En Passant

The Western madness and murder in Afghanistan continue and Gillard Labor and the other members of the Australian ruling class will ‘stay the course’ in the criminal invasion and slaughter.

In Queensland Labor faces a wipe out and the only point on which it can distinguish itself is that the Liberal National Party will be worse in Government. Giving Labor’s role as ruling for the rich that is going to take some doing.

The support some unions mistakenly had for Bob Katter’s reactionary party dried up when he unleashed a homophobic advertisement. Instead of clutching at straws like Katter’s Australia Party – only the R is missing in the acronym – maybe fighting Labor in power industrially might yield better results.

Certainly the magnificent victory of nurses in Victoria shows that industrial action can win. They smashed the Government’s 2.5% ceiling on wage increases – with any more dependent on trade offs – and won between 14% and 21% over 4 years (i.e. 3.5% to 5% per annum) without any ‘productivity gains’ and with nurse patient ratios in tact.

This brilliant victory was won on the back of walk offs and mass meetings. The rest of the union movement, the rank and file especially, should learn this lesson. Strikes can win better pay and conditions and defend jobs.

Dave Oliver will replace Jeff Lawrence as head of the Australian council of Trade Unions. This is part of the unions positioning themselves against Tony Abbott and his rotten industrial relations agenda.

What they won’t do is attack the current Labor Abbottites in power and their rotten industrial laws. A fight for wages and jobs is a fight against Labor. A fight against Labor is a fight against Abbott.

Not fighting Labor now is to surrender to an Abbott victory and his continuation and deepening of Labor’s current onslaught. 

Peter Costello is in a tiff because he didn’t get the gig at the Future Fund. Given his undoubted abilities maybe he should head up Clive Palmer’s mooted breakaway soccer league, Football Australia.

George Clooney has been arrested protesting against the brutal regime in Sudan. If Sudan, why not Afghanistan too George? The biggest mass murderers sit in Washington.

To have your say on these or any other matters, or to see what others are saying, hit the comments button. As for all posts, comments close after 7 days.

Whether or not the saber-rattling of Israeli and U.S. leaders escalates into military action, both governments have already committed acts of war against Iran writes Alan Maass in Socialist Worker US.

IN THE U.S., in Europe, even in Israel, military and intelligence officials agree: The Iranian government doesn’t have a nuclear weapon. It doesn’t have a program to make nuclear weapons. It hasn’t even made a decision to pursue such a program sometime in the future.

The only way to stop more killings of innocent Afghans is to end the occupation say the editors of the US magazine Socialist Worker.

THE MASSACRE of 16 unarmed Afghan civilians in the middle of the night by a U.S. Army soldier was a chilling confirmation of the sheer brutality of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, now more than 10 years old.

This latest nightmare for the Afghan people shows the barbarism that the U.S. war machine is capable of inflicting–whether through the actions of a single heavily armed soldier or the Pentagon’s more “clinical” methods, like missiles dropped from unmanned drones.

Barack Obama immediately offered regrets for the latest atrocity, claiming, “The United States takes this as seriously as if this was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered…It’s not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military.”

But if the people of Afghanistan have learned anything from the decade-long U.S. war, it is that massacres and mayhem exactly represent the U.S. military.

Claims that the U.S. war and occupation would free Afghans from political tyranny, liberate women and reconstruct the country were proven hollow long ago. The latest massacre is yet more proof that the U.S. war has been an unmitigated disaster for ordinary Afghans–because the war was never about helping them, but about securing U.S. imperial interests in the region.

The killings in Southern Afghanistan are an atrocity caused by imperialism–and the only way to end such violence is to end the U.S. occupation.

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ACCORDING TO reports, on the night of March 11, an unnamed 38-year-old U.S. army staff sergeant from the 3rd Stryker Brigade left Camp Belambay in the Panjwai district, about 20 miles west of the city of Kandahar.

The soldier walked a mile south to the village of Balandi, where he entered a house. Neighbors heard screams, shots and an explosion as the soldier hunted down the women and children, shooting and stabbing them before setting some of the bodies on fire. The soldier reportedly then circled back to the north to another village, where he attacked two more homes. Finally returning to the base, he apparently turned himself in.

In all, 16 unarmed civilians–nine of them children–were murdered, and several others were injured.

Mainstream media reports asked in shocked tones how such a horrific crime could be committed by a U.S. soldier–and suggested that the staff sergeant must have suffered a mental breakdown. Although details are scarce, the soldier is believed to be an 11-year war veteran, with three tours in Iraq before his current one in Afghanistan. One report suggests he may have suffered a traumatic brain injury on his last tour in Iraq.

“No Taliban were here. No gun battle was going on,” one local woman, a relative of several of the victims, told MSNBC. “We don’t know why this foreign soldier came and killed our innocent family members. Either he was drunk, or he was enjoying killing civilians.”

But whatever drove the staff sergeant, the media are wrong to portray his crimes as an isolated act. Similar war crimes and massacres have been a feature of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq throughout the past decade.

