En Passant

The flowers of freedom I saw their ghosts today In something that I read I feel their ghosts forever In something that they said And they say now, and yesterday For all around is past These ghosts are true, They flourish in our land Of reality as image, hand in hand Where mirage dresses Itself […]

Stopping the boats (itself a lie) is built on starting the torture. Turnbull, and I should add, Shorten, feel confident in their brutal refugee policies. How do we challenge them? History shows that civil disobedience has been a key weapon in the armoury of those fighting for civil rights. Stop the cities to stop the torture. Occupy to free the refugees from the concentration camps and bring them here.

The ACT election result should worry the Turnbull Government, since swings against parties have traditionally presaged the fall of the party federally, says John Passant in Independent Australia. To read the whole article click here.

I submitted this back in May to the Canberra Times after I had spoken at the National Law Reform Conference at the ANU on a whole range of national and local progressive tax reforms. They did not publish it. In light of the Australian Capital Territory election on Saturday, I thought I would publish it today to stimulate some sort of discussion about tax reform in the A.C.T.

The Turnbull government on Wednesday passed a Labor amendment to a Tax Bill which called on the government “to explain why it has failed to close tax loopholes and increase transparency in Australia”. What next? Trying to organise a piss up in a brewery?

Public anger builds and banking oligopoly and corruption are set to continue as Turnbull announces banking tribunal instead of a royal commission.

To read my full report in Independent Australia click through here to get to the article. The big 4 Australian banks said ‘sorry’ so Turnbull announces tribunal instead of Royal Commission

To move the ALP to really fighting for marriage equality maybe our demand should be for them to make the Parliament ungovernable. Labor could refuse to vote for any government motion or Bill, even ones they in theory agree with, until the Government allows a free vote on marriage equality.

We could begin that process by making the cities unworkable, by calling protests with the express goal of thousands of supporters closing down key entry points until the government allows a free vote on same sex marriage and calling on Labor to make the Parliament unworkable until that happens.

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.

What an exciting time to be an A.C.T. Legislative Assembly voter. Look at all the choices we have – neoliberalism to the left, neoliberalism to the right, neoliberalism everywhere in between.
Where is the ACT’s Jeremy Corbyn? Why is there not even one Bernie Sanders’ style democratic socialist among the 141 candidates?

In Independent Australia on Tuesday I discussed the absurdity of the Turnbull Government’s claims that the SA blackouts were caused by renewables. Click here to get to the link to the full article, in which I raise privatisation and climate change as the real culprits of the blackout. SA blackout: The ‘renewables and Labor did it’ tale