En Passant

The attacks on the poor, the low paid, the disabled, the unemployed, pensioners, students, Aborigines and others are a class issue which requires a class response. That is why I say the best way to stop the bosses’ budget is to stop work. Bust the budget rallies are being held across Australia this coming Sunday, 6 July. Make them the first step in stopping Abbott attacking us and to send a warning to Labor to abandon its attacks on us when it is in government.

Are there lessons for Australia in what tax staff in the UK are doing? Some 50,000 tax workers at HMRC offices around Britain began a week of rolling strikes on Monday of this week writes Annette Mackin in Socialist Worker UK.

Phone hacking went on at an industrial scale, the court was told. It wasn’t just celebrities, writes Simon Basketter in Socialist Worker UK. Trade unionists and ordinary people had their phones hacked too. But this is not just about bad journalism. The scandal has revealed the unholy alliance between the police, the media and the political establishment. And it goes to the very top. The most prominent of the accused were David Cameron’s close friends.

You are never going to see me offered a regular spot in any mainstream media. Of course, once the lion rises from its slumbers the bosses’ media aren’t going to give any space to the enemy. So to understand what is going on you’ll just have to keep reading my blog and other sites like Red Flag and Green Left Weekly.

If Abbott and Bishop really want Peter Greste freed, then it is time to play dirty. Threaten Pine Gap and the US base in Darwin if Obama doesn’t get the Egyptians to release Peter Greste and his colleagues. The task for the Egyptian people, again, is to overthrow the tyranny and this time defeat reaction. Only a working class socialist revolution can do that.

The Tasmanian ‘Liberal’ Government has introduced legislation that will see those who protest against logging ‘and other production sites’ jailed for their second ‘offence’.

Jailing protesters? Now where I have heard about that happening recently?

In Egypt they jail protesters and journalists. In Australia, journalists could be next.

Of course the conviction of Peter Greste is a travesty of justice. So too are Aboriginal deaths in custody, imprisoning innocent asylum seekers and their children in concentration camps, criminalising dissent, fining or jailing workers for ‘illegal’ strikes and imprisoning Aboriginal peoples on their own lands.

The fight for justice in Australia is the fight against the same sort of forces imprisoning Peter Greste in Egypt. Our fight against injustice here is the fight against injustice everywhere. Peter Greste’s struggle is our struggle. The best way for Australians to support Greste is to fight for justice and freedom here in Australia.

A government committed to women re-entering the workforce could set up a program for state owned and operated (with parent participation) childcare centres at affordable rates in working class areas across Australia.

The wages of early childcare workers remain low, (Page 26), so a progressive government would also increase the pay of these workers markedly.

Trotsky: Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity—one’s own and that of other people.

That the conservative commentators and media pundits who spread such lies, misinformation and hysterical jingoism to justify mass slaughter continue to be respected and celebrated by the establishment, and have faced no consequences of any import for their actions, speaks to the depravity and cynicism of modern capitalism writes Louise O’Shea in Red Flag.