En Passant

  Refugee Rights Action Network WA (RRAN) activists writing in Red Flag have pieced together the following harrowing account of events taking place on Manus Island. REFUGEE RIGHTS ACTION NETWORK – SYNTHESISED ACCOUNT OF THE ATTACKS ON MANUS The following account has been put together from multiple sources that various Refugee Rights Action Network activists […]

Close down these detention centre concentration camps. Bring the asylum seekers from Indonesia and Malaysia to Australia for processing while they live in the community. Hope, not fear. Love, not hate. Refugees, not racists.

To see that happen will require a Herculean effort on our part since the Abbott government has gone murderously on the attack against refugees. We must therefore fight back strongly in their defence. The first steps to do that are demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne. Others will be announced soon and posted when I have details. Join us in the fight to defend refugees and by extension all those who will come under attack from this rotten viciously ruling class government.

I send my solidarity and support to the brave freedom fighters on the Manus Island concentration camp resisting the crimes of the Australian Government. It is right and just to rebel against such tyranny.

The mood of the rally can be summed up in the words of Marlene Wharton, who said, “I am here today to support my friend, my sister, my people against the brutality of the police and what they did to Sheila. This has got to stop. My grandparents fought for the rights of our people back in the day, then my father fought, then my uncles, and now I’m the next generation and I’m not going to stop the struggle and I don’t want anyone else to stop either”.

Dozens of Brisbane Murri community leaders gathered on Tuesday night in the southern suburb of Logan to organise support for Sheila Oakley, who was viciously tasered by police on the doorstep of her home on 6 February write Kaye Broadbent and Sarah Jean in Red Flag. A rally has been called for Saturday 15 February at 11am, assembling at 26 Jacaranda Avenue, Kingston. Speeches will be followed by a march to the Logan police station. After the rally there will be a BBQ fundraiser to support Sheila and her family in their time of need. Everyone who wants to stand in solidarity with Brisbane’s Murri community needs to be there.

The relentless campaign in the Murdoch press and other right wing media outlets accusing the ABC of ideological bias and groupthink is so laughably hypocritical that it would be easy to conclude the lot of them were a cutting new satire from the people who brought us The Onion writes Corey Oakley in Red Flag.

Scarlett Johansson is the new face of apartheid writes Kostas Rologas in Red Flag. Her very public decision to quit Oxfam and continue her role as Sodastream’s “global brand ambassador” is appallingly racist. Here’s why.

Me interviewed by Sharon Firebrace on Razor Sharp this morning. The Royal Commission, car industry and age of entitlement get a lot of the coverage. http://sharonfirebrace.com/2014/02/11/john-passant-aust-national-university-canberra-2/

Me on 4 February 2014 on Razor Sharp with Sharon Firebrace. http://sharonfirebrace.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/4-2-14-john-passant-aust-national-university-canberra-end-of-the-age-of-entitlement-for-the-needy-but-pandering-to-the-lusts-of-the-greedy.mp3

Paid trade union officials are the retailers of our labour power to the bosses and what Abbott wants to do through this Royal Commission is cut out the middle men and women, the union officials, and allow the bosses to completely dominate atomised workers and thus drive down wages and slash conditions, cut jobs, and lengthen the working day, among other things.