En Passant

The U.S. involvement in Syria has nothing to do with democracy or even chemical weapons — it is about protecting and extending U.S. military and economic power, says John Passant  

  Malcolm Turnbull’s trip to shake the hand of Donald Trump has diminished the prime minister and is degrading for Australia, writes ​John Passant in Independent Australia.

Academics are starting a US conference boycott.

The point isn’t to bury our arguments, but to learn how to make them while operating in political arenas that aren’t just our own if we want to win people to more radical politics. Revolutionary socialists have a long and rich tradition of building united fronts, which seems more real now that 3 million people were in the streets.

We must do a better job at facilitating debate, discussion and argument so that we talk about how to build the kind of movement we want. But endless social media critiques with no commitment to diving into that struggle for the kind of movement we want is not a serious approach.

There are literally millions of people in this country who are now questioning everything. We need to open up our organizations, planning meetings, marches and much more to them. We need to read together, learn together, be in the streets together and stand up to this assault together.

Labor thinks it is on a winner with its Australia First propaganda. Expect to see much more Aussie jobs rhetoric and dog whistling from the ALP. Of course, like Trump, most of this will be verbiage without action.  Where was Labor for example when the car industry was shutting down?

Labor, rather than dog whistling about foreign workers, could make some real changes to industrial relations law in Australia. The first one would be to enshrine the right to strike at any time in legislation. The second would be to allow unions access to all workers to explain pay and conditions, and for building industry and other dangerous workplaces, to enforce safety standards

  American workers have been sold a pup, says John Passant in Independent Australia. As the Great Recession morphs into the Long Depression, their False Messiah will throw them under the bus. To read the whole article click here. Trump the False Messiah: Will he become the workers’ anti-Christ?

We have a lot of work to do, starting today, to build a real left alternative that recognizes the misery and suffering so many people endure; that confronts these conditions politically and practically; and that builds organization capable of turning the tide.

Electing Hillary Clinton won’t challenge let alone change the system of oppression or the positions of power that give some powerful men what they think is (and because of their positions of power often is) sexual power over women. Indeed, like Obama before her, as President Hillary Clinton will reinforce the oppressions of capitalism, the oppressions of gender and race on which capitalism has been and is built and reinforced.