In 2009, for example, a group of 12 U.S. soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade reportedly took part in the “sport killing” of three Afghan civilians or aided in the cover-up. Only four of the 12 were convicted of any crime. At his court martial, Army Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, the highest-ranking defendant, described cutting fingers off corpses and yanking out a victim’s tooth to keep as war trophies, “like keeping the antlers off a deer you’d shoot.”

This is the reality of war–the total dehumanization of Afghans in the eyes of their supposed “liberators.”

In early 2010, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the general formerly in charge of Afghan military operations, gave an uncharacteristically candid assessment of the occupation:

We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number, and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force…To my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I’ve been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it.

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THIS LATEST horror comes on the heels of other incidents that exposed the racist and callous attitude of U.S. troops. Last month, the burning of several Korans by American military personnel sparked furious protests across Afghanistan, leading to a surge in deaths among U.S. and NATO soldiers. In January, a video was released showing U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of several Afghans.

Hatred of the U.S. and its occupying forces has reached a new pitch, and for good reason. Yet to listen to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the U.S. is actually the victim. “We’ve been through a series of challenging events over these last few weeks in Afghanistan,” Panetta said following the massacre. “We seem to get tested almost every other day.”

But it is the Afghan people who have been “tested”–every single day for the past 10 years–by bombings, raids and continued brutality from the U.S. military, not to mention repression and corruption from a central state put in power by the occupiers.

Currently, there are 91,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The Obama administration plans to reduce that number to 68,000 by the end of the year, on the way to a proposed withdrawal of troops by 2014.

But even once the war is “over,” it won’t be at an end. U.S. leaders intend for their military presence in Afghanistan to continue for many years, as an important imperial foothold in a crucial region.

It’s no wonder, then, that, while condemning the massacre, Obama also cautioned against the U.S. “rush[ing] for the exits.” The killings, he said, show “the importance of us transitioning in accordance with my plan so that Afghans are taking more of the lead for their own security, and we can start getting our troops home.”

Such logic turns reality on its head.

From the start 10 years ago, leaders of both the Republicans and Democrats have talked about Afghanistan as the “good war”–one that would liberate the Afghan people from the brutality of the Taliban. Instead, the U.S. itself has waged a brutal onslaught in which civilians have been slaughtered and human rights trampled. Meanwhile, the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, installed in power by the U.S., presides over a thoroughly corrupt regime where basic human rights, including the treatment of women, has not improved.

Obama’s hypocrisy is obvious. The Nobel Peace Prize president may condemn this massacre, but he apparently believes that dropping bombs on unarmed civilians with unmanned drones–standard practice for the U.S. military, and far more deadly in its consequences–is somehow better than shooting them point blank.

Meanwhile, the U.S. war machine continues to take a toll on its own soldiers, who face successive lengthy deployments and untreated physical and mental health problems.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, reportedly the home base for the soldier who committed this most recent massacre, was declared by Stars and Stripes to be “the most troubled” in the entire military in 2010. Last year, 12 soldiers at Fort Lewis committed suicide–a record number. And the soldiers convicted in the 2009 killing of three Afghan civilians for “sport” were also based out of Fort Lewis.

According to Jorge Gonzalez, executive director of G.I. Voice, which runs the Coffee Strong resource center for soldiers near Fort Lewis, the base:

has produced a Kill Team, suicide epidemic, denials of PTSD treatment, denials of human rights in the brig, spousal abuse and a waterboarded daughter, murders of civilians (including a park ranger), increased sex crimes, substance abuse, DUIs, police shootings of GIs, police violence toward protesters, differential treatment of GIs, and much more. These abuses are not because of a few bad apples, but because of the base’s systematic dehumanization of soldiers and civilians, both in occupied countries and at home.

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THE ONLY way to stop more massacres from occurring is to stop the war.

The administration may claim that it is on a path to ending the war, but there is no such thing as a “responsible” timeline for troop withdrawal. Each day that U.S. soldiers remain in Afghanistan is one more day that the Afghan people are unable to determine the course of their own country.

Here at home, the best way to support the Afghan people is to oppose the war–by building opposition to U.S. wars and occupations and protesting at events like this May’s NATO summit in Chicago. With Obama’s record on the Afghanistan war clear, no one should buy the hype that the Democrats deserve the “antiwar” vote. “Troops out now” should remain our call.

As veteran antiwar activist and author Tariq Ali explained:

In most colonial wars, people are arrested, tortured at random and killed. Not even a façade of legality is considered necessary. The “lone” American gunman who butchered innocents in Afghanistan in the early hours of Sunday morning was far from being an exception. For this is not the act of a deranged maniac, killing schoolchildren in an American city. The “lone” killer is a sergeant in the U.S. army. He’s not the first and won’t be the last to kill like this…

It’s hardly a secret that most Afghans are opposed to the occupation of their country. Occupying soldiers are well aware of the fact. The “enemy” is not hidden. It is the public. So wiping out women and children is part of the war. Helicopter gunships, bomber jets and drones are more effective killers than “lone” gunmen.

So what is to be done? Get out now. These wars that dehumanize the “enemy” also dehumanize the citizens of warmongering nations.

Malalai Joya will be speaking at Marxism 2012: Revolution in the Air in Melbourne over Easter.

