oppose the racism of both major parties and their left and right factions in the demonisation of innocent men, women and children.
In other news from Australia, the joke that passes for political debate and analysis in my country continues. Tony Abbott’s past is being subjected to the same sort of scrutiny The Australian and the other members of the fruitcake faction of capital (see Campbell Newman, Barry O’Farrell and Ted Baillieu for a foretaste nationally) have been applying to Julia Gillard.
While it interesting to see allegations about Abbott calling a woman ‘chairthing,’ punching walls and the like, and to witness the fruitcake faction have some shit thrown back at it, and to see the chutzpah of The Australian in defending wallpuncher Abbott, this is a diversion from the real issues.
In Queensland Campbell Newman announced he would sack 14000 public servants and 500 rail workers. The unions have pranced around in the ring but because the union leadership refuses to call members out on strikes, they haven’t laid a punch on the Newman Government.
Soon all we will be left with is platitudes about voting Labor in four years’ time and things will be better. For the 14,500 soon to be sacked 4 years away is a country too far.
It is the same in New South Wales. The Liberal Government of Barry O’Farrell has just announced $1.7 billion worth of cuts to education and the union leadership has been more or less quiescent.
In Victoria that other barbarian, Ted Baillieu, is continuing his assault on Tertiary and Further Education with massive funding cuts, job and course losses and campus closures.
In South Australia, Opposition leader Isobel Redmond let slip sacking 35000 public servants.
If the Liberal premiers can get away with sacking tens of thousands of public servants, imagine what an Abbott Government will be emboldened to do by the unions’ lack of union action to date.
When will the current union leadership organise a real fightback and close down their states with strikes to defend jobs, education and health?
One of the best allies in practice the conservative premiers have, and I should add the conservative Gillard Government with its attacks on public service jobs and government spending, is the conservative trade union leadership.
When oh when does the fightback begin? It is time for rank and file unionists to reclaim our unions and turn them into fighting organisations defending our jobs, our living standards and our freedoms.
The Arab world is aflame again. In response to a deliberately intended provocative film about the prophet Mohammed, demostrativos have attacked US and other Western embassies. Years of being oppressed by US dictators means the target of people’s anger is not just the US puppets or wannabe puppets but the symbols of US power. However in Benghazi at least it looks like the attack and killing of the US ambassador may have more to do with attempts by extreme right wing Muslims to destabilize the country.
Much will be made of Western values and how abhorrent it is to kill people over a film. Sarcasm alert.
Give me real Western values like invading Iraq and killing 1 million innocent Iraqis; invading Vietnam and killing 2 million innocent people; drone bombing and killing innocent people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan,Somalia, Yemen; shipping refugees off to concentration camps onshore or offshore; supporting brutal dictators because they are our brutal dictators; silently supporting the genocide of the Palestinians. These of course are the sort of belief systems we all love and cherish.
Here endeth the sarcasm alert.
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