The Australian economy: the continuing crisis

Written by: (Contributed) on 30 March 2025

(Source: freepikcom)

An OECD report dealing with the economies of member countries has revealed the fragile nature of the Australian economy. The report has been presented by economists using economic data, which can be used by politicians to provide a misleading picture of many of the problems arising.

The section of the report dealing specifically with percentage change in real household disposable income, however, has revealed how the Australian working class and lower socio-economic groups have borne the brunt of recent economic problems far more than their counterparts elsewhere.

The present OECD report has shown the global economy is in relative decline, particularly when assessed through the diplomatic hostilities between the US and China.

GLOBAL GDP

2024 - 3.2%
2025 - 3.1%
2026 - 3.0%

US 2025 - 2.2%
2026 - 1.6%

CHINA 2025 - 4.8%
2026 - 4.4% (1)

China will inevitably overtake the US as the world's biggest economy sometime in the future, sooner rather than later, if not toward the end of the present decade, then the next one. The problem arising should be assessed as remaining in the background of diplomatic hostilities between the two countries, with many of the dramas being played-out in the Indo-Pacific region, drawing Australia ever closer to real-war scenarios.

The Australian economy, meanwhile, continues to bump along the bottom, with economic growth of 2.5 per cent for the present year, with a projection falling to 1.8 per cent for next year. (2)

The Australian figures also reveal a volatile economy; growth rates of just 0.6 per cent were recorded in the December quarter last year. (3) The growth rates do not appear sustainable, but fluctuate regularly.

The growth rates, furthermore, show Australia's fall significantly below those of the G20, where average growth rates of 3.1 per cent for this year are expected to only fall slightly to 2.9 per cent next year. (4)

Australia's inflation rate also continues to hover around 2.4 per cent, only slightly being reduced to a projected 2.2 per cent next year. (5) It continues to be a problem.

The figures also have to be studied in the context of Australia's growing debt; in 2004 gross public debt amounted to 15.2 per cent of GDP, by 2024 it had risen to 57.9 per cent. (6) By the end of this year it had been projected to rise to 60.6 per cent. (7)

When the economic data is linked to living standards, however, the real problems facing Australia can be accurately established.

The OECD report revealed that while the average gains in living standards of other member countries averaged at 5.5 per cent, Australia's had slipped by minus 8.3 per cent. (8) The figures are all the more appalling when studied in the context that they are an average for all Australians; the working class and lower socio-economic groups on basic Award terms and conditions of employment, pay far more of their disposable income for basic necessities than higher socio-economic groups.

The study, furthermore, found that on average, Australian workers were working longer than the standard working week of 38 hours, with overtime seemingly becoming essential for lower paid workers to even make ends meet.

The massive casualisation of employment has also pushed millions of workers into vulnerable positions where poverty remains a problem, looming on the horizon.

Those on the Australian Forbes rich list, however, continue to amass huge profits, up by nearly ten per cent to February this year, from last year. (9) The present economy is heavily stacked in their favour, as they exploit the working class for every last cent they can grab. Economic rationalism and the implementation of race-to-the-bottom production techniques have worked wonders for the business-classes and corporate sector.

The federal Budget acknowledges the cost-of-living crisis, but offers on limited measures for dealing with it.

An economic crisis would appear to be looming!

1. 'Serious volatility', The New Daily, 18 March 2025.
2. OECD slashes growth forecast on global unrest, Australian, 18 March 2025.
3. Decline in living standards undermines 'plucky rhetoric' of economic recovery, Australian, 12 March 2025.
4. Australian, op.cit., 18 March 2025.
5. Ibid.
6. Debt blowout worst in developed world, Australian, 19 March 2025.
7. Ibid.
8. Australian, op.cit., 12 March 2025.
9. Website: Forbes – Australia's 50 Richest, 12 February 2025.

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Don’t leave politics to the politicians!

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 28 March 2025

On May 3 Australians will exercise their democratic right to vote for whoever will next misrepresent them in Parliament.

The vote is important. It was fought for many years ago.

But actual democracy is largely illusory.

The big end of town, with its money and its media, has powerful means of influencing and controlling public opinion such that the dominant ideas are those of the dominant class.

Whether Labor or the Coalition win the election, there will be no sudden outbreak of independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy. There will be no withdrawal from our role in supporting US plans for war with China.

Whether Labor or the Coalition win the election, there will be no about-turn in economic policy to solve the housing crisis and the cost-of-living crisis. It is not that there is not enough money for governments to act – there is too much money and it is in the wrong hands, at the big end of town. But don’t expect the selfish rich to be made to pay – politicians do not dare touch them.

It is true that Labor has passed some laws demanded by the unions, and that there are differences with the Coalition over nuclear power. Despite the hopes and progressive ideas of many rank and file ALP members and voters, the "top brass" of the ALP in government will deliver more of the same servitude to US domination of Australia. Far better to seek out Independents with progressive policies, or the Greens, than to perpetuate the parliamentary version of the “difference” between Coles and Woolworths. Better still – to rely on our united strength in people’s struggles.

The proximity of the election to May Day will lead some opportunist elements within the union movement to try to make re-election of Labor the focus of May Day. That would be a disservice to the working class. We must stand for our own independent agenda as a class regardless of which party of capitalism is put into office.

Whether Labor or the Coalition win the election, we must refuse to be sent back to our rooms to play. We must not leave politics to the politicians. We must make our voices heard in our workplaces and communities, in our social media and out on the streets.

Against Zionism, and for the Palestinian people!
Out of the US “Alliance” - stop AUKUS!
Genuine self-determination for First Peoples!
For an anti-imperialist independence and socialism!

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GO NORTH OLD MAN

Written by: Humphrey McQueen on 27 March 2025

Trump’s pledge to push the boundary of the United States of America 2,000 kilometres north is not another rush of blood but channels 300 years of imperial rivalries over resources.

In the grip of ‘now-ists,’ all ‘News’ is fake because it comes from the ‘context of no context,’ a blight made worse by journalists afflicted with the compulsion to accuse anyone able to rub two facts together of running a conspiracy theory. Conventional wisdom around academe passes scholarly myopia off as expertise so that Clinton Fernandes can be chastised for sullying international relations with economics in What Uncle Sam Wants (2019).

Take up the contexts of Trump’s annexation of Canada at Britain’s 1759 victory over France at Quebec on the Plains of Abraham, securing barrels of Newfoundland cod to feed slaves on West Indian plantations and the Hudson Bay Company’s monopoly over beaver pelts.

Marquis de La Fayette joined the Continental Army (1) in 1777 in the War for Independence against Britain’s Hessian mercenaries. To entice the victorious Americans away from their French backers, in 1783 London talked about handing over Canada. Meanwhile, defeated Tories headed north.

Blockading Napoleonic Europe thirty years later, the Royal Navy stopped other nations trading with its enemy. In response to attacks on U.S. merchant vessels, President Madison authorised incursions into Upper Canada in 1812, which led to open warfare. The Duke of Wellington pointed to the difficulties of defending its borderless frontier. Two years later, a British force burned down the Capitol Building and the White House.

After the collapse of the Spanish Empire and with Britain’s unchallenged naval power after Waterloo, President Monroe in 1823 warned off European powers. His Doctrine soon turned into a land claim, starting with Texas in 1837 before annexing what became the States of Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico, (not forgetting Hawaii in the 1890s).

The U.S. annexation of ‘America’ for its quarter of the Western hemisphere makes Trump’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America nothing new. Does anyone around the Oval Office have the faintest after whom the entire hemisphere had been named in 1507, before being reserved for the southern half in 1537? (2) While Trump is at it, he could follow Tony Abbott’s lead and rebadge the threatened annexation ‘Canadia.’

Financial panic distracted Washington from the 1837-8 rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada before Congress agreed in 1839 to a $10m. war budget and 50,000 conscripts, reviving schemes to bring Canada into the Union. Continentalists assumed that Canadians would rush to join the Land of the Free, apparent in the accompanying map from 1888.

Lincoln’s campaigns against Confederate independence involved the British whose government backed the slaveholders’ rebellion to secure cotton and to stymie competition from textile mills in New England.

Richard A. Preston documented the next eighty years in The Defence of the Undefended Border Planning for War in North America, 1867-1939 (Montreal; McGill-Queens University Press, 1977).

In response to the victorious Union Army’s genocidal expansion westward against the Amerindians, London revived its decades-old plan to bring Ottawa, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick together as a self-governing Dominion.

Within hours of Royal Assent to the British North America Act on March 29, 1867, the U.S. of A. applied pressure from the west by paying the Czar $7.2m. for Alaska. At the same time, it hoped to squeeze from the north-east by acquiring Greenland from Denmark, on which Trump also has his sights for minerals, as in the Ukraine.

The conga-line of High-Tech chieftains at his second coming are after shares of the copper and rare earths to extend their energy-gobbling networks.

In the 1880s, the President of the U.S. Naval War College, Admiral Mahon, surveyed The Influence of Naval Power upon History 1660 and 1783 (1890) through the Royal Navy’s rise to global dominance, attending to its operations in the West Indies and along both the North American coastlines. As a disciple of Mahon, Teddy Roosevelt dispatched the ‘Great White Fleet’ around the world in 1908 as a warning to Britain as much as Germany or Japan.

Doughboys landed in France in 1917 with the battle cry ‘Lafayette. We are here,’ suggesting that although they were happy to help France, they had not forgotten who their common enemy had been.

No sooner had the U.S. of A. stopped fighting alongside the British Empire, than Washington strategists drew up ‘War Plan Red’ as a contingency for armed conflict against its erstwhile ally. A joint US Army-Navy force would take Halifax to block British reinforcements, seize power plants near Niagara Falls, occupy Montreal, the railhead at Winnipeg and Ontario nickel mines, while the Navy secured the Great Lakes and blockaded its Good Neighbour’s Atlantic and Pacific ports.

Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1937 saw Plan Red’s being abandoned since Washington no longer feared that London and Tokyo might combine against it, as Britain and the U.S. of A. had eighty years earlier to inflict unequal trade treaties on Meiji Japan.

Canada became a founding member of N.A.T.O. in 1948, the U.S.-dominated GATT and then WTO, before signing up to a Free Trade deal with the U.S. of A. from 1989 before its extension to Mexico in 1994 as the North American Free Trade Agreement established a continent for a market and a market for the continent.

The U.S. wrote the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement which signalled an end to Imperial Preference in trade and installed the Greenback as good as the gold in Fort Knox, which it was until the late 1960s, since when its military-industrial complexes have kept the dollar Almighty, enabling it to flick the switches at the system for international electronic financial transfers, SWIFT.

The U.S. of A. writes the rules for the rest of us to take their orders. Washington is not a signatory to the Law of the Sea Convention yet when China does not accept a ruling it is confronted by the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait.

The U.S. of A. withdrew from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in 1986 and sanctions staff of the International Criminal Court.

Enforcing the Extra-territoriality of its laws, Washington fined France’s BNP Paribas $US8.9bn in 2014 for trading with Iran, forgetful of Reagan’s Iran-Contra deals of the 1980s.

Madison Avenue manifested American destiny by alerting the world’s consumers to our being latent U.S. Americans. For them, there is no ‘other.’

In the midst of dismantling its Department of Education, Washington is telling Australian universities that research funding will be cut off if they persist with diversity, inclusion and equality, or in being bribed by anyone but the U.S. corporate-warfare state, above all, by its commercial competitor, the Peoples Republic of China.

On May 14, last year, Biden’s White House quadrupled the tariff on Chinese EVs to 100 percent. To protect the Trump-Biden tariff wars, successive administrations have, since 2019, blocked the appointment of new judges to the Appellate body of the World Trade Organisation.

U.S. diplomacy remains a near-run thing between hypocrisy and mendacity.

Its latest Globalism trumpets what had been true all along in Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.,’: ‘America’ first!

Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen's works include A New Britannia, From Gallipoli to Petrov, Suspect History, Australia’s Media Monopolies, Japan to the Rescue, Gone Tomorrow, Framework of Flesh and We Built This City.

(1) The Continental Army was created to coordinate the military efforts of the colonies in the war against the British, who sought to maintain control over the American colonies -eds.

(2) The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, when it was applied to what is now known as South America. It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer. He disproved Columbus’s claim that the West Indies and the South American continent were part of the East Asian land mass and established that South America was a separate continent – eds.

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Federal government breaks critical environmental promise

Written by: Leo A, on 25 March 2025

(Original image from the Australian)

On February 5, the Albanese Administration’s promise to create an environmental protection agency in the current parliamentary term was finally killed off. One Labor insider admitted to The Saturday Paper that this was due to the government having "the most powerful business interests in the country screaming" over the proposed legislation.

In our current political system, it is easy for our so-called "leaders" to easily make promises that they know won’t be kept, and face no consequences in the aftermath. Similarly, it is easy for government to follow the will of big corporations and other fundamentally undemocratic forces, again without facing any consequences for betraying the interests both of the working masses and of our natural environments. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young described the decision as "a stunning capitulation to vested interests in the mining and logging lobby".

The legislation aimed to establish Australia’s first independent national environmental regulator to enforce environmental laws, improve transparency, and enact stronger nature and wildlife protections. This, of course, is within a context of ongoing environmental catastrophe both in Australia and across the planet. And this catastrophe is affecting both well-documented ecosystems and species, and those which have yet to be sufficiently understood. Across the Pacific, the presumed-extinct South American Tapir has recently been sighted for the first time in over a century, and this Hidden Threatened Species is just one of countless examples that demonstrate that even the long lists of wildlife at risk of extinction are incomplete.

Under capitalism, environmental protection is an uphill struggle, as any promises can be broken and any progress can be reversed. But it is a necessary struggle. For every presumed-extinct species that turns up alive, a dozen more - perhaps even a hundred more - are truly lost forever. Under socialism vast changes to protect these species will finally become fathomable, but we must still do what we can until then.

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Book Review: Mood Machine The rise of Spotify and the costs of the perfect Playlist

Written by: Duncan B. on 25 March 2025

As Vanguard recently reported, music streaming service Spotify has been accused of helping to destroy the Australian music industry. A new book Mood Machine. The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by US music journalist Liz Pelly, exposes the dark side of Spotify, and the harm it is causing musicians.

Spotify was founded in 2006 in Sweden by advertising industry men Martin Ek and Daniel Lorentzon. Since then, Spotify has grown into a $67 billion media conglomerate.

This wealth has come at the expense of the musicians who whose creations Spotify exploits. The big three companies Sony, Universal and Warner control 70% of the recorded music market. Pelly shows how Spotify serves the interests of these companies, while making it difficult for independent record companies and musicians to get their work featured on Spotify.

Spotify also uses session musicians, and more recently Artificial Intelligence, to create a lot of the music on Spotify’s playlists. This means they have to pay even less for the music they stream.

Payments to musicians for each stream are pitifully low and hidden in an obscure payment system. A figure of $0.0035 per stream is often quoted to show how low payments are. In 2021 musicians mounted a campaign against Spotify, demanding that payment be raised to one cent per stream. They also called for an end to Spotify’s programme “Discovery Mode.” This is where musicians can accept lower royalty payments in return for algorithmic promotion of their music on Spotify.

In 2014 Taylor Swift removed her music from Spotify. She was quoted as saying, “I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music.”

Another risk from Spotify is the vast amount of data which Spotify harvests from its users. This data is then sold to data brokers for the use of advertisers. Currently, Spotify derives about 13% of itsrevenue from advertising, and aims to raise this to 20%.

Like the other tech companies Amazon, Meta and X, Spotify spends millions of dollars lobbying the US government in order to protect their interests. We are seeing this lobbying in action at presentwith the big tech companies lobbying to get the Trump government to take punitive measures against Australia and other countries which try to impose any sort of regulatory controls, restrictions, taxes or payments on these companies.

In trying to find a solution to the stranglehold that Spotify has on the music industry, Pelly sees the need for musicians to come together to find independent alternatives to Spotify to promote their music. These include community-based streaming services, based for instance in libraries. Here local
artists can make their music available within their community.

She says, “At a time when the music industry has insistently sold the idea of the hyper-individualistic solo creative entrepreneur as the model independent artist—where every artist is meant to act like the CEO of their own little media empire—there’s power in collectives of artists pushing back, and asserting that true independence comes from working together with the people in your community to build an alternative.” As one independent musician told her, “The music industry is not trying to help musicians. It’s going to come down to us, but they’ll do everything they can to break us.”

Australians have been world leaders in music, whether it be classical music, opera, folk music, country music or any of the many genres of pop and rock music. We must not let foreign-owned technological companies destroy this heritage.

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Imperialists used religion to justify their actions

Written by: Duncan B. on 25 March 2025

Marx wrote about the economic structure of society and of the legal and political superstructure which arises on it. As recent articles in Vanguard have shown, culture is a part of the superstructure. Religion is another part of that superstructure.

For centuries, colonisers and imperialists, such as the Spanish Conquistadores in South America, the British colonisers of America and the British, Dutch, French, Belgian, German and Italian invaders of Africa, India, Asia and Australia have used religion as a justification for their marauding.

They interpreted passages in the Bible to justify their conquests.(1) From the 15th century, several Popes authorised and blessed the activities of the Spanish and Portuguese colonisers of Africa and South America with a number of Papal Bulls.

One Bull issued in 1454 allowed the Portuguese to take possession of any land they discovered in Africa, and to enslave any non-Christian inhabitants they encountered. A Bull issued in 1493, after Columbus returned from his first voyage to the Americas, defined the demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese territory in the New World. This Bull, and another issued in 1529, gave the Spanish ruler the authority to compel the native people to convert to Christianity, by force if necessary. This the Spanish zealously did, while also enslaving or massacring thousands of Azteca and Incas.

Although the Papal Bulls referred specifically to Spain and Portugal, other European nations such as Britain and France, interpreted this “Doctrine of Discovery” to mean that they too had a divinely sanctioned, papal-endorsed right to own any lands they discovered and to colonise any non-Christian inhabitants.

The imperialists also used the so-called “Curse of Ham” as a justification for enslaving black people. In the Book of Genesis, a drunken Noah placed a curse on his son Ham, Ham’s son Canaan and all their descendants, condemning them to perpetual slavery. (2)

From the fifteenth century, religious leaders cited this “Curse of Ham” as justification for enslaving black people, based on a mistranslation of “Ham” as meaning “black-skinned” from the original Hebrew.

The indigenous inhabitants of the countries conquered by the imperialist powers were invariably seen as being members of “inferior races”, “primitives”, “heathens”, “savages” and “cannibals”. Missionaries sought to “save their souls” and convert them to the missionaries’ particular version of the one true religion. They did not care that the intended converts had their own centuries-old belief systems. This certainly was the case in Australia. At the time of the colonisation of Australia, the spiritual beliefs of Australia’s indigenous people were tens of thousands of years old.

From the 1820’s missionaries set about trying to Christianise, “educate” and assimilate Aboriginal people into colonial society. Indigenous languages and cultural practices were banned at the missions. Children were separated from their parents so that they could not learn their language and culture from their elders. The same happened in other countries that the imperialists invaded. Cultural oppression, along with massacres, enslavement, disease and dispossession were the weapons imperialists used against the indigenous peoples wherever they set foot. A fig leaf of religion covered naked greed.

(1) For example in the Old Testament, Genesis 1:27 and 28. “So God created main in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he him. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have domination over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Then there is Psalm 2 verses 7 and 8. “Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” A justification for imperialism and its treatment of native peoples if ever there was one!

In the New Testament, St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 13:1 and 2 continues in this vein. “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” This was the fate of any Aztecs, Incas, Native Americans, indigenous Australians or any other indigenous people that resisted the colonial invaders.

(2) Genesis 9:24 and 25. “And Noah awoke from his wine and, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”

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Why are we paying $200 million to store torpedoes for the US Navy?

Written by: Nick G. on 25 March 2025

(Image source: Australia Pacific Defence Reporter)

Two days ago, the Minister for Defence Industry and Capability Delivery, Pat Conroy announced the purchase from the US of $200 million worth of Lockheed Martin MK-48 Heavy Weight Torpedoes.

Conroy stated that the torpedoes would be “a critical boost to the defensive and offensive capabilities of Australia’s Collins class submarines. The MK-48 will also be used on Australia’s future nuclear-powered submarines.”

He also noted that the MK-48 is the product of a “joint program between the Australian Government and United States Government. This involves the joint development of MK-48 hardware and software...”

The torpedoes will be sent in sections that are assembled and tested at the Torpedo Maintenance Facility in Western Australia, which is also certified to assemble, maintain and test the weapon for use in United States Navy platforms.

This very brief statement did not include the glowing praise for the deal outlined on the US online Breaking Defence website.

According to this website, a spokesperson from the Strategic Analysis Australia thinktank said, “Essentially you can take an RAN torpedo that has been maintained and stored at HMAS Stirling and load it into a US Navy submarine. More Mk-48 torpedoes in Australia’s inventory means we can provide them to USN submarines that are part of Submarine Rotation Force-West .”

So, we are purchasing torpedoes which we helped design and build so that in addition to placing them on Australian submarines, they can be part of a joint, shared inventory at no cost to the US.

The joint US-Australia MK48 project was entered into on March 21, 2003.

It was further defined in a Defense Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Australia signed in 2009. According to this MOU, the two countries were to share in financing the project on the basis of an 85:15 US:Australia ratio. Between 2010 and 2019, Australia agreed to pay US$61.089 million

The testing of various iterations of the MK-48 have taken place in the US and at the Torpedo Analysis Facility (TAF), located at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) in Edinburgh, South Australia. More recently, the Australian testing is to be done in Western Australia, as noted above.

Why was the torpedo purchase as a joint warstock inventory of interoperable and interchangeable US and Australia navies not mentioned in Conroy’s press statement?

If the AUKUS arrangements fall apart, as many predict, and the life of extension modifications to the existing Collins class subs do not keep them in service for more than a few years, who has operational control of $200 million worth of MK-48 torpedoes warehoused in WA?

Are we really doing anything more than once again subsidising the US war machine?

We need to break free from our subservience to the US and achieve a genuine national independence and sovereignty.

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Trump government tries to turn back time to revive US capitalism

Written by: Ned K. on 23 March 2025

Donald Trump; William McKinley (Getty/Mandel Ngan/National Archive/Newsmakers)

When Trump campaigned for US Presidency under the slogan "Make America Great Again", it was not very clear what period of time of US capitalism he was referring to. Was it the pre- Biden Presidency period, or the Cold War period of the 1950s or Roosevelt's New Deal period before the Second World War?

According to Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, none of the above!

Lutnick's idea "Make America Great Again" is a 21st Century version of the pre-1900 President William McKinley period. In this period, US corporations were making huge profits supported by a government making revenue from high tariffs and a relatively low portion of revenue from income tax. Lutnick's "modernization" of the McKinley era is to add a $5 million "gold card" visas payment to be made by wealthy foreign business tycoons to live in the United States. According to Lutnick, US allies could choose to be "in or outside the tariff tent" by setting up businesses in the United States or providing the Trump administration and US multinational corporations with whatever they wanted from allies such as the Australian Government.

Hence Trump and his cronies like Commerce Secretary Lutnick expect the Australian to give US corporations primary access to minerals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite and rare earths.

The demands of the US pharmaceutical corporations on the Australian government to dismantle the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is also part of the plan to emulate the McKinley Presidential period.

The Australian Financial Review on Thursday 20 March commented that the US demand for complete subservience of its allies was alive and well when Obama was President. According to Joe Hockey, imperialist rivalry between the US and China at the time led Obama to demand that Australian government cease all export of iron ore to China!

At that time and to this day, iron ore exports to China are about 80% of all iron ore exports which amount to over $100 billion.

40% of all exports from Australia go to China.

As imperialist rivalry between China and the US intensifies, the Trump administration is likely to turn the screws on its allies such as the Australian government even more, in order for US imperialism to try and regain its ascendency as an economic powerhouse.

There is a rising tide of resistance to US imperialism's current economic aggression towards Australia. This is reflected even by outbursts from politicians like Jacquie Lambie calling on the Australian government to hit back by closing Pine Gap and cancelling the rotation of US troops in northern Australia.

Both the current Albanese government and the "wanna be" government led by Dutton have been forced to re-define their message about acting in the "national interest". However, the defence minister Richard Marles has quickly chimed in that any counter measures by the government to the current US tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium exports to the US will NOT include any change to Australia's commitment to AUKUS, the nuclear-powered submarine agreement with the US, or the Australia- US Alliance.

People's struggle for Australian independence from US imperialism and its rival China will inevitably grow as people see that the major political parties continue to toe the US line.

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Condemn the Zionist state’s resumption of genocidal war

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 20 March 2025

(Above:before and after the criminal gang's resumption of bombing in Gaza)

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) condemns in the strongest possible terms the Israeli Zionist state’s resumption of its genocidal war to eliminate Palestinians in Gaza.

An initial estimate of 400 killed by Israeli bombing of many areas including refugee camps and health centres, has now been revised by Hamas to as many as 900, including 174 children.

The Nazi-like Israeli state always says that it is targeting Hamas militants but in fact its primary aim is to depopulate both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank so that the governing Likud Party can achieve its stated aim of Israeli rule from the river to the sea.

The resumption of bombing followed Israel’s decision in early March to suspend food, water and electricity supply to Gaza in an attempt to stare the population into submission.

The war criminal Netanyahu boasted that his latest crimes had the full support and encouragement of Trump, and the latter displayed that support with bombing of Yemen’s Houthis.

There is simply no end to the bloodlust of Netanyahu and his Zionist cronies.

He had never intended to honour the ceasefire agreement that took effect last January 19 and could not wait to reopen his war of annihilation of the Palestinian people.

Trump recently approved the delivery of $3 billion worth of bombs, missiles and other weapons to Israel. It undermined the ceasefire agreement by supporting the Israeli demand that the Palestinian forces release all its prisoners immediately, contrary to the scheduled releases agreed upon in the ceasefire agreement. Trump’s ambition to place Gaza under US ownership and development as a coastal resort for billionaires built over the bones of 60,000 civilians (including 17,500 children) is an obscenity that outrages decent humanity.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine asserted that “the occupation has committed its crimes and massacres in Gaza with prior planning as part of a comprehensive war of extermination.”

The Front called on “all international parties to take immediate action to stop the war of extermination in Gaza.”

We are confident that Australians will support that call.

We acknowledge the growing protests in Israel against Netanyahu and his policies. Two days ago, more than 40,000 took to the streets of Tel Aviv chanting “The time has come to topple the dictator”.

We condemn Foreign Minister Wong’s failure to identify Israel as the criminal violator of the ceasefire. She has blamed both sides equally, calling on “all parties to respect the terms of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal”.

The reality is that one side has and one side hasn’t.

Wong contradicted herself within the space of one sentence, following up her call to respect the terms of the hostage deal by saying “Terrorist group Hamas must release all hostages immediately, unconditionally and with dignity.”

She can’t have it both ways. And if she had any integrity, she would apply the “terrorist” label to the Israelis.

Back to the streets comrades!

For the survival of Palestine and Palestinians.

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Forget Plan B – just dump AUKUS now.

Written by: Nick G. on 18 March 2025

The united front against AUKUS is definitely growing, with retired Admiral and former head of the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) Chris Barrie calling for a Plan B, and former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull calling it “a really bad deal”.

These developments are unconditionally welcomed and strengthen the movement against AUKUS.

At the same time, they require genuine anti-imperialists to ensure that the movement is led by people whose view of Australian independence goes further than a re-tweaking of the so-called Australia-US “Alliance”.

This leadership in turn requires the involvement of the working class in the fight to dump AUKUS.

Labor Against War’s letter to all Labor MP’s, and the passage of motions questioning AUKUS by some 150 ALP sub-branches assist in the mobilisation of Australian working people.

