En Passant

Team Australia is an exclusive club for white Anglos, preferably Christian, who like footy, beer and meat pies. Good sorts are allowed in to this blokey paradise, but not Aborigines, non-whites, communists, dissenters, lefties, gays, or Muslims, and especially not women who think for themselves.

By creating and reinforcing the threat from the ‘other,’ that is those of us outside Team Australia, Abbott and co, like all previous governments, hope to bind the white Anglos to them and their capitalist system and divert attention from the very attacks the neoliberal politicians are launching on those self same white Anglos (and others) as workers or, like pensioners, the disabled and the sick, people in need.

I am opposed to humanitarian aid as cover for imperialism. The fact Obama has done nothing to stop the genocide in Gaza while pretending to do something about Syria shows that US imperialism acts in its own interests.

In discussions with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Canberra our Prime Minister praised Japanese soldiers during World War II for ‘the skill and the sense of honour that they brought to their task…’

In doing that Abbott exposes the regime of lies the Australian ruling class and all ruling classes use about war, in Australia’s case especially to hide Australia’s own war crimes offshore and here in Australia in the frontier war against the original inhabitants.

Labor in Australia began this bipartisan descent into hell in 1992 when Paul Keating and ‘left-wing’ Immigration Minister Gerry Hand began locking up asylum seekers. It should come as no surprise that the Party that gave us locking up asylum seekers has so far refused to condemn refoulement. If you are angry about any aspect of government policy, whether it be asylum seekers or the Budget or the banks or anything else, I would urge you to attend rallies across Australia on Sunday 6 July to Bust the Budget.

Unionists across Australia should be clogging up the arteries of their sclerotic union bureaucracies demanding a 24 hour nationwide strike as the first step in busting the budget. We should make the same demand at the 6 July rallies. If that doesn’t happen then we should organise these actions in our unions without our ‘leaders’.

Given my health isn’t one hundred percent, I’ll throw the forum over to you with these thoughts:

Tony Abbott is off overseas to talk to Obama, Cameron and Hollande. No doubt he’ll impress them as much as he has impressed us.

I am turning this Saturday’s socialist speak out over to a poll of Australian readers.
Is the Abbott government the worst government you have ever experienced? If so why? Is Labor the answer? If not, why not?

Let’s put our class interests back on the agenda. Stop work to stop the bosses’ Budget. Together we can win.

Where were all those Australians so concerned about the welfare of children when their Australian government was stealing Aboriginal children as an act of genocide (the words of the bringing them home report, not mine)? Where are they now when the Intervention is doing the same?

Where are all those Australians so concerned about the welfare of children when their current government has locked up 1000 kids in concentration camps on Manus Island and Nauru? The current Abbott government, and the previous Gillard/Rudd governments, were and are as big a threat to some kids as Boko Haram.

Some of my centre-left friends have been talking about forcing a double dissolution by denying supply. I would if in the Parliament vote against Abbott’s Budget of Entitlement for the Rich.

However without a mass campaign on the streets and in the workplaces – specifically shutting Australia down – forcing a double dissolution won’t of itself politicise the masses and may not see the bastards kicked out.

Th real task is to win those threatened and angry to the side of direct action. Then we can talk about parliamentary games.