En Passant

Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott wants to turn refugee boats back out to sea. As Abbott points out this was also the position that now Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd adopted in the last days before the federal election in 2007. The Liberals are desperate and with a bit of refugee bashing they hope to re-connect with the [...]

Was Shane Watson’s ton at the MCG a case of Rauf justice?

Apparently it is OK to kill kids if you are the American ruling class. Only turning this upside down world right way up – working class revolution – can stop the murder of the innocents.

As the bourgeoisie prove incapable of dealing with their economic and environmental breakdowns, 2010 could be the year in which we turn their continuity into systemic discontinuity and witness the seeds being sown for a new democratic society to satisfy human need.

Tony Blair finally admitted recently what millions of people in the anti-war movement have known for years – that he was intent on going to war in Iraq whether the country posed a threat or not. Fern Britton asked Blair in a BBC TV interview, “If you had known then that there were no WMDs [...]

Marg bar dictator. This is Farsi for ‘death to the dictator’, one of the chants of the tens of thousands of protestors in the streets of Tehran today. The dispute started off as a fight among the ruling elite but has the potential to become one for the very survival of the Islamic republic.  I do not [...]

Readership of my blog has dropped by about 60 percent in the last week. When the choice for those who have been slaving for the boss for the last year is between Saturnalia, sloth and family or reading revolutionary political blogs, not surprisingly Saturnalia wins. Still, I’m pleasantly surprised more than a thousand people visited my site over Christmas. Small bickies [...]

A vicious little war has broken out in the Middle East, along Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen. It is rooted in a struggle for control over the strategically vital Arab country. In the latest incident, Saudi warplanes are accused of killing at least 70 people in a mass bombing raid on villages said to be [...]

Israeli policy has two main drivers - to keep the country Jewish and to incorporate the West Bank and Gaza into the zionist state. The two are related and seemingly contradictory. However Zionism thinks it can square the circle by driving the Palestinians from Palestine. The establishment of the State of Israel was the first step in this slow genocide. The Israelis drove [...]

The industrial revolution and the expansion of capitalism worldwide commodified all human relations, including Christmas. Thus the traditions of the past became objects of profitability.