The Plan B calls reflect a growing awareness that the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine arrangements are fatally flawed.

The US Congressional Research Service says the US can’t build Virginia SSNs at a rate needed to transfer subs to us. The UK Infrastructure & Projects Authority says delivery of AUKUS SSN reactors is unachievable. Even the Australian Navy agrees AUKUS is high risk; yet they stumble on. Trump adds to the uncertainty.

But Plan B proponents generally speak from a belief in the continuing value of the “Alliance” and seek better ways to protect it.

For example, Admiral Chris Barrie, calling for a Plan B on March 13, said the “US is no longer a reliable ally”. He said he had previously supported the idea of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines because of their superior capabilities but was worried there was no guarantee they would arrive under the current AUKUS strategy.

However, he did not criticise the “Alliance”.

Likewise, Turnbull’s comments did not advocate independence from the US stranglehold.

The positive message was that “The most likely outcome of the AUKUS pillar one is that we will end up with no submarines of our own.”

“There will be Australian sailors serving on US submarines, and we’ll provide them with a base in Western Australia.

“We will have lost both sovereignty and security and a lot of money as well. That’s why I say it is a really bad deal.”

Turnbull’s prediction about how AUKUS will be implemented echoed an opinion piece in the US online Breaking Defense journal.

Under the heading "It’s time to ditch Virginia subs for AUKUS and go to Plan B", Henry Sokolski, referring to the Australian Government’s recent gift of $800 million to help pump-prime US shipyards, said “Because the submarine deal is unlikely to overcome budgetary, organizational, and personnel hurdles, that payment should be Australia’s last.”

His Plan B would cancel the sale of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia “in light of Australia’s budget, organizational, and personnel shortfalls.” Instead, “US and UK subs operating from Australia with RAN sailors and maintained by Australian workers would serve as a sufficient deterrent. The first element of a Plan B is already underway, with US and UK nuclear submarines regularly visiting HMAS Stirling near Perth, including conducting maintenance with a visiting US Navy tender.”

This is just what Turnbull was suggesting might happen.

Sokolski then outlined how an expanded AUKUS Pillar 2, with additional partners South Korea, New Zealand and Canada, should develop “innovative projects” like uncrewed systems, AI, quantum computer science, and hypersonic weapons, which “could deliver technologies that provide most of what the Virginia-class subs would offer for Australia.”

Sokolski’s Plan B, with Turnbull’s warning of its likelihood, shows that more than a Plan B is needed.

What is needed is a break with the US and the removal of its military presence in Australia. This movement needs sufficient strength to last beyond Trump’s four-year term of office, and a recognition that whoever or whatever replaces Trump will try and maintain Pine Gap, North-West Cape, US marines in Darwin, nuclear-armed US bombers based at the Tindal RAAF base outside Katherine, nuclear-armed US and UK submarines based near Perth, US fuel dumps, access to satellite surveillance…and the list goes on.

The only alternative to AUKUS, according to former Australian Ambassador to the US John McCarthy on March 6 is Plan A. “This should not be a Plan B but rather a new Plan A – with the A standing for Australia and not ANZUS, let alone AUKUS.”

For us, Plan A means an independent and peaceful Australia that protects its own sovereignty without the aggressive belligerence that both Labor and Liberals are completely committed to.

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DOGE firings may not AID Trump’s survival

Written by: (Contributed) on 12 March 2025

(Above: sourced from thetonymichaels.substack.com)

An internal memo from inside the Trump administration in Washington has revealed most of the USAID foreign programs are not scheduled to re-open after their ninety day suspension. It comes as no great surprise for informed observers, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region.

News that about a third of staffers employed by the DOGE have resigned in protest at government cuts, however, was not anticipated; it shows a substantial groundswell of public opinion opposed to the presidential administration and its policies is taking place.

Information contained in a memo has revealed the Trump administration intend to save an estimated US$60 billion from closing about ninety per cent of the present USAID program, cutting 5800 of the 6200 existing programs. (1) The move marks a dramatic shift away from traditional US diplomacy which was based in foreign assistance to safeguard 'US interests'.

With the Indo-Pacific becoming a theatre for aggressive diplomacy against China, the moves, at face value, appear contradictory and nonsensical. They appear to have taken place in an air of right-wing popularism couched in terms of criticisms that the existing programs advance liberal agendas which have been assessed as not being compatible with the position of the Trump administration and its far-right policies.

The aid programs in the region have, historically, been designed to provide assistance to the most needy sections of Pacific Islands, many of which have little, if any, sustainable economic development provision. In the period 2012-2022 the US provided US$1.5 billion with the US-Pacific Co-operation program, together with a further US$810 million for expanded programs. (2)

Pacific Islands' governments have tended to remain dependent upon neo-colonial financiers which invariably exploit the mass of the population. Programs which have concentrated upon food and medical provision together with governance to provide political stability have been a useful contribution for millions of people.

Whether Australia and other countries now move in to occupy the aid vacuum created by the Trump administration remains to be seen; a statement from Canberra has already noted 'it was unrealistic to think Australia – already the Pacific's largest aid donor – could totally fill the gap left by the US … the announcement has left Australia racing to identify the South Pacific's most pressing funding needs … Australia had started auditing which Pacific programs were most at risk, with a view to shouldering some of the burden'. (3)

The moves by the Trump administration have been accompanied by similar developments in the domestic sphere inside the US; planning to literally gut government spending have already taken place, with further rounds planned in due course. (4)

The unease over DOGE cuts has extended to sections of the military. Kelly Hammett, director of the US Space Rapid Capabilities Office, said his organization risks being “inordinately impacted" by workforce reductions underway with the Trump administration.

In a Mad magazine Spy vs Spy scenario, he revealed that the Space Force has had a secretive, orbital tool that can gather information on China’s own network of sensors that monitor American satellites.

As a small organization with roughly 50 civilian and 20 military employees, some in at-risk categories like probationary workers, Hammett warned his office could be disproportionately affected by labour cuts that are underway by the Trump administration. He said he was losing staff, but could not “hire people back because we’re under a hiring freeze”.

Rob Joyce, former director of cybersecurity at the NSA, said "Eliminating probationary employees will destroy a pipeline of top talent essential for hunting and eradicating threats”.

“I want to raise my grave concerns that the aggressive threats to cut US government probationary employees will have a devastating impact on cybersecurity and our national security,” he said.

Oh, wouldn’t it be a shame if the man who tried to incite a coup was overthrown in one by a military determined to maintain its numbers in the face of DOGE cutbacks.(5)

What has received little publicity, however, is that an open revolt has already started against the position of the Trump administration. In late February a third of the staffers employed by DOGE resigned their positions on the grounds that the spending cuts 'endanger millions of Americans who rely upon these services every day'. (6) Despite employees in government departments receiving emails from DOGE a mass movement of government employees have ignored the correspondence or 'downplayed the risks of not answering it', in defiance of the directive. (7) Basic trade union principles are being re-born.

The moves taken by the Trump administration also remain reminiscent of the Thatcher administration in Westminster, over forty years ago. Their initial economic rationalist policies were on the premise that the economy would 'bottom out' following drastic government spending cuts. Their distorted vision was that a new economy would then arise like a phoenix from the ashes, with trickle-down economic advantage for lower socio-economic groups. It never happened. In fact, in common-sense terms, economies do not reach rock bottom but continue to deteriorate indefinitely without responsible government support.

It is particularly interesting to note, therefore, that the statements from the Trump administration have marked a significant shift away from usual bravado and displays of splendour; they have tended to convey a view that the US is already in terminal decline and not able to lead or defend the west. Their costings appear quite drastic cast against a backcloth of hyper-delusion and megalomania.

It is, ironically therefore, a time when the demand for Australia to pursue an independent foreign policy is winnable!

1. US to cut 90pc of foreign aid packs, Australian, 28 February 2025.
2. Fact Sheet: US Embassy and Consulates in Australia, 30 September 2022.
3. Australian, op.cit., 28 February 2025.
4. DOGE exodus: one-third of Musk's staff resign in protest, Australian, 27 February 2025.
5. Details from US online magazine Breaking Defense
6. Ibid. Doge exodus…
7. Ibid.

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Duterte’s ICC arrest a victory for the Filipino people, but struggle for justice continues

Written by: National Democratic Front of the Philippines International Office on 12 March 2025

The arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte by virtue of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a victory for the Filipino people, particularly the thousands of victims of his bloody “war on drugs” and his fascist attacks on the revolutionary movement. It affirms what the people have long known – that Duterte is a mass murderer who must be held accountable for his crimes. However, this does not absolve Marcos Jr. of his own blood debts as he continues the reactionary state’s counterrevolutionary war against the Filipino people.

While we welcome the ICC’s move against Duterte, we also reiterate the crimes of the Marcos Jr. administration. The 2024 International People’s Tribunal (IPT) found both Duterte and Marcos Jr., as well as the US government, guilty of grave violations of international humanitarian law. The findings of the IPT reinforce the fact that state terror and impunity persist under Marcos Jr. and that the fight for justice must extend beyond Duterte’s arrest—it must challenge the continuing fascist repression being waged by the current regime.

The ICC warrant focuses on Duterte’s “war on drugs,” but his crimes extend far beyond this. His regime carried out the systematic killing of NDFP peace consultants, aerial bombings of civilian communities, and the torture and execution of captured Red fighters (hors de combat), all in blatant disregard of the laws of war. These war crimes were not just Duterte’s policy—they remain central to the Marcos Jr. regime’s counterrevolutionary war against the Filipino people. Under Marcos Jr., indiscriminate bombings, enforced disappearances, forced evacuations, and extrajudicial killings continue, proving that the reactionary state will stop at nothing to crush the people’s resistance.

Furthermore, Duterte’s crimes were not his alone, nor were they simply the product of local reactionary politics. US imperialism has long propped up Philippine fascist regimes, providing military aid, training and intelligence to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP). The US-funded “counterinsurgency” programs directly contributed to Duterte’s reign of terror. Even now, under Marcos Jr., US-backed military operations continue to target both revolutionary forces and the legal democratic mass movement. The people’s movement must continue to expose and resist the imperialist role in enabling fascist rule up to this day.

We call on the international community to sustain pressure for Duterte’s immediate prosecution. At the same time, the ICC must exert all necessary measures to compel the Marcos Jr. government to surrender Duterte to ICC jurisdiction. The NDFP International Office stands firmly with the Filipino masses in their fight for justice and genuine national and social liberation. Duterte and his cronies must face the full weight of their actions – not just for their past crimes but to end the continuing reign of impunity in the Philippines.

Duterte’s arrest, or even his potential conviction, will not dismantle the semicolonial and semifeudal system that breeds fascist rulers and US puppet regimes. Only through a national democratic revolution with a socialist perspective, led by the working class, can the roots of fascist violence be eradicated.

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Learning from history – workers’ collective action decisive in defeat of imperialist powers

Written by: Ned K. on 10 March 2025

(Above: background image sourced from iai.tv)

Since the election of Trump as US President, the two global powers, USA and China are intensifying their rivalry. The USA, an imperialist power in decline, is fighting to hold off the rising imperialist power of China. At the moment, the main arena of struggle is trade with threat and counter threat since Trump first announced an intended 25% tariff on goods and services imported from China.

This has alarmed some close allies of US imperialism, including Australia. When Trump included Australia on his list of countries regarding tariffs on their imported goods and services to the USA, Prime Minister Albanese was on the phone to Trump pleading for an exemption for Australia and the Defence Minister Marles followed up with a trip to the USA to seek assurance about US imperialism's commitment to nuclear -powered submarines.

At the same time Prime Minster Albanese has stated the importance of Australia's relationship with the rising imperialist power China, especially on the trade front.

Albanese though is locked into loyalty to the declining US imperialism when it comes to the crunch, while Dutton, the so-called " Leader of the Opposition", is an even stronger supporter of US imperialism in its rivalry with rising China.

Neither the Albanese government nor the "Opposition" led by Dutton have a vision of an Australian independence economically, militarily and politically.

The Black Armada

The only class that has the power to lead decisive action in the interests of the Australian people on a consistent basis is the working class.

The difference between the working class and parliamentary party leaders when it comes to decisive action against imperialist powers was demonstrated during and just after the end of the Second World War.

The declining Dutch imperialist power was losing its grip on its East Indies empire due to the rising tide of struggle by Indonesians for a Republic of Indonesia.
In the mid-1940s the Labor government allowed extensive use of Australian ports by the Royal Netherlands Navy and the setting up of a Netherlands Indies Government In Exile The government in exile tried to muster enough support while based in Australia to overthrow the new Republic in Indonesia.

The Labor Curtin Government under Chifley did not know which way to turn with pressure from British imperialism to support the continued Dutch East Indies.
The decisive blow to the declining Dutch East empire over-turning the new Indonesian Republic was the power of the Australian and Indonesian working class.
Indonesian maritime workers went on strike, refused to carry Dutch troops or munitions and were joined by seamen from India, China and Malaya.

Australian maritime workers put black bans on the movement of 36 Dutch merchant ships, passenger liners, troop ships, two tankers and 35 other oil industry craft.

There also black bans on the movement of aircraft and submarines and two vessels of the Royal Netherlands Navy that were built to track down submarines.

The black bans were so extensive and lasted for over 6 months. The workers were able to have such effect because the Dutch empire in the East Indies had become so dependent on Australian ports.

As Rupert Lockwood in his book, Black Armada, explained,

"All delays are dangerous in wars...The first blow for the Republic of Indonesia against the Royal Netherlands armed forces, delivered at Australian wharves, warehouses, military camps, airports, naval depots and shipyards, was one from which the Dutch could not recover."

In 1946, the Communist-led Waterside Workers Federation of Australia commissioned Dutch Communist film-maker Joris Ivens to direct a film of the struggle. The 23-minute Indonesia Calling can be seen on Youtube here (Indonesia Calling )

The decisive collective action of Australian workers saw the defeat of the declining Dutch empire in this part of the world. It occurred as British and French control in South East Asia, India and China was also in decline.

The decisive action by the Australian workers was so strong that Prime Minister Chifley decided the days of the declining Dutch empire to the north of Australia and in Australia had to come to an end if his desire to maintain British and American interests in the region was to be achieved.

However, his support for workers was short-lived, as in the interests of British and US imperialism in Australia in 1949, he turned on the coal miners.

In the coming increased struggle between the declining US imperialism and Chinese imperialism, the current Australian government and previous governments have allowed more than "governments in exile" to operate from Australia. They now allow and support US troops and bases in Australia and US domination of most aspects of the economy, following in the footsteps of Prime Minister Menzies who waved the flag for white Anglo-American "protection" for white Australia from the "yellow hordes " from Asia!

Certainly, the ruling class constantly reviews its tactics in relation to class struggle. Black bans and sympathy strikes were on their hit list, but the great 1969 struggle to defeat the penal powers of the industrial laws, led by our Party vice-Chair and Secretary of the Victorian Tramways Union, Clarrie O’Shea left the employers powerless for more than a decade. They then decided to legislate to make unions the same, legally, as persons and used the civil law of tort to begin prosecutions of unions in disputes like Mudginberri Abattoirs (1984-5) and Dollar Sweets (1985). The Trade Practices Act outlawed secondary boycotts making black bans and sympathy strikes illegal.

The Australian working class, remembering their Black Armada actions of the 1940s against the declining Dutch empire, and determined to restore their democratic right to strike, will be up to the challenge of freeing Australia from the clutches of the declining US imperialism and any of its rivals.

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SA Government Workers in Action in Struggle Against Rising Cost of Living

Written by: Ned K. on 8 March 2025

South Australian Government employed cleaners, food service attendants in public hospitals and disability community and home carers are leading the struggle of public sector "blue collar" workers against the rising cost of living. They imposed work bans which did not interfere with patient care but put the Government on notice they were prepared to escalate their action if necessary to win a decent wage increase.

The Government's initial wage offer of 3% per year triggered the industrial action,

In an interview on ABC radio one of the workers' leaders said that the SA Government's wage offer amount to the miserable sum of just an 83 cents per hour pay rise for most workers. She said that hospital and disability workers were in the lowest paid group within the public sector and workers were taking action to win wage increases that took into account the rising cost of living over the last two or three years.

Negotiations for a new Enterprise Agreement had dragged on since mid-2024. The workers action received a lukewarm response from the Government. What made disability sector workers more determined was the knowledge that some of the major private sector disability providers had agreed to wage increases up to 5% higher than what the Government paid!

The industrial action is sure to escalate until the Government makes an acceptable wage offer to some of the lowest paid workers in the SA public sector workforce.

This is only one headache for the Malinauskas Government on the wages front, as other public sector workers such as Ambulance service Paramedics are also in negotiations this year for new Enterprise Agreements with wage increases and cost of living high on the list of logs of claims.

Rising Cost of Living A Key Issue For Workers On Eve of Federal Election

The industrial action taken by government support services workers is an indication of a rising tide of struggle of workers against the rising cost of living, While the official ACTU election campaign leading up to the federal election is about " Don't Trust Dutton", the resistance of Labor State Government's to wage claims of State Government workers' wage claims has many workers asking themselves -"Can I trust either a Dutton Government or the current Labor Government?"

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8th March - International Women’s Day - Salute Women’s Struggle

Written by: Mary P. and Alice M. on 7 March 2025

On this International Working Women’s Day the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) extends our warm and militant solidarity to the women of the world in their struggles against oppression, exploitation and imperialist wars. Women of Australia stand in solidarity with our international sisters in our common struggles to end injustices, inequality and the violence of capitalism against women. Like all working women around the world, women in Australia are fighting dual battle in the workplaces and in the social sphere!

The history of IWWD is the history of working women’s liberation movements struggling against capitalist and imperialist exploitation and wars, and in the fight for socialism.

International Working Women’s Day grew out of working class women’s struggles for decent wages and conditions, equality and against exploitation and imperialist war. Its communist roots have been obscured through its more recent appropriation by bourgeois political sectors with their long corporate breakfasts and high teas.

IWWD was first proposed by German Marxist Clara Zetkin at the International Socialist Women’s Conference in 1910, which brought together burgeoning women’s movements from various countries concerned with universal suffrage, women’s labour rights and gender equality in all aspects of life. Later Zetkin and her women comrades, including socialist leaders Rosa Luxemburg in Germany and Sylvia Pankhurst in England, were at the forefront of the fight against the imperialist slaughter of WW1 and its ruthless conscription of young working-class boys and men as cannon fodder.

Capitalism, Exploitation and Oppression of Women

The CPA (ML) views the contemporary oppression of women as stemming from capitalism; its exploitation of all workers for profit, and its requirement that (largely) women perform unpaid labour to sustain the current, and reproduce the future, generation of workers, necessary for continued capitalist exploitation. This means that as well as being exploited in their workplaces, performing some of the lowest paid, insecure work, women labour for the capitalist class for no wages in housekeeping, child-raising, and fulfilling the social needs of family and community, like volunteering. This is the ‘hidden engine’ of capitalism necessary for the creation of profit for the entire capitalist class. To pull off such a swindle as getting women to work for no wages, the capitalist system is constantly generating its ideology, culture and media which serves to reinforce their role in the labour force, social reproduction and the nuclear family, socialising and conditioning women and men to comply with their designated roles as wage slave labourers, creators of surplus value and profits for the capitalist class.

So, when capital demands female and feminised labour it’s all ‘girl power” and when they aren’t required it’s ‘look after your family’. Often, it’s both at the same time. In the process the system exploits women’s genuine love and commitment to their children, partners, their extended families and communities. We recognise that while the family under capitalism is structurally a site of inequality and additional burden carried by women, it is often too a site of refuge and selfless care, nurturing and love in a heartless world.

Despite this, women involved in class struggle in their workplaces and communities, can loosen their chains and overcome the obstacles of capitalist and imperialist oppression. It is in the struggle for socialism that women find the path to women’s liberation, and the liberation of all humanity.

Working women shoulder the heavy costs of capitalist economic crises and imperialist wars

The world today is in deep capitalist economic and social crisis. This crisis is intensifying the economic and political competition between imperialist powers redividing the world amongst themselves. This is leading to military conflicts and wars in all corners of the world. Fascism and state repression by ruling classes is on the rise worldwide.

Throughout history women have always fought and led struggles against the ruling classes shifting the economic crisis onto the shoulders of working people. Women are the nurturers and fighters for life. We are the unacknowledged engine powering the day to day running of society.

Women are always at the forefront of liberation struggles against colonialism, imperialism and imperialist wars. We are indispensable in the fight for socialism and building a socialist society.

Women in Australia

In Australia today economic conditions for working people are deteriorating. The rising cost of living crisis and the struggle to make ends meet is putting extra burdens on working class women juggling family budgets, their jobs and trying to keep their heads above water. Over 50% of working women are in low paid, insecure and part time work. Most single parent women and their children live below the poverty line. The rising prices of food, utilities, healthcare, housing, education, childcare, the basic needs of life, are creating more hardship in the day to day struggle of working class women.

In the family it is more often women who must balance the budget and try to make it stretch to meet everyone’s food, health and educational needs. In a cost-of-living crisis this puts even more strains on women than usual.

Poverty and homelessness amongst working class women, especially amongst elderly single women, makes them the fastest increasing demographic experiencing this.

The housing crisis and housing debt hits women hard.

Exploitation of women in the workplace intensifies.

All workers are exploited in a capitalist society. This exploitation is intensified with women earning 22% less than men annually, including significantly less superannuation. Women earn 78 cents in every dollar men earn overall. In Australia this means on average women earn $28,428 annually less than men. And that’s an overestimated figure for the majority of lowest paid women workers who are the majority of low paid workers. The disparities between the cost of living and lower wages hit women hardest.

First Nations Women

For Australia’s Indigenous women the oppression and exploitation is doubled and far worse. For 237 years, from the first day of brutal colonial occupation, dispossession and racism, Indigenous women have refused to succumb to the devastating effects of colonialism on their people and communities. First nations women are pillars of strength, keeping their communities together, instilling pride in their culture and heritage. The countless deaths in custody of their children, families and community only strengthens their resolve to continue the fight against oppression, racism and for self-determination and sovereignty. A new generation of young Indigenous women are stepping up, leading militant First Peoples struggles, teaching and inspiring the non-Indigenous young people.

Women and imperialist wars

Just as women for centuries have fought against brutal colonial occupations and imperialist wars, today women continue to mobilise and lead the anti-war and anti-imperialist struggles and movements for justice and peace. Globally, women are at the sharp end of the wars mainly generated by imperialist powers, fleeing the devastation, poverty, displacement and persecution to protect their children and families.

As control of Australia’s economy, politics and military is tightened in US hands it is harder for women to fight for higher wages, more social services and a redistribution of wealth.

Australia’s US puppet governments have committed to spend over $400 billion of public funds on AUKUS, the aggressive US-led military pact to contain the rise of China. This money will be spent on 8 US nuclear powered submarines over the next 30 years. That’s more than $30 million a day diverted from the Australian people’s social and economic needs, and the Indigenous people’s sovereignty and land rights, to prepare Australia as a US military base and a proxy in a US- led imperialist war with China.

Meanwhile these $billions are being denied for critically needed funding for women’s health, homelessness, child care, single parents’ payments, women’s workplace rights and women fleeing domestic violence, amongst other urgently required funds to meet human needs in Australia.

Domestic and Social Violence against Women

Despite ideology which claims that women are liberated, capitalism still designates women as inferior to men and commodifies our bodies as sexualised objects for male gratification, control, and profit making. This leads to sexual abuse, harassment, domestic and social violence across the society.

Marxist Feminists argue that violence against women is relatively normalised by the capitalist state, its legal system and commercialised popular culture to subjugate women into accepting their submissive roles.

International Solidarity

On this International Women’s Day we pay tribute to women of Palestine, the Philippines, Myanmar, Rojava, and all other women fighting in their people’s heroic armed struggles for liberation from imperialism, colonial Zionism, capitalism and all reactionary forces. We pay tribute to women in all corners of the world.

We recognise the women tirelessly fighting for reforms within the capitalist system to alleviate the burden of oppression and exploitation it employs. History has taught us that the real and lasting end to the exploitation and oppression of women cannot be achieved without abolishing capitalism and replacing it with a new socialist society where women’s potential is fully liberated.

We fight for:

Funding for decent and secure public housing

Living wages for all

Full and secure employment for all

Properly funded free public health, education and child care

Sovereignty and Liberation of Australia’s First People

Equal pay and end to gender exploitation

Scrap AUKUS and spend $368+billion on people’s needs and the environment

End the US-Australia Alliance

No imperialist war – peace with justice

For an anti-imperialist independent and socialist Australia

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Albanese to weaken environment laws for foreign salmon farmers

Written by: Nick G. on 6 March 2025

(Above: Salmon farms off Bruny Island. Source: Environmental Defenders Office)

In a move that caught environmentalists by surprise, PM Albanese has intervened in a controversy over salmon farming in western Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour by promising to weaken environmental laws to guarantee the future of the industry. Albanese wrote to industry owners in February promising to “introduce legislation to ensure appropriate environmental laws are in place to continue sustainable salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour”.

Last November, Albanese injected a further $28 million into the industry to improve oxygenation levels in the harbour following a request by conservation groups to Environment Minister Plibersek to reassess salmon farming approvals under the Environmental Protection and biodiversity Conservation Act.

Their concern was the future of the endangered Maugean skate – a stingray-like creature whose only known habitat is in the harbour. Studies had shown its numbers were falling due to low oxygen levels in harbour waters caused by the salmon pens. Another $9 million of federal funds is to assist a skate captive breeding program. This money too, should come from the companies threatening the skates’ existence.

Albanese’s intervention has effectively sunk the expected decision by Plibersek’s department to raise the skate’s threatened species level from endangered to critically endangered. Their decision has been postponed until after the federal election.

Public concern over the nature of salmon farming

Concerns over salmon farming – the raising and harvesting of fish from large pens located in open sea water – are as old as the salmon farms, but the publication in 2021 by Penguin Books of respected novelist Richard Flanagan’s Toxic – The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmanian Salmon Industry gave opponents of the farms the ammunition they needed for a widespread campaign. Some people claimed that Flanagan’s devastating exposé of the industry, with its destructive practices, diseases and fish kills, and use of synthetic chemicals to dye the fish flesh, had put them off eating salmon forever.

The main problem with salmon pens is that they let fish faeces and food waste fall directly onto the ocean floor where the build-up of excess nutrients can destroy marine ecosystems. It can lead to harmful algal blooms that reduce oxygen levels in the water killing fish on the pens and marine life in adjacent waters. Diseases associated with fish in poor health are then treated with hundreds of kilograms of antibiotics which leach into surrounding waters. There they are taken in by wild fish above the allowable level for human consumption. Use of broad-spectrum antibiotics for particular fish diseases, rather than safer vaccines, could lead to antimicrobial resistance beyond the target bacteria. Despite these problems, the Tasmanian government is proposing to increase the area of permitted significant environmental impacts on sea floors under salmon farms from the current 35 metres by an extra 100 metres of legally permitted pollution.

Driven by profits and returns to overseas shareholders, the 3 foreign companies in the industry have been allowed to self-report to the Tasmanian Environmental Protection Authority and have concealed reports on nutrients, fish deaths and fish escapes, diseases and antibiotics. Lack of transparency, of secrecy, is a matter of great concern to Tasmanians.

Multinationals served by government

Tasmanian salmon farming is entirely in the hands of three foreign multinationals. They are Tassal, owned by Canadian company Cooke Inc, since 2022; Huon Aquaculture, owned by notorious Brazilian meat processors JBS, since November 2021; and Petuna Seafoods, 50% owned by Maori nations and 50% by Japanese Nissui.

According to Tax Office data, the companies have paid no tax since 2019.