At Sydney University the new academic year has been ushered in with 100 academic staff being given redundancy notices, and a further 64 given teaching-focused contracts, writes Alma Torlakovic in Socialist Alternative.

It is part of the Vice Chancellor’s plan to cut 7.5 percent of “salary-related expenditure” and $28 million in administration costs. This roughly equates to 340 job cuts overall. The result will be a massive increase in workload for those left with a job, and poorer quality in education and services for students.

“Poor” is the last cry anyone expected Sydney University to make, given its net operating margin of $113 million. But clearly this is not enough to cover the costs of mahogany, and expensive scotch served at the schmoozing functions put on by the VC. Together with his deputies, they are leeching $5 million out of the budget for their own salaries (not including numerous overseas trips, all expenses paid). Students, if you ever wondered what happens to your money once you sign on the dotted line and hand over your TFN, just remember – it isn’t necessarily for funding your education. 

Sydney University is one of the richest universities in Australia, with a student fee income for 2011 of $792.3 million. Talk of it being in dire financial straits because of overdue infrastructure projects is untrue. It has been estimated that the cost of the redundancy packages would amount to approximately $40 million and management have reassured staff that they will have the opportunity for redeployment elsewhere in the university. So clearly it is not a question of lack of funds, rather, the cuts are an opportunity for the university to squeeze more out of its workforce.

Academic staff have been targeted based on retrospective criteria. They are “on the list” if they failed to produce enough publications over the last three years, standards which the VC and his deputies would not fulfil themselves. In many cases, absence from research due to teaching commitments or maternity leave have been overlooked, which sheds light on the shambolic nature of the consultation process. Targeting staff in this way is a calculated attempt by management to atomise individuals and make them feel like bludgers who are not pulling their weight. 

Unsurprisingly, staff angered by the cuts have overwhelmingly rejected the proposals for change and have actively participated in mass meetings and rallies organised by the National Tertiary Education Union. At the first meeting called by the union, about 580 staff attended and vowed to mount a fight to stop the cuts. Since then there have been a series of meetings and two rallies. The last one, under the VC’s window, drew 700 angry staff and students. 

Industrial action will be the only way we can win. We cannot rely on legal challenges or Fair Work Australia, and we must unite to fight this collectively. At the most recent rally, even the mention of the phrase “industrial action” was received with cheers from the crowd. It is clear there is support among workers and the wider community for a serious campaign to stop these cuts. We have what it takes to do it – now it’s a matter of mobilising this sentiment. 

Alma is Chair of the NTEU Campaign Committee at Sydney University.

Karl Marx developed his ideas in an era of when young people were dedicating their lives to a struggle for new rights and freedoms. Brian Jones in Socialist Worker in the US examines Marx’s revolutionary ideas.

HOW DID Karl Marx become a Marxist? Marx developed his idea not just through study–although he was a voracious reader (really, the word “voracious” doesn’t begin to touch it). Marx’s Marxism is really the theoretical product of his practical efforts to build a movement for radical change, and his observations of struggles taking place around him.
This is worth our attention because Marx is not only the author of a set of ideas about history, but the author of a unique method of looking at history. This method is widely known as historical materialism or dialectical materialism.

Our tale begins with the 1830s. A young Karl goes off to university to study law, and like so many before him and so many since, is seduced instead by the study of philosophy on the one hand, and the drinking of great quantities of beer on the other.

One of his school reports cites him for: “excellent diligence and attention,” and then blithely goes on to add:

He has incurred a punishment of one day’s detention for disturbing the peace by rowdiness and drunkenness at night…Subsequently, he was accused of having carried prohibited weapons…The investigation is till pending.

The brand of beer (and weapons) may remain unknown, but the brand of philosophy is not: Marx was a radical democrat, which is to say that he was living in an era of revolutions–known as bourgeois revolutions, because they were the revolutions led by the bourgeoisie (French for “capitalists”) to overthrow the feudal order of kings, queens and the nobility.

The kings and queens taught that the world never changed, and that universe, the earth and society were all organized in God’s image–with them, conveniently, perched at the top. But this was increasingly a lost argument once their royal heads started rolling into guillotine baskets.

MARX BECAME a follower of the ideas of Georg Hegel. Hegel said that the kings and queens were wrong–that the world is always changing. The change, Hegel argued, is produced by conflicting ideas–feudal ideas vs. bourgeois ideas, for example. Rather than a view of a static, never-changing world, Hegel put forward a view of a dialectical, ever-changing world.

Marx was for Hegel. Marx was for the bourgeois revolutions and the triumph of the new bourgeois ideas about rights and freedoms (of the press, of the ballot and so on). These were the exciting, dangerous new ideas that young people everywhere were dedicating their lives to fight for. A young heir to a textile business, Frederick Engels (Marx’s future collaborator), was just the sort who was thoroughly infected with these ideas, as he himself pointed out:

What shall I, poor devil, do now? Go on swotting on my own? Don’t feel like it. Turn loyal? The devil if I will!…I cannot sleep at night, all because of the ideas of the century. When I am at the post office…I am seized with the spirit of freedom. Every time I look at a newspaper I hunt for news of advances of freedom. They get into my poems.

