Elections 2010: Crazy, crazy, crazy...

July 23, 2010
Issue 
Green Left Weekly is with Obelix on this one.

This election campaign is crazy.

It’s crazy that so much fear is being whipped up about the few thousand of the world's 43 million refugees and displaced people who manage to get on a leaky boat to Australia.

But neither mainstream party is willing to stop sending troops to the decade-long military occupation of Afghanistan. This war is largely responsible for 2.8 million Afghan refugees worldwide — the same war is opposed by most in Afghanistan and most citizens of the countries whose armies occupy it.

Labor and Coalition politicians parrot the line that this “war on terror” is aimed at stopping terrorism. But on July 20 the BBC said the ex-head of MI5 had admitted to an inquiry that the invasion of Iraq did not reduce terrorism but added to it.

It is a no-brainer that the Afghan war is doing the same. But the “war on terror” is the official craziness that the establishment parties defend.

It’s crazy we don’t discuss how many billions of dollars our society should invest into an emergency shift to stop climate change.

Instead, the major parties bend over backwards to encourage Big Coal, Big Oil, Big Gas and Big Every Other Mineral.

Why? Because continuing this crazy course will make some very powerful corporations a lot of money. As Guy Pearse wrote in the May Monthly, Australia will soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's leading carbon exporter. Australian capitalism is hooked on a course to destroy the planet.

The best we get from Labor in response to the climate emergency is a hint that it might — at some time in the future — introduce a leave-it-to-the-market carbon trading scheme.

Well, that is crazy too.

We are still in the middle of a global economic disaster, caused by decades of leave-it-to-the-market politics. This disaster frittered away trillions of dollars in the world's biggest casino — the financial speculation markets.

The world hasn't recovered from this craziness. Economists can’t even work out when some countries in Europe will ever get out of insolvency, but we are forced to once again leave our common future to the market.

Green Left Weekly is one of the few publications waging the David and Goliath struggle against the leave-it-to-the-market madness that passes as “mainstream” politics.

We campaign for massive public investment now in a shift to renewable energy and public transport.

For this campaign to be heard we need our supporters to make an investment in GLW. We have a target of $300,000 this year and so far we have raised $120,655. Please help us raise the rest with a donation this week, or better still, commit to a regular donation.

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