However, both the Tasmanian and federal governments are bending over backwards to ensure these foreign companies are not placed on an endangered list. From reworking and weakening environmental protection laws, to injecting public funds to save these private companies to have to clean up their own mess, to hiding all of this under a professed concern for jobs – it all comes down to governments in open service to capitalism.

The industry has claimed greater numbers of jobs than really exist. The Australia Institute has criticised the figures based on census data and has been supported by Tasmanian Senator Jaqui Lambi who described industry figures as “bullshit” saying that “It’s all robotics. It’s just feed. They carry on. They overestimate.”

And on the other side of Tasmania…

Just three days after Albanese’s letter of support for the Macquarie Harbour fish farmers, the companies kicked an amazing own goal in south-eastern waters between Bruny Island and regions south of Hobart.

On February 20, masses of salmon carcasses and globules of rotted fish fat washed up on the southern beaches. This was despite large quantities of dead fish taken from pens and dumped in landfill east of Hobart.

Alistair Allan, Greens candidate for Lyons in the forthcoming federal election said, “This is now solid proof that the industry has completely lost control of the disease outbreak that is causing so much death and suffering on these factory fish farms.”

Jacqui Lambie, characteristically, says that she has had a gutful of the salmon industry, and said it must stop its Macquarie Harbour operations and either move further out to sea and transfer to land-based tanks, with the federal funding better spent on supporting the deployment of affected workers.

“You’ve made more than enough money off the arse of Tasmania. Move it on,” she said.

Postscript: Prize Catch

Capitalism’s destructive war on nature, its profit-driven disregard for the environment, its secrecy and corruption were brilliantly captured last year in Alan Carter’s novel Prize Catch, published by Fremantle Press. Needing to facilitate a takeover by a foreign company, a Bruny Island salmon farmer employs SAS war criminals blooded in Afghanistan (under the control of a very Ben Roberts-Smith type leader) to undertake a campaign of murder and intimidation of local environmentalists. Police corruption assists their endeavours. It’s as good as Australian crime fiction gets.

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Book Review: Culture and Imperialism

Written by: Duncan B. on 5 March 2025

Culture and Imperialism is a 2024 reprint of a 1993 book by the Palestinian-born literary critic Edward Said.

In this book Said examines the domination by British, French and US imperialism over most of Africa, Asia, and South America, and the resistance to imperialism by the peoples of the countries invaded by imperialism. He does this by examining the culture, in particular the literature of the imperialist countries and of the subject countries.

Marx pointed out in his Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, “In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production corresponding to a determinate stage of development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which there arises a legal and political superstructure and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life-process in general.” Culture is a part of the superstructure erected on the economic base, in this case of imperialism.

In looking at the culture of the imperialist countries, Said examines novels by Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, E M Forster, Rudyard Kipling, Albert Camus and others. He also discusses Verdi’s opera Aida. Said shows how these works helped to justify imperialism and make it normal and acceptable to the home audiences in the imperialist countries.

Kipling’s stories and poems in particular, glorified imperialism and denigrated the native peoples of the colonised countries with racist stereotypes. His poem The White Man’s Burden urged the imperialist powers to take more territory from its rightful owners.

In looking at the culture of the countries oppressed by imperialism, Said shows how books such as Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, and the writings of many other Arab, African and Asian writers helped oppressed peoples to raise their self-awareness of their oppressed position, reclaim their national cultures which were dominated by imperialist culture and to mobilise for anti-imperialist resistance and struggle.

Said points out the world-wide spread of US culture, and the stranglehold that US media companies have over the supply of news in the world. This situation is much worse now than when Culture and Imperialism was written, thanks to the spread of social media. US culture dominates our TV shows, streaming services and live and recorded music.

Streaming service Stan, owned by channel 9, commissioned almost half of the new Australian-scripted content in 2024. The federal government had promised to impose local content quotas on the streaming services such as Netflix and Disney by July 1st last year. Hollywood resisted this, claiming that any regulation would be a breach of the Australia - US Free Trade Agreement. The government let this deadline pass.

Now the Trump government has threatened retaliation against countries which attempt to regulate the activities of US companies in their markets, claiming that this a violation of American sovereignty. It is likely that moves towards quotas will remain in limbo for the time being.

Australian culture has a proud history. There have been many writers, poets, artists and musicians who have played a strong role in the struggle for socialism and against capitalism and imperialism. Australians must uphold their struggle and continue the fight against imperialism’s attempts to dominate our culture.

Culture and Imperialism is not an easy book to read or to comprehend. It is well worth persevering with it however, to help us gain a better understanding of the important role which culture plays in anti-imperialist struggle.

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ICOR strongly condemns the invasion of Congo by Rwandan troops and the blockade of the city of Goma

Written by: ICOR on 5 March 2025

The attack of the Rwandan special forces on the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo was only possible with the support of highly developed equipment supplied by Western powers. The current situation in Eastern Congo is once again leading the region into an unprecedented cycle of violence.

The Congolese masses are caught in a vise and their situation is becoming increasingly untenable. From 25 December 2024, Goma and its population of over one million people has been added to the hundreds of thousands already wandering around in the jungles of the surrounding localities, fleeing bombings and insults from all sides. All supply routes for essential goods have been cut, including the city's water and electricity supply, which is now cut off from the outside world.

The destabilization of Congo, which has been going on for 65 years, is in line with the logic of imperialist exploitation and domination, with destabilization being a means to ensure the orderly plundering of Congo's natural resources. Millions of people were killed and millions more displaced. And Rwanda is playing the role once ascribed to the brokers during the slave trade, namely to serve the imperialist conquest of the Congolese mines..

The Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in natural resources, including gold, copper, tin, uranium and minerals such as coltan, which is used in the production of tantalum for cell phones and computers. In 2016, Rwanda accounted for 50% of global tantalum production, with the majority coming from coltan mines seized in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(Above: street art protesting Apple'srole in exploiting African labour for coltan supplies)

China now owns most of the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, having bought out the previous owners from the US, and also controls most of the copper and uranium mines. The Congolese army has protected the Chinese assets.

The ICOR demands the immediate withdrawal of the Rwandan troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The ICOR supports the resistance of the Congolese people against imperialist domination and its Rwandan accomplice.

The ICOR supports the right of the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo to own and control the natural resources of their country.

The ICOR calls for solidarity with the progressive organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to strengthen the resistance of the Congolese people.

The ICOR calls on all its members to actively oppose the import of Rwandan minerals into the European Union and demands the revocation of the Memorandum of Understanding between the EU and Rwanda from 2024 on the import of “Rwandan” minerals into the EU.

The ICOR demands a ban on the sale of arms to Rwanda.

The ICOR calls on all revolutionary organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo to intensify their struggle against imperialism and to take a stand for socialism - the true liberation of the Congolese people!

Long live proletarian internationalism in the struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism!

Status of the signatories 04.03.2025. Further signing possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info

1. ORC Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo

2. CPK Communist Party of Kenya

3. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

4. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

5. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh

6. NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

7. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

8. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

9. Krasnyj Klin Аб'яднання беларускіх камуністаў «Чырвоны Клін» (Association of Belarusian Communists «Red Wedge»), Belarus

10. БКП Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)

11. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

12. MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

13. UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

14. BP (NK-T) Bolşevik Parti (Kuzey Kürdistan-Türkiye) (Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan-Turkey))

15. KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

16. RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

17. UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

18. RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)

19. MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

20. TKP-ML Türkiye Komünist Partisi – Marksist-Leninist (Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist-Leninist)

21. MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

22. KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

23. UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia

24. PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))

25. PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

26. SUCI (C) Socialist Unity Center of India (Communist)

27. Chinese Communists (MLM) Chinese Communists (Marxist Leninist Maoist)

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We must have a correct understanding of Putin

Written by: on 5 March 2025

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ICOR call for International Women's Day 2025

Written by: ICOR on 4 March 2025

International Women's Day on 8 March is inextricably linked with the history of socialist women. In 1910, at the Second International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen, the communist Clara Zetkin launched the initiative to establish a Women's Day on which women would take to the streets for their rights and freedom.

This day of struggle for women's equality called for women's suffrage, the right to vote, but also for the introduction of the eight-hour working day, adequate protection for mothers and children, the establishment of minimum wages and equal pay for an equal day's work – all of which were groundbreaking achievements for the masses of women. But the struggle could not be separated from the struggle against imperialist warmongering, which would determine the fate of the world only a few years later.

Socialist women took a clear stand against the policies of the imperialist powers that led to the First World War. Rosa Luxemburg summed up the spirit of the times with the slogan “Socialism or Barbarism”. This warning has lost none of its relevance to this day: we are experiencing a new phase of imperialist wars and reactionary preparations for war, of the willful destruction of nature. On the contrary, the rapid developments of our time make the task of saving humankind and the environment from the destructive power of capitalist profit logic even more urgent.

The danger of a Third World War is currently greater than ever. The theaters of war in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as war preparations in the South China Sea and South America, are harbingers of that war. With his so-called peace negotiations with Putin and threats of forced deportation of Palestinians from Gaza, US president Trump sharpens his imperialist power plans on the backs of the peoples, as well as the rivalry with other powers.

The aggression against the peoples of the region which are supported by the imperialists and the genocide of Israel's reactionary Zionist government towards the Palestinian people show the unprecedented contempt for humanity and the wanton destruction of the imperialist order. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is also exposed to massive threats from the Turkish state; its revolutionary achievements and advances in the liberation of women must be defended. In the reactionary war in Sudan, which is being waged with the support of various imperialist powers, we experience women committing suicide on a massive scale to escape the sexual aggression of anti-people warmongers.

Today, too, it is the meaningful duty of all militant and socialist women worldwide to resist imperialist warmongering and oppose psychological war preparation and warfare which try to portray these wars as liberation, humanism and defense. Let us put a stop to this! We women will take to the streets on 8 March with a determined and militant anti-war stance!

The living conditions in today's world are particularly painful for women and children. This begins with the low income, lack of child care or, even more intensified in case of flight, hunger, poverty, hardship, violence, misery, also rape and other forms of sexualized violence.

Especially working-class women are suffering from ever-increasing unemployment, inflation and a wave of impoverishment. For example the workers in the gold mines of Mali, agricultural workers in Indonesia, the female industrial workers such as the VW workers in Germany who are confronted with threatening job cuts, and the militant trade-unionists in the Netherlands – they are all doubly exploited. Especially the children of the working class are confronted with great insecurity and fear of the future.

All of this also challenges the fighting spirit of women all over the world. The new US president, too, must and will have to contend with all these women. When the ruling class doubly exploits working women, our conclusion can only be that we must be twice as determined fighting for the socialist revolution. The proletarian women's movement is the backbone of the worldwide militant women's movement. However, with this call, we address all women, all fighters for the liberation of women!

The deep crisis of the bourgeois system also means that patriarchal violence has taken on ever greater proportions. In recent years, brutal femicides in Mexico, Bangladesh, Turkey, India, Kenya and many other countries have led to large mass mobilizations. It is our duty to resist the oppression of women!

On 8 March, we also commemorate the Mirabal sisters, who as communist pioneers stood up against the dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and became a symbol in the fight against patriarchal violence. Today too, as women, together with our class alliance partners, we must fight in the front lines against the increasingly reactionary forms of imperialist capitalism and rising fascism. Trump, Modi, Milei, Orban, Erdogan, they all declare themselves enemies of women with their fascist ideology and behave as such!

All of these are already more than enough reasons to take to the streets on 8 March! We also declare: the oppression of women and their exploitation, in all its facets, are inherent in the capitalist system. In his groundbreaking work, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, Frederick Engels already laid the foundation for this conclusion with his historical-materialistic analysis of the gender relations. We can only achieve a solution through social revolution! Therefore, in the socialist tradition of 8 March, let us continue on the path of great pioneers such as Clara Zetkin, Inessa Armand, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and many others!

The revolutionary world organization ICOR is resolutely committed to the liberation of women, to the coordination and strengthening of their struggles, to the networking and exchange of their forces.

In close alliance with the worldwide movements for liberation, especially the grassroots women and revolutionary forces, ICOR calls for demonstrations on 8 March and advocates the slogans:

Women against imperialism and fascism!

The road to our liberation is through the struggle for socialism!

Working women, oppressed women of the world, forward in the struggle against im-perialism and for socialism!

Status of the signatories 02.03.2025. Further signing possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info:

1. ORC Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo

2. CPK Communist Party of Kenya

3. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

4. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

5. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh

6. NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

7. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

8. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

9. Krasnyj Klin Аб'яднання беларускіх камуністаў «Чырвоны Клін» (Association of Belarusian Communists «Red Wedge»), Belarus

10. БКП Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)

11. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

12. MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

13. UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

14. BP (NK-T) Bolşevik Parti (Kuzey Kürdistan-Türkiye) (Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan-Turkey))

15. KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

16. RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

17. UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

18. RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)

19. MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

20. TKP-ML Türkiye Komünist Partisi – Marksist-Leninist (Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist-Leninist)

21. MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

22. KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

23. UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia

24. PCC-M Partido Comunista de Colombia – Maoista (Communist Party of Colombia - Maoist)

25. PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))

26. PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

27. SUCI (C) Socialist Unity Center of India (Communist)

28. CPPDM Chinese People's Party for the Defense of Mao Zedong

29. Chinese Communists (MLM) Chinese Communists (Marxist Leninist Maoist)

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Lessons for Australia in Trump’s Ukraine switch

Written by: Nick G. on 26 February 2025

(Source: https://www.republicworld.com)

If ever any of the US bootlickers in Australian political and military circles needed a wake-up call, it has come directly from Trump’s change of US policy on Ukraine.

Trump has thrown Zelensky under a bus, demanded mineral and rare earth deposits worth 50% of Ukrainian GDP as “compensation” for its financing of Ukraine’s efforts to defeat Russian aggression, and set out to negotiate a deal for ending the war with Putin to the exclusion of the Ukrainians.

Then on February 24, to coincide with the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UN General Assembly debated two resolutions on the conflict, one proposed by the US, and one by Ukraine.

The US resolution omitted mention of Russian aggression, and only passed after a majority of Member States voted to add EU-led amendments which led to the US abstaining on its own motion and voting against the Ukrainian’s.

The Ukrainian resolution was a three-page document that included clauses noting that “the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has persisted for three years and continues to have devastating and long-lasting consequences not only for Ukraine, but also for other regions and global stability.”

It called for a commitment to “the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders”.

Ukraine’s version was eventually passed, supported by 93 countries, opposed by 18 with 65 abstentions including China.

The US voted with Russia, Belarus and Israel to oppose the Ukrainian resolution. The majority of the remainder of the 18 were African nations, indicating Russian imperialism’s increasing influence on the continent.

Later, the US took its original resolution to the Security Council where it was carried 10-0. Five European countries abstained while the US, Russia and China voted in favour.

US imperialism’s about-face on Ukraine must be of concern to its cheer-leaders and lackeys in Australia.

For our part, we have never believed in the US-Australia “Alliance” and have rejected calls to accept US “security guarantees” allegedly contained in the ANZUS Alliance.

The prospect of US imperialism demanding “compensation” for such “guarantees” is now a grim reality.

Will the Brisbane Line be revived and parts to the north of it ceded to the US?

The reality is that something like that is already underway through the US Force Posture Agreement.

Trump’s demands for compensation from Ukraine were described by one journalist as a “gangster protection racket disguised as foreign policy”.

Will we also need to pay the US for its “protection”?

The reality is that we are already committed through AUKUS to pay $30 million a day for the next 30 years – or $368 billion and counting – for a handful of submarines which they and we will pretend are “ours”, but which will be part of the US Navy on an interoperable and interchangeable basis.

It is time to end the grovelling to the US by loyalists to its Empire in Australia.

We are determined to fight for an independent and peaceful Australia.

Both independence and peaceful non-alignment are cornerstones for our future and of equal value and importance.

Smash US imperialism!

For independence and socialism.

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How "highly credible" is corporate ownership of the Whyalla Steelworks?

Written by: Ned K. on 22 February 2025

(above: Malinauskas and Whyalla Steelworks workers Source: InDaily)

With the Whyalla Steelworks in administration, large corporations are circling to see how much profit they are likely to make if they successfully bid to buy the Whyalla Steelworks. Corporations from Germany, South Korea, India along with Australian-based BlueScope are reported to be interested in buying and operating the steelworks.

BlueScope is being promoted by SA Premier Malinauskas. In the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper on 21/2/2025, Malinauskas is quoted as follows:

"There is no secret about the fact that I've been talking, along with other members of our team, in the state government, to a range of potential owners, and BlueScope is only one of them. But let me say this, BlueScope a HIGHLY CREDIBLE (writer's emphasis) Australian publicly - listed company and I look forward to news emerging in coming days and weeks about how our relationship with BlueScope in Whyalla might be deeper again."

Malinauskas is a popular leader among the local capitalists and big event-based capitalists in SA with his brand of "bread and circuses" capitalism and his general confidence and belief in capitalism.

To him, GFG Alliance was just a rotten tomato in a good "crop" of big businesses and BlueScope is not only a ripe tomato in the crop, but "highly credible"!

BlueScope's "Highly Credible" Record?

A closer look at the history of BlueScope makes the highly credible label an illusion.

• BHP-Billiton owned Whyalla steel works and in July 2002 it split off its steel assets creating BHP Steel.

• 17 November 2003 BHP Steel re-named BlueScope, perhaps a marketing ploy as BHP-Billiton was known as ruthless exploiter of workers across its international operations

• 2004 BlueScope merged with US corporation Butler Manufacturing which had twelve steel manufacturing plants in the USA, Mexico and China at the time.

• October 2011 BlueScope, which owned Port Kembla Steelworks, closed its No 6 Blast Furnace reducing production capacity by 50%!

• In 2012 BlueScope set up a new coated steel plant in the large industrial area of east India, Jamshedpur.

• In 2019 BlueScope expanded its capital investment in the USA by $1 billion

• In August 2019 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) started a civil case against BlueScope and its then CEO Jason Ellis for engaging in "cartel conduct"

• In December 2022 the Federal Court of Australia found BlueScope and its CEO guilty of attempting to induce 8 steel distribution companies in Australia and an overseas manufacturer to enter agreements to fix and/or raise the level of pricing for flat steel products

• In July 2020 BlueScope was fined $30,000 by SW Environment Protection Authority for failing to comply with dioxin air emission limits six times over two months of March and April.

• BlueScope current Managing Director is quoted in the Adelaide Advertiser on Saturday on 21/2/2025 as saying BlueScope was a "net beneficiary" of US tariffs on imported steel and 45% of BlueScope" earnings" came from its US steel plants. He added that at the moment BlueScope is in the "early stages of a $200 million cost-cutting blitz to reap returns" (returns = profits)

• At the same time, Albanese is on the phone to Trump to plead for exemption on tariffs on steel imported from Australia!

• BlueScope US plants produce 3 million tonnes of steel a year. BlueScope exports 200,000- 300,000 tonnes of steel to the USA

Other corporations competing with BlueScope to make profits from the Whyalla Steelworks will no doubt have their own histories in their relentless search for profits or they call them "earnings".

The only short-term solution to benefit the Whyalla community and Australian people as a whole is for the steelworks to be a government owned entity. The only longer-term solution is for major industries and services to be owned and run by the people in an independent, socialist Australia.

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Whyalla Workers Steeled In Struggle Deserve Job Security -Nationalise the Steel Industry!

Written by: Ned K. on 21 February 2025

The working-class community of Whyalla, led by over 1,000 steel workers have won a significant short-term victory. For months steel works workers and workers employed by contractors dependent on the steel works for their very existence, endured reductions in working hours, layoffs, weeks of work without being paid any wages in an economic climate of ever-increasing costs of living.

The steel workers and their Whyalla community affected allies repeatedly demanded action by the SA Government and GFG Alliance CEO, Sanjeev Gupta. Many promises were made by Gupta about the GFG Alliance commitment to the workers and to the SA Government that payment of lost wages, payment to GFG Alliance's many contractor feeder companies was just around the corner. However, the " corner" remained over the horizon!

The SA Premier Malinauskas read the mood of the town and the emptiness of Gupta's promises well. As well as the possible situation of GFG Alliance going belly-up and the steelworks grinding to a halt, he needed a fully functioning Whyalla Steelworks to be the main customer of his pre-election promise in 2022 to build a liquid hydrogen fuel plant at Whyalla.

By January 2025, the Labor Prime Minister Albanese could see disaster ahead if Australia's only producer of high-grade steel essential for the construction industry and rail transport stopped producing steel. It would cost him the loss of Seats in the federal election that he would call to be held one Saturday before mid-May 2025.

In mid-February Premier Malinauskas pushes through SA Parliament an amendment to the 1958 Whyalla Steelworks Act to enable the GFG Alliance Whyalla Steelworks arm of its global economic "empire" to be put into administration.

The next day, Thursday 19 February, Premier Malinauskas and Prime Minister Albanese visited Whyalla and announced the much broadcast $2.4 billion "rescue package" to pay lost wages and pay contractors owed money by GFG Alliance, to keep the steelworks operating while it is under administration and to partly fund a modernization of the steelworks with a hoped-for new owner of the steelworks.

This announcement received a big sigh of temporary relief from workers and the whole Whyalla community.

The appointed administrator Korda Mentha was also the administrator in 2017 which led to the previous owner of the steelworks, Arrium, being taken over by GFG Alliance. Korda Mentha is reported by the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper on Friday 20 February 2025 to charge $795 per hour per senior partner for administering the steelworks and sorting through GFG Alliance finances. Korda Mentha will also be making a recommendation to the SA and federal governments on which company should take over and own the steel works

The underlying cause of the current situation has been the large corporate owners of the steelworks, British-based GFG Alliance and those before it - Arrium, One Steel and its parent BHP have always put profits before the interests of the workers, Whyalla community and the Australian steel industry as a whole.

These large corporations have not only made profits from the steelworks itself, but also from the nearby Middleback Ranges where they owned and mined some of the highest grade iron ore in the world. The iron ore from Iron Knob and Iron Monarch in these Ranges has purity of ore of over 60%. In the 1920s and 1930s before the steelworks at Whyalla was constructed, the high grade ore was shipped to Newcastle and Port Kembla steelworks. In 1939, the UK declared the ore to be the highest grade deposit of iron ore known in the world.

In the turmoil of the last few days, it was reported in mainstream media that GFG Alliance was propping up its European steelwork interests from profits made from the iron ore mines and the steel produced in the Whyalla steelworks

NATIONALISE THE STEEL INDUSTRY

Albanese in his announcement on Thursday 19 February rightly made the comment that the steel industry is part of Australia's national sovereignty. Malinauskas made the same point.

If they really believe this, rather than just sounding good before a federal election, they should take the first step towards a nationalised steel industry by placing the steelworks and iron ore mines at Whyalla into public hands.

Workers in Australia, led by the courageous people of Whyalla have the ability to operate the steelworks and the iron ore mines for the benefit of their community and the needs of Australian construction and expanding rail network construction.

Albanese and Malinauskas may say the steelworks need the "expertise" of a foreign owned multinational corporation or a nominally Australian owned company like Bluescope who operate Port Kembla steelworks.

Or they may say Australia has not got the money to modernise our own steelworks.

Where then did the Albanese Government find the money to send to the USA to part-finance the building of more nuclear-powered submarines? Where do they miraculously find $368 billion to fund nuclear-powered submarines in coming decades?

DEMAND NATIONALISATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN STEEL INDUSTRY NOW!

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Message to Ukrainian Australians on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s illegal invasion

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 19 February 2025

February 23, 2025, marks the 3rd anniversary of Russian imperialism’s illegal and unjust war of aggression against Ukraine.

On February 25, 2022, we issued a statement condemning Putin’s invasion, saying “Ukraine has become the battleground of the rival imperialist blocs of the US-NATO-EU and of the Russian Federation. A struggle over imperialist spheres of influence is at the heart of the crisis. It arises due to the uneven development of the strengths and weaknesses of the powers and of their abilities to protect their respective spheres of influence.”

On the first anniversary of the invasion, we attended rallies of Ukrainian Australians and distributed a leaflet headed Russian imperialists – out of Ukraine!

After reviewing Putin’s “justifications” for his aggression, and the role of the US in creating instability in Ukraine as part of an expansion of NATO towards the east, we concluded “Ukraine for the Ukrainians, not for the Russians, and not for the US and NATO.”

We stand firm in our belief that, as Ho Chi Minh said of Vietnam, “nothing is more precious than independence and freedom”.

Today, fresh dangers face the Ukrainian people.

The Russian authorities not only continue their aggressive ad unjust war, but impose new repression on Ukrainians in Russia itself.

Of the more than thirty Ukrainian cultural autonomies and organisations that existed in Russia at the end of the 2010s, only a few continue to function actively. Most of them exist solely due to their complete loyalty to the Russian state authorities.

In 2024, the Russian government initiated a bill to denounce the agreement with Ukraine that regulated the activities of information and cultural centers. This decision was the final blow to the National Cultural Center of Ukraine in Moscow - one of the last legal centers of Ukrainian culture in the Russian capital.

Activists who tried to continue working to preserve Ukrainian culture and identity are under constant threat of detention, fines, or other repressive measures.
Our comrades in the Russian Maoist Party initiated a statement, “Solidarity with the Ukrainians of Russia” which was released on January 6, 2025 and signed by ourselves and 17 other Marxist-Leninist parties and organisations. They included our comrades in the Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine.

When it was announced that North Korea was sending troops to support Russian aggression, we released the statement “Condemn the DPRK’s sending of troops to the Ukrainian conflict” on 6 November 2024.

Now, a further complication has emerged with the election of Donald Trump.

Ukrainians must maintain their vigilance and not place any trust in the new US President.

He must not be allowed to do a deal with Putin at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

He has boasted that he will end the war in a day.

But he has also cited his own imperialist aims to absorb Greenland into the US, retake the Panama Canal from Panama, and make Canada the 51st state of the US. He has proposed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza for the sake of a US-led real estate development.

Nothing would suit him better than a deal with Putin based on a redivision of areas of influence and the seizure of territories not their own.

To that end, the February 7 “deal” presented to Zelensky by Trump, requiring Ukraine to grant the US the right to oversee Ukraine’s mineral resources, ports, energy infrastructure, and future economic projects must be rejected. The agreement would claim a larger share of Ukraine’s GDP, at $500 billion, than Germany’s post-World War I reparations under the Treaty of Versailles.

For our part, our focus as an Australian Marxist-Leninist Party is on winning our own anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

In this conflict, there is no “good” imperialism – neither Russian nor Western.

Ukraine needs to defeat the tiger that has burst in through the front door, while keeping out the wolves that lurk around the back door.

We hope that the Ukrainian working class will establish its leadership in the resistance and guarantee Ukrainian independence through a socialist state.

Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

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A Capitalist Parliament Won’t Get People Out of the Mess - Mass Struggle for People’s Power the only Solution to the Crisis

Written by: John G. on 17 February 2025

(Above: Keep the initiative in our own hands, and lift the level of struggle!)

In the economic crisis that stalks Australia, there is only one solution. The struggle of Australian workers and working people.

Struggle is against the multinationals and their collaborators, struggle for increased wages, for adequate social services, for easing workload burdens, for shorter hours, for secure jobs and for housing we can afford. The common thread is to throw foreign monopoly corporations and their collaborators off our backs and out of Australia, to establish the rule of the working and patriotic people, the vast majority

Struggle mustn’t be held back by any of the scam cures offered, restraining wages, balancing government budgets, increased spending on infrastructure, cutting spending on infrastructure, spending super on housing, lowering interest rates, multi-employer bargaining, subsidies on windfarms, cutting subsides on renewable power, spending hundreds of billions on nuclear power, and on and on.