The bourgeoisie had revolutionized France and America. But in Germany, there was a problem: the old Prussian state still clung to power and was determined to repress anyone who spoke out. Many who had previously called for change succumbed to the pressure, including Hegel!

Marx remained among those who would not submit. These opponents of the old order called themselves the “Young Hegelians.” Just when Marx got his PhD and was hoping to get a faculty position in a university, “Hegelianism” was banned by the Prussian state. Marx was effectively blacklisted from teaching, so he turned to journalism.

Marx started writing for a newspaper that was funded by some reform-minded capitalists. He wrote hundreds of articles about all sorts of abuses of the Prussian state, and made a huge impression on his colleagues. In fact, within one year of working as a journalist, Marx had such a reputation that Engels (who had yet to actually meet Marx) wrote a poem about him, based only on the stories he was hearing:

Who runs up next with wild impetuosity?
A swarthy chap of Trier, a marked monstrosity.
He neither hops nor skips, but moves in leaps and bounds,
Raving aloud. As if to seize and then pull down
To earth the spacious tent of Heaven up on high,
He opens wide his arms and reaches for the sky.
He shakes his wicked fist, raves with a frantic air,
As if ten thousand devils had him by the hair.

The problem with all of this fist-shaking was that Marx was advocating for freedom of the press (among other things) in a country where freedom of the press had not yet been won. Again and again, Marx’s newspapers were shut down and Marx was arrested. He was deported for the things he dared to write.

Even worse, when Marx wrote about anything that went beyond bourgeois freedoms, his own funders would retreat. For example, Marx wrote a scathing article against the land “rights” that prevented the poor from gathering free firewood from the estates of the rich, and the shareholders (precisely the sort who didn’t want the poor to set foot on their land) complained that the paper was becoming “more and more impudent.” Just as the newspaper was growing in popularity, it was shut down.

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FROM THIS experience, it was confirmed for Marx that the world isn’t just driven forward by ideas. There was something else that trumped ideas: material interests.

Marx retained the idea that the world was dialectical, and therefore constantly changing through struggle. But instead of a struggle between pure ideas, he came to see society as driven by a struggle between conflicting material interests. Marx was on his way toward developing a dialectical and materialist way of looking at the world.

This enabled him to explain why the German bourgeoisie wouldn’t lift a finger to fight for bourgeois ideals. They made their money off the growing armies of wage workers, so while they still hated the authority of the kings, they feared even more the possibility of stirring up any kind of revolt among their employees.

It seemed increasingly unlikely, especially in Germany, that capitalists would carry out anything resembling a real revolution, on the model of the French Revolution. But if they wouldn’t, who would?

As Marx and his family were chased around Europe, searching for refuge, he came in contact with a new class of people: wage workers.

They were different from peasants, and different even from artisans or craftspeople–all of whom worked mostly in small, self-sufficient units. Wage workers, on the other hand, were organized into giant collective armies, and Marx discovered that they were political! In France, they had secret societies. Marx sat in on their meetings, listened to their speeches and plans, and was struck by how bold and honest their discussions were. As he wrote:

You would have to attend one of the meetings of the French workers to appreciate the pure freshness, the nobility which bursts forth from these toil-worn men… It is among these “barbarians” of our civilized society that history is preparing the practical element for the emancipation of mankind.

In Silesia, a group of 3,000 poorly paid weavers revolted after one of them was arrested for harassing the boss in song (under his window!). They went to the bosses’ houses and destroyed their account books. The army was sent in, and the weavers beat them, too.

The workers’ material interests led them to stand up for each other–solidarity was a necessity, not just an ideal.

So while the material interests of the bourgeoisie got in the way of fighting for loftier ideals, for the wage workers, it was the opposite. Whether they even knew about the lofty ideals, their material interests compelled them to fight for freedom and equality.

Marx’s struggles and experiences led him to a new way of looking at history–not just as a contest of ideas, but a contest of material interests. As he and his now collaborator Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight.

And Marx came to a new conclusion about history–that if the modern working class were to fight capitalists and actually win–that is, if the working class became the ruling class–its victory would mean the end of classes:

If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

Brian Jones is a teacher, actor and activist in New York City. He is featured in the new film The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, and his commentary and writing has appeared on MSNBC.com, the Huffington Post, GritTV and the International Socialist Review. Jones has also lent his voice to several audiobooks, including Howard Zinn’s one-man play Marx in Soho, Wallace Shawn’s Essays and Noam Chomsky’s Hopes and Prospects

This is what I submitted to be considered for the inaugural Walkley freelancer award. Like all my submissions for Walkley awards this application will go the way of all flesh.

John

__________________________

I write articles from the viewpoint of the 99%, not that of the one percent which dominates the mainstream media.

 The pieces submitted are examples of my balanced writing.  I use my knowledge and understanding of political economy, Marxism, the union movement, the protest movements, tax, academia, business, the left, the radical left, the revolutionary left, to balance the reporting of the mainstream media and the journalists who are part of or beholden to the one percent.

The Arab spring, the strikes and protests in Europe against austerity, the Occupy movement with its demonstrations in more than 800 cities in 80 countries show that something is happening globally – an awakening of the 99%. It is possibly only a matter of time before the anger against 30 years of neoliberalism boils over in Australia. The fledgling Occupy movement here, the Tent Embassy protest, the Baiada picket line, the increase in strikes over the last few months, the Equal love campaign and the refugee action protests all give a hint of the future and the possibility of resistance.

