En Passant

Even a slight familiarity with history would help the head of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection Mike Pezzullo and others understand that the offshore and onshore detention centres are in fact classic examples of concentration camps. Pezzullo is not about historical truth; he is about denying the truth of history. If we as a society were to call these detention centres what they are, concentration camps, then the reality of Australia’s actions would become clear.

Dozens of women were sexually assaulted on New Year’s Eve in Germany. But rather than connecting the events to everyday sexist violence, politicians and the media have turned to stoking up racism. Silke Stöckle and Marion Wegscheider respond in this article for German socialist group Marx21, translated by Kate Davison and re-published from Socialist Worker UK

The terrorism hype and changes to our immigration laws throw away basic rights to a trial and give incredible powers to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. They undermine our freedoms here and now. They set a dangerous precedent. They prepare the way for further criminalising dissent in Australia.

‘Just following orders’ sums up the bigwigs in the Department of Immigration and ‘Border Protection’ in charge of implementing the government’s racist and reactionary asylum seeker policy perfectly. Here is my challenge to them. Threaten me with punitive action.

It is a dark day when a Bangladeshi union comrade working to protect workers’ rights is deemed by Australian Immigration too poor to travel to Australia to highlight anti poverty week! Grant Masum a visa!

If you want a new and democratic society where people come before profit, if you think we need a revolution of the mass of workers to win that, then you should consider joining Socialist Alternative. Unlike Labor and its puppy dog left, we welcome refugees; we don’t demonise them, imprison them indefinitely in concentration camps, or deport them to possible death, torture or imprisonment.

Since I don’t spray under my armpits, should I be shipped off to a deodorant gulag? But I do like the idea of giving real content to ‘cultural awareness training.’ It should be compulsory for all parliamentarians to be trained in our real history – the genocide of the Aboriginal people, the myths of ANZAC, the wars we fight side by side with imperialism, the exploitation that is capitalism, profit as theft. I doubt Teresa Gambaro would be at the top of that class.

We must see the talk of “sustainable population” for what it really is: an attempt to use racism to divert people’s attention from the real issues in society.

It’s far easier for the two major parties of capital to rail against immigrants and asylum seekers than to do anything that would actually address the real problems of overcrowding and congestion.

The bidding war for the racist vote has begun. The loser will be asylum seekers; those fleeing the persecution, poverty and war that the economic, political and military forces of Western capitalism impose on them. Labor has frozen the processing of refugee applications from Afghans and Sri Lankans. In the case of Sri Lankans the ban is […]