The grim reality is economic crisis rolls on whatever parliament has done or will do. Struggle mustn’t be held back by the parliamentary hassle that’s going on, pumped up to hoodwink people.

It’s important to get over the complete rubbish, get to grips with the fundamental reality of what’s going on, and solve it.

The capitalist system is failing the people. Inflation of the currency has robbed people of their livelihoods, their savings and prospects for the future. Inflation is the current expression of a long-festering crisis of overproduction in the capitalist system here and overseas. After years of people’s agony with wages held way behind price rises, high interest rates and rents, business bankruptcies, countries drowning in debt, the economy will pick up sometime, at a huge cost to people. It won’t last long. The major centres of capitalist funds and power are choking on mountains of accumulated capital funds with nowhere to profitably go. That problem’s going nowhere. It’ll come out in the next problems in one form or another.

Markets, sources of raw materials and production centres, are all dominated by monopoly corporations from the US, China, Europe, Russia and other imperialist powers. The battle between the various capitalists for markets and things to invest in has come to a peak, turning from mainly economic and political struggles to military struggles. Trade Wars may head into world wars.

Wars for oil are no news to anyone. Now its wider, with proxy wars in the Ukraine, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The waste of war, the destruction of arms and infrastructure creates shortages and markets, offering some relief for capitalists to use their money capital to get profits, getting round the crisis of oversupply for a while. For capitalists, war’s a way out of their mess.

The US is gearing up for war with China. Trump is concentrating on war in Asia to grab control of China and those countries increasingly dependent on it. Proxy wars head into direct warfare between the big imperialist powers.

People find ways to stand up to US and western imperialists moves to war. People from Palestine to West Papua to Kurdistan have risen with arms in hand to win and defend their national liberation from imperialist vultures. They are showing organised resistance knocks the imperialists back, serving up defeats to imperialist conspiracies against people.

We’ve had both Liberal and Labor governments in the last decade. We’ve had Greens in a ‘balance’ of votes in the senate. We’ve had Greens and Independents manoeuvring between the two big players.

The tactics of Labor leaders might differ from Dutton, which has some importance, but essentially, they all look after the rich and attack the poor. The Greens and Teals, Jackie Lambie, Palmer and others tout various different programs to get votes promising to get people out of the mess.

Irrespective of the government, and the mix of parties in parliament coming out of an election, hardships keep cutting a swathe through working and small business people time and again, while the big foreign monopolies keep plundering Australia and the people.

Parliament and party shadow-boxing in its chambers works to keep capitalism on our backs.

Stop Dreaming! Parliament is no way out of the mess.

Get organised! Build mass struggle for people’s power against foreign, corporate monopoly power.

Stand up to US and other imperialisms to win independence from foreign-moneybags and their local collaborator capitalists and bureaucrats, Canberra included.

Democratic Anti-Imperialist Revolution for Power to the People.

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Tiny Cook Islands leans to China despite US-Aus-NZ pressure

Written by: (Contributed) on 16 February 2025

High-level diplomacy between the Cook Islands and Beijing has sent alarm bells ringing inside the elite US-led Five Eyes intelligence-sharing organisation; a heightening of diplomatic tensions and hostilities has proved easy to observe.

The matter, however, is best assessed in the context of the wider Pacific region and the recent decision by the Trump administration to suspend all foreign aid for at least ninety days.

The official five-day diplomatic visit to Beijing by Cook Island Prime Minister, Mark Brown, in early February has been officially noted as sealing a Joint Action Plan for Strategic Partnership between the two countries. (1) An official media release from the office of the PM, noted, 'This visit is about expanding economic opportunities while ensuring our sovereignty and national interests remain at the forefront … Our approach to foreign policy is clear … we engage openly and transparently to secure the best outcomes for our people'. (2)

While the Cook Islands are self-governing with a population of about 17,000 citizens, they have a 'free association' with New Zealand which provides economic assistance and defence and security; all Cook Islanders are technically New Zealand citizens. The fifteen islands and atolls straddle about 1.9 million square kms in the South West Pacific, centred upon 20 degrees south and 160 degrees west, alongside strategic land-masses controlled or administered by France.

The Cook Islands also have a defence and security co-operation agreement with Australia, signed in 2022; it was officially noted from Canberra that 'the Australian government is cautiously waiting to see the detail of the agreement' between the Cook Islands and China. (3)

The response of the NZ government was more forthright; they warned there had been a failure with official consultation procedures and demanded access to the Joint Action Plan. (4) It was subsequently diplomatically noted that NZ 'did not see eye to eye with the Cook Islands government on a range of issues'. (5)

Both New Zealand and Australia form part of the elite US-led Five Eyes intelligence-sharing organisation, which oversees the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and rests upon the 'Quad', aimed at containing and encircling China from all sides. (6)

The Cook Islands, furthermore, possess some limited status inside the US-led defence and security provision, being placed upon sensitive islands chains in Oceania. The Cook Islands, in fact, also possess their own intelligence services, which official government publications have noted, 'continually gather intelligence for analysis'. (7) What facilities the Cook Islands use for intelligence-gathering has not been publicised; the Australian government, however, has historically used secret facilities on the Cocos Islands for intelligence-gathering on Indonesia and other parts of the Indian Ocean. (8)

The US, likewise, use facilities on the Marshall Islands in the form of a space surveillance radar system known as the 'Space Fence', with ability to track satellites and space debris. (9)
Using their Echelon system the US can continuously monitor global telecommunications through outlying computer stations directly linked into the National Security Agency. (10) The surveillance exists outside of territorial laws and regulations, high in the sky and inside cyber-space. The fact that both the Marshall Islands and the Cook Islands also swing on the same arc from Pine Gap in Central Australia may not be coincidental.

Silence, with such diplomatic matters, tends to be the order of the day.

The noted response of the Cook Islands government toward their NZ counterparts over the recent diplomatic spat was, nevertheless, both blunt and direct; PM Mark Brown 'dismissed New Zealand's concerns … there is no need for NZ to sit in the room with us … he … declared his government intends to sign a strategic partnership with Beijing regardless of Wellington's objections … following a phone call on Friday in which Mr Peters demanded he reveal the contents of the deal'. (11) He then boarded an international flight to Beijing from Auckland, on the northern island of NZ, 'without further consultation'. (12)

Recent developments with the Cook Islands, however, rest upon decades of relative neglect from the advanced, industrial countries, toward the small island states of the Pacific. They were absorbed into neo-colonial-type relations following political independence during the previous Cold War and expected to be passive recipients of aid packages. Things now, however, are not what they used to be; a changing balance of forces has taken place.

A recent assessment from Canberra has, for example, provided a glimpse of unfolding developments; it was noted there had been 'a fundamental shift in how Pacific nations see themselves. They are no longer content to be passive recipients of great … or even regional … power influence. Instead they actively seek to shape the regional order according to their interests. Beijing has carefully cultivated these aspirations'. (13)

Stronger diplomatic standing and organisation in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) has also had an impact upon traditional hegemonic positions; the US is no longer the dominant power in the Pacific, with China emerging as a serious competitor. (14) Both collectively and independently, the Pacific Islands have questioned their traditional neo-colonial status and now possess stronger bargaining positions; they have acted accordingly with their own diplomatic initiatives.

It is important to note the diplomatic silence from the Trump administration about these developments. It is not difficult to understand why. Buffoonery has taken precedence over
common sense and sound political and diplomatic judgement, for all to see.

The US has had a foreign aid commitment with aid programs to twelve Pacific countries amounting to US$3.4 billion; the recent decision to suspend all the programs globally for at least ninety days has already been assessed as a spectacular 'own goal' by informed observers to the debacle. (15) Recipients of foreign aid now look elsewhere.

In conclusion, the decision, by the Cook Islands, to seek greater support for their economic development from China has shown how US-led diplomacy conducted through Australia and New Zealand has failed to accurately assess the changing balance of forces in the Pacific, despite huge resources used by the Five Eyes for defence and security provision.

The Cook Islands initiative has proved a timely response to matters arising, and, invariably, has far-reaching implications for future diplomatic relations and their outcome elsewhere, across the Pacific:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. NZ fury as Cook is partners with China, Australian, 7 February 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Cook Islands' Beijing pact triggers strategic waves across Pacific, Australian, 10 February 2025.
4. Australian op.cit., 7 February 2025.
5. Ibid.
6. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
7. See: Cook Islands – National Security Policy, 2023-2026, page 27.
8. Secret spy station on the Cocos Islands, The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 October 2013.
9. US v. China, Japan Forward: Politics and Security, 14 February 2020.
10. See: Echelon, Espionage, Spies and Secrets, Richard M. Bennett, (London, 2003), pp. 89-93.
11. Pacific paradox leaves door open to China, Australian, 11 February 2025; and, Australian, op.cit., 10 February 2025.
12. Australian, ibid., 10 February 2025.
13. Australian, op.cit., 11 February 2025..
14. See: Study – US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
15. See: Gift for Beijing: Asia-Pacific analysts warn shock US aid freeze 'an own goal', Australian, 4 February 2025.

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Australian culture under attack

Written by: Duncan B. on 16 February 2025

(Progressive Australian culture has had its ups and downs: the 1890s, 1930s and 1970s. The above is the front cover of the SA-based Australian Cultural Association’s 67-page history of its 1975-1980 activities. Maybe it’s time for another upsurge!)

Australian culture has come under attack on several fronts lately. In the past six months, two big multinational publishers have taken over two independent Australian publishing houses.

Simon & Schuster took over Affirm Press and Penguin Random House took over Text Publishing. The big five overseas publishing companies (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan) now control a large chunk of the Australian publishing industry.

These take-over deals are bad for Australian authors, Australian readers and Australian literature. We risk losing more Australian culture because of them. The big companies are cautious about what they take on, while independent publishers take more risks and support innovative and experimental writing. Text Publishing has authors who have been short-listed for the Nobel, Booker and Pulitzer prizes. Other Text authors have won the Miles Franklin and Stella Prizes. Text has also reprinted books by past Australian authors, bringing them to a new generation of Australian readers.

The Australian Music industry is also facing a crisis thanks to Spotify. This Swedish-owned streaming platform with global revenues of $25 billion per year, controls 70% of the Australian audio streaming market. Australian music is suffering as a result.

Many people now get their music from Spotify instead of buying CDs or listening to radio stations such as Triple J. American pop stars dominate the music played on Spotify, which is not subject to any local content rules, despite promises by the Labor Party to introduce them. Three major record labels, Warner, Sony and Universal, released 95% of the music on the Australian top-100 in 2023.

Only five Australian songs made it to the ARIA top 100 for 2024. Only 18 Australian artists made it into Triple J’s Hottest 100 for 2025. Triple J’s ratings have dropped to 4.3% nationally. This is a sad result for a radio station which has done so much to promote Australian music in its 50 years of operation.

The Triple J playlist has always featured a much higher level of Australian music than the commercial stations. Programmes such as Unearthed and the One Night Stand travelling live music shows have allowed many Australian musicians to gain recognition.

Live music in Australia is dominated by overseas multinationals such as the US-based Live Nation. The three top video streamers in Australia are foreign-owned-Netflix, Amazon and Disney. Video streamers are also not subject to local content quotas.

The government is being urged to introduce local content quotas of at least 25% for streaming services. This would be a start. Much more action is needed to seize back control of our culture from the multinationals and return it to Australian authors, performers and audiences.

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Who the Nationals serve

Written by: Duncan B. on 13 February 2025

Vanguard has previously said that the National Party serves the interests of fossil fuel companies, miners and big graziers.

The latest records of disclosure return forms published by the Australian Electoral Commission covering 2023-24, show that British American Tobacco, Phillip Morris, Adani, Fortescue Metals and the Minerals Council of Australia were among the major donors to the Nationals.

Phillip Morris donated $100,000 and British American Tobacco donated $84,000, up from $55,000 the previous year. Adani donated $66,000 and Endeavour Group which owns Dan Murphy’s and hundreds of poker machine hotels donated $22,000.

Responsible Wagering Australia donated $25,000, as did Tabcorp Holdings, Telstra, and oil and gas company Santos. Donations to the National Party and Laneway Assets (the National’s vehicle for receiving membership fees), totalled $4.16 million.

It is easy to see why the National Party denounces climate change, opposes renewable energy and promotes fossil fuels.

“He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

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Listen to people so as to improve mass work

Written by: Nick G. on 13 February 2025

(Original image from Milwaukee Independent)

In December 2022, the United States Study Centre of the University of Sydney released the results of a survey of Australian attitudes towards the “US-Australia Alliance”.

The survey identified 30% of respondents as “full supporters” with no concerns about what the “alliance’ means; 33% are described as “reserved supporters” with concerns about Australian independence and sovereignty; 23% are described as “sceptics” who are not convinced that the Alliance, in its current form, is necessarily benefiting Australia’s security and would like to see significant change; and 8% are described as “opponents”.

Kym Bergmann, editor of the online Asia Pacific Defence Reporter could perhaps be placed in that second category. Bergmann is a journalist with a commitment to the military and has an unquestionable belief in the US as Australia’s “most important security partner”. He has held senior positions in several companies, including military contractors Blohm+Voss, Thales, Celsius and Saab. His online journal is a daily compendium of which government has given which arms manufacturer which contract, together with news of the latest in military technologies.

Bergmann has a weekly podcast in which he editorialises on the absurdity of the AUKUS arrangements and the secrecy and stupidity of the Department of Defence.

In his most recent podcast, he criticises Trump’s proposed “ethnic cleansing of 2 million Palestinians”, and Netanyahu’s rejection of a “two-state solution” and determination to cleanse not just Gaza, but also the West Bank, of Palestinians.

He doesn’t mince words when criticising Trump and Netanyahu, but says “You can’t hear anything this strong from the Australian government because for them it represents the absolute worst of two worlds: the risk of offending the Americans and the risk of offending the Israelis.”

He reviews our massively expanded military ties with the US and the money we are giving them hand over fist for what he says are a “couple of second-hand clunkers” in the form of Virginia-class submarines, and says that if any country in the world is in a position to express mild discontent with America, it is Australia. But all we get, from the Government and the Opposition, is “vague motherhood sort of stuff.”

He says that there are other countries out there beside the US and asks what must they think of us?

He is scathing of our politicians who “still cower in terror rather than say anything that could be interpreted as criticism.”

“What must they (other countries) think of our ongoing craven forelock tugging” he asks.

“From Copenhagen, Ottowa, Panama City, we must look like the most abject, pathetic bootlickers they have ever seen.”

So here we have a person, deeply embedded in and committed to the military, to military industry and to military culture who nevertheless has major concerns about the loss of Australian independence and sovereignty and who clearly wants Australia to have a capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy.

People like Bergmann are all around us.

They are a complex of attitudes and values. Their ideas are unlikely to be 100% progressive or 100% backward.

In our workplaces, communities and families, our understanding of the massline requires us to listen to those around us, avoid immediate judgemental attitudes but carry out investigation that allows us to make appropriate categorisation of the people based on the relative balance between progressive and backward elements in their outlook.

Those categories could follow the pattern of those in the US Study Centre.

From that investigation and subsequent understanding of the categories that people in our workplace, community group or family fall into, we can improve our mass work with a view to raising the ideological level of the people concerned.

This means having the confidence to reject passivity, and the understanding to reject acting like a bull in a china shop. Not everyone will respond to our mass work with a sudden light globe moment. Ideological development takes time and is different for different people depending on their starting point.

For example, in relation to those categories of people in the US Study Centre survey, we could aim to isolate the full supporters by challenging their faith in the “alliance” and then try to shift those who can be shifted into the category of reserved supporters; within the latter group, make more of an issue of independence and sovereignty so that some change from being supporters of the Alliance to sceptics; and turn the doubts and misgivings of the sceptics into conscious opposition to imperialist domination and control.

Investigation and study of our workplaces, communities and families is a Marxist-Leninist approach that counters the danger of left-blocism where people are only comfortable in the presence of others who share their advanced views. It allows us to move within the people like a fish through water.

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US suspension of aid an "own goal"?

Written by: (Contributed) on 12 February 2025

The decision by the Trump administration to temporarily suspend its foreign aid program has proved controversial. It has done little to convey an enlightened, planned, balanced and well-implemented foreign policy and diplomatic position. In fact, when viewed in the context of present Cold War diplomatic rivalry with China, the decision, might, justifiably, be viewed as a spectacular own goal, with serious implications for all US allies, including Australia in the Pacific region.

In early February, within days of taking office, the Trump administration announced they were temporarily suspending more than US$60 billion of international funding through the US Agency for International Development (USAID). (1) While the reason for the suspension was along lines that the agency was being run by 'radical lunatics', the underlying reason was cost-cutting and projecting an America First diplomatic position.

The position of the Trump administration is best viewed in the context of Cold War; they seek a return to the halcyon days when the power of the US was barely challenged. Studies of the period referred to the US as 'the world policeman on the road to world leadership'. (2)
The language used by the Trump administration when suspending foreign aid was largely reminiscent of terminology frequently used from Washington sixty years ago; the prevailing balance of forces, however, has now changed. They appear oblivious.

There was, furthermore, little ambiguity in the right-wing business position adopted by the Trump administration: staff were placed on administrative leave and access was blocked to the Washington headquarters; employees were locked out of computer systems. Many of the on-line websites about USAID programs were also systematically blocked to prevent access to statistics and other information. It carried all the hallmarks of little understanding of the gravity of the situation and a swashbuckling attitude toward those regarded as subject to dictat. An official statement from the Trump administration also noted the whole USAID organisation was 'beyond repair'. (3) What will happen after the 90-day suspension remains to be seen. Many programs are likely to be terminated indefinitely and permanently.

Historically, aid programs have been used by governments to foster closer diplomatic links between host countries and those regarded as countries of interest. It is regarded as 'soft diplomacy'. While criticisms have arisen about neo-colonialism and stronger countries using aid programs to enhance their position over those categorised as emerging economies, large numbers of poor people depend upon aid programs for their everyday needs. Different governments have used various approaches to achieve diplomatic objectives: the US has tended to channel aid through official bodies, while Israel usually uses local Police as a conduit, China tends to use central government organisation while Taiwan uses a more localised provincial network to distribute their aid. Britain retains a huge aid program, most of which is channelled through the Commonwealth, other countries use different approaches.

Australia has a large foreign aid program across the South Pacific, Pacific and Asia regions, working closely with US counterparts as a regional hub for 'US interests'. During the past decade, for example, USAID has provided the Pacific region with an estimated $3 billion in aid. (4) Australia's counterpart, AUSAID, has been responsible for using $392.9 million during the 2022-23 financial year to twelve Pacific countries; PNG is a large recipient.

The aid programs are invariably aimed toward sustainable economic, social and political development, and can take many forms: many of the programs, for example, have lasted a long time, providing stability in often volatile areas. A major program in the South Pacific has been governance, and the training of local government officials in administration procedures, to deal with countries which are divided along ethnic and inter-ethnic lines. It has been noted that, 'predictability in aid is key to the effectiveness of programs … including … critical public services, medicines, food, humanitarian assistance', and a whole list of other services. (5) Staff employed with aid programs frequently have to deal with local decision-makers, which can sometimes be difficult.

The situation is the Solomon Islands remains problematic where ethnic and inter-ethnic divisions have spilled over into open warfare twice in recent times. Australia has, invariably, been left to foot the bill for peacekeeping and political stability. The Solomon Islands has remained dependent upon aid to provide many basic services as one of the poorest countries in the region. To promote economic development USAID has provided the country with $1 million to promote ten agricultural programs, several of which are regarded as key projects to support 'critical development needs in the Solomon Islands'. (6)

And this diplomatic position has been suspended by the Trump administration for a minimum of ninety days. Many of the recipients of US aid programs, however, are unlikely to possess sufficient economic reserves to fund their own programs for three months. Large numbers of local people linked to the aid programs have already lost their employment.

Reaction to the decision was immediate: it was noted from one well-informed observer that 'it's a huge gift to China … and the legitimacy question is a big one … now you have the biggest component … destroying it and moving away from its commitments and principles'. (7) In the case of the Solomon Islands, and elsewhere in the Pacific, most USAID has been used specifically to challenge perceived Chinese diplomatic initiatives; the position of the Trump administration, therefore, can best be assessed as ill-thought of and very likely to become totally counter-productive, leaving Australia to foot the bill, once again:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Gift for Beijing: Asia-Pacific analysts warn shock US aid freeze 'an own goal' Australian, 4 February 2025.
2. See: The Road to World Leadership, The Police Idea in US Foreign Policy, CIA.,Chapter 5, Intervention and Revolution, Richard J. Barnett, (London, 1970), pp. 77-93.
3. Musk tightens his grip on wheels of power, Australian, 5 February 2025.

4. Donald Trump's foreign aid freeze, ABC News, 1 February 2025.

5. Australian, op.cit., 4 February 2025.
6. See: US suspends foreign aid, PINA, 29 January 2025.
7. Australian, op.cit., 4 February 2025.

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China’s anti-socialist counter-revolution

Written by: Nick G. on 11 February 2025

(Where the People's Daily once produced lists of labour heroes, Bloomberg now produces lists of Chinese rich.)

A certain organisation has commented this week on what it calls “China’s socialist revolution”.

The comment is little more than a repeat of the revisionist CCP’s rewriting of its own history.

It says, for example, “In the first years following the revolution China was set back by the “great leap forward” and then, the “cultural revolution” which were implemented under the leadership of Mao Zedong, who, in the later period of his life adopted extreme “leftist” policies.”

Things allegedly took a “dramatic turn for the better” when Deng and his cronies rejected these “leftist” policies and switched China from the socialist to the capitalist road.

One assumes that it is “better” that one of the most equal and classless societies in the world has been destroyed and a society of vast social polarisation has taken its place. (See “China and the Widening of Relative Poverty” on pages 3-8 here: AC+2020+Spring.pdf )

One assumes that it is “better” that a socialist country is now a major exporter of capital to non-socialist countries where it can only function as any exportable capital in purchasing the natural resources of other countries and exploiting the labour of the workers of those countries, taking the surplus value created by those workers for the profit of its private and/or state-owned corporations. (See: “Explaining China: How a socialist country took the capitalist rod to social-imperialism” here: Explaining+China+Final+v2.pdf )

One assumes that it is “better” that China no longer seeks the restriction of bourgeois right, but rather its frantic expansion, resulting in China now having more billionaires than its rival US imperialism, and millionaires allowed to join the ruling Communist Party as one of three representatives of contemporary forces of production. (See: “Understanding the Need to Restrict Bourgeois Right” pages 14-34 here: AC+2022+Autumn.pdf )

One assumes it is “better” that when the new Chinese Deepseek AI platform is asked how China is restricting bourgeois right, it avoids any explanation of bourgeois right and doesn’t initially know what to do, twice replying “The server is busy. Please try again later.”

6 hours later, again asked “What is bourgeois right and how is it being restricted in China?” it lamely offers this non-answer:

In China, we adhere to the socialist system, where the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics are the fundamental guarantees for China's development and progress. The Chinese government is always committed to safeguarding and improving people's livelihoods, promoting social fairness and justice, and ensuring that the people share in the fruits of reform and development. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics has been continuously improved, effectively protecting the legitimate rights and interests of the people. China's development practice has proven that the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the correct one that suits China's national conditions, and it has also received widespread support and active participation from the entire Chinese people.

One assumes that it is “better” that the proletarian revolutionary Comrade Mao Zedong is discredited and maligned, and that his ideology is replaced with the officially described revisionist nonsense of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

In a further post, we will look again at the revisionism of so-called Xi Jinping Thought.

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American Empire Is Past Its Prime

Written by: Ned K. on 11 February 2025

It is often said these days that while America (USA) is still the biggest imperialist power, that it is in decline.

A recent article in the online news service, Pearls and Irritations, provides some facts about the American empire's decline, The article is by Les Macdonald and was posted in Pearls and Irritations on February 9, 2025.

The post reveals some revealing statistics about different aspects of the USA economy and society.

• Life expectancy. In 1900, 46.6 years for men, 48.7 years for women. In 2000, 74.7 years for men, 79.9 years for women. Between 2017 and 2021, life expectancy dropped by nearly 4 percentage points, a decline that marks a stark departure from the previous century’s progress.

• Income and "Productivity". According to the Economic Policy Institute, the earnings of the US middle class (middle income earners) in real terms was $17,867 less per year in 2007 than in 1979. Between 1979 and 2007, productivity increased by 74% while real wages increased by 9%. Since 1979, wages and salaries for the top 1% of employees rose by 138% while real wages for the bottom 90% rose by 15%

• Consumer Price Index. Since 2000, the CPI went up by 83.28% while the median wage went up by 34.7%

• Health Care Access. Tens of millions of people have no health coverage or minimal health coverage with the resulting added cost to individuals contributing to over 40% of the average 530,000 bankruptcies per year.

• Manufacturing. In 1946, More than 50% of the world's manufactured goods were produced in the USA. in 2024, it was only 15.9% of world's manufacturing produced in the USA. In 1979 there were19.6 million USA workers employed in manufacturing. In 2019, only 12.8 million, a reduction of 35%. (USA Bureau of Labor Statistics). The largest sector of USA manufacturing is military production, approximate dollar value of $1trillion per year!

• Education. USA graduates 70,000 engineers per year compared with USA main rival China's 600,000 per year. USA student loan debt is $1.74 trillion with 7% in default category.

• Privatization. Privatizations over the last four decades has seen a boom in private prison population. Prison population in 1980 was 320,000. In 2024 it was 1.8 million. Private prison operators lobby for harsher prison sentences to fuel their labor force inside prisons.

• Firearms. In 2024 more than 500 million firearms in the USA were in private hands which is an average of 1.93 firearms per adult.

These figures do not indicate a rosy picture of USA society and economy. The recent signing off by Trump and the Republicans for a further $1 billion military export to Israel and Trump's plan to "redevelop" Gaza into a "Middle East Riviera" and sending Palestinians out of Gaza altogether is being trumpeted (!) to give lucrative contracts to USA big business. A taste of this is the announcement only a day ago by the USA government that private USA security contractors would replace some Israeli troops in a small part of northern Gaza.

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Richard Boyle case vindictive and intimidatory

Written by: Nick G. on 10 February 2025

Australian Tax Office whistle-blower Richard Boyle is in the South Australian District Court today for a call-over hearing.

Boyle lost his last chance to secure immunity from prosecution when the High Court refused his application for special leave to appeal last November, after two South Australian courts previously rejected his bid.

He is due to face the court on 3 November 2025. Today’s call-over hearing is intended to bring the presiding judge up to date on developments in the case.

Before he fronted the court this morning, Boyle released a copy of a letter he has sent to Australian Attorney-general Mark Dreyfus stating that he had withdrawn instructions to negotiate a plea-deal with the Commonwealth.

He accused the Commonwealth Prosecutor under Dreyfus’s control of not acting with integrity.

Background

Boyle, a former ATO debt collection officer, first became an internal whistleblower in October 2017, when he grew concerned about operations in the tax office.
He told journalists at last year’s Walkely Awards Presentation that in mid- 2017, as the financial year wrapped up, ATO staff across the country, not just Adelaide, were instructed to take money out of people’s bank accounts, shutting down many small to medium businesses without due cause.

“It did not matter to the Tax Office if their debts were incorrect.

“Some months after this ‘cash grab’ in June 2017, I wrote a formal public interest disclosure to outline this abuse of power, as well as the other significant failures of administration by the Tax Office that I was observing.

“And who did I have to send that complaint to, by law?

“To the Australian Taxation Office.

“I didn’t have a chance, did I?”

When his complaints were ignored, he went public and told Four Corners about the culture at the ATO, which he said included his area being instructed to use more heavy-handed tactics on taxpayers who owed the tax office money.

Only following the Four Corners episode titled ‘Mongrel Bunch of Bastards’ did this type of vile abuse by the ATO cease.