All my pieces attempt to capture that sense of potential and sometimes actual resistance to the dictatorship of the one percent. 

The articles

First there are links to 2 articles of mine published in The Conversation. 

Second are links to 3 articles of mine published in En Passant with John Passant.

The Conversation:

1. November 24, 2011 We’ve gained a mining tax, but lost a rare opportunity
2. May 27 2011 Spooking Labor was Rinehart’s smartest investment

En Passant with John Passant

The date of publication in En Passant with John Passant follows the title and is before the link.

1) It is right to be angry; it is right to protest – land rights now 26 January 2012

http://enpassant.com.au/2012/01/26/it-is-right-to-be-angry-it-is-right-to-protest-land-rights-now/

2) The carbon tax’s dirty little secret – gas fired power 28 August 2011

http://enpassant.com.au/2011/08/28/the-carbon-taxs-dirty-little-secret-gas-fired-electricity/

3) Labor – making Abbott look good 6 September 2011

http://enpassant.com.au/wp-admin/post.php?post=11037&action=edit

Yusef Khalil and Lee Sustar report in the US Socialist Worker on the escalating violence of the Syrian regime and the response of the opposition–while imperialist powers maneuver.

THE VICIOUS artillery bombardment and summary executions carried out by Syrian troops in the Baba Amr section of the city of Homs has highlighted the regime’s survival strategy of waging war on what had been peaceful mass protests in order to transform the conflict into all-out civil war.

With the U.S. and other imperial powers considering further intervention beyond economic sanctions, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the top military and security forces around him have clearly concluded that drowning the revolution in blood is the only way to maintain power. After Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters withdrew from Baba Amr, Syrian troops moved in, reportedly executing dozens of men. The death toll since the beginning of the uprising in Syria was estimated at 7,500 as of March 4.

Syrian troops slammed Baba Amr with artillery fire for days before moving in March 1. Al Jazeera gave an overview:

Conditions in the western Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr have been described as catastrophic, with reports on Saturday [March 3] speaking of extended power outages, shortages of food and water, and no medical care for the sick and wounded.

Government forces took control of the opposition stronghold on Thursday after opposition fighters fled under the same constant bombardment that activists said killed hundreds of people since early February.

New shelling began in other sections of Homs on March 3, and Syrian forces also shelled the central city of Rastan, killing seven people, including four children.

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THERE HAVE been many examples of collective punishment and destruction in the yearlong Syrian revolutionary struggle. But in Homs, the regime launched an all-out provocation for a wider armed conflict. Up until now, the regime has opened the door for civil war. Now it is trying to throw the country through that door.

By demonstrating its willingness to detain and slaughter all men of fighting age, the government of Bashar al-Assad is hoping to break the morale of the revolutionary forces before sanctions further disrupt the already crisis-ridden Syrian economy. But if that fails to break the resistance and the revolution turns into a primarily armed struggle–such as that already being carried out by the lightly armed FSA–the Syrian military would then claim justification for an even greater crackdown.

By launching a civil war, Assad aims to cement Syria’s religious minorities to his government, while keeping top military and security personnel in his camp. Much of the leadership of the regime are drawn from the Alwaite offshoot of Shiite Islam, and the state has posed as the protector of the Christian and Druse minorities as well.

In reality, the picture is much more complicated: Alawites are certainly not all tied to the regime, and a network of Sunni business figures have long been allied with the ruling Baath party. And Kurds have been systemically oppressed by the regime for decades.

Nevertheless, Assad is using a classic divide-and-conquer strategy to try to split the opposition. From the beginning, the regime has claimed that Sunni Muslim fundamentalists, armed by Saudi Arabia, were behind the uprising in a bid to establish an Islamist state. Now, by targeting predominately Sunni towns like Homs, the regime is seeking to stir up precisely those forces in order to justify an even wider crackdown.

If Assad thinks he can get away with this, it’s because the opposition remains divided–and the U.S. and the West have so far been wary of undertaking a Libya-style intervention.

The U.S. fears that any wider conflict could spill over the border into Lebanon, draw in other powers and pose a threat to neighboring Israel. And the U.S. is anything but a friend of the revolution in Syria or anywhere else: it has backed client regimes in Yemen and Bahrain as they carried out their own counterrevolutionary repression. Meanwhile, Libya, the supposed positive example of Western intervention, is being run in part by former Qaddafi regime elements and unaccountable militias that had been armed by the West.

For its part, neighboring Turkey, which backed the uprising early on, is allowing the FSA to operate on its territory. But the Turkish government has not yet handed over heavy weapons to the Syrian revolutionary forces, apparently worried about the possible disintegration of the Syrian state and a massive refugee crisis. In addition, the Turkish government is hostile to any notion of autonomy for Syria’s Kurds for fear that it would set a dangerous example for Turkey’s own oppressed Kurdish minority.

Assad also got a boost when Russia and China vetoed a UN resolution condemning Syria for fear that it would be used as a step toward a Libyan-style intervention. This enabled the regime to seize the moment to try to achieve a decisive military breakthrough.

