En Passant

Tim Wilson, one of the Human Rights Commissioners, phoned me today about the ANU student newspaper Woroni and its refusal to publish my rebuttal of their untruths in vilifying Socialist Alternative as anti-Semitic and violent.

This is a slightly edited version of a letter I have emailed to Tim Wilson, the right wing libertarian Free Speech Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission over the refusal by the Australian National University student newspaper Woroni to publish any rebuttal by me of their outrageous article ‘convicting’ Socialist Alternative of anti-Semitism. What odds eh?

This is an updated version of an article I sent to to the editors of Woroni, the student newspaper of the Australian National University. They refused to publish an earlier version of what is written below. I have submitted a cut down version of this to the Canberra Times for their consideration.

If you are a public servant or anyone else who believes in the right to bag out Abbott and co, Free Speech Sunday is the blog spot for you. Hit the comments link under the heading to have your say.

It is time to stand up for freedom of expression, real free speech. Public servants work for the government as a wage slave, not as a slave. The government doesn’t own you out of hours. Post your criticisms of the government here on this blog on any relevant article.

You will get plenty of opportunities. I write about this rotten-to-the-core Abbott Liberal government or their mirror image, the do-nothing neoliberal Labor Opposition, almost every day.

John Passant calls on newly appointed ‘Freedom Commissioner’ Tim Wilson to represent all sides of the political divide.  Yours truly in Independent Australia on Friday.

The vast majority can only win free speech, its actual exercise, by overthrowing the system that concentrates free speech in the hands of billionaires like Murdoch.

Before that happens there are newspapers of the revolutionary left like Red Flag which offer an alternative vision of society, a vision of a society where war and poverty do not exist and where production is organised democratically to satisfy human need. To help understand what is happening in the world today read those newspapers.

To make sense of the zeal of George Brandis for certain types of freedoms we need to judge them through the prism of class. Brandis’s freedoms will directly or indirectly assist the ruling class in its ongoing campaign to justify itself and reinforce its barbaric and exploitative rule. His proposed freedom commissars will strengthen the dictatorship of capital.

Me in Independent Australia. ‘Academic John Passant has been subjected to vile threats after writing about a recent demonstration against education cuts — and has traced some of them back to Victoria Police.’ http://www.independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/victoria-police-threaten-academic,5857