But rather than rewarding an honest and principled employee for exposing abuse that gravely risked the health and safety of the public, and causing such practices to stop, the ATO sought revenge on Boyle.

Vindictive and intimidatory

It is typical of ruling class legal procedures that the political essence and class nature of its actions is hidden behind criminal charges that particularise and obscure what is really going on.

In Boyle’s case, the intention of the ATO as an employer is to vindictively punish Richard Boyle, and of the Government, which has the power to intervene and drop the charges, it is to use Boyle as an example in order to intimidate any others who dare to expose wrongdoing and injustice.

Hence Boyle is not charged with whistle-blowing and is not protected by the legislation and whistleblower protections introduced by Dreyfus, in 2013.

Instead, he is charged with 24 offences consisting, as today’s District Court hearings sheet lists them, of “Make A Record Of Protected Information By A Taxation Officer (6)/ Use A Listening Device To Overhear, Record, Monitor Or Listen (7)/ Disclosure Of Protected Information To Another Entity By A T/ Record Another Person's Tax File Number (2)/ Attempt To Disclose Protected Information To Another Entity (6)/ Attempt To Divulge Or Communicate Another Person's Tax File (2).”

In his letter today to Dreyfus, Boyle refers to the situation in October 2022, when Counsel for the Commonwealth advised regarding the allegation that Boyle had “disclosed confidential taxpayer information to my lawyer at the time (Mr. Finlay), that 'no such disclosure occurred'. The Commonwealth agreed that Mr. Finlay deliberately did not open the encrypted files out of an abundance of caution to protect the confidentiality of the information. After the initial shock of this statement to all present, her Honour Judge Kudelka retorted, somewhat ironically, 'Aren't you prosecuting Mr. Boyle in the criminal trial for disclosing confidential tax information?'. All parties, including the court, left the hearing that day with the full expectation that the Commonwealth would abandon these charges, considering they had scuttled their own case as they had argued the opposite of the alleged offense.”

If it had acted with any integrity, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions would have dropped the charges then and there, but 28 months later, they are still vindictively in place.

Boyle faces charges that carry a maximum prison sentence of up to 46 years.

Boyle’s case is a reminder that eternal vigilance is required against government erosion of hard-won democratic rights.

They have taken their toll on this brave and honest person.

He told the journalists at the Walkleys, “Louise and I should have been starting a family, buying a house, settling into the routines of life together.

“Instead we are here with you tonight, both completely and utterly broken.

“Louise can speak for herself, but I personally am broken, physically, mentally, and financially.”

Boyle’s charges must be dropped and proper restitution and compensation paid by the government for the hurt they have caused him and his wife.

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Unions say "Don't risk Dutton" but avoid issues of substance

Written by: Ned K. on 9 February 2025

On Tuesday 4 February, the ACTU held an online webinar for affiliated Unions to outline the ACTU's plan for the fast-approaching federal parliamentary elections. The webinar was run by ACTU Secretary Sally McManus and President Michelle O'Neill with support from State and Territory Secretaries.

Over 700 people joined the webinar from a diverse range of Unions covering workers from many different industries and backgrounds.

Sally McManus said that the coming election was being framed by the mainstream media and Dutton as a referendum on the how the Albanese Government has "performed" regarding the rising cost of living. The ACTU's intention was to frame the election around the theme "Don't Risk Dutton".

For Union members and workers generally, the ACTU campaign would emphasize the risk of workers losing the gains made on the workplace front under the Albanese Government term of office if Dutton and the Liberal Party were in government. Sally McManus specifically mentioned multi-employer bargaining, Same Job-Same Pay, Workers Right to Disconnect, Wage Theft laws, restrictions on use of casual labor and Delegate Rights.

McManus implied that Dutton's agenda on these workplace issues alone would see workers worse off and therefore intensify rising cost of living issues for workers.

In this respect the thrust of the ACTU campaign is similar to the Rights of Work, Worth Fighting For campaign which was a main factor in the defeat of the Howard Government in 2007.

The difference in 2025 is that the existing rising cost of living issues for workers did not subside under the last three years of an Albanese Labor Government. The exception has been significant pay rises ranging from 15% to 25% to thousands of Aged Care and Child Care (Early Childhood Education) mainly women workers and a relatively small number of labor hire workers who are already seeing the benefits of the Same Job, Same Pay laws despite vigorous opposition from the multinational mining companies.

In the webinar, there was no mention about ACTU campaigning on issues such as opposition to AUKUS, Palestinian struggle and surprisingly no mention of the specific issue of affordable housing.

The ACTU plan for their election campaign is a focus on key marginal Seats in each State and Territory and asking Unions to "lock in their membership base " to the theme "Don't Risk Dutton" by focusing on the workplace/industrial issues mentioned above.

The campaign is being launched on 18 February with Unions in each State and Territory conducting leaflet blitzes at busy public places such as train stations. This will be followed by the now familiar door knockings in targeted Seats and phone calling members and holding workplace meetings.

Union members in past elections have shown that they can be an influential force when mobilized on the ground to have conversations with fellow workers and their communities.

Many Union members are from English as Second Language backgrounds and in the western suburbs of Sydney in particular, many are from Middle Eastern backgrounds. Their main issue may be the lack of support by the Albanese Government for Palestinian people which results in them lodging a protest vote against the government. Many other workers may agree with the ACTU about a Dutton led government trying to wind back workplace rights gains made, but they also may lodge a protest vote against the current government which may mean more votes for Liberal candidates or more likely, more votes for Independents or the Greens Party.

At the webinar, there was some awareness of this possibility with the ACTU steering away from any slogan that included "Vote Labor".

How rank and file Union members react to the ACTU proposed campaign remains to be seen, with some key Unions already deciding to withdraw funding of the ALP for the election and deciding to support the Greens.

Whether it is a Labor or Liberal Party forming the next government or minority government, both will continue to support AUKUS and the Australia-US Alliance and resulting US domination of this country. There was no mention of this reality in the ACTU election campaign webinar presented on 4th February.

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Let's Embrace the Gains of the Rojava Revolution! Let's Defend the Women‘s Revolution!

Written by: Women’s Leadership Group, Marxist-Leninist Communist Party/ Turkey & Kurdistan on 2 February 2025

(Above:Jin Jiyan Azadi! Women, Life, Freedom)

The Rojava Revolution is a fire of rebellion and a torch of hope for women in the Middle East, in the midst of the most aggressive, most slavish strongholds of patriarchy in the region based on oppressive, colonialist, fascist regimes and unbridled bourgeois patriarchal states. The Rojava Revolution, which also developed as a women's revolution, is the achievement of all the women of the world.

The Rojava revolution, in which hundreds of women fighters sacrificed their lives with the ideals of national liberation, women's freedom and equality, developed a great people's army against the rapist, slavish, political Islamist fascist Daesh, the invasion attacks of the fascist colonialist Turkish capitalist state and the collaborator gangs it organized and directed.

The revolution raised the women's army and women's self-defence. In Rojava and Northern Syria, it has lived for years under fascist, despotic rule of various male reigns, the last of which was formed by ISIS, and has maintained women's councils, women's institutions, women's justice, co-presidency system with great persistence and will in all areas and administrative structures, including the regions where patriarchal reactionary social traditions are most dominant.

Today, fascist colonialism under Erdoğan has once again mobilized all its power and capacity to destroy the Rojava Revolution and overthrow the popular power. He is giving orders to HTS. It is waging war through a gang of collaborator fascist traitors called SMO. It directly engages in massacre attacks. It is increasing the buildup around Rojava for genocidal occupation. It threatens the Kurdish people and the Rojava revolution with “either surrender or genocide”. Women of all ages from the peoples of Rojava and Northern Syria are responding to this colonialist fascist arrogance by resisting with weapons in hand and forming new defence batta lions.

The Rojava revolution is one of the most important obstacles for Erdogan's fascist chiefdom regime to intensify and spread fascist state terror and massacres in order to achieve the grave silence it aims in Turkey and Bakur Kurdistan, to continue its attacks on the women‘s liberation struggle even more unbridled, to cross out all the legal gains of the women‘s liberation struggle with great arrogance, such as exiting the Istanbul Convention with a single signature, and to unleash male violence on the streets.

The fascist chief, who threatened Rojava and the Kurdistan freedom struggle with “either you will surrender or we will destroy”, declared 2025 as the “Year of the Family” in the same days. One of the most current bases on which he connects these plans to turn women into a birth tool to provide more exploited labour force, a larger army of hungry, miserable, poor, miserable unemployed to force workers into slavish submission, more soldiers for the army of murderers for more aggressive colonial and expansionist regional policies, and to organise a family system that will keep masses of workers and labourers, youth and women under control, is the threat and aggression against the Rojava Revolution.

The Rojava Revolution will not be defeated, no matter what threats the colonialist fascist regime makes. It will once again defeat the denialist, colonialist, occupying, male-dominated, fascist tyranny directed against it.

As KKÖ, we will never lower the flag of KKÖ fighters Sibel Bulut, Ivana Hoffmann, Ayşe Deniz Karacagil, Sevda Çağdaş, who were immortalised while defending the Rojava Revolution and what it brought to the women of Rojava and the whole world, we will defend the Rojava revolution. We will defeat colonialism and its fascist, racist political Islamist collaborators and allies.

We call on all women in Turkey and Bakur Kurdistan and all over the world, who want freedom, who struggle for equality and justice, to raise solidarity with the Rojava Revolution!

Long live our Rojava Revolution!

Long Live the Women's Revolution! Jin Jiyan Azadi!

Rojava Will Never Fall!

January 20, 2025 MLKP / KKÖ Women’s Leadership

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Behind the scenes of the plan to deport Palestinians

Written by: Fouad Baker DFLP on 31 January 2025

(Above: Going home to vorthern Gaza. Source: #Times of Gaza)

Fouad Baker
Palestinian politician and human rights activist
29/01/2025

The Trump plan to deport the Palestinian people from Gaza and the West Bank cannot be viewed in the same way as his rhetoric about purchasing Greenland from Denmark, merging Canada with the United States, or controlling the Panama Canal and the Gulf of Mexico. The plan to deport Palestinians is presented with high seriousness, and preparations for it are taking place behind the scenes to move the residents of Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan.

This plan is based on communications between Donald Trump and his counterparts, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Jordanian King Abdullah, as well as secret communications with other countries such as Albania, Indonesia, and some members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, especially with Saudi Arabia.

Trump Between Two Terms

During Trump's first term, from 2016 to 2021, he altered the equations that Palestinians had established, which emphasized that no regional settlement could occur without resolving the Palestinian issue. Donald Trump undermined this equation when he imposed the "Deal of the Century" in 2020, moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and annexed the Syrian Golan Heights to Israeli sovereignty in 1967. He also signed the Abraham Accords, which are treaties and agreements to normalize relations with Israel, including with Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan, as well as forming a military alliance under the guise of so-called economic peace.

With his new term, since assuming office on January 20, 2025, he has reintroduced the issue of resolving the Palestinian cause, this time with his desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize and end wars in the world. However, this also comes at the expense of the Palestinian people and their inalienable national rights, as outlined in international legal resolutions, including the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the right to self-determination, and the right of return as per Resolution 194.

Secret Diplomatic Moves:

The new U.S. administration, alongside Israeli diplomats, has quietly begun seriously discussing Trump's vision of deporting Palestinians. They are engaging with several Arab capitals to push this plan forward and apply heavy pressure, through the gateway of accepting Palestinians as short-term humanitarian refugees, pending the reconstruction of Gaza. This plan involves a period of receiving Palestinians between six months to a year, with their return to Gaza in 2026 once the reconstruction is complete. The plan subtly includes, though not openly stated, the possibility that Palestinians may not return to their cities and villages, much like in 1948, when their departure was intended to be temporary, but they have not returned despite all international resolutions.

According to diplomatic sources, Israel is communicating with certain countries to accept Palestinians as refugees, specifically with Albania and Indonesia. The discussions are revisiting aspects of the 2020 Deal of the Century, particularly the integration of Palestinians displaced in 1948 into the countries that hosted them, such as Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Israel has also opened dialogues with some members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to resettle 5,000 Palestinian refugees annually over a span of ten years, totaling around 50,000 refugees.

Today, the Trump administration is striving to engage with Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel and to abandon its conditions related to the two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative. According to sources close to decision-makers in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has become more flexible in its approach to the Arab Peace Initiative, under the pretext that it cannot be implemented all at once, but rather gradually, starting with normalization with Israel, to open political dialogues and prospects related to the Palestinian issue.

The Reconstruction Dilemma:

The new Trump administration has returned to its previous tactics from the first term, exerting economic pressure on the Palestinian Authority. It has cut aid and support for American development projects in the West Bank and plans to use the reconstruction of Gaza as leverage against Hamas. The aim is to pressure Hamas not to reclaim authority over Gaza by stalling reconstruction efforts, holding back funds and donations from other countries, and preventing them from being transferred to Gaza. The administration also seeks to control the reconstruction fund, which is currently being organized by some European countries and certain official Arab regimes that oppose Hamas's control over Gaza.

According to technical experts, Gaza will require several years to rebuild, to erase the remnants of Israeli aggression and clear the rubble of destroyed buildings. In this context, the new Trump administration justifies the temporary humanitarian refugee status for Palestinians in Gaza for six months, while being fully aware that reconstruction would take at least eight years if it were to proceed—assuming there are no political obstacles or funding restrictions.

Possible Scenarios:

The scene of Palestinians returning to their homes in Gaza through the Netzarim checkpoint—now destroyed—illustrates the deep connection of the Palestinian people to their land, despite the widespread devastation. This shattered the illusion of absolute victory that Netanyahu spoke of. Hamas, with a tactical move involving the release of the Israeli prisoner Arbel Yehud, achieved a strategic success by securing the return of residents from northern Gaza. It has become increasingly difficult for Israel to resume the war, even if the ceasefire agreement from the past six weeks were to collapse, especially with the unsearched civilians walking through the Netzarim crossing.

Furthermore, the renewal of the war is no longer in the hands of Netanyahu or Smotrich, who oppose the ceasefire agreement. The decision now lies solely with Trump, who seeks to rescue Israel from military defeat and turn it into a political victory by deporting Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. This plan would continue the annexation of Palestinian territories, normalize relations with Arab countries—specifically Saudi Arabia—and undermine the two-state solution. The true deal this time will be American-Saudi-Israeli.

The Missing Palestinian Role:

Trump is attempting to replace the genocide that was inflicted on the Palestinian people with a political genocide. This time, it is not only aimed at the authority in Gaza but also at the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. By besieging the Jenin camp and confronting armed groups in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority seeks to present credentials to the new U.S. administration in an effort to maintain its political position and prevent its collapse.

In the absence of a unified Palestinian national strategy, Donald Trump’s plan remains intact, and it is difficult to counter it. This first and foremost falls on the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, which refrains from implementing the Beijing Declaration, calling for a meeting of the unified Palestinian leadership, and its failure to form a national unity government that includes everyone, thus avoiding collective responsibility in confronting the American-Israeli plans.

This calls for international efforts to confront the looming danger to the Palestinian cause, with the goal of pressuring the Palestinian Authority to implement the Beijing Declaration, form a national unity government that includes competent national figures, hold comprehensive Palestinian elections, rebuild Gaza, and

Conclusion:

The Palestinian people have affirmed to the entire world, through the powerful scene of their return to northern Gaza, their unwavering attachment to their land and their rejection of the forced displacement plan, despite all the destruction and massacres committed against them. No matter how much Israel tries to impose racist and colonial policies against them, the Palestinian people will resist until their last breath. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe states in his book Ethnic Cleansing, "the olive tree has pierced the trees imported by Israel from outside Palestine and planted in Palestinian land to reinforce their narrative that they are the rightful owners of the land." Similarly, the Palestinian people will defy all these plans with their will and rejection of colonial projects and policies of fait accompli. They will invent new forms of resistance, as they have done in previous stages, and they will amaze the world with their diverse strategies.

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For the defeat of the Burmese junta and a free and independent Burma!

Written by: Nick G. on 30 January 2025

(Above: BurmesePLA celebrate their arrival in a liberated township)

Very little coverage is given to events in Burma (Myanmar) by the Australian mainstream media.

However, recent developments show the military regime is increasingly besieged by a coalition of anti-regime armed forces, and has to rely on Chinese interference to maintain itself in power.

The various ethnic rebel forces and the Communist Party of Burma’s People’s Liberation Army are increasingly developing a united front and providing each other with mutual support and training.

The regime is losing large swathes of territory outside the three main cities of the Burmese capital, Naypyidaw, and Rangoon and Mandalay.

Its ability to move its army by land corridors is restricted, and it is relying on airstrikes and long-range artillery bombardment of towns under rebel control. Air-dropped troop reinforcements often fall into the hands of anti-junta forces.

Superpowers and their rivalry over Burma

Both superpowers are keen to direct the outcome of struggles within Burma.

The US imperialists have applied sanctions to the military junta since its takeover, have few direct investments to protect, but are trying to win over the democratic bourgeoisie and landlord forces through an encouragement of a return to a “democracy” within which they can meddle. The 2022 US Burma Unified through Rigorous Military Accountability Act, known as the BURMA Act, mandates sanctions against the junta, and authorises substantial humanitarian aid to support the rival, US-backed National Unity Government (NUG), but not the ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) or the People’s Defence Forces (PDFs).

Chinese interests are more substantial. Among the most important is Kyaukpyu Deep-Sea Port, a crucial part of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which gives China direct access to the Indian Ocean, reducing reliance on the Malacca Strait from which it could be denied access in the event of war with the US.

There are also the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines that run from the Bay of Bengal to China’s Yunnan province, providing Beijing with a shorter and strategically secure energy route, again bypassing the Straits of Malacca. China is financing and constructing key railway and road links to connect Myanmar with Yunnan province.

China has also invested in multiple hydroelectric dams, and built and operated several coal and gas power plants. It has a dominant presence in telecommunications and technology though Huawei and ZTE, and Alibaba and other Chinese platforms have expanded financial technology services in Burma.

Chinese real estate companies are active in real estate projects, particularly in the junta-controlled cities of Yangon and Mandalay. China has developed industrial parks like the Kyaukpyu SEZ to attract Chinese and foreign businesses.

Imperialism, not proletarian internationalism

(Above: Villagers welcome the BPLA)

China claims that it is supporting Burmese sovereignty against threats of foreign (US) interference. A genuinely socialist country should support any state that is standing up to “outside pressure”, but it should not support a state that is oppressing its own people.

In 2017, China supported Aung San Suu Kyi’s military offensive against the Rohingya. When she was overthrown by the junta in 2021, it flirted with support for the various anti-junta ethnic armies and allowed the return to Burma of members of the Burmese Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army.

It has vacillated between maintaining relations with some of the ethnic anti-Junta armies and the regime, according to where it perceives its investments in Burma can be best protected.

For example, last September, fighters of the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, seized control of a key military base from the junta at Chipwe township in Kachin State, close to a Chinese hydro-electric power station and a Chinese rare earth mine, prompting China to pressure insurgent forces along the countries' shared border to agree to halt their offensives against the junta, and closing border crossings through which medicines and food had flowed.

China’s Customs Department said that China imported more than US$1.4 billion worth of rare-earth minerals from Burma in 2023, underscoring the importance of “stability” in regions close to its investments.

On November 6, the head of Burma’s military junta, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, travelled to China, meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Kunming. China signalled that it desires the bare minimum stability to protect its interests and it felt the junta is the horse to back to achieve this. China has said that it will support the junta’s electoral process later this year, a clear indication that it will work to keep the junta in power.

Meanwhile, ethnic armies and the BPLA continue to take territory from the regime. The Kachin and Ta’ang, as well as the Arakan Army in Rakhine, continue to resist China’s pressure.

Hostilities between the junta regime forces and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) have recommenced as of January 9, 2025, following the initiation of a new military operation by the junta in Naungcho township.

The Arakan Army (AA) stated on Monday January 26 that it had seized control of the Moehti hilltop outpost in Bago Region on the previous day - five days after it launched its attack. The military outpost is located in the Arakan Mountains, known as the Rakhine Yoma.

Of passing interest to Australians is the role of Julie Bishop as the United Nations’ Special Envoy on Myanmar. The former Australian Foreign Minister will no doubt pursue US strategic interests in Burma. It should not be overlooked that in March 2017, the government of PM Malcolm Turnbull rejected a Senate vote calling for a United Nations commission of enquiry into the persecution of the Rohingya.

Several weeks later, it reversed its position and co-sponsored a resolution at the UN human rights forum for the UN to send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar. The change was partly fuelled by an upsurge of reported atrocities against the Rohingya on one hand, and Australia’s hypocritical push for membership of the UN Human Rights Council from 2018.

Bishop can be expected to try to do deals to facilitate China’s acceptance of the pro-US National Unity Government should the regime fall to the united resistance front.

For now, we can only support the fight of the combined Burmese resistance for national liberation, independence and democracy, and oppose all outside superpower interference that runs counter to the aspirations of the Burmese peoples.

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Interoperability under US direction and control

Written by: (Contributed) on 29 January 2025

(Above: US commanders are trained in managing those they control. Source: www.army.mil/ )

The US has an obsession with the interoperability of its military equipment and that used by its allies. It is regarded as an important factor linking the Pentagon with far-flung countries in the Indo-Pacific region. Moves by Canberra, therefore, to assess the ability of various countries across the region to challenge China, if the situation arises, carry all the hallmarks of US-led fears about the threat to their traditional hegemonic position and the significance of Australia as a hub for 'US interests'.

It follows similar intelligence assessments of the Pacific region, which found the US would struggle and have serious difficulties challenging China.

Early in the New Year, a major statement issued by Canberra about regional defence and security was timed to coincide with the establishment of the Trump administration; it contained many points of interest. Australia, as a major regional hub for 'US interests', was clearly following directives from the Pentagon; compliance is the name of the game.

It followed concerns arising about 'Australia's strategic outlook', toward the vast region, with an emphasis that 'efforts should begin immediately behind the scenes to extend the solidarity proposal to a range of nations'. (1) The whole exercise would appear an additional element and component of the already operational US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS).

Central importance in the statement was placed upon Australia providing assistance 'in the form of diplomatic, economic, technical, intelligence and material support and – subject to there being in place a military alliance between nations – could also involve defence assistance'. (2) A long list of regional countries was then provided as being regarded of interest, stretching from the Maldives in the east, to Taiwan in the north, and the Pacific Islands Forum in the west, with Australia linked to New Zealand in the south, both members of the elite Five Eyes intelligence-sharing organisation. (3)

The timing of the statement remains a matter of curiosity; the horse would already appear to have bolted. Last year, for example, an official military statement concerning Australia's regional role included reference to already existing 'co-operation agreements recently signed with India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea'. (4) The same statement also drew attention to 'under existing alliances with Singapore and the US, training ranges and defence bases are being expanded and upgraded in Queensland and the Northern Territory'. (5)

The statement, however, stressed that Australia had no intention of attempting to establish an 'anti-China coalition', but to establish communiques with individual countries in order to 'make Beijing's calculations vastly more complicated'. (6) Beijing, when assessing its own regional position, will be faced with having to study individual countries and the wording of diplomatic agreements.

The moves follow decisions taken by the US over a decade ago to improve their regional intelligence, following the rise of China as a competitor. Early in the last decade the US military expanded their Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) to include as many as 1,600 new intelligence-gatherers working in the convergence of military and intelligence agencies. (7) Emphasis was placed upon intelligence assessments 'focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units'. (8)

Inter-operability would appear an important factor when assessing the expansion of the DIA; the US have made greater use of allies for basing their agents in sensitive areas.

The developments have coincided with an official announcement that the ADF has already laid the basis for military personnel from other Five Eyes countries to join Australian counterparts as serving military officials, it would appear interoperability is a fact already in working practice. (9)

The development would appear reciprocal: more than a hundred Australian military personnel, for example, have also graduated from US nuclear submarine schools and an announcement that the USS Hawaii (SSN 776) arrived in Perth, West Australia, with an Australian officer at the helm, leaves little to the imagination. (10) Future US strategy will include provision of military equipment for forthcoming hostilities, military personnel from allies will, however, be in the firing line following Pentagon directives.

The moves follow revelations that the US was no longer the dominant power in the Pacific;
a commission, established by US Congress, issued its findings several years ago. (11) Recommendations from the final US government report also included the US 'further relying on traditional allies, including Japan and Australia … and the … US military superiority is no longer assured and the implications for American interests and American security are severe'. (12) Fears have now arisen that closer diplomatic relations between China with its allies, Russia, North Korea and Iran, have contributed toward an increasingly serious challenge to US hegemonic positions across the wider Indo-Pacific region. (13)

These developments, however, have been given minimal publicity and have been conducted through stealth; they have, nevertheless, far-reaching implications for Australia, which has been placed in a pivotal regional position for defending 'US interests' in the wider region. Australia has been drawn even closer to US diplomatic positions, with all the hallmarks of real-war scenarios becoming increasingly visible and looming on the horizon:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Regional security pact in our hands, The Weekend Australian, 11-12 January 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Alliances enhance domestic training, Land Forces Supplement, Australian, 11 September 2024.
5. Ibid.
6. Weekend Australian, op.cit., 11-12 January 2025.
7. Pentagon plays the spy game, Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012.
8. Ibid.
9. ADF to welcome Five Eyes recruits, Australian, 30 December 2024.
10. Bipartisan support in US helping fuel AUKUS impetus, Australian, 10 January 2025.
11. Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
12. Ibid.
13. See: Afghan war exist 'was right thing to do', Australian, 15 January 2025.

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Adelaide Survival Day: with the masses and against the masses.

Written by: Nick G. on 28 January 2025

The Adelaide Survival Day march was a resounding success.

This was despite an attempt by SA Labor Premier to dismiss discussion of the appropriateness of January 26 as “Australia Day” as “becoming ‘tired’, and that Australians should have a chance ‘to reflect on how lucky we are to live here’”.

Prominent Survival Day organsier Natasha Wanganeen said on Facebook that the Premier “has now targeted our event. He didn't have to talk on survival day, he gave the trolls a target & its us. Putrid behaviour from a so called leader.”

Several thousand people rallied to commemorate Survival Day and marched through the city.

In contrast, a tiny group of Nazis marched to the War Memorial on North Terrace, chanting “Australia for the white man!” Between thirty to forty of the fascists desecrated the steps of the Memorial which includes commemoration of Australians who died during the War Against Fascism.

Their organisation, the National Socialist Network, only has a handful of members in SA. To try and disguise this, Nazis were flown in from other states. Perhaps the Australian Federal Police might be interested in who the group is funded by, including US and European fascist organisations.

Police told the group to disperse and then arrested 16, including notorious Victorian Nazi Thomas Sewell.

The arrested included a 16-year old Melbourne boy who has been bailed to appear at the Adelaide Youth Court on March 21.

Of the other 15, only one was from SA, 3 were from NSW, 4 were from Victoria, 3 were from WA, with one each from Tasmania and Queensland. A further two from interstate were yet to provide addresses.

Eight of those arrested were charged with fail to cease loitering, and seven with possession of an article of disguise. Two were charged with possession of Nazi symbols.

The loitering charge carries a maximum penalty of $1 250 or imprisonment for 3 months; the disguise charge a maximum of $2 500 or imprisonment for 6 months; and the Nazi symbols charge a maximum of $20,000 or imprisonment for 12 months.

Of these three charges, only one is overtly political and directed at Nazis. The other two reflect the inadequacies of bourgeois law in protecting the community against fascists. They are civil charges under the Summary Offences Act. Loitering is an excuse for punishing the poor and marginalised; disguise is in a section dealing with house-breaking. Both can be applied against progressive political action.

