En Passant

Free speech is free speech for the billionaires. It is they who control the means of communication. That free speech for them is built on the denial of free speech for the rest of us.

Hate speech is an important part of the armoury of control of the ruling class.

Youth unemployment might be 50% in inner Western Sydney suburbs but all is well because we can vilify refugees. In fact it isn’t but the externalisation of hate diverts inchoate anger with the system towards the most powerless in society, people such as refugees.

Please add my name to the Media Alliance letter to show my support to my colleagues at Southern Weekend in their fight for press freedom and the fundamental principles of journalism.

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.’

At least three La Trobe University student activists are under threat of expulsion for their participation in a campaign to stop major cuts in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS) Faculty writes Socialist Alternative.

For 40 years I have been raging against the capitalist machine in all its manifestations – war, genocide, poverty, human rights abuses, working class exploitation, economic crises and the racism, sexism and homophobia which act as a glue for the system and the Labor party and trade union leadership which are its staunchest defenders and the rock on which it survives.

If recent calls in Australia for the further criminalisation of dissent mean that I’ll have to write my blog from a prison cell then so be it. I won’t be the first and I certainly won’t be the last revolutionary imprisoned for their views.

We all know Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper is big on free speech. (Its own, if no-one else’s.) And investigative journalism. And making sure our leaders are people of integrity. So I thought I’d post the letters I sent to The Australian in the last few days that it hasn’t published.

As Vashti Kenway, spokesperson for the defendants told the press: “This is a huge victory for the right to protest, and in particular the right to protest in solidarity with the Palestinians. We stood and raised our voices for Palestine in a public place, which should be the right of every Melbournian and every person across Australia.”

The substantive charges against the Max Brenner 16 (besetting and trespass in a public place) have been dismissed this morning in court. 5 defendants are however still in court fighting specific charges of resist arrest and assault police.

The decision on the substantive charges is nonetheless a big win for our right to protest in public places in Melbourne. We have beaten back their attempts to criminalize dissent and their attempts to silence a public pro-Palestine voice in Australia.

So today, May Day, as workers gather and march in Melbourne and Manila, in Athens and across the globe, we should remember that the struggle of the Palestinian people, and today especially of the Palestinian prisoners, is the struggle of all of us. And it is in that court, the court of struggle, that justice for Palestine is being fought and will be won.