En Passant

I have argued for some time that the refugee movement must radicalise and, for example, close down the centres of major cities to win the campaign to bring them here. Otherwise we are, like Sisyphus, trapped in the eternal boulder rolling of defeat.

The Syrian war is not just a tragedy writes Corey Oakley in Red Flag. It is a crime of immense proportions. And it is clear as day who is culpable.

For the left to be relevant in the future, we need to solidarise with movements of the oppressed in the Arab world (and beyond), and at the same time form the alliances necessary in the West to take on the oligarchs that rule our countries for the 1 percent. The old “anti-imperialism” that targeted only the West will not do. And neither will a politics that subordinates domestic questions in the West to litmus tests of international politics, or allows hostility to Russia to turn into accommodation with Western imperialism.

I thought I would just reproduce what some have written about my first book of poetry, Songs for the Band Unformed.

You are our friend
We yours too
It is time, to renew
Our bonds
Live long
Together

The Coalition Government in Australia is struggling with internal divisions and crossbench pressures, plus recent polls show it is “on the nose” with voters. To read the whole article click here on John Passant’s report in Independent Australia.

The Syrian war is an obscenity, a brutal meat-grinder that consumes mainly the innocent, writes Alex Callinicos in Socialist Worker UK. The initial popular revolutionary impulse that dictator Bashar al-Assad tried to crush by brute force still weakly survives. But it is now subsumed by the rivalries of imperialist powers and their local clients and allies. The fighting goes on because it is in these powers’ interests.

Here are some of my recent unpublished mainstream media letters to the editor. This first one is a letter I sent to The Australian. (Yeah, I know. And no, there is no irony in the fact that the ‘newspaper’ with a fake free speech campaign for one of its cartoonists should refuse to publish this. Free speech is free speech for the rich and powerful and those who disagree within their set and acceptable boundaries.)

The politics of alone Alone, again, Few comrades, and no friends Alone, again, reading Marx Between the darkness and the dark Is this our Facebook life? Entangled spaces wrapped in strife Debate becomes our hate And nothing, but nothing, awaits The nihilism of words Grasps the meaning of absurd And free among the fields Yields, […]

In a response to articles by journalist Max Blumenthal, Ashley Smith in Socialist Worker US challenges the view that the Syrian Revolution has been manipulated by the U.S. from the beginning. We must stand in solidarity with genuine liberation struggles from below, regardless of which imperial camp they are challenging. Our slogan is neither Washington, nor Moscow, nor Beijing, nor Damascus, nor Tehran, nor Riyadh, but self-determination for oppressed nations and international socialism.