It was a marked contrast: a handful of racists completely divorced from popular support, and thousands of people determined to oppose racism and the ideology that excuses and supports colonial aggression and genocide.

In the final analysis, the people must rely on their own strength to keep Nazis off the streets.

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Melbourne rallies around Invasion Day solidarity

Written by: Bill F. on 27 January 2025

A militant rally in the heart of Melbourne brought together a huge crowd of First Peoples and their allies in the on-going struggle against imperialist domination with all its colonial laws and other relics, and its racist oppression.

It was led and organised by the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) with the theme “End colonialism – Smash imperialism”.

While the media conceded 25,000 in attendance, a more realistic estimate would be at least 45,000 and predominately young people. Many brought their own placards and banners, carried the Aboriginal Flag and frequently chanted, “Always was, always will be – Aboriginal Land!” and “No pride in Genocide!”

Very prominent at throughout the crowd were the supporters of the Palestinian people, with their Palestinian flags and proudly wearing the Keffiyeh scarf. The usual Sunday rally in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle was merged with the annual Invasion Day rally, with the strong support of each.

This was reflected in the speeches outside Parliament House where both Indigenous speakers and Palestinian speakers recognised the commonality of their situation – dispossession and land theft, genocide, racism, on-going oppression and discrimination, attacks on children and indiscriminate jailing of the youth.

Also recognised and given great respect was the vast history of heroic struggles against this oppression and the sacrifices made by First Peoples and Palestinians in defence of their land, their culture and their people.

First peoples’ speakers strongly promoted unity among their people in the growing campaign against deaths in custody. They also objected to “Australia Day” celebrations being held on January 26 as this was the day the British invaders arrived and proclaimed the land as a British territory. For First Peoples, this is a day of sorrow.

With the distraction of the ‘Voice to Parliament’ referendum now buried; speakers called for more focus on the long-standing demand for Treaty. Even though there has been some progress with consultation about Treaty at the State level and here in Victoria, no treaty under capitalism will overturn private property ownership rights or empower First Peoples to control their own communities. Only socialism can guarantee viable land rights and respect for traditional customs.

As the rally marched from Parliament House through the city to Flinders St station, it was joined by many along the way, including even some tourists. Others waved or clapped when they realised the reason for the huge crowd.

Not waving or clapping were the hundreds of police (on overtime rates?) on duty, called out by the right-wing media in case of “violence” or “anti-semitic behaviour”. Media and State Labor government claims that such rallies were disrupting normal Sunday business were exposed as beat-up crap by the numbers of people in the take-away shops and cafes, and by rally participants dropping in to buy a cold drink on a hot day.

At Flinders St the rally was met by another crowd of supporters, some elderly but keen to welcome and show their solidarity. The efforts of all on the day were greatly appreciated and the speakers at Parliament House and at Flinders St paid tribute to the fine organisation and spirit of the day.

If one thing stood out, it was the powerful speech of Indigenous veteran Gary Foley who pointed to the future and the task ahead – “to educate, educate family, friends, neighbours, workmates – the history, the resistance, the stolen children, the sorry business …” – an inspiring call for engaging and winning even wider support.

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Sydney Invasion Day march against genocide

Written by: (Contributed) on 27 January 2025

Voices quiet and roaring, young and old, female and male, marked the January 26 Invasion Day speeches in Sydney.

The younger generations are rising and organising They began threads echoed by others, that struggle must be every day of the year, not just one, that genocide continues. They spoke of intergenerational trauma, but say, ‘We’re still here!’

One young woman’s tiny daughter, spoke in language to the crowd. Unlike her mother, English is her second language. That cultural rebirth, that underpinning strength, was also a thread.

Wangan and Jagalingou have been fighting the Adani mine for a decade. Their representative, Adrian Burragubba, spoke of his and other First Peoples arising ‘from our rivers, from our water’.

‘Don’t worry about Dutton,’ he said. ‘He’s a nobody. He’s not a patriot.’ The real patriots are those who’ve fought for their lands since British invaders came ashore.

Corporations came under attack as inheritors and beneficiaries of invasion.

Dunghutti man Paul Silva grew up in the struggle for justice, after his uncle David Dungay Jr, was crushed and suffocated to death at Long Bay Jail Hospital.

Paul Silva spoke of ‘fallen heroes.’

‘People said it happened 237 years ago. But it happened yesterday.’

‘We are still exposed, by this government, by this system. We are under attack.’

‘Whatever happens, we’ll still rise up. It’s what we do.’

!0,000 plus people marched in Sydney. Though it was smaller than last year, Yabun festival near Redfern, where the march finished, was booming with people and cultural strength.

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Survival Day demands decolonisation

Written by: (Contributed) on 26 January 2025

(Above: Survival Day march, Brisbane)

Today on the 26th January 2025, in Butchulla country as well as across all of Australia, Survival day celebrations and ceremonies were held by Indigenous Australians and their allies.

The particular one I attended had a sunrise memorial service paying tribute to the survival of the First Peoples against Colonialism and continued occupation.

There were reflections on previous struggles like the Waterloo Creek Massacre and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

There was also music and dance richly steeped in culture and tradition.

The ceremony was not only a solemn reflection on the past suffering and resistance to colonialism by the Indigenous, but an energetic show of resistance to the ongoing settler-colonial oppression and subjugation of Indigenous Australians.

As the genocidal nationalism of Australia day, its date and the settler-colonial, genocidal nature of Australia are entered into more and more people’s consciousness, the struggle for First Peoples self-determination and resistance against settler-colonialism will grow and is growing.

At a time when the settler-colonial occupation and Genocide of the Palestinians has become more mechanised and devastating and is also rising in the people’s consciousness, the link can clearly be drawn and seen between Palestinian self-determination and Indigenous Australian Self-Determination.

Australia can only be truly independent and on the road to socialism when Australian settler-colonialism against its Indigenous population is smashed.

Without decolonisation Australia can never be Socialist.

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First Peoples will never give up, nor will their allies

Written by: Louisa L. on 25 January 2025

2025 marks 25 years since a secretly developed Business Council of Australia (BCA) agenda was put into action. Noel Pearson – who rightly saw corporations as key drivers of Australia, but wrongly saw them as allies for First Peoples – was its spokesperson.

Beyond capitalism’s state apparatus for suppression (its jails, police, military, courts) and deception (its parliaments, media, cultural and education systems) the BCA embodied ruling class organisation.

Why was it jolted into action?

On January 26, 1988 the magnificent unity, organisation and power of First Peoples, built in 200 years of struggle across this continent and its islands, told those who had systematically attempted genocide three simple words, “We have survived.” You have not destroyed us. Whatever you do, we will rise again.

Promises and lies

The unstated BCA agenda aimed to do three things to enable capitalism’s continued exploitation of First Peoples’ precious lands – divide and conquer them; crush their powerful resistance; and create Aboriginal collaborators.

Constitutional recognition was one weapon. Yolngu leader and NT parliamentarian Yingiya Mark Guyula rightly dismissed Australia’s constitution as “just a piece of paper”. Constitutional change had been raised by First Peoples long before, but was swept aside by the Treaty movement, with its potential for deeper and more fundamental change. The BCA promised its allies immediate change with other gains flowing on.

Corporations demanding tougher tactics on every front were represented by PM John Howard. After his destruction of ATSIC, his term ended with the old brutality and land grabs of the NT Intervention, disguised as “saving the children”. Key BCA Aboriginal supporters helped divide opposition at its inception. Its child victims are still criminalised.

Jump forward to 2023. No matter how hard-working, sincere and honest most supporters were, the battle over constitutional change, was initiated and overwhelmingly organised and actioned by BCA corporations and operatives. By giving decision-making power to descendants of settlers, instead of First Peoples themselves, and by a Yes/No mechanism, the referendum itself was divisive. Whether it passed or failed, it did the job. Both before and after the vote, corporate profits boomed.

Meanwhile, other landgrabs escalated, until today. In NSW BCA member Westpac trained Local Aboriginal Lands Councils to claim land to sell or develop often excluding Traditional Custodians.

Truth telling

Fascism is rising worldwide. Australia will not be spared. First Peoples already feel its genocidal fire. 10-year-olds in jail? Of course, because the young are the most dangerous rebels. Their spirits must be crushed.

Resistance is inevitable. Witness Lidia Thorpe’s thunderous truth telling, “You are not my king!” Australia is still managed through a system of colonial relics, including in the divided former colonies renamed as states.

Parliamentary Labor ‘leaders’ are increasingly discredited puppets of US imperialism, while Dutton still leads the highly organised, resurgent far right.

Real rule is underpinned by US imperialist control of the commanding heights of our economy, by AUKUS, multiplying US military bases, deceit and more.

Imperialism, and all those who deliberately implement its policies, are the enemy.

Everyone else is a potential ally to be won over.

Relying on legalities or what’s ‘reasonable’ in the face of brutality and unquenchable, systemic theft, violence and suppression, is like snow in a furnace. We can’t succeed unless we unite the vast majority of the inhabitants of these lands. Unless we fight!

The working class is overwhelmingly the biggest class and most important ally. Without it nothing is made, transported or sold. Our schools, hospitals and other services cease. Workers have been systematically dis-organised, and demoralised. We must reverse that.

But we rise

Ours is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party. We stand openly for the overthrow of imperialism, for the right of First Peoples to secede if they choose, for reparations, for culture, for land.

Reflect a moment on ruling class lies about First Peoples and Palestinians. Imagine then, the enormity of the venomous propaganda, once masses of everyday people defeated capitalism and imperialism and created socialism.

Another simple three-word slogan, ‘Peace, bread, land’ forged unity to create the first socialist state.

Tens of millions of their peoples died fighting imperialism, before and after victory, for over 30 years in the Soviet Union, and before the over 20 years of socialism in China. Each became lone beacons to the world. But surrounded by older, richer, better-armed capitalism, with its poisonous ideas regenerating and settling in a few “leaders” who utterly betrayed their people. Familiar?

Primitive, literally ‘the first’, communism – communism of first peoples everywhere – is rich in lessons about living collectively. How much more dignity and good health ‘savages’ (literally, people “of the forest”) had than the criminalised oppressed of Britain or their guards dumped here 237 years ago. No wonder, in what’s now called Australia, First Peoples fought an armed struggle so bravely and so effectively it held back settlement for 140 years. ‘How They Fought’ by Ray Kerkhove deserves to be read by all of us.

Right now, here, most First Peoples’ lives are also rich in lessons about how to survive on almost nothing. Many others face that same situation. Allies too.

Worldwide, armed anti-imperialist struggle is rising among oppressed peoples. France is evicted from Africa after 400 years! We are not alone. Others are winning. Others have done it before. So can we.

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Canberra airport guards fight for job security while overseas owned security contractors compete in "race to the bottom" at privatized airports

Written by: Ned K. on 25 January 2025

(Source: www.moneycontrol.com)

The Canberra Times reported in their 24 January newspaper that Canberra Airport aviation security guards were fighting for job security due to a change in airport security contract services from Certis Group to MSS.

The new aviation security contract at Canberra Airport starts on 1 March 2025. The new contractor MSS plans to pick and choose who it employs from 1 March and also plans to employ security guards on less pay and conditions than the current guards won during their employment with Certis Group. The Canberra Times interviewed one guard with more than 10 years' service at the airport. She said that many of the over 100 Certis employed guards had not been offered work by the in-coming contractor MSS.

The Canberra Times also reported that the guards' union representative, United Workers Union Director Lyndal Ryan said that MSS's track record should have excluded them from the contract bidding process and that "ultimately, it's on Canberra Airport decision-makers to properly scrutinize the contractors they allow to operate in high-security risk areas of the airport, and MSS does not pass the pub test in regards to this".

Just who are the "Canberra Airport decision-makers" and who are Certis and MSS?

The Canberra Airport, like all major city airports, is a privatized airport. The airport was built on land leased to the federal government Department of Defence in 1926. In 1930 it was handed over to the federal government's Civil Aviation Control. Between 1926 and the 1990s there were several upgrades and extensions to the airport terminal and runways.

In 1998 the airport was privatized on a 99-year lease to a company called Capital Airport Group whose front man was a local "rags to riches" Canberra businessman Terry Snow who died in August 2024. The privatization of the Canberra Airport was one of many privatized in the same decade under the Howard Government's Airport Act 1996 which enabled 49% ownership of any airport privatized under the Act.

The Hawke- Keating governments facilitated the privatization of airports in 1988 when they set up a federal government business enterprise, Australian Pacific Airports Corporation (APAL).

Government business enterprises in aviation, like in other industries, remove ownership and direct control by the relevant government departments and their Ministers.

In the case of the Canberra Airport, the privatized owner, who appeared to be the local businessman Terry Snow is actually the Capital Airport Group whose overseas interests are Chinese aviation corporate interests based in Beijing, China!

The outgoing and incoming security services contractors at the Canberra Airport are also both overseas owned corporations.

Certis Group is a Singapore based security company.

MSS is wholly owned by Indian based SIS Limited, one of the Asia-Pacific's largest security personnel contractors.

Guards Taking Action

Canberra Airport security guards are taking various actions to fight for their jobs with a focus on federal politicians returning from holidays in the first week of February.

This situation of a group of workers in Australia employed by contractors in insecure jobs owned by multinational corporations whose client in turn is a government privatized entity is all too familiar.

The Canberra Airport guards will fight to defend their jobs, pay and conditions and are already receiving strong support in Canberra and beyond.

In a federal election year, their struggle is a microcosm of the general struggle for Australian independence and socialism. They hear the politicians talk about the "national interest". In the case of airports and airport security, is it in the "national interest" to have airports and airport security owned and operated by multinational corporations whose reason for existence is maximize profits?

To support Canberra Airport security guards, go to www.uwu.org.au/noplceformss

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The cars that ate suburban streets

Written by: Ned K. on 22 January 2025

(Above; SA Govt.proposal for solving urban infill car parling crisis. www.plan.sa.gov.au)

In the 1970s, there was an Australian made film "The Cars That Ate Paris", directed by Peter Weir, which was about the prime place of cars in lives of Australians in the fictional small town of Paris, and the unexpected impact of cars on communities.

Now in 2025, Australians living in capital cities in particular are battling the consequences of cars clogging urban streets.

Nowhere is this more of a problem for people than in Adelaide which used to be called the Detroit of Australia because of the primacy of cars as a means of necessary transport. The primacy of cars as a means of transport in Adelaide intensified in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the political influence of oil companies like Shell and BP, and US car multinationals General Motors and Chrysler and the car component industry led to the state government dismantling the city and suburban public transport network.

Locally made General Motors Holdens and Chrysler Valiants filled the expanding suburbs and every quarter acre housing block and even semi-detached housing trust dwellings had ample room for a garage to park the car, with room for another one in the driveway.

There was little need to park the car in the street, leaving room for visitors to park their car in the street right outside the house of the friends they were visiting.

The size of the "average" Holden and Valiant meant that even when cars were parked in suburban streets, there was plenty of room for a reasonable traffic flow of passing cars.

Fast forward to 2025 and the situation has completely changed.

The local car industry was shut down by the car multinationals who then made profits from Australians by marketing imported larger and larger cars (commonly called SUVs) to replace the previously locally made ones.

At the same time, governments and property developers saw an opportunity to build at least two new dwellings on properties in the suburbs that previously had one house. These new dwellings each have an attached garage but often the garage was too small for the larger imported SUV type cars!

An additional problem in 2025 is that many of the new smaller dwellings have young adult children of the parents still living at home and they all have their own car. Inevitably this has led to many suburban streets being clogged with parked cars and in some cases no room for all the residents of a street being able to find a car park in front of their actual home!

To add insult to injury the ABC radio reported that the car multinationals have a vested interest in marketing large cars imported into Australia to offset the trend in other "developed" capitalist countries for people's preference for smaller EV and hybrid cars.

The South Australian government has just announced a proposal to legislate for property developers to be required to build new dwellings with larger garages to accommodate the large cars that the multinational car companies dump on the Australian market.

The Government has gone one step further and proposes that every new dwelling must have a minimum number of car spaces on a new dwelling based on the number of bedrooms in the place!

The developers, represented by the Property Council have said this will increase the cost of housing which is not the response the government wanted at a time when people, especially young people, have the choice of renting forever or buying a new home that will cost at least eight times their household income.

The government solution is a band aid solution at best as it does nothing to alleviate the current problem in established suburbs where parked cars make it impossible for a reasonable flow of traffic along the street without risk of a head on collision with a car coming in the opposite direction with a stressed - out driver in a hurry to get to or from work or pick up the children at the local school.

Since the multinationals successfully pressured the SA government to close down the suburban tram network and also reduce the train network, no government in SA and perhaps in other cities as well has planned a public transport system adequate for the ever-expanding suburbs.

More recently governments of Labor and Liberal have said that "urban infill" is the way to solve the housing crisis and the developers chime in by demanding that high rise apartment living at various hubs across the city suburban limits is the way to go. The problem with high rise apartment living for people is that there is an inadequate public transport system in most of the suburbs so the people who have no choice but to live in a high-rise apartment will need a car for necessary travel and of course somewhere to park the car when they are at home!

Multinational car companies are continuing to flood the Australian market with large cars with competition between the multinationals for market share as fierce as ever.

The issue of cars clogging suburban streets is linked to the problems of affordable housing, inadequate public transport and poor social infrastructure in urban communities. These are all problems that have existed under capitalism in Australia in one form or another for generations.

The band aid solution proposed by the current SA government is an example of the impotence of parties of capitalism in solving basic problems of living day to day that people face. The Premier Malinauskas may have the best intentions in solving these problems, but he will not succeed due to the nature of the capitalist system that he attempts to administer.

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Trump’s inauguration – continuing US imperialism’s decline

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 20 January 2025

The US Presidential election was won by the Republican Party's Donald Trump. Trump's campaign was financially supported by key sections of the US ruling class including finance capital, arms industry, some sections of the fossil fuel and gas monopolies, and information technology.

Trump paraded as the champion of the working class battling rising cost of living, unemployment and homelessness. His appeal to some sections of the working class and small business was that he blamed the “establishment”, represented by the Democrats, and scapegoated "illegal" migrants and China as the cause of their problems. Unlike the Democrats, Trump trumpeted that he would round up "illegals" and send them back over the US - Mexican border and place a 60% tariff on imported Chinese goods. This would "Make America Great Again".

The US working people do not see the Democrats as providing an alternative to the increasingly difficult economic and social security issues they are experiencing.

The very phrase "Make America Great Again" is in its own words recognition that the US empire has been in decline for decades and the election policies of Trump reflect the desperation of a declining imperialist power.

Trump is supporting or progressing the movement towards fascism rhetorically in his support for authoritarian policies and the people he is putting in positions of power.

This is a logical progression for the ruling class of an imperialist power in decline. There is growing realisation that they can no longer operate under the guise of bourgeois democracy and will increase attacks on the working class and those who represent them.

What does the election of Trump as US President mean for the working people and First Nations people of Australia?

US imperialism's rivalry with the rising economically more powerful Chinese social imperialism will intensify, especially on the military front. The new Trump administration will continue the US - Australia Alliance to its advantage and demand that the Australian Government (whether Labor or Liberal) continues to lock Australia in as its launching pad and Deputy Sherriff in the Asia Pacific region.

On the economic front, US corporations will continue to dominate the Australian key economic sectors, including defence, mining of rare earth minerals and finance. In the event that Trump imposes significant tariffs on some goods imported from China into the USA, that decision will be made without any consideration by the Trump administration for any negative impact on the Australian economy and more importantly on the working people of Australia.
In the likely event of intensified rivalry between the US and China under the new Trump administration, the US - Australia Alliance and the increasing presence of US land and naval bases in Australia will make Australia a military target.

In essence the presence of Trump as President of the US will intensify the rivalry between a declining imperialist power and a rising social-imperialist power.

The new situation will inevitably see a rising tide of struggle by First Nations people and working people. It will provide significant opportunities for advancing struggle for an independent, socialist Australia and end white Australia's long history of subservience to colonial and imperialist powers.

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Woolworths and Coles face working-class backlash

Written by: Leo A. on 16 January 2025

(Source: Wilderness Society | Protecting nature and wildlife)

Within the past two months, the retail companies Woolworths and Coles have both faced serious backlash in response to decisions made by the ruling boards of both entities. Late November and early December saw more than 1500 Woolworths warehouse staff in both New South Wales and Victoria go on strike, seeking better pay and safety conditions. Unsurprisingly, government-imposed administrators of the NSW CFMEU told corporations they “wouldn’t defend any worker sacked for striking”.

At around the same time, the Wilderness Society – an environmentalist organisation with a nationwide presence – performed a campaign of activism against Woolworths’ and Coles’ policies contributing to deforestation. Australians shouldn’t have to worry that their groceries are coming from the destruction of our forests and bushland, but every day these supermarkets are exposed to deforestation, from some of the beef mince they sell being raised on recently-cleared land, to some of the timber pallets the products arrive on.

Such action is critically important in the context of the ongoing environmental crisis across Australia. As a reminder of the severity of the crisis, as recently as late November it was revealed that a whopping 35 known species of freshwater fish that aren’t yet on Australia’s threatened species list should be. And we can’t pretend that our ecosystems exist in isolation from one another.

Who is really in charge?

Of course, Woolworths, Coles, and similar companies couldn’t care less about that. In fact, we should consider the fact that, despite being headquartered in New South Wales and Victoria, these companies aren’t as “Australian” as most of their customers believe. The three largest shareholders of both are Blackrock Group, State Street Corporation, and Vanguard Group – American banks, all headquartered an easy drive from each other in the Northeastern

This is technically public knowledge, although like much “public knowledge” it’s carefully buried in reports that the average person isn’t going to hear of. While it’s far less subtle than, say, the construction or expansion of an American military base, it is still an element of the ongoing contradiction between the greed of American power and the struggle for Australian sovereignty.

Woolworths and Coles are two of the most hated corporations in Australia, because they squeeze farmers and whole primary industries for the lowest wholesale prices, while hitting customers with higher prices and pretended price cuts. The Wilderness Society could tap this opposition in a united front targeting them.

It must be noted that some opposition to Woolworths and Coles has come from the right, who are exploiting the ongoing contradiction for their own gain. We must remind ourselves that, as Mao explained in 1937, the existence of a common opponent does not erase the fundamental contradiction between revolutionary and reactionary forces. If we keep this in mind, we can exercise a healthy level of caution when assessing the groups claiming support for the working-class movement against these companies.

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Civil defence a threat to civil liberties? Well, in a word, Yes.

Written by: (Contributed) on 16 January 2025

(Above; ADF Reserves can be called on to control civil unrest. Source: https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/ )

Moves to boost the military reservist forces in Australia carry all the hallmarks of an expansion of Cold War civil defence. The initiative carries considerable baggage from the previous Cold War; there are few safeguards to prevent the massive erosion of civil liberties.

Elsewhere, within the elite Five Eyes intelligence-sharing organisation, examples of previous abuses of power have been well recorded; in Australia, itself, the legacy of the Salisbury Affair in South Australia should stand as a warning to all, particularly at the present time.

Early in the New Year the Australian Government issued a carefully worded report about how Defence had adopted a new approach to recruiting and training Defence Force reservists, drastically reducing the usual two-year program to a mere six weeks. (1) Fears have arisen in Defence circles in recent years about failure to recruit and train sufficient numbers of military personnel to maintain defence and security projections into the next decade and further. (2)

Total ADF numbers for military personnel last year were 59,194; projections have suggested Australia requires about 69,000 by the early 2030s, and 80,000 for 2040. (3)

The recent announcement about reservists is contained in a 78-page report and due to be operational and phased in during February, 2025. (4) It leaves little to the imagination. A statement that 'the ability of the reserves to provide an extension base for the ADF in times of crisis', reveals personnel will receive basic training and then be kept on lists for if and when required, in times of military hostilities. (5) The intention, furthermore, is designed to re-evaluate 'the reserves workforce to better integrate it with the ADF, including a larger operational workforce … and … would focus on delivering short-notice capacity'. (6)

The model already adopted by the ADF has followed a training program specifically for Ukrainian soldiers organised by the UK; Operation Kudo included recruits being provided with basic training for five weeks which included basic war-fighting skills, first aid, explosive hazard awareness and marksmanship. (7) Intelligence-gathering was not officially noted although implicit in all military training, through the chain of command.
The trainers of such military provision do not seek professional and highly disciplined graduates as a back-up to regular forces; they are merely legitimising para-military type organisations which will then return to civilian roles awaiting their call-up. In the meantime they reside in the grey area of the eyes and ears of those wielding class and state power.

The official government statement issued by Canberra also drew attention to military and industrial partnerships, whereby the 'civilian workforce and infrastructure with Defence at critical points in time … and the … sharing of the workforce between the private sector and Defence', was to become a standard working practice during peacetime and on operations. (8) Trade-unions should perhaps take note: the problem of security vetting, in some industries undertaking defence contracts, is already an issue raising serious concerns.

The planned model, however, is hardly new; it amounts to a re-vamping of previous civil defence-type provision from within the Five Eyes during the previous Cold War.

Civil defence under the Tatcher regime

During the early 1980s, for example, the Thatcher government in Britain established the Home Service Force (HSF), a broad-based military reserve for former trained personnel and Defence Police Officers and others who had received basic training deemed useful elsewhere. Recruits were provided with one training course, designed to provide basic awareness, then formally attached to official military facilities with the specific role to 'guard key points and installations likely to be the target of enemy special forces and saboteurs, so releasing other units for mobile defence roles'. (9) The emphasis was upon identifying 'fifth columns'.

Concerns had arisen in Whitehall about the ability of those assessed as adversaries being able to undermine defence and security provision in times of crisis. Main roads connecting important cities were a foremost concern. Railways and power stations were another.

The main road between Manchester and Sheffield, for example, was one with which the HSF appear to have developed a major preoccupation; they were two major industrial areas. Another was the link with Huddersfield in West Yorkshire and the High Peak area in Derbyshire across the Pinnines; the road was also used for access to a sensitive communications facility at Holme Moss and a large reservoir nearby. It was also not particularly difficult for HSF personnel to be mobilised across the vicinity; they had bases in Huddersfield and Stockport, near Manchester. Both road links, furthermore, converged upon the small town of Glossop in the High Peak area of Derbyshire. Users of the roads in question may have noticed cars frequently monitoring their movements, usually driven by older, middle-aged men wearing car-coats, with a tendency to keep a relatively low profile to not attract undue attention.

During the 1984/85 Miner's Strike, however, the roads were used by striking miners and their flying pickets; it was not coincidental, therefore, to note that a helicopter would frequently be stationed above Holme Moss, early in the morning and late at night, seemingly monitoring transport movements.

Members of local Miner's Support Groups were also approached during the period by suspicious characters, who were not local people; one was informed he was on a government list for detention, if a State of Emergency was declared. (10)

The HSF was subsequently disbanded in the early 1990s with the demise of Thatcher.

Elsewhere in the Five Eyes, in Canada, between 1971-74, similar local level surveillance of those associated with protest movements was conducted by the state. The national program of 'counter-measures' was conducted under Operations Oddball and Check-Mate. (11) A later official inquiry noted political developments of the time were different to the 'Communist threat' of previous times and linked increasingly to the growth of the far-left and agitation focussed upon outside of workplace issues; extensive profiling took place. (12)

In Britain, a similar inquiry established large-scale surveillance of about a thousand different political groups and organisations over a forty-year period; the Anti-Apartheid Movement was closely monitored. (13) No doubt the notorious South African secret police were kept well informed; links between the British and South African intelligence services have been well recorded elsewhere. (14)

During the same period the British military were also training officers about internal subversion, for example, at Camberley Staff College. Their focus and main preoccupation and obsession were listed as: trade-unionists, Whitehall 'moles', urban guerillas and Scottish nationalists. (15) It revealed a military mindset based, not in perceptive intelligence assessments, but narrow Cold War paranoia.

