En Passant

Protesters filled the streets of Paris on the eve of the United Nations Cop21 climate change summit–despite president Francois Hollande’s best attempts to keep them away writes Dave Sewell in Socialist Worker UK from Paris.

First it was Mojgan, then it was Melbourne. This is the real face of Australian Border Force.

The Abbott Liberal Government and its State counterparts will ratchet up their strategy of vilification and demonisation against the powerless, the poor, refugees, bikies, indigenous Australians. This lays the groundwork for turning on social welfare recipients – so called dole bludgers and the like – and then on to the defensive organisations of labour, unions. They will ramp up the rhetoric of union thugs and attacks on unions.

An injury to one is an injury to all. To keep and improve current pay, conditions and jobs we will have to fight back against reaction, against all demonisation and vilification, against attacks on unions. If there is hope it lies in the proles.

For operational reasons this blog will be closed until further notice. Eric Blair, Secretary, Department of Home Affairs.

For 40 years I have been raging against the capitalist machine in all its manifestations – war, genocide, poverty, human rights abuses, working class exploitation, economic crises and the racism, sexism and homophobia which act as a glue for the system and the Labor party and trade union leadership which are its staunchest defenders and the rock on which it survives.

If recent calls in Australia for the further criminalisation of dissent mean that I’ll have to write my blog from a prison cell then so be it. I won’t be the first and I certainly won’t be the last revolutionary imprisoned for their views.

The duality of racism in Australia means that when Abbott inflames racist tensions by attacking refugees he lays the groundwork for more and more brutal attacks on our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters, including the Tent Embassy.

Real democratic change in Iran won’t come from U.S. intervention, but from a broadening and deepening of the protest movement.

The demand for democracy has the potential to unite the poor with the better paid workers and drive the Iranian dictators into the sea.

A democratic and secular Palestine for all who want to live there is gaining support.

Through strikes and demonstrations Egyptian tax collectors won a 325% pay increase and have now formed an independent trade union.