En Passant

On asylum seekers Labor has been hoist with their own petard. It would be laughable if it were not so serious. The time has come for Labor to abandon the stink bomb that is their refugee policy and welcome those fleeing war, rape, imprisonment and persecution. I know that will not happen. It is up to refugee activists to continue our long fight to defend asylum seekers. Instead of Labor and Liberal lies, that means, as a start and as Red Cross has shown, telling the truth about our abandoned brothers and sisters and exposing Labor and the government for the liars and criminals they are. It means pointing out too that the government (of whatever neoliberal persuasion) that is attacking workers and the poor also attacks asylum seekers. We are all in this together.

The message from the Abbott government couldn’t be any clearer. The war in Iraq is going to accelerate the war on workers and the poor, the sick, the disabled, the young, the old and the unemployed in Australia.

Whistleblowing hero, Edward Snowden, has revealed that Australia’s equivalent of the Stasi has been tracking the calls of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian President and a number of other powerful Indonesian politicians, including Ministers and potential candidates in next year’s presidential election. The Indonesians now know the reality of Australian imperialism, or rather Snowden has exposed it to the Indonesian masses and to Australians. Tony Abbott’s Jakarta strategy is in tatters. Good.

Abolish our Stasi. De-fund defence and intelligence agencies and spend the money on health and education.