Enhanced ADF Reserves training

Surveillance techniques inside the Five Eyes and elsewhere tended to closely follow US-led training and defence and security provision. Declassified documents have revealed whole societies were routinely spied on and then profiled into black, grey or white lists in order to identify potential adversaries. (16) The US had an obsession with 'subversives'; anyone who was assessed as not being supportive. People pursuing what were deemed 'alternative' life-styles were especially liable to be targeted.

It is, therefore, interesting to note the new Australian recruitment and training policy for reservists has followed what has been officially recorded as 'enhanced training opportunities … for the ADF and its regional allies and partners'. (17) Some of the countries involved, notably South Korea, for example, have a strong commitment to civil defence provision which has often mobilised alongside joint US- ROK military exercises. South Korea has draconian defence and security provision, enforced through legions of spies and informants.

Whether the ADF uses recently expanded and upgraded facilities in Queensland and the Northern Territories for the new training of reservists has yet to be established. The new Greenvale Training Area (GUTA) in northern Queensland near Townsville, for example, is already used for exercises linked to the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy. (18)

The Australian new recruitment and short-term training of reservists, it should be noted, would appear to be linked to shadowy civil defence-type operations designed for local level surveillance rather than traditional military reservist operations.

SA: Lessons of the Salisbury Affair

Australians should be aware of the dangers, particularly following the Salisbury Affair in South Australia, decades ago during the darker days of the previous Cold War. SA, at that time, had one of the most militant workforces in Australia which promoted progressive legislation and regulations.

Those wielding class and state power in South Australia, at the time, were not content, however, to merely spy on workers and trade-unions through usual workplace espionage techniques. They also used their flunkies and others on their pay-rolls inside their patronage systems to spy on all those deemed responsible for associating with them, collectively; families, friends, colleagues residing at the same post-codes and so on.

Mistaken identities and so-called 'intelligence' based little other than hearsay was commonplace.

The business classes and their Liberal Party supporters had also been responsible for recruiting Harold Salisbury, former British Chief Constable of York, and the North and East Riding of Yorkshire. He was appointed as Police Commissioner for South Australia in 1972.

The whole episode was, and remains, a classic example of the uses and abuses of power:

A subsequent official inquiry noted the following response, when information was requested from Salisbury about those who had been spied upon and their files:

Obviously anyone who shows any affinity towards Communism – that's common-sense - the IRA, the PLO, and I would say anyone who's decrying marriage, family life, trying to break that up, pushing drugs, homosexuality, indiscipline in schools, weak penalties for anti-social crimes, pushing that sort of thing. Oh, a whole gamut of things like that could be pecking away at the foundations of our society and weakening it.

Interviewer – And do you regard those people as subversives?

Salisbury – Well, in a word, yes. (19)

Needless to say, Salisbury was eventually sacked by the State Premier, Don Dunstan; a huge number of the files for which he was responsible were subsequently destroyed due to their compilation being conducted outside usual legal procedures and processes, amounting to an abuse of power.

In conclusion, it might be worth noting that those who fail to learn the lessons of history have to repeat them, over and over again! The fact the agendas of those who organise such endeavours are never straightforward is also something which remains an important consideration when evaluating their political behaviour.

1. See: Ukraine training model for reserves, Australian, 6 January 2025.
2. Long-term recruitment a problem for the army, Land Forces 2024 Supplement, Australian, 11 September 2024.
3. Ibid, and, ADF to welcome Five Eyes recruits, Australian, 30 December 2024.
4. See: Strategic Review for the Australian Defence Force Reserves, December 2023 to April 2024, Canberra, 18 December 2024.
5. Australian, op.cit., 6 January 2025.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Strategic Review, op.cit., page 51.
9. Wikipedia: Home Service Force; and, Britain's 1980s Cold War Dads Army / Home Guard – The Home Service Force, website - Cold War Conversations.
10. Confidential Source.
11. The Ties That Bind, J.T. Richelson and D. Ball, (Sydney, 1985), page 293.
12. See: Commission of Inquiry – Canada, (August, 1981), Freedom and Security under Law, Volume One, page 268.
13. Undercover Police spied on UK's anti-apartheid movement for decades, inquiry, The Independent (U.K.), 5 November 2020; and, BBC – What is undercover policing inquiry?, 2 November 2020.
14. See: Vorster's men get psycho-war kit, The Sunday Times (U.K.), 3 April 1977.
15. BBC 1, War School, 9 January 1980; and, State Research, Volume 16, February-March 1980, pp.63-64.
16. Lost History: Project X, Robert Parry, The Consortium Magazine, 31 March 1997; and, Army's Project X had wider audience, The Washington Post, 6 March 1997.
17. Alliances enhance domestic training, The Land Forces Supplement 2024, Australian, 11 September 2024.
18. Ibid.
19. Special Branch supply false information, State Research, Volume 23, April-May 1981, pp. 100-01.

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Out Of Their Own Mouths- Government Subservience To USA

Written by: Ned K. on 15 January 2025

The Australian Government has accepted the invitation to President -Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration as the next President of the USA.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Australia’s Ambassador to the USA Kevin Rudd will represent the Australian Government.

It is not a surprise that the Australian Government has been invited as US imperialism has economic and military interests in Australia, whether Democrats or Republicans win a US Presidential election.

What is worth noting is the Australian Foreign Minister’s clear position on the ALP Government’s relationship with the biggest imperialist power, the USA.

In an ABC radio interview on the weekend she is reported to say that the invitation to the inauguration “Is a demonstration of the steadfast alliance between Australia and the US. I am also looking forward to meeting with members of the Trump administration and congress during my visit.”

“The US is Australia’s vital ally, closest global partner and most important strategic relationship. This early visit will be an important opportunity to discuss how we can advance the benefits of our strong economic and security partnership and expand our cooperation “.

Reading between the lines, the Albanese Government is hoping Australian Government's tariffs on Australian imports to the USA and to ensure that the military and economic investments in Australia continue.

The Foreign Minister’s words do not contain even the slightest mention of Australia having any independence from the USA militarily or economically or politically.

It may be worth remembering the Foreign Minister’s words and reflect on them in 12 month’s time if the Albanese Government is still the government after this year’s federal election.

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Profits first, ethics second: Foreign corporations financing Russian imperialism’s war of aggression

Written by: Nick G. on 14 January 2025

A report just released by three Ukrainian organisations has revealed the foreign corporations whose taxes on earnings in Russia are helping to fund Russian imperialism’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

Non-Russian companies are contributing to Russia’s war on Ukraine through the taxes they pay, the supply chains they support and the technology and training they provide. This report focuses on one specific angle: multinational company revenue and taxes associated with operations within Russia.

The Report found that in 2023, 1600 multinational corporations played a pivotal role in strengthening Russia’s economy, contributing to its illegal war of aggression in Ukraine. They paid an estimated $21.6 billion in total tax, bringing the total estimated taxes paid to $41.6 billion since the full-scale invasion in 2022. $41.6 billion is equivalent to just under one-third of Russia’s estimated military budget for 2025,

According to the Report, banks were the largest contributors to Russian tax revenue. Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), in particular, was found to be the largest single corporate taxpayer in Russia by far in 2023. RBI’s Russian tax contributions in 2023 totalled $491m - more than twice those of the second-largest corporate taxpayer, China’s Chery Automobile, and more than the tax contributions of all other international banks put together.

On a country basis, American firms generated the largest total revenues in Russia and emerged as the Kremlin’s most substantial contributors through profit taxes, paying $1.2 billion in 2023. Germany follows, with its companies paying $692.5 million in profit taxes to Russia in the same year.

Although many foreign corporations pulled out of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Chinese companies moved to capture market share and boost revenues, particularly in the automotive and technology sectors. Yet despite gains in these areas, it is still companies headquartered in G7 and EU countries who were cumulatively the highest profit taxpayers in Russia in 2023, representing 16 of the top 20 contributing countries. Companies from China - which is considered as a ‘friendly’ country by Russia - reported higher revenues than those from Germany, but their profit tax contributions remain lower.

Chinese companies in the Top 20 List of foreign tax-paying corporations in Russia were Chery Automobile, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Haval Motor. Together their tax on profits in 2023 amounted to $328m, still lower than the Austrian bank’s payments.

China’s 3 companies in the Top 20 compared with 8 from the US.

Revelations of US, European and Chinese firms supporting Russian aggression through their taxes on profits in Russia are a stark reminder of companies that invested in Nazi Germany and continued operating after the beginnings of Nazi aggression and the outbreak of World War 2.

They included Ford and General Motors, both owned by anti-semitic admirers of Hitler, Coca-Cola, IBM and IT&T. Ford factories and those of GM’s German subsidiary Opal, switched to war production after 1939. After the war, GM was compensated $32 million by the U.S. government because its German factories were bombed by U.S. forces during the war. A large sum was also paid to Ford, although the exact amount was never revealed, and despite the fact that slave labour from concentration camps was used at its Ford-Werke plant.

Imperialist finance capital, throughout its history, has always placed profits over ethics. It may be one thing for corporations to pay taxes to their “own” aggressor nation, but it is scaping the bottom of the barrel of ethics when they work with and support governments to which their own are opposed or actually fighting.

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Greenland: The United States and its isolationist path

Written by: Alan Jackson on 12 January 2025

Greenland: Inuit, and not for sale or takeover. Source: Flickr Commons

With the expansion of counter-hegemonic imperialist powers, Russia and most notably China, America is rapidly on the decline and racing to fascism as it tries to consolidate its position at the top of Imperialist domination especially against its enemies in the same market of exploitation.

On Tuesday, the 7th of January, with less than two weeks before taking office, Donald Trump has gone full mask off once again for American Imperialism in a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Although this is not the only time Trump has been so honest about his, or rather the ruling class of America’s plan for the world, this press conference was especially isolationist and Imperialist in its rhetoric.

First off Trump declared military action will be used if necessary to take control of both Greenland and the Panama Canal. While doing this we learnt the one thing Trump knows about ex-president Jimmy Carter, in his words, “The Panama Canal is a disgrace, what took place at the Panama Canal. Jimmy Carter gave it to them (Panama) for $1, and they were supposed to treat us well. I thought it was a terrible thing to do,”. (1.) Along with this Trump also humbly declared that the Gulf of Mexico should be changed to the “Gulf of America”. (2.) it doesn’t end here though. Trump also repeatedly declared that America’s settler-colonial neighbour to the north, Canada, should become the 51st state of the United Settler-Colonial States of America! What a roll.

Now, let’s try and examine why Trump felt so compelled to go on an hour and a half rant that sounds like America reclaiming ‘Manifest Destiny’ from Germany for itself. While doing this we will also try to explain the historical conditions behind these decisions and the importance of the areas that America has their claws out for.

Greenland’s history, much like Australia’s, is very much a history of settler-colonialism. Greenland and its indigenous population the Inuit, made up of three major indigenous populations, have been subjected to colonialism and neo-colonialism by Denmark for centuries. Blaringly a showcase of this colonialism is that although being an autonomous part of Denmark rated 2nd for the happiest country in the world by the World Population Review (3.), Greenland has the world’s largest suicide rate. (4.) Outside of Denmark due to both its important geographical position and abundant resources Greenland has been at the grabs from keen-handed Imperialists the world over, most notably, America, Russia and China. The United States has had military presence in Greenland since WWII (5.) and has had Trump again earlier in 2019 trying to buy Greenland due to its importance. (6.) America trying to purchase Greenland has been consistent for decades, since even 1946. (7.) This is representative of the fact that Americas imperialist ambitions have been present and loud since long before Trump and that Trump is not the “great man” in Americas Imperialist past and future ambitions, Trump is merely the great puppet of the American capitalist ruling class.

The importance of Greenland geopolitically, as I mentioned previously, is not one sided and not lost on the minds of the other great Imperialist power, China. Chinas interest has been recent but nonetheless is clear with visits from Chinas Minister of Land and Resources to the purchasing of stock in Greenland Minerals and Energy which develops a Uranium and rare-earth site at Kuannersuisut (Kvanefjeld). (8.) Both the US and China have been competing by proxy through two Australian mining companies most notably Greenland Minerals Australia’s holding company and Ironbark in extracting many valuable resources from Greenland for the competing Imperialist powers. (9.) this case is quite similar to Chinas export of finance capital through Australian mining companies in Africa.

What is clear is why Greenland is so valued by the Imperialist powers. The problem is that it contains an indigenous population which does not wish to be dominated by Imperialism. The Inuit have not had the right of self-determination of their own country and have had to suffer the subjugation of colonial powers for hundreds of years. America, China and not even Denmark have the right to determine who controls Greenland, this right belongs to Greenland and its masses.

The posturing and absurdity of Donald Trump in his most recent press conference, let alone the history of imperialism and how It continues today, puts a clear cut through the idea and the relied upon verbiage from the ruling class of a rules-based order. There is no rules-based order, there is only Imperialism and its necessity for profit seeking abroad and the slicing up of the globe into outposts of Imperialism. There is only one rule, and it is profit. This is the inevitability of a capitalist society in its dying stages. The only solution is the scientific solution.

The only solution is the struggle of the world’s masses against Imperialism for Socialism and independence. Nothing else can bring humanity forward.

Sources –

(1.) - Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago press conference. 7th January 2024.

(2.) - Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago press conference. 7th January 2024.

(3.) - Happiest Countries in the World 2024

(4.) - Greenland Has The World's Highest Suicide Rate, And Teenage Boys Are Especially Vulnerable : Goats and Soda : NPR

(5.) - Greenland, Denmark, and U.S. Relations

(6.) - Greenland, Denmark, and U.S. Relations

(7.) - Greenland: what is China doing there and why? | Presence before power

(8.) -Greenland: what is China doing there and why? | Presence before power

(9.) - Australia, China, and US in the Greenland Precious Metals Rush - Resource Erectors

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Book Review: Juice, by Tim Winton

Written by: Josh S. on 10 January 2025

Juice is set in a bleak future, severely damaged by climate change, ravaged by fire, heat and increasingly unreliable weather. The population is largely ground down, demoralised and compliant. Meanwhile, the environmental destroyers- ruthless, profiteering corporations, gangs and clans, hole up in luxury in heavily fortified citadels.

Some (in fact many more than are apparent on the surface) rebel and fight back, motivated by anger, morality and hope. A sophisticated, international, underground organisation- the Service, exacts revenge by attacking and eliminating environmental corporate criminals. However, over time, the Service loses its way; it becomes complacent, and unclear about its purposes, objectives and strategies.

Juice is beautifully written, and quite breathtaking in the breadth and depth of its imagined detail.

Some valuable points can be drawn from this novel.

1. Our climate is being changed and the planet damaged inexorably by rapacious, profiteering capitalism. How bad it will get before socialist societies rein in the damage and start the repair process is anyone’s guess.

2. The fatalism and docility of the bulk of the population is akin to the imposed ignorance, superstition and fatalism of medieval peasantry, under the pressure of feudalism and the fear-imposing spiritual domination of the church.

But, there is still life and light. People are resilient. They can lift their eyes, imagine a better future, and look to fight back.

3. But anger and hope are not enough (as Winton seems to grasp, intuitively at least). Nor are acts of sabotage, terrorism or elimination, divorced from broad mass political agitation and organisation. (The recent assassination of the CEO of a US health insurance company is hardly going to bring down the vast, vicious, profiteering US health exploitation industry).

A scientific ideology to guide the revolt; a political program to chart the way forward to build alternative power and structures; and agitation among, and mobilisation of, the people to win support for fundamental change, are required.

4. This last point should give pause for thought to the impatient and fervent, who are attracted to seemingly revolutionary Gueveraist and Gonzaloist notions that the militarisation of all revolutionary organisations, and purely military actions, will spark uprisings and engender political support for revolution. This has never been successful, nor is it at all likely.

5. Equally, those who laud pure spontaneity need to understand that unorganised, sporadic uprisings are no match for experienced, extensive, extortionate evil. Sustained political organisation, strategy, patience and, discipline are required, to challenge and replace capitalism.

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US Biden government's parting weapons "gift" to Israel and Australian government's silence.

Written by: Ned K. on 7 January 2025

In the dying days of the Biden Democrats government, a $12.9 billion (Australia currency) weapons package has been agreed to be sent to the Israeli Government. The weapons being sent include thousands of bombs, missiles and precision munitions. This is one of the largest weapons packages sent from the USA to Israel since 7 October 2023. The $12.9 billion has to be rubber stamped by Congress.

A Biden administration official announced the latest "gift" to Israeli Government saying, "We will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel's defense."

"Defense" in real terms means the continued bombing of hospitals and all kinds of buildings in Gaza resulting in daily reports in the 24-hour news cycle of deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza but now extending to Yemen and Syria.

The Australian Government is complicit in this continued weapons supply from the US Government to the Israeli Government through its continued support of the Zionist Israeli state, its silence on US weapons "gifts" to Israel and by allowing Australian-based weapons and weapons-related component companies to supply the US and Israeli war machines.

The Democrats government in the US and the ALP government in Australia parade as the mass parties for the worker in their respective countries! Their actions pave the way for greater attacks on the Palestinians and attacks on workers in the US and Australia when there is a change in government to Republican or Liberal parties in the US and Australia respectively.

In the US, the Democrats have been strong backers of the Israeli state since at least 1948 when the Democrat leader Truman was elected to government on a platform committed to Israel.

In Australia, the ALP has consistently supported the US position on Israel through the US-Australia Alliance. The ALP leadership at the moment is more concerned about being re-elected in the coming federal parliamentary election. The Palestinian people's situation will only be viewed by the ALP leadership as important if it perceives it will win it a few election votes. That is the reality of parliamentary politics of capitalism in Australia.

2025 has just begun and is sure to see continued resilience of the Palestinian people against the Israeli Zionist regime and continued solidarity with Palestinians from the peoples of both the US and Australia and indeed the whole world.

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Chinese aid to Cuba: Aid as imperialism is as old as imperialism itself.

Written by: (Contributed) on 5 January 2025

The UK-based and revisionist-backed Friends of Socialist China website headlined an article, "China donates 70 tons of equipment to help Cuba restore its electric system."

FOSC, run by Danny Haiphong and businessman Keith Bennett , would be better named Publicity Agents for Capitalist China. Nonetheless, their post could not hide that the gift was an example of a typical PRC ploy: negotiate a big commercial deal with a country, tack on a dollop of pure aid, and publicize the latter.

This tactic was used, for example, when Chinese companies exported COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. The donated first batch would arrive, and the Chinese side would arrange a publicity photo. The bulk of the deliveries on commercial terms would follow.

The FOSC post conceded, "The (Cuban) deputy minister also stated that the island government estimates that this donation will benefit about 53,200 homes in the country." The rest of the iceberg is hinted at: "The donations are part of agreements signed between Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, seeking to expand cooperation in strategic initiatives such as energy, transportation, food security and trade."

Two months ago a news report had more about these "strategic initiatives."

Chinese company bullish on Cuban solar drive, executive says (excerpts)

Reuters, November 4, 2024

Havana - Hangzhou Duojia Technology, which distributes solar technology to Cuba, called a Cuban plan to dramatically boost solar generation a win for both countries, touting China's manufacturing heft and the island's sunny climate.

Qiaoming Huang, president of Hangzhou Duojia Technology, told Reuters in an interview that
his company, which sources solar technology from China for small-scale commercial projects of up to 20 kilowatts in Cuba, had 10 containers of solar panels and lithium batteries on their way from China.

Cuba agreed in April for China to help it boost solar power's role in its grid, though neither government elaborated on financing details. After the October nationwide blackout, Cuba's top leadership appeared to double down on the plan, at least partially financed with Chinese development credits, according to state-run media.

Note that HJT "sources solar technology for small commercial projects." The company is a trader, not manufacturer of solar panels nor lithium batteries. HJT's principal business is as a global distributor between "more than 3000 auto parts manufacturers" in China and retailers in 50 countries. It has a large warehouse in Hangzhou for spark plugs, steering wheel covers, etc.The company obviously wants to get into green energy distribution, hence the Cuba deal.

Any donation to Cuba to break the U.S. embargo is a good thing. But let's not fool ourselves that the PRC is ambiguous between socialist solidarity and capitalist commerce. It's 98% the latter – as, for example, 53,000 homes in ratio to perhaps three million Cuban households.

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South Korean instability a problem for US imperialism

Written by: (Contributed) on 5 January 2025

Above; December 2024 and South Koreans take to the streets to demand Yoon Suk-yeol's resignation

While government investigators sift through piles of evidence for use by the South Korean Constitutional Court following the impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol, one outstanding matter will be his agenda for attempting to implement martial law in early December.

From available evidence it would appear Yoon Suk-yeon was likely to have been pursuing a longer-term agenda in order to buttress his highly unpopular conservative and business political position, against an increasingly assertive and popular and well organised opposition which have proved problematic for decades.

During his election campaign in 2022, Yoon Suk-yeol stated if elected president his administration would abandon the traditional Blue House for suitable premises elsewhere. The Blue House, however, has a highly symbolic place in the political culture of most South Koreans: having experienced political turmoil and upheaval, the presidential palace is the institution through which they have been governed since the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948. While other ROK political leaders have expressed concerns about the Blue House, none had ever managed to muster enough support to abandon the vast, sprawling estate.

After winning the presidency with a very small margin, Yoon Suk-yeol announced he was making the former Defence Ministry headquarters his new presidential residence. It was to prove highly unpopular with many South Koreans; during the earliest days of presidential administration a massive public petition of 3,600,000 signatures opposed the move. (1)

The choice by the Yoon Suk-yeol administration to use the Defence Ministry premises, likewise, were to prove unpopular with many South Koreans for reasons the presidential administration appear to not have even considered as relevant.

Most South Koreans, while expected to serve National Service in the country's vast military apparatus, have unhappy memories of military involvement in political and civilian affairs which are regarded as darker days in the country's history. It has been noted, for example, that 'military officers … are by now fully educated about the deep unpopularity of earlier decades of martial law … and that … South Koreans have a deep embrace of democratic values'. (2) The choice of Defence Ministry for the official presidential premises can, therefore perhaps, best be viewed as strangely incongruous; that is, if the choice is to be regarded as straightforward and above board.

What, however, proved a particular matter of concern for many South Koreans were the expensive upgrading of various facilities in the Defence Ministry premises. Security concerns had been raised although it has remained curious how such an important defence facility could be regarded as so vulnerable by those making the assessments. While upgrades were taking place Yoon Suk-yeol used his own home as the presidential premises.

With plummeting popularity ratings Yoon Suk-yeol appeared to have developed a bunker-like mentality even before moving into his Defence Ministry compound, seemingly oblivious to what was taking place in the country as a whole. Government investigators will, no doubt, have a field-day assessing the role of the country's intelligence services and their working relations with the presidential administration; the reliability and nature of the intelligence assessments and those providing the sensitive information, and whether the presidential administration took any notice of what they were being told, has yet to be established but will inevitably be called into question.

Popularity ratings of President Yoon Suk-yeol continued to plummet to under twenty per cent of the population as his administration pursued policies of closer diplomatic involvement with the US and Japan. The US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) rests upon its diplomatic relationship with Japan as part of a global alliance; co-ordinated involvement with all US regional allies, including the ROK, remain a US political and military obsession. (3)

The April elections saw the political opposition, centred around the Democratic Party, win 192 seats in the 300-seat parliament. While regarded as a landslide victory, it fell just short of a super majority although rendered the presidential administration as little other than a 'lame duck'. (4) Despite attempting to label his political opponents as being North Korean agents, Yoon Suk-yeol provided no credible evidence of any northern involvement in the growing dysfunctional nature of ROK political developments. They remain mere allegations.

The ROK, however, still has legislation from the previous Cold War concerning any relations and contact with the northern DPRK. It remains highly controversial and part of the US-Japan alliance of which the ROK is a component part, for rapid deployment elsewhere in time of crisis. (5) While unpopular, attempts by then President Roo Moo-hyun over twenty years ago to repeal the National Security Law proved highly controversial. (6)

The 1948 law has been seen 'as a legacy of the military dictatorships that dominated South Korea for most of the Cold War'. (7) Fears that President Yoon Suk-yeol would resort to using the draconian legislation against political opposition figures was to become a common concern following their April electoral success, until his demise with impeachment in December.

President Yoon Suk-yeol later announced his move into the new Defence Ministry premises in early November in a manner of being under siege, less than a month before attempting to implement martial law under cover of darkness on the night of 3 December. (8) Why it took those providing the required upgrade over two years to complete the construction and security work has yet to be established. The whole matter, however, looks suspicious and requires clarification, although attempting to implement martial law from inside facilities so closely associated with the ROK's darker history is revealing, in itself.

Nearly 300 ROK uniformed military personnel were subsequently directed by President Yoon Suk-yeol to seize control of the country's parliament, paving the way for full control of the political system; some arrived by helicopter on the roof of the parliamentary buildings.

Opposition political figures barricaded themselves into the parliamentary building and sprayed fire extinguishers at the soldiers, while huge numbers of protesters lined the streets.

Government investigators later established Yoon Suk-yeol had actually authorised the military to 'fire their weapons' at those resisting the attempted coup, in a ten-page report. (9) The personnel concerned, however, refused to accept the order and the Defence Minister subsequently attempted to commit suicide, presumably from disgrace.

And the farce was all over in a mere six hours: the presidential administration appears to have completely misread both the mood of the people and those residing in the state and military apparatus over which they were supposed to have direct and total control.

As ROK government investigators collect legal evidence for forthcoming Constitutional Court proceedings, they will obviously have to consider the longer-term agenda of President Yoon Suk-yeol and his decision to use military force to deal with political opposition on 3 December. It is difficult to accept the decision was taken on the spur of the moment or a planned quick solution to a long-time problem affecting class and state relations in the ROK stretching back decades.

The subsequent impeachment of Yoon Suk-yeol's replacement, Acting President Han Duck-soo, for 'actively participating in the insurrection', likewise, has already revealed the deeper and close-knit nature of their conspiracy. (10)

The tentacles of the attempted coup conspiracy may reach very deep indeed.

1. Explained: Why South Korea's president-elect wants to relocate the presidential palace, The Indian Express, 23 March 2022.
2. Real-life political Squid Game offers compelling viewing, The Weekend Australian, 28-29 December 2024.
3. The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
4. Weekend Australian, op.ci.t, 28-29 December 2024.
5. North Korea's behaviour could threaten Australian security, Australian, 27 December 2002.
6. See: Uneasy Korea braced for America's big squeeze, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 10-16 December 2004.
7. Ibid.
8. See: Yoon moves into new presidential residence, The Korean Times, 8 November 2024.
9. South Korea's Yoon authorised 'shooting' during martial law bid, prosecutors say, ABC News, (and AFP), 28 December 2024.
10. S. Korean acting leader impeached, The Weekend Australian, 28-29 December 2024.

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2024 in Australian Agriculture

Written by: Duncan B. on 4 January 2025

2024 saw billions of dollars worth of Australian farmland and agricultural businesses change hands in a market dominated by institutional buyers, overseas buyers and wealthy individuals.

Canadian and US pension funds were again among the biggest buyers of Australian farm assets. Even a Utah-based subsidiary of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints paid over $300 million for a 26,885 ha cattle and cotton growing property in Queensland.

US investors were behind the three biggest agricultural property transactions for 2024, which saw more than 265,000 ha change hands for more than $1.2 billion. Canadian pension fund PSP was involved in some major purchases, as was US pension fund TIAA-CREF.

Canadian and US pension funds control Australia’s largest summer and winter cropping operations. Canada’s PSP, the largest investor in Australian agriculture by value, controls over 230,000 ha of cropping operations, producing winter cereals, oilseeds and cotton.

