En Passant

If the Fairfax bosses win this round, we’re on the way to almost complete mainstream media Murdochisation in Australia, writes John Passant in Independent Australia.

The following is a statement by the Victorian branch of the National Tertiary Education Union on La Trobe University’s shocking decision to suspend Roz Ward for a Facebook post that the Australian flag is racist. Roz has been a key person in the Safe Schools anti-bullying campaign for school students. The Murdoch owned Australian newspaper has run a witch hunt against her for her Marxist views, all with the aim of destroying Safe Schools which teaches respect and understanding for LGBTIQ students. McCarthyism is alive and well in Australia and La Trobe University’s decision is yet another example.

Until an anti-austerity mass movement and its political expression arise we will continue to have bad government after bad government in Australia. That new formation will I suspect only happen when we decide to take action as the working class against whoever is in power, the Liberals or Labor.

A variety of opinions? A contest of ideas? Only those writers imbued with the capitalist ethos are published in the mainstream media.

John Passant offers a way forward for a once mighty newspaper empire in steady decline.

Phone hacking went on at an industrial scale, the court was told. It wasn’t just celebrities, writes Simon Basketter in Socialist Worker UK. Trade unionists and ordinary people had their phones hacked too. But this is not just about bad journalism. The scandal has revealed the unholy alliance between the police, the media and the political establishment. And it goes to the very top. The most prominent of the accused were David Cameron’s close friends.

I love it when thieves fall out. The front page of The Australian today (Saturday) has analysed the tax position of Clive Palmer’s companies. They haven’t paid tax for 6 years. I am so looking forward to the Australian’s forensic analysis of the tax position of News Corpse both in Australia and globally. Black kettle […]

In breaking news the NSA has confirmed it has hacked Rupert Murdoch’s private phones for eleven years. ‘The fight against terrorism knows no bounds,’ spokesthing Joseph Dzhugashvili said.  Barack Obama said ‘Of course.’ Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott denied Australia’s spy agencies had broken any AUSTRALIAN laws in helping the Americans.

It says much about the state of politics in Australia that this Murdoch filth can smear their excrement on the Australian body politic. This is not just because mainstream politics has veered way to the right. It has. It is because Labor and unions have led this stampede – the ALP politically and the unions industrially. This has created the sewer pit from which Murdoch’s rags can spew their shit.

Media diversity now involves picking over the carcasses of the two parties to debate differences in their rotting entrails in detail. The best way to retain independence and some form of capitalist (ie narrow) media diversity, would be to strengthen unions.