En Passant

Today, Obama’s Iraq policy is not about some grand new plan for US domination, but is a desperate rearguard effort to salvage what remains of US power and influence in the Middle East, writes Corey Oakley in Red Flag.

Maybe they hate us Senator Brandis because the last time we invaded, in 2003, about 1.5 million Iraqis died as a result? The number continues to rise. Maybe they hate us because the puppet regime we imposed on them was a sectarian Shia dictatorship over Sunnis? Maybe they hate us because we are invading them again. And killing women and children. Again.

This government is pushing racism and Islamophobia to win support for its war in Iraq and to detract attention from its rotten austerity Budget. A war footing and jingoism are the breeding grounds for the ruling class to push fear of the other. The Labor Party is rushing in to support Abbott. As the war deteriorates and the economy worsens the anti-Muslim dog whistles from our politicians will become claxon horns. Opposing the war and fighting against the Budget are linked, and must join up with the fight to defend our Muslim bothers and sisters.

The ‘enemy’, the ‘other’ is supposedly both external and within. It is a common ploy of our rulers. Over white Australia’s history the threat has been variously the Chinese, the yellow peril, the Russians, the Germans, the Japanese, the Reds, immigrants, refugees and of course the founding ‘enemy’, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. It unites ‘us’ all, boss and worker, against the other and helps the bosses set their agenda. That agenda includes the West’s terrorism worldwide to subdue the peoples of rebellious countries and impose the market for the benefit of Western capitalism.

Muslims in Australia today are, for the capitalist class and its politicians, the perfect other, the perfect target, the manufactured representation of both home-grown and overseas terror and terrorism.

They are the decoy for neoliberalism and the West’s permanent global war.

THAT WAS a strange tactic of the political leaders of England–to try and convince Scotland not to vote for independence from England by sending up all the English people they dislike the most, who have made them consider independence in the first place, writes the Independent’s Mark Steel. If that doesn’t work, maybe David Cameron will dig up Margaret Thatcher and send her to the middle of Glasgow as well.

World leaders are coming to New York City this week for another United Nations-sponsored summit on climate change. This time, though, they’ll be greeted by the largest climate justice march in history. What are we fighting for in New York City? Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis, looks at […]

This is the link to my 30 minute interview with Sharon Firebrace on Razor Sharp, talking about, among other things, the new old war in Iraq, the death cult that is Western imperialism, the war on the poor, Abbott in Arnhem Land, a treaty, and the need to fight back against the Budget war on the poor and the war in Iraq.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that this war in Iraq would take months. No doubt they’ll be home before Christmas. Have we learned nothing over the last century? Or is this the war to end all wars? This time, no doubt, the Western ruling classes will get it right. Oh yeah, just like 100 years ago.