En Passant

Well the grand success of the Abbott idiocy is playing itself out today in the further deterioration of the relationship with Indonesia. Abbott has displayed all the airs and graces of a white colonial master in his dealings with the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Abbott’s refusal to apologise for Australia spying on the President and his wife in 2009, under the former Labor government.

It is a pity that Barnaby Joyce, a man of tact, diplomacy, nuance and subtlety, isn’t going to Indonesia to fix things up. I am disappointed that Barnaby is missing out on this great opportunity, and I am sure the Indonesians feel the same way.

Sarcasm aside, the situation is getting more and more serious. The Indonesians have cut off cooperation with Australia on refugees and boats and now they are threatening the Australian meat export industry.

Abbott’s leadership of racism in Australia is now undermining his main propaganda popularising and focusing racism, ‘stopping the boats.’

He may therefore be considering an alternative racist focus like Aborigines but given the massive political investment he made in ‘stopping the boats’ and the possibility of resistance or fightback, that may not work. In Abbott’s mind a good ‘terrorists in Australia’ beat up might be more successful in diverting our attention away from his failed refugee racism.

Sound far fetched? Well, what is his alter ego, Campbell Newman, doing in Queensland? Targetting bikie gangs, gangs which pose no real threat to society. That means mass scare campaigns and rabidly anti-democratic laws. There is a model for Abbott’s forthcoming diversionary attacks.

About 60,000 people demonstrated across Australia for action to address climate change. Well meaning people turned up to push the carbon tax and emissions trading schemes as ways to address life threatening climate change. Leaving aside the fact it may be too late, and the carebon tax/ETS charade is not actually about effectively addressing the issue, the lack of focus on the political and economic drivers of climate change, the capitalist system, means there has been little international ruling class progress over the last 2 decades to address the issue.

Couple that with the dead end politics of respectability from the Greens and most of the climate groups and effectively the types of demonstrations held over the last weekend will produce no positive results unless there is a radicalisation and a branching out to the working class and all its concerns.

The choice is becoming starker – system change or climate change. The masses are not yet listening in great numbers and it may be that by the time the environmental crisis focuses their attention on the issue, all that can be done is manage the terminal condition.

50 years ago today Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated imperialist warmonger John Kennedy. Barack Obama continues that imperialism and warmongering.

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