Because of a shortage of politically reliable troops, the Syrian military has concentrated its attacks on one or two towns at a time, allowing protests elsewhere to continue, albeit attacked by snipers and pro-government thugs. The assault on Homs, however, seems intended to provoke a widespread military confrontation, which the regime would use as a pretext for greater assaults, perhaps using air power.

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WHILE ASSAD’S military was carrying out its crackdown, an international “Friends of Syria” conference was underway in Tunis. Nominally convened by Arab governments, the conference was also a vehicle for the U.S. and European imperial powers to push their agenda of ratcheting up sanctions on Syria in hopes that a downward spiral of the economy will crack the regime.

Also present in Tunis was the main opposition umbrella grouping, the Syrian National Council (SNC), which is internally divided over whether to call for military intervention. Even those who favor such actions are divided on what form it should take, with a minority calling for a Libya-style bombing campaign while others demand a no-fly zone and protected areas for refugees.

But initial press reports were factually inconsistent about whether other opposition groupings were invited. Some say the Damascus-based National Coordination Committee (NCC) was invited, but then declined. Others say it was snubbed from the beginning as part of the SNC (and Western) intolerance for any other opposition group.

The NCC, while committed to the downfall of Assad, is opposed to foreign intervention. By contrast, some of the member organizations of the SNC are increasingly open in their calls for foreign military action.

Along with the political-diplomatic gathering in Tunis was a parallel meeting of Western and Arab intelligence organizations about coordinating their efforts around Syria.

France and Saudi Arabia are pushing hard for intervention, while the U.S. is more careful. The Gulf state Qatar is setting the pace: the real significance of holding the conference in Tunis is that it took place under the auspices of the Qatar-backed Ennahda government, which is guiding Tunisia, the spark of the Arab revolutions, into the camp of the U.S. and the Gulf states.

There is a counter-argument that Tunisia in fact appeased the Assad regime–both by having the Tunisian president publicly rule out military intervention in Syria and not publicly broadcasting SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun’s speech at the conference. In reality, Tunisia is playing good cop: applying soft pressure on the Syrian regime with assurances for Assad of safe passage and immunity through Tunis, even as Qatar and Saudi Arabia talk of arming the FSA.

Thus after long resisting calls for armed struggle against the regime, the SNC suddenly declared the formation of a military bureau. It was a fiasco. It seems the SNC’s hand was forced by an internal grouping, which threatened to (or did) split in order to work on arming the rebels. The SNC quickly gave this grouping full control of the military portfolio to keep it in the fold.

The official FSA command, however, says it wasn’t approached about any of this. Turkey, which is supposed to host the military bureau, hasn’t been officially informed either. And the Homs revolutionary council said there was no way that it is taking military orders from the SNC.

In the meantime, Qatar continues to be very busy. After brokering the unity agreement between the Palestinian Hamas and Fatah parties, the Qataris are now helping Hamas out of its isolation in the Arab world (and dependency on Syria and Iran). Further, with the political winds shifting in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded parties in Tunis, Egypt and Kuwait, Hamas is also shifting its alliances by publicly supporting the Syrian revolution.

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THE UPSHOT: Syrian opposition groups and individuals who are for increasing military operations against the regime (whether through no-fly zones, humanitarian corridors or arming the opposition) now have the upper hand, as seen by the power play in the SNC over the military bureau.

This turn by the SNC has come under criticism from the Syrian left, both in the country an in exile. For example, Bassam Haddad wrote in the Web journal Jadaliyya that the SNC’s performance in Tunis shows that:

a more robust opposition is necessary. The failure of the SNC in particular to leverage the regional and international fronts on position of principle left it with alliances that hold little promise, or legitimacy. Its inability to bring more Syrians to its side by explicitly and comprehensively denouncing sectarian behavior no matter against whom it was directed reduced its ability to create unity.

Its rush to reverse its decision and support military intervention of all sorts ultimately compromised its nationalist credentials and placed it in camps that have long been hostile to Syria and the Syrian people. Most importantly, its increasingly narrow approach has prevented it from serving as an umbrella to smaller opposition groups like the National Body for the Coordinating Committees [also known as the National Coordination Council].

With the SNC increasingly looking to foreign intervention, the Syrian revolution needs an organization that can articulate its democratic demands to win over the hesitant sections of the population.

It must clearly and unequivocally address the rights of religious and national minorities–which the Assad regime cynically pretends to do–while insisting on the sovereignty of Syria against foreign intervention. The revolutionary opposition must also make an appeal based on class by taking up the economic demands of workers and peasants. Only in this way can the revolution undercut the regime’s efforts to manipulate sectarian and ethnic division.

Building such a revolutionary organization amid a brutal military crackdown and foreign pressure is a tremendous challenge. But the resilience of the Syrian movement over the past year shows that the potential is there to do so.

This is a spot where you can comment on any of the events of the day or week.

