En Passant

Independent columnist Mark Steel thinks Angela Merkel and her austerity policies are dangerous enough that we should all be listening in on her phone calls.

“Victoria Police clearly had a premeditated agenda of attacking our peaceful protest. They came out of nowhere. Riot cops moved in on the crowd and pulled people out. One of the first people they arrested, Lauren Stevenson, was unconscious as they pulled her towards the paddy wagon. We attempted to get an ambulance to her, but police said an ambulance would not be allowed to attend because she was under arrest. So they put her in the paddy wagon unconscious and drove away.”

Having created its own gravedigger in the form of a powerful working class, is it any surprise Stalinism is merely transitory? Historically it looks as if state capitalism is a conduit or stepping stone from peasant societies to market capitalism.

It looks to me as if profit and competition are the barriers to addressing climate change. If that is the case then only a democratic revolution of workers to run society to satisfy human need can address climate change. As the banners at some environmental demonstrations and eco-socialist conferences say ‘System Change, not Climate Change.’

Let’s prepare right now for the conflagration the Liberals want to unleash on us in the May Budget and the spot fires the government arsonists have already been starting. Be Abbott aware now.

A more humane and just society where all bushfire victims are treated fairly can be won, but that means joining with all those under attack from the Liberals. Most importantly it means workers taking action to defend their own interests against the attacks of the one percent and their Liberal government. We can beat them back with strikes.

Mohammed and Saleh are bad Arabs. They are unwilling to continue to participate in a masquerade called Israeli democracy. They are unwilling to dance to the sounds of the Israeli Magic Flute, which shows them off as a badge of honour, as long as they are submissive slaves . They are unwilling to cuddle up to racism whether institutionalised or popular. They don’t want to entertain the Israelis who are part of this racism and thus help them feel so good about themselves. But instead of father and son being shown solidarity and esteem, at least among the so-called Israeli avant-garde, the response to their action has been a shameful silence . Bakri and his son will not play with us anymore, so what? We have the next music reality TV coming up.

Just as the Abbott government doesn’t care about climate change, they don’t care about its victims either. As the cuts to bushfire (and other) emergency relief show, they don’t give a toss about ordinary Australians whose lives have been affected or destroyed by the fires. If they feel confident enough to attack bushfire victims, imagine what cuts they have planned for the rest of us.

The expenses scandal in Australia grows deeper by the week. Yet the greatest crime of politicians is that, while serving themselves, they serve their masters more.

Abbott is talking out of his arse to defend his political positions. His views, on gay marriage and on climate change for example, make little or no sense. Perhaps the time has come for a working class intervention to sober up this Prime Minister, drunk on power..

Bosses claim that scientific management practices are a product of “progress” and innovation. But a recent study by Caitlin Rosenthal from the Harvard Business School has found a connection between modern management techniques and the practices of slave owners, writes Kim Doyle in Red Flag.