En Passant

The play’s the thing and this 7 month long interlude is designed to trap young Abbott, perhaps help keep the jester in his place and cement the uneasy crown on the Queen against her plotters. The reality is both Gillard and Abbott are past their dancing days.

Is there an alternative to the failure that is Labor? The need now for a revolutionary socialist workers’ party is great. But we cannot hurry history. Workers will have to learn the lessons of struggle and history, with input from the revolutionary left where we can to patiently explain the way forward and our view of the world.

Labor might be gone but the struggle continues.

A treaty, recognising prior ownership and sovereignty, paying the rent to the indigenous owners of the land and allowing Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to run their own affairs is a set of systemic solutions to the systemic problems of dispossession and disempowerment, systemic solutions to the past and ongoing genocide against the indigenous peoples of this country.

That would require an attack on capital in Australia and its interests. Labor won’t do that. Far better from the point of view of Gillard as the captain of the second level of capital to pick Nova Peris to open the batting in the battle for the Senate than actually take on capital to address the real issues. Nova Peris will be a willing accomplice to Gillard’s anti-Aboriginal agenda.

The Invasion Day protests, the burgeoning Idle No More indigenous peoples’ movement in Canada which is spreading across the globe, the campaigns against the Intervention and deaths in custody, all offer an alternative approach to winning better lives for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. They are movements from below, not machinations from above. That way lies the future, not one bum on one seat for a Gillard puppet in the Senate.

This pamphlet, written 75 years ago, appeals, in such blistering tone, to take “pause in the midst of your…rejoicings” and is well worth repeating on this, the 225th anniversary of invasion.

With President Hugo Chávez suffering from severe health problems, what does the future look like for Chavismo in Venezuela? Lance Selfa explains in Socialist Worker US

The West is keen to use the Algerian gas plant seige to justify new interventions in a region it once dominated. But the official version of events just doesn’t stack up, writes Ken Olende in Socialist Worker UK.

If the Obama administration and Congress really wanted to get to the heart of gun violence, they would have to take a serious look at the social policies the government is based upon. The answer to gun violence isn’t spending billions on police who devalue people’s lives. The real answer depends on a whole new set of social priorities that would make people’s lives worth living.

Three key features characterize Israeli apartheid:

•Four million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories lack the right to vote for the government that controls their lives through a military occupation. In addition to controlling the borders, air space, water, tax revenues, and other vital matters pertaining to the Occupied Territories, Israel alone issues the identity cards that determine the ability of Palestinians to work and their freedom of movement.

•About 1.2 million Palestinian Israelis, who make up 20 percent, or one-fifth, of Israel’s population, have second-class citizenship within Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state rather than a state for all its citizens. More than 20 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel.

•Millions of Palestinians remain refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, unable to return to their former homes and land in present-day Israel, even though the right of return for refugees is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Eric Ruder in Socialist Worker US reports on a new weapon of choice in U.S. wars around the globe – the drone.

Australia Day perpetuates the country’s ‘founding’ racist myths and is part of the system that enslaves our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters and as a consequence, all of us here. In the spirit of true reconciliation let’s abolish this celebration of genocide. Let’s instead celebrate the 65000 years of indigenous history and stewardship of this land. Recognise aboriginal sovereignty, negotiate a treaty and pay the rent. It is time to fight for justice.