En Passant

After Tony Abbott’s Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture to the Europeans on how to better abuse asylum seekers, and the wonderful response he got from the thoroughly reactionary UKIP and its leader, Nigel Farage, words are beyond me. This cartoon captures it perfectly.

There is no migrant crisis. There is a crisis of imperialism, of intervention, of capitalism. End the cycle of death and tears. Stop invading countries, bombing them and supporting dictators.Open the borders everywhere.

Writing in the Irish Socialist Worker Memet Uludag argues that we must support refugees, oppose the imperialism that drowns them at sea and build a political alternative that embraces our humanity, not hatred. Among other things Memet explains the increase in deaths this year in the Mediterranean are the result of rotten racist anti-immigrant policy changes by the EU.

Europe’s business and political elite are trying to stifle or subvert the radical left party SYRIZA. It needs international solidarity against the bankers, writes Alan Maass in Socialist Worker US.

THE EUROPEAN debt crisis keeps getting worse despite a series of attempts to bail out debt-wracked countries in the eurozone, the 17 countries that share a common currency.

Versions of reformism will seek simultaneously to express workers’ resistance to capitalism and to contain it within the framework of the system. But it underlines the necessity of building a revolutionary left that is part of this great movement sweeping Europe but maintains its own political identity.

You are right of course. Protests never achieve anything.

Resistance across the Arab world. The occupy movement in over 800 cities in over 80 countries. Strikes and demonstrations across Europe against austerity. The Equal Love campaign and the Baiada poultry workers’ picket in Australia.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing came of them.

Some years stand out because they change the course of history, and they change us. They change the way we think about our society, about politics, about the possibilities for social change. 2011 has been one such year writes Rebecca Barrigos in Socialist Alternative.

Having socialists involved in the struggles of the day, socialists with an understanding of the tasks necessary to win a better world here and now and into the future and coalescing around common ideas about socialism and democracy is an important part of the ultimate success of the liberationist project.

If two years ago the European ruling class had “no unified strategy or coherent response”, it is clearer now. Smash, grab, hold on and try to weather both the economic storm and the wave of popular resistance that is being provoked. What remains unclear is how exactly they will be able to do so.