En Passant

Censorship from Facebook?

‘You’re temporarily restricted from joining and posting to groups that you do not manage until Wednesday at 2:41 PM. If you think you’re seeing this by mistake, please let us know.’

Why? For posting my regular weekly Independent Australia column to various groups. Yet they don’t block holocaust deniers.

Here is the article Facebook blocked me from positing in groups I have posted in for the last five years.

In Independent Australia, John Passant reflects on a week of insanity in Australian – and world – politics, saying Labor and the Greens must do better.

James Supple writes in the socialist magazine Solidarity about the ongoing and deep-seated problems in bourgeois politics in Australia. He says that underpinning the turmoil in parliamentary politics is the low level of class struggle. The greatest strength the working class majority has is in its industrial strength and in mass movements to fight for change outside of parliament. This is where real reforms, for land rights, equal pay, penalty rates and long service leave, have been won. That is why socialists put such emphasis on fanning the flames of struggle—this is where the hope for change lies.

Without class struggle no alternative working class political ideas can prosper, can break through, can shine, let alone lead. So enjoy your reading about Ricky’s retirement and Ralph’s rort, about Abbott’s allegations and Gillard’s gadflying. One day politics, real class politics, will burst forth and we will be able to say, like Marx, well grubbed old mole.

If Liberals are friends of capitalists the Labor Party is the friend of capital. The controversy over the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT), announced by the Rudd government in its response to the Henry Tax Review, is the latest illustration of this longstanding relationship. The largest chunk of the revenue from the new tax will […]

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 […]

Australian justice is like Chinese justice – it represents the interests of the rich and powerful.

After twelve years of ruling for the likes of pulp miller Gunns Limited and shitting on its working-class supporters, the corrupt, right-wing Labor government in Tasmania has taken a sharp hit at the polls, with its vote down twelve per cent. It is a similar story in South Australia, except that the Rann Labor government, […]

There was enough in the voting in Tasmania and South Australia for all the conservative parties to claim a victory of sorts. The Greens in Tasmania polled 21 percent of the vote. They may hold the balance of power, assuming Labor and the Liberals don’t shut them out with some shady deal. The Greens’ 21 percent, as […]

Those nasty unionists have been arguing for a $27 a week increase in the minimum wage from its current ‘exorbitant’ $544 a week. The end is nigh. Or so the bosses tell us. There are about 1.4 million workers whose salary is dependent in some way on the minimum wage. Paying them a slight increase will […]