En Passant

The dominant forces in the Greens are driven by electoralism and an attachment to neoliberalism (or fiscal responsibility, as they prefer to call it). Regardless of the odd press release tacking left, the Greens have just legitimised the neoliberal agenda Gillard is implementing. And as they have done so, they have further accommodated to the establishment.

‘A campaign against rape in isolation from all other aspects of women’s oppression will not serve the purpose. Rape, like domestic violence and sexual harassment, is a symptom of a deeply unequal class-based society that leads some men to think they can control women, including sexually. This is reinforced by women’s material inequality and lower status in society. We must challenge sexism and through the process of struggle will see millions of people questioning the brutal, sexist and exploitative capitlaist society in which we live and look for alternatives beyond capitalism.’

Just to let you know how The Australian itself values free speech, here are 3 letters I have sent recently to them. None have been published. To whet your appetite, here is an entree. ‘I love The Australian as the representative of the fruitcake faction of capital. But the number of nutters you are publishing in your letters and opinion pages is getting somewhat tiresome.’

If more radical ‘tax the rich and big business’ policies aren’t forthcoming from the Australian Greens soon then we can be pretty sure they have turned the rightward amble into a stampede to make themselves seemingly even more respectable and electable. The irony is the more respectable and electable they think they are the less support they seem to garner.

US General Norman Schwarzkopf died during the week. The 1991 Desert Storm war criminal is being feted across the country by the American elite, including fellow war criminals George Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. I guess the link between war crimes abroad and gun massacres at home is lost on people.

Panos Petrou is a leading member of the socialist group Internationalist Workers Left (DEA), one of the groups that co-founded SYRIZA – the Coalition of the Radical Left – in 2004. Here he reports on what took place at its recent conference and the political debate that is taking place over its future and direction.

Marx never went to a Boxing Day Sale. He didn’t have the money. More importantly Boxing Day sales are a recent invention of neoliberalism to make more money out of workers.

The Sydney to Hobart yacht race is a race for the billionaires and multi-millionaires, the one percent. These people lead a very different life to us. They live off our hard work. They don’t and won’t mix with the rest of us. They inhabit rich ghettos. They speak a different language of finance and investment and money. They even eat different food. We don’t want them here. It’s time to turn back the yachts.

For the 130 Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi and Sri Lankan refugees on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, this Christmas season is an uphill battle to keep spirits up in a grim environment writes Socialist Alternative. On Christmas Day most Australian children wake up to a morning of opening presents; the 15 children on Manus Island wake up to a vastly different reality: their daily malaria pill. In this remote tropical island without air conditioning, adequate medical treatment, or privacy, the best gift the Australian government could give asylum seekers this festive season is the most basic and simple of all: freedom.

Without a mass working class movement demanding and winning better wages, more jobs and price controls as well as more tax paid by the rich and big business, the rich and big business will continue to get richer and pay less and less tax.

There’d be one sure way I reckon to break the drug smugglers’ business model and all that goes with it, like Customs Department corruption. Legalise drugs and treat addiction as a health issue. They did that in Portugal and the results have been a great success. Maybe we could do something similar for refugees too [...]