En Passant

See the Great Barrier Reef before we kill it. Kiss goodbye to the snowfields. Find some way to cool down all day every day or move somewhere a bit cool, like Tasmania. Take out flood and fire insurance. Stock up on water purifiers. Don’t buy homes too close to the coast. Definitely don’t buy a farm. If you are indigenous or poor or both, you are completely stuffed. Well, maybe not you but your grandkids for sure.

The question of Labor linking or not linking to the trade union bureaucracy is the wrong one. The real question is how to build a workers’ party committed to socialist revolution. That task for the revolutionary left involves becoming the place those people in Labor and near it and even more so outside it who want to build a better world turn to and join in that fight. Labor’s neoliberalism and inhumanity help open up that possibility.

Abbott had his bonfire of red tape last week. Meanwhile at Morwell the bonfire of deregulation has severely disrupted the lives of thousands of residents and the health of many, since the fire spread to the deregulated Hazelwood open cut mine about a month ago.

Socialist Alternative makes no bones about our opposition to the apartheid state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, just as we opposed apartheid South Africa. We make a clear distinction (for anyone willing to see it) between Zionism as a political justification for the state of Israel, and the Jewish religion. We are critical of Zionism. Religion is a private matter. There are Jews, proud of their heritage, among our membership.

The Australasian Union of Jewish Students and its campus affiliates very actively and publicly support the Israeli state and its policies.

But the reality of Israel’s brutal actions, from the death of more than 1,100 as Israel bombed Beirut in 2006 to the massacre of 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza in January 2009 (to name just two examples found unavoidably newsworthy by the mainstream media), makes it ever more difficult to present Israel in a positive light.

By resorting to fabrications of racial vilification against those who oppose Israel’s crimes, our accusers merely reveal that they are attempting to defend the indefensible.

Tenants living in public housing in Sydney’s Millers Point are vowing to resist the forced sale of their homes writes Lisa Moon in Red Flag. A community meeting to plan the fightback, organised by the Millers Point Defence Committee with the support of the Maritime Union of Australia and the City of Sydney, drew a crowd of 500 on 22 March.

The possibilities are endless for Australian sycophants of capital. Dame Bronny, Sir Arthur of the Waters, Dame Edna, Sir Les. And of course the mining magnates deserve a special mention. Dame Gina, Sir Clive and Lord Twiggy of the Forrest. It is all enough to warm the cockles of any monarchist’s heart (if they have hearts.)

My hot tip is Sir Paul out of the Howes, for his sterling services to capital.

Both the Liberals and Labor have embraced the racist Northern Territory intervention and attacked asylum seekers, although they sometimes differ a little on the detail. They are both on the right. They are both bigoted.

Our tasks are twofold – to build a movement to resist the racists and to build an organisation of the revolutionary left capable of organising with workers to challenge the system that produces bigotry and racism.

This isn’t about cutting red tape. It is about lining the pockets of the rich and powerful with even more money at the expense of the low paid. Just as Sinodinos tried to line his pockets with his $2000 an hour job, this is what he and the Abbott government are trying to do now for their mates in the one percent with their misnamed ‘bonfire of red tape’. The only people being burnt are the poorly paid and less sophisticated, working class investors.

This is a link to my interview with Sharon Firebrace on Razor Sharp on Tuesday 18 March talking about the Tasmanian and South Australian elections, the march in March, jobs, jobs, jobs, the WA Senate election, the centralisation of power, neoliberalism, criminalising dissent etc, etc …

I’ll leave it up to readers today to comment on whatever is on their mind, within reason. The march in March, Sinodinos, missing aeroplanes, Crimea, Russia and Ukraine, Manus Island, Reza Berati, Syria, the non-existent Opposition, the forthcoming WA Senate election, the Budget in May … whatever. Go for it.