In Australia one of the big controversies was the attack on Australian war graves in Libya and the condemnation that went with it. This is pure hypocrisy from the ruling class who continue their genocide against indigenous Australians and desecrate Aboriginal sacred sites every day.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith released a report showing sexual and racist abuse was rife in the defence forces. Most of the media comments were off point and about whether he should apologise to a commander he had put on paid leave for twelve months for allowing the continuation of an unrelated disciplinary hearing against the woman at the centre of the Skype video scandal. She was filmed having consensual sex with another cadet. This was played on Skype to six other cadets.

This tangential attack was part of the Defence Establishment’s fight back against Smith and their defence of the neanderthal attitudes and their inept and sexist management of the Forces.

Wayne Swan bagged out 3 super rich people and complained about inequality. Under his stewardship of the Treasury inequality has grown massively under Labor. Shifting the share of national income going to capital from labour has been one of the ALP’s great ‘achievements’.

The tax take from companies has collapsed and in the May ‘balance the books’ Swan will introduce a few minor (or miner?) tax measures to divert attention away from his brutal attacks on public services.

Sabre rattling against theocratic Iran continues as part of the US program to retain control of the Middle East and the oil industry there vital to its interests and ability to control the world, especially China.

Israel is attacking Gaza as I write and has killed five, seven, 11, 13 so far according to reports. The genocide of the Palestinians continues apace.

Hit the comments button to have your say or see what others are saying. As is the case with comments on all articles, comments close after seven days. I am reviewing this to see if I should make it shorter to stop large amounts of spam hitting my inbox and some getting published.

Wayne Swan’s article in The Monthly arguing that a few rich pigs (my words, not his) are subverting democracy has created a bit of a storm.

All across the nation the filthy rich and their apologists have pontificated about the return of class war. Let’s be clear. There has been a class war going. The rich won.

Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and Twiggy Forest evidently create wealth. Without them (apart from better poetry and football) we’d all supposedly be living in poverty.

Of course capital doesn’t create wealth. Labour does. It is the work you and I, or in the three amigos’ case, the mine workers do, that creates the wealth. Rinehart and co then expropriate that wealth.

Of course, Swan’s ‘class war’ rhetoric was spin, part of an attempt to differentiate the neoliberal Labor Party from the neoliberal Liberal Party. At best it might be softening up the multi billionaire mining magnates for a few minor (or should that be miner?) tax changes at the edges to help with the budget deficit ‘problem’.

Well Wayne, if there are these rich few who think their interest is the national interest, who threaten democracy and don’t contribute fully to society (I agree) why not tax them? Just to jog your memory, here is an article I wrote in February this year offering some suggestions for doing just that.

It all began with me reading one of those delightful stories, in the Australian Financial Review of all places, trying to paint the French as somehow a little odd and quirky.

A rich British magnate has a holiday flat in the ski resort of Val d’Isere. Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones – you just can’t make these names up – is trying to shut down a chip stand nearby because he doesn’t like the smell, the noise or the sight. (Henry Samuel ‘French spitting chips over pom’s frites court case’ AFR Monday 6 February 2012 page 13. By the way, who is the twisted genius doing their headlines?)

Sir Lindsay visits the resort for a month a year.

Well, hasn’t his claim for loss of value ignited a fervour of ‘class envy’ in France? Valerie Maertens, the chip stand owner, has said the tycoon is acting like a feudal lord wanting to crush the peasants. (Funny, that’s the same sort of description I use for University management and its relationship to its workers. We peasants are revolting.)

Well, the locals have supported the chip stand owner in their thousands upon thousands. maybe the French aren’t so different after all. This looks like the same revulsion many of us here in Australia feel about Gina Rinehart, the richest Australian, buying a big share in a newspaper.

In among this Financial Review story of class war was a message for the Australian Labor Party. As the report in the AFR says:

The French are notoriously wary of high-earning bosses. Francois Hollande, the Socialist presidential candidate, has seen his popularity rocket ever since pledging to ‘tax the rich’ and declare war on ‘finance’.

Tax the rich eh? Who’d have thunk that would be a vote winner? Bash the banks. Another vote winner.

Why not combine the two, Labor? How about a super profits tax on the banks to fund all those socially necessary expenditures like a universal dental health care scheme?

Apply it to all companies making a super profit from the stolen land of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and who knows, we might even have enough money to negotiate a real treaty with our Indigenous brothers and sisters.

Here are a few other tax ideas driven by the fact that Australia doesn’t have a progressive tax system. According to the ACTU, the bottom 20% pay an effective tax rate of 26.7%. The top 20% pay an effective tax rate of 34.5%.

Now remember, the bottom 20% own about 1% of the nation’s wealth; the top 20% own over 60%.

A left wing government would begin by making the income tax scales more progressive, not less as they have been becoming over the last 30 years.

As well, it could impose a wealth tax on the rich, bringing in billions every year from a tax on the wealth they hold here and overseas.

It could implement a death and gift duty so the sons and daughters of the Rineharts, Packers, Murdochs and Fairfaxes would pay tax on their ill-gotten gains.

It could even impose a minimum company tax on business so that the 50% of big business who currently pay no income tax, and those who reduce their effective rates to well below the current company rate of 30%, pay a little more.

And it could attack the disguised grants to the business and the rich through the tax system known as tax expenditures. The Treasury figures are revealing.