Although overseas purchases of Australian farmland continue at a high rate, Foreign Investment Review Board approved investment proposals for the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector was $5.3 billion for 2023-24. This was a 34% drop on the previous year. FIRB approvals for agricultural investments have been valued at between $7 billion and $8.5 billion since 2016-17, except for the COVID year of 2020-21. One reason given for the fall in investment is the lack of suitable properties ($100 million or more) of the type that foreign investors seek.

Experts are predicting that foreign investors, especially from the US will be back in the market in a big way this year as the US corporate sector is posting record profits. The corporates will be looking to invest in international markets.

One factor making Australian farming attractive to foreign investors is the difference in the average value of agricultural land in Australia ($9184 per ha), compared to the US ($16,200) and Europe ($17,500). This difference allows foreign investors to make a healthy return on their investments.

This means that more of Australian land will pass into foreign hands!

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Our New Year’s resolution: Keep building the revolutionary movement!

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 1 January 2025

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) gladly extends greetings and welcome to all our friends and supporters on the occasion of New Year’s Day, 2025.

The new year will undoubtedly see a further expansion of the scope of people’s struggle and a growing isolation of all imperialism and all reactionary forces.

Armed with anti-imperialist class consciousness and united in struggle, the working class and its allies are the most powerful and unstoppable force for developing the revolutionary movement for fundamental change in Australia.

Ours is a country whose formal name is the Commonwealth of Australia. Emerging from its colonial past as a federation still under the control of imperialism, wealth in Australia has never been held in common, has never been shared across the class divides.

For more than two hundred years, the old adage that the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer” has held true across the ages, and is seen today in a widespread cost-of-living crisis. This pattern of social polarisation built on the exploitation of the many and the selfishness of the few has well and truly outlived its uselessness and must be overthrown.

We live in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, but we are not yet in a proletarian-led revolutionary situation.

That situation will be built by class conscious workers supporting each other and our class in the revolutionary movement that does exist and which we are doing our best to shape and promote.

It is contributed to by the consciousness arising from the tireless fight against Israeli Zionist aggression and in support for the courageous Palestinian people whose resistance to the Israeli Zionist occupation of Palestine has sent a message to the world and Israel that after more than 70 years of struggle against oppression and occupation the Palestinian people will never give up.

Palestinian resistance has lit the flames of resistance against imperialism and colonialism across the world, exposing and isolating the brutality and decadence of capitalism and its ruling classes. The US-empire loyalists in the leadership of the capitalist Australian “Labor” Party are rightly rejected and unpopular for their defence of Zionism and for their treacherous betrayal of Australian national sovereignty in the hugely costly AUKUS arrangements.

Australian First Peoples have seen parallels between their situation and that of the Palestinians, both peoples having been subjected to occupation, theft of country, and attempted genocide. Their fight against racism and for self-determination will continue.

We are witnessing a sharpening of inter-imperialist tensions, mainly between US and China/Russia for markets, resources, areas of investments, and sources of surplus value in all corners of the world - Syria, Ukraine, Africa, Middle East, Asia, South America, Europe and Oceania - all leading closer to inter-imperialist war that could easily become World War Three.

The attacks on Australia’s most militant union, the CFMEU, have further exposed the ALP and the peak leadership of the unions in the ACTU as agents of the bourgeoisie committed to class struggle against the workers. However, their attacks bring with it the potential and capacity to unite and organise workers in struggle, adding further impetus to the revolutionary movement in Australia.

Fearing escalation of people’s struggles against the burden of capitalist economic crisis, oppression and war, the ruling classes of monopoly capital are moving towards more open repression and have no compunction in removing more and more of the veneer of bourgeois democratic rights.

They prosecute and gaol whistle-blowers, fail to protect Australian citizens from the vengeful reach of US imperialism, direct the police to attack and suppress progressive political actions, increase penalties directed at protests and even ban them outright.

The capitalist parties are lining up for a federal election. In previous elections, the people have shown their disenchantment with the two major capitalist parties by voting for independent candidates and minor parties.

There is a growing awareness that parliament cannot be relied upon to solve the working people’s problems. Yes, the people will vote and are not yet ready to pursue an independent working class agenda through to the seizure of power from those who currently hold it from them.

But on the ground, in our workplaces and communities, people will be uniting, organising and mobilising against imperialism, colonialism and war and all reaction.

It is right that they rebel, rather than sit back having been told by the capitalist media that they have had their exercise of democratic rights by putting paper in a ballot box.

Their defiance of reactionary authority is a good thing and will not be satisfied by a once-in-three years vote for the politicians of their “choice”.

• Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite against imperialism, colonialism and fascism.

• Serve the people

• For an independent and socialist Australia!

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Worth Reading - "NIGHT OF POWER - The Betrayal of the Middle East"

Written by: Ned K. on 26 December 2024

Some people are fortunate enough to find time over the Christmas - New Year period to read a book.

For those interested in the struggles in the Middle-East, the late Robert Fisk's book Night of Power - The Betrayal of the Middle East is well worth reading. It is well researched and covers the impact of the imperialist powers of USA, western Europe and Russia in the internal affairs of Middle-East countries, particularly Palestine and the settler apartheid state of Israel.

The book is written through the eyes of a westerner who spent over forty years in the Middle-East region. The clear message running through Fisk's book is that a pre-condition for the resolution of conflict and war in the Middle-East is that all imperialist powers exit the Middle-East. In the words in the book's foreword, Fisk "exposes the inescapable consequences of colonial oppression and violence in the Middle-East".

One chapter in the book, "The Dog In The Manger" exposes the attitude of the British imperialism during the British Mandate of Palestine from the Balfour Declaration days to 1948. Fisk exposes the real thinking of Winston Churchill and the British ruling class towards the Zionist "homeland" of Israel on Palestinian land. In Churchill's testimonial to the Peel Commission in 1937, Churchill is quoted as saying:

"I have a great regard for the Arabs, but at the same time you find where the Arab goes it is often desert...It is a lower manifestation the Arab". He goes on to say,

"It was for the good of the world that Palestine should be cultivated, and it will never be cultivated by the Arabs".

As I read these words I thought of how at school, we were told Churchill and the British rulers were heroes "protecting our way of life".

I kept reading, keen to read the next words of Churchill quoted by Fisk and taken from Churchill's testimonial to the Peel Commission. Churchill goes on to expand on his views about Indigenous people generally, including in Australia. He says:

"I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly, wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

In more recent times, the imperialists meddling in the internal affairs and seeking to maintain their domination over the Middle- East and indeed Australia, may use different language than that of Churchill, but as Fisk makes clear in his book, their thinking is no different to that of Churchill's and they try to "educate" people in western countries to think the same way.

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Building a New Socialist Society

Written by: Xiang Guanqi on 26 December 2024

Each year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese flock to Shaoshan in Hunan Province. Shaoshan is the birthplace of Mao Zedong, and the family home still stands. People go there throughout the year to show their respect for Chairman Mao, with the two peak periods being Chinese New Year and today, December 26, Mao’s birthday.

Last year was significant as the 130th anniversary of Mao’s birth. Those who missed out last year are arriving in large numbers. At the beginning of 2024, in just 8 days, more than 680,000 people went to Shaoshan to pay New Year's greetings to Chairman Mao, and according to the statistics analysed by reporters, among the tourists who came to Shaoshan, the proportion of "post-60s and before" was about 28%, and the proportion of post-90s + post-00s was as high as 32%.

Mao’s Selected Works are also being sought out, and most of the people searching for them are young people aged 20-29. Why, then, do fashionably dressed young people with trendy ideas become so interested in these old books and these things that are said to be "outdated"?

Comrade Xiang Guanqi, now in his 80s, a noted critic of China’s restored capitalism, says in this excerpt from one of his writings, it is more than nostalgia – Eds.

Maoism stresses the need for socialist society to revolutionise the whole of society and to strive to create a new socialist society that is truly and fundamentally different from capitalist private society, as the first stage of communist society. This is an important and profound element of Maoism's theory of continued socialist revolution.

Under the guidance of the Maoist general principle and strategy of correctly dealing with internal contradictions among the people, Chairman Mao personally took the lead in advocating the development of the communist spirit among the whole nation, and in the activity of ‘Learning from Comrade Lei Feng’, led the whole nation to endeavour to bring about a revolution in their thinking; and a number of advanced and exemplary figures appeared on various fronts as models for the whole nation to follow. At the same time, taking the nature of internal contradictions among the people as a prerequisite, we implemented the formula of ‘unity, criticism and unity’ to help the backward people to overcome some of the shortcomings and errors in their thinking and actions, and to gradually strengthen the transformation of their own subjective world, so that they could achieve, step by step, the revolutionisation of their thinking, and to keep pace with the requirements of the times for building socialism.

The famous ‘May 7 Instruction’, written by Chairman Mao on 7 May 1966, is the theoretical idea of building a genuinely new socialist society, a new innovation of the international communist movement.

It is not a long text, so it is worth quoting in full here:

Dear Comrade Lin Piao,

I have received the report from the Rear Service Department which you sent me on 6 May. I think it is an excellent plan. Is it possible to send this report to all the military districts and ask them to hold discussions of it among the cadres at the army and division levels? Their views should be reported to the Military Commission and through it to the Centre for approval. After that, suitable directives should be issued to them. Please consider this .

In the absence of a world war, our army should be a big school. Even under conditions of the third world war, it can still serve as a big school. In addition to fighting the war, it must do other work. In the eight years of the second world war, did we not do just that in the anti-Japanese base areas? In this big school, the army should learn politics, military affairs, and culture, and engage in agricultural production. It can build up its own middle- and small-size workshops to produce goods for its own use and the exchange of other goods of equal value. It can take part in mass work, factory work, and rural socialist education. After socialist education, there are always other kinds of mass work for it to do, to unite the army and people as one. The army should also participate in the revolutionary struggle against capitalist culture. In this way, it carries out military-educational, military-agricultural, military-industrial, and military-civilian work.

Naturally, should be properly coordinated and a distinction should be made between major and subsidiary work. A unit can select one or two from the agricultural, industrial, and civilian combination, but not all three. In this way, the tremendous power of several million soldiers will be felt.

Likewise, workers should, in addition to their main industrial work, learn military affairs, politics, and culture, and take part in the socialist educational movement and in criticizing the capitalist class. Under adequate conditions, they should also engage in agricultural production, following the example of the Daqing Oilfield.

The communes do their main agricultural work (including forestry, fishing, animal husbandry, and subsidiary trades), but they must also learn military affairs, politics, and culture. When circumstances allow, they should collectively set up small-scale factories and take part in criticizing the capitalist class.

The students are in a similar position. Their studies are their chief work; they must also learn other things. In other words, they ought to learn industrial, agricultural, and military work in addition to class work. The school years should be shortened, education should be revolutionized, and the domination of our schools by bourgeois intellectuals should by no means be allowed to continue.

Under favourable conditions, people in commerce, service trades, and party and government offices should do likewise.

What has been said above is neither new nor original. Many people have been doing this for some time, but it has not yet become a widespread phenomenon. Our army has been working in this way for decades. Now it is on the threshold of new developments.

When it comes to a new socialist society, the new China of that time under the leadership of Chairman Mao was indeed a new society, a new society in which the whole society was filled with the spirit of communism. It was a great creation. If we look at China at that time not only at the level of development of the productive forces, but also at the level of the comprehensive development of society as a whole, and especially at the level of development of human beings, we can say without exaggeration and in all truthfulness that China had surpassed not only the Soviet Union, but also the developed capitalist countries of the West.

Lei Feng was learnt everywhere. Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, China was truly an advanced socialist country holding aloft the red flag of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; it was a new society in which ‘one person is for all, and all people are for one person’, in which there was both liveliness and unity of will, in which the free development of each individual was united with that of the whole society; and this was the road to the realisation of the historical task of socialism and to communism step by step.

Nowadays, many people do not understand why people of the older generation who came from that era are always nostalgic for a time when the economy was not yet developed, when life was not yet affluent, and even when many people were still poor. The answer lies in the fact that Chairman Mao led the entire nation to create a new society full of the spirit of communism and nurtured a new generation of people who adopted the communist ideology as their outlook on life.

Just as the revolutionary mentors taught, once human beings completely got rid of their animal nature and the alienation brought about by private ownership, and truly began to live as human beings, the free and happy life of human beings also began. Today's nostalgia for Chairman Mao's era is precisely a reflection of people's longing for the pursuit of this free and happy life of mankind - the life of communism.

This can in no way be described as ‘nostalgia’, but rather as ‘seeking newness’.

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CPA (M-L) extends comradely greetings to the Communist Party of the Philippines

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 24 December 2024

Warm congratulations on the occasion of the 56th anniversary of the founding of Communist Party of the Philippines, 26 December. The Communist Party of the Philippines is the leading force in the struggles of the Filipino working people against semi-feudalism, semi-colonialism, bureaucrat capitalism, imperialist domination and the violent puppet Marcus government.

The Filipino people’s daily struggles against exploitation and political repression, and against imperialist domination come together in the powerful united front formed under the revolutionary leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. This revolutionary leadership is bringing together all sectors of society, workers, peasants, indigenous, educational and health professionals, with a revolutionary vision of land reform, national sovereignty, and socialism.

Whether in the countryside or the cities or in the villages, the Filipino people’s protracted struggle is always fierce. We honour the hundreds of martyrs, the disappeared, the prisoners, and the suffering families and communities of fallen comrades.

We hail the victories of the heroic New People’s Army.

We acknowledge the key role of the great Marxist-Leninist, Joma Sison, in leading and guiding the Philippines revolutionary movement. Steeled in long and bitter struggle and armed with a correct ideological and political line, we are confident that the Filipino people under the leadership of CPP will continue to win further victories leading to the success of the revolution.

Australia is also a Pacific country dominated by imperialism, mainly US imperialism, the core of the capitalist ruling class in Australia. US imperialism is exploiting and suppressing the Australian people economically, politically and militarily and continues the oppressive colonisation of Australia’s First People.

The US led imperialist AUKUS pact and US-Australia military alliance is dragging Australia into US imperialist wars and now is threatening an imperialist war with China. The US and its puppet Australian governments are turning Australia into a major US military base in preparations for war with China. The Australian people are resisting the US led march to war and are building anti-war alliances with the people of Asia-Pacific. Neither the Australian people nor the people of the Philippines want war.

The comradeship between our parties embraces our people’s struggle against imperialism, rejection of imperialist war and building an anti-imperialist united front.

Red salute to the Philippines revolution, to the comrades of the CPP!

Workers of the World Unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!

Central Committee

Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

26 December, 2024.

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A Tale of Two Pities

Written by: Nick G. on 24 December 2024

Nothing says “hypocrisy” more than a Labor politician with words in his/her mouth.

On Monday, PM Albanese uttered certain memorable words in relation to Australian man Oscar Jenkins, captured by Russian imperialist troops in Ukraine.

Filmed being interrogated and slapped, Jenkins looked miserable.

Albanese vowed to “always look after Australians” after learning of Mr Jenkins’ situation.

It was a correct and appropriate response, albeit one that revealed the PM to be lying though his teeth.

For on the same day, the very same day, his Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus confirmed he has approved the extradition of US-born Australian citizen Daniel Duggan to the loving arms of the US judicial system as it passes under the control of incoming President Donald Trump.

Imperialism means persecution and oppression.

US imperialism and Russian imperialism are alike in that respect.

Dreyfus has just as vindictively slapped Duggan in the face by approving his extradition to the US. And not just Duggan, but his long-suffering wife Saffrine and their children who have now been separated from husband and father for more than two years while he has been held by US imperialism’s branch office in Australia.

Saffrine said yesterday she felt the family had been "thrown out with the trash" by the Australian Government announcing Dan's extradition a few days before Christmas.

It is disgraceful and a complete injustice that Duggan has been held in solitary confinement in a NSW maximum security prison for 795 days having broken no Australian law and still innocent until proved guilty of fabricated Cold War charges brought against him by the US.

It must be a difficult thing to boast about “always looking after Australians” with your tongue stuck so fast to the big brown eye of your US masters!

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People's Health and Safety More Important Than Nuclear Power

Written by: Ned K. on 23 December 2024

A recent article in Vanguard pointed out that the USA is busy arranging port facilities in the Indo-Pacific region where it can re-stock its warships with missiles in the event of war with China.

Australian ports are part of its plans. The USA already use at least one Australian port, in WA, to dock nuclear powered submarines for maintenance purposes. As part of AUKUS, the USA will also have its nuclear-powered submarines docking at Australian ports for maintenance and readiness for war against China. Associated with nuclear-powered submarines is the removal and transportation and dumping of nuclear waste.

All these activities are a threat to the health and safety of people who live in the same suburban areas where these activities are carried out.

Added to these threats to health and safety are places like Alice Springs being a nuclear target in the event of a war between the USA and China.

What are the two major parliamentary parties doing to protect the Australian people from the various threats associated with nuclear power and nuclear weapons?

Both Labor and Liberal parties support AUKUS and the US - Australia Alliance which includes commitment to nuclear-powered USA navy vessels with or without nuclear weapons being based in Australian ports.

The Liberal leader Dutton is also a champion of nuclear power plants being built in Australia. With a federal election early next year, the Labor Party are now trying to win votes by saying that nuclear power plants proposed by Dutton will endanger Australian people's health and safety, especially those people living near the places where Dutton decides to have the plants built!

Not a word is said by either Labor or Liberal leaders about the health and safety threats of nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear warhead missiles, or whole suburbs and cities being wiped out due to Australia's entanglement in USA preparations for war with China.

As the recent article in Vanguard concluded, Australian people need an independent foreign policy free from the USA's war preparations with China.

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Communists in North and East Syria Prepare to Defend the Revolution

Written by: MLKP on 21 December 2024

To encourage people in Melbourne to support today's rally in defence of Rojava (4pm at the State Library) we reproduce this report from the International Bulletin of the Marxist-Leninist Party/ Turkey and Kurdistan (MLKP).

(Above: Demonstration in Al-Dirbasiyah/Dirbêsiyê in support of SDF on December 20. Neither Turkish occupation nor Islamist gangs will break the will to freedom of these women.)

Communists in North and East Syria Prepare to Defend the Revolution

After the occupation attack by HTŞ (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) on Aleppo on November 27, the Tur kish colonialist state, along with its militias, targeted Şehba, Til Rifat, and later Minbic and Kobanê with the same goal. The Autonomous Administration called for mobilization. The communists of Rojava responded to this call and quickly began mobilization efforts to de fend Northern and Eastern Syria, as well as all of Syria. Cemil Sîdwo, representative of the Communist Revolutionary Movement (TKŞ), spoke about the work done so far:

"In this recent period, the most urgent request from us was the defense of cities, neighborhoods, and the people. The goal of the former Syrian regime was to use Daesh (ISIS) as a tool to attack some of our cities. For this reason, the Autonomous Administration declared a state of ‘emergency.‘ We also participated in this and have been on duty to defend the neighborhoods and cities.

“We are on guard day and night. We are also living in this revolution. The revolution is ours; we de fend it. Military-wise, some of our groups participated in the defense. If our comrades defended Şengal (Sinjar), that experience today guides us here on a broader scale. We participated in the defense and put that experience into practice.“

He added that the Communist Women’s Movement (JKŞ) and the Communist Youth Movement (CKŞ) have conducted military and political training and participated in the defense of neighborhoods. Politically, Syria has entered a new phase, and the communists are an active part of it. Sîdwo pointed out some dangers:

"In this phase, we need to act very cautiously. Why? Because the enemy wants to play a destructive role here. They aim to create chaos, cause division, and launch psychological warfare against the people. We didn’t allow this step by the enemy. Especially the peoples of Northern and Eastern Syria, particularly those in Rojava, have united, shook hands, and stood firm against the policies being applied here. Why? Because a very dirty policy is being pursued. We can call it a politics of life or death.

“The people are holding on to their land with all available means and have thwarted the enemy‘s plans. They wanted to create conflict between the Kurdish and Arab peoples. But we did not allow the enemy to implement this policy. With the right approach and unity, we prevented what they intended to do. We supported those who fled from Afrin and Şehba to Roja va. Whatever we had, we collected and brought it to the refugees from cities like Qamişlo (Qamishli), Hesekê (Hasakah), Kobanê (Ayn al-Arab), and Til Temir."

Ekin İsyan, (left) spokesperson for the CKŞ, spoke about their ongoing work:

"We continue our work in the spirit of mobilization. The goal of the Turkish occupation state is to sow fear among the people and simultaneously seize our achievements in the ensuing chaos. As children of the Rojava Revolution, we have spent 12-13 years in this revolution. We have fought for this revolution and paid a price for it.

“The fascist Turkish state does not want us to gain our rights. Therefore, it is launching its attacks against us, the people of Rojava. This is a mobilization phase, and our actions are focused on self-defense.

“The Rojava revolution plays a very important role. We have sacrificed many martyrs. Therefore, we need to act accordingly. Especially young people and

“The misogynistic policies of political Islamist militias want to sacrifice us for themselves and their jihadist cause. They want to enslave women again. They want to place us under the system represented by Daesh’s black flag. Turkey’s collaboration with Daesh is evident. But Rojava is our value. We stand by our values, which we have fought for and earned over the years. These attacks do not mean they can make us retreat from our will. As the children of Rojava, as young men and women living in the revolutionary lands, our greatest task is to defend the achievements of this revolution.

“The Turkish state should know that no one can turn us away from our goal. We are ready, just as we worked for this revolution in the past, we will work with even more determination in the future.

“Members of CKŞ continue their mobilization in cities such as Hesekê, Qamişlo, and Kobanê. Especially during the state of emergency declared by the Autonomous Administration, we focus on training our youth in self-defense and preparing them for practical self-defense. We provide shooting training and conduct street patrols and neighborhood watches.

“I want to call on the youth in Rojava and all around the world: Defend Rojava, because Rojava is our greatest achievement. Rojava is the foundation of the revolution in the Middle East.”

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The “three constantly read articles” should still be constantly read.

Written by: Nick G. on 21 December 2024

(Above: Norman Bethune operating in the wounded in a field hospital in China.)

December 21 is the anniversary of Mao Zedong’s statement In Memory of Norman Bethune.

It was written in 1939 after the Canadian doctor who had gone to China to treat soldiers wounded in the War of Resistance Against Japan, died of blood poisoning contracted from the wounds of a Communist Eighth Route Army soldier whom he had been treating.

Bethune was born in 1890. He began medical studies, but suspended them to work as a stretcher-bearer in France during WW1. He received a shrapnel wound in the Second Battle of Ypres, then completed his medical studies in 1916.

Bethune specialised in thoracic surgery and developed or modified more than a dozen new surgical tools.

During the Depression, he became convinced of the links between the poor health of working people and the economic system of capitalism. He advocated socialised medicine and travelled to the Soviet Union to study its system of universal free health care. He joined the Communist Party of Canada in 1935.

Towards the end of 1936, Bethune went to Spain and offered his services to the forces supporting the Republican government. To better provide for the wounded anti-fascists, he developed a mobile blood transfusion service to take bottles of donated blood to the wounded.

Returning to Canada, Bethune agreed to go to China. In January 1938, he arrived in Yan’an where he met Chairman Mao. He spent the best part of the next two years on the battlefield, treating Communist soldiers and their wounded Japanese enemies alike.

Chairman Mao’s eulogy for Bethune spoke of his personifying the spirit of Communism. He praised “his utter devotion to others without any thought of self”, and said that his “spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism,” was “our internationalism, the internationalism with which we oppose both narrow nationalism and narrow patriotism.”

Mao used Bethune’s example to call on his followers to overcome bad habits born of the old society. “Every Communist must learn from him. There are not a few people who are irresponsible in their work, preferring the light and shirking the heavy, passing the burdensome tasks on to others and choosing the easy ones for themselves. At every turn they think of themselves before others. When they make some small contribution, they swell with pride and brag about it for fear that others will not know. They feel no warmth towards comrades and the people but are cold, indifferent and apathetic. In truth such people are not Communists, or at least cannot be counted as devoted Communists.”

If the example of Bethune was an inspiration during the War of Resistance Against Japan, its importance was in no way diminished during the period of China’s socialist construction.

It was placed together with two other writings, Serve the People and The Foolish old Man Who Moved the Mountains and published at the start of the Cultural Revolution under the heading “The Three Constantly Read Articles”.

Chairman Mao knew that it was one thing to bring the old society to an end, and an altogether different thing to build a new and different society. It required the adaptation and development of the spirit of Communism from the pre-revolutionary, to the post-revolutionary situation.

That meant overcoming the old ideas, old habits and old customs inherited from the past and revolutionising people’s thinking in accordance with the requirements of advancing along the socialist road.

If people’s thinking had been revolutionised to carry out Liberation, it needed to be further revolutionised and carried to each new stage of the elimination of classes and the replacement of bourgeois individualism with proletarian collectivism.

The Cultural Revolution aimed at nothing less than the complete transformation of people’s world outlook. Without this change, without restricting the bourgeois right brought into the new world from the old, there would inevitably be a change in direction and the socialist road would succumb to the capitalist road, socialism would be abandoned and capitalism restored.

The “three constantly read articles” were promoted to support the socialist slogan “Fight self, repudiate revisionism”. This linked the survivals of feudal and capitalist thinking to the emergence of policies designed to destroy confidence in socialism and promote the reversion to capitalist economic and political methods.

The essence of the slogan “Fight self, repudiate revisionism” was the struggle between the proletarian and bourgeois world outlooks representing the concept of working for the public interest as against the concept of working for one’s own interest.

The betrayal of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line by Deng Xiaoping and others confirms Mao Zedong’s warnings about the failure to restrict bourgeois right and the consequences of adopting policies that expanded bourgeois right.

Today’s China is both capitalist and social-imperialist. It has not officially discarded socialism, and hides its capitalist restoration behind the nonsense of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and practices imperialism in competition with the US and its imperialist bloc.

Regrettably, some on the Left in Australia are enamoured of the “characteristics” fig-leaf.

Within progressive circles there are not a few who praise China’s opposition to US hegemony, failing to see the imperialist motivation of China in doing so.

For our part, we will work to prevent US preparations for war against China whilst upholding an anti-imperialist line of opposing all imperialism.

We will constantly read the “three constantly read articles” to remould our own world outlook and develop the spirit of Communism with our own ranks.

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Re-loading missiles on ships: further integration of Australia into US war plans

Written by: (Contributed) on 19 December 2024

(Above: Guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey in the South China Seas. Source: wikipedia.org)

A scramble appears under-way by the US to secure access to port facilities across the Indo-Pacific region for sensitive re-loading of armaments.

The stated diplomatic position follows revelations about how the US Defence Department has already authorised their naval vessels in September to use Australian facilities for re-loading with cruise missiles.

No comment has been forthcoming from Canberra about Australia's stated diplomatic position on the matter or who authorised the operation.

The information was, nevertheless, leaked in one single sentence of a short and official report about another, related military consideration and matter.

Fears have arisen inside the Pentagon about the US readiness to fight a war against China in the Indo-Pacific. It is possible for the US to fire dozens of cruise missiles within minutes during time of military conflict. A major consideration, however, has been the ability of US naval vessels to re-load with further missiles at sea to continue hostilities. Strategists have raised concerns that if military hostilities begin in the Western Pacific, for example, the US is faced with an 8,000 kms journey to safe port facilities for re-loading with further missiles. (1) They have noted that 'the ability to re-arm at sea will be critical to any future conflict in the Pacific'. (2)

To date, the US military have used secure facilities on solid ground in sheltered harbours for re-loading; re-loading at sea requires accurate assessments of a variety of problems affecting
small movements which potentially have dreadful consequences in time of error.

While experiments are taking place using digital advances