According to the Treasury statistics released a few days ago the superannuation concessions will cost us about $30 bn next year. According to ACOSS 80% of these tax benefits go to the top 20% of income earners. Those earning below $37000 get no benefit from the concessions.

Disguised grants through the tax system for business (euphemistically called ‘business tax expenditures’) for 2010-11 are in the order of $9 bn. Abolish them and your budget deficit disappears.

And the houses of the rich (along with everyone else’s) are not subject to capital gains tax. Maybe now is the time to tax the gains those who live on the foreshores of Sydney Harbour make on their multi-million dollar houses.

And that’s just a few thoughts from a deranged Lefty, Labor. Imagine what the neoliberals in Treasury could come up with in a day of thinking about squeezing the rich till their pips squeak.

Tax the rich? Nah, it would never be popular, would it, Labor? Just ask Francois Hollande, the man who could well be the next President of France precisely because he says he wants to tax the rich.

International Women’s Day has a revolutionary history.

After the Socialist Party of the US organised a demonstration for women workers in 1909, German communist Clara Zetkin put the proposal to hold a day of international solidarity among and with working women to an International Conference of Socialist Women in 1910. 

 The day itself was seen as championing the on-going struggle for better working, social and political conditions for women, in particular the vote.

The day was chosen to honour mass strikes of US textile workers in 1908 and 1909 for bread and roses, for union recognition, for the vote, for better pay and for dignity.

As a consequence in March 1911 one million workers (men and women) in various European countries rallied to really begin the international day.

On 23 February 1917 (8 March in the modern calender) women garment workers in St Petersburg struck for bread and peace and in doing so sparked the conflagration that bought down the Czar four days later and saw the working class take power 8 months later.

Yet despite a radical history in Australia, one that went through various phases in the 30s and after the war, including being rebuilt by the liberationists in 1975 as a day of action, today in Australia IWD is a celebration of the rise of women to the top of bourgeois society as well as recognition that women still have a long way to go to be liberated. 

Indeed much thinking now seems to conflate these two distinct ideas so that the day has become one where liberation is seen as becoming a boss or manager.  The glass ceiling argument for example will get a run, little recognising that working class men don’t run factories or departments either.

IWD in its current form as a bourgeois celebration doesn’t differentiate between Julia Gillard and the underpaid women working in the community sector. It doesn’t differentiate between the head of Pacific Brands (on her $1.8 million salary) and the 1850 mainly migrant women on a pittance she sacked two years ago.

It doesn’t differentiate between Gail Kelly as head of Westpac and the cuts to the living standards of women workers her decisions to raise her bank’s mortgage interest rates produces. Or the low pay of her female and male workforce. Or her sacking of staff, female and male.

The idea that working class women have more in common with their boss because she is woman than with working class men is criminal and absurd. 

The bourgeoisie and those women who have positions of power in bourgeois society celebrate the day precisely to paper over the class differences and to give the impression that becoming a boss is what liberation is about. 

We are not ‘all in this together’. 

Ruling class women have a material interest in the present exploitative system continuing and in keeping the wages of many women workers low. Working class women have a material interest in better pay and eventually in overthrowing the system.

Let’s look at some of the key indicators of women’s advancement in society.

Abortion is still a crime in most states. In Queensland, the police of Labor Party premier and ‘feminist’ Anna Bligh bought charges against a young woman for procuring an abortion and stopped abortion in the state for months while uncertainty about the law flourished.

 A comprehensive paid maternity leave scheme (which the 1910 Socialist Conference mentioned above supported) is still a pipe dream in Australia. Labor’s pathetic scheme delivers a massive wage cut to women on the average wage for example when they look after their baby.

Australia has possibly the longest working hours of any country. We work on average about 5 or 6 unpaid hours a week for the boss, totalling around $72 billion in wages foregone a year. 

The long working week destroys the capacity of women and men to spend more time with their families. It often forces the low income earner in the family, mostly the woman, to take part time work when she really wants to work full time.

This pressure to work part time, or unpaid and longer hours reinforces gender roles and stereotypes.

Despite years of talk, including the last year with a woman as Prime Minister, women aren’t paid equal wages for equal work. The gap is about 18 percent and growing under Labor.

The recent Fair Work Australia decision granting equal pay to workers in the community sector will be phased in over almost 9 years. There have been no iron clad guarantees the increases won’t be funded in part by job losses. And the ultimate effect of the drawn out increases is that up to 40 percent could be lost in time and through negotiations for normal wage increases. 

In 1969 the Arbitration Commission refused to grant equal pay to women workers. Zelda D’Aprano chained herself to the doors of the Commission.

Enough is enough. After 43 years women workers are not much closer to equal pay for equal work.

What better way to reclaim International Women’s Day than to strike for equal pay until it becomes a reality now, not in some never never far distant future?

Women workers and women bosses have nothing in common. Fight the bosses, male and female, for equal pay now, for a proper maternity leave scheme, for abortion on demand, for free child care, for jobs for all.
Readers in Canberra might be interested in attending the Socialist Alternative meeting ‘Women’s liberation: still a long way to go’ at 6 pm on Thursday 8 March in Hayden Allen G 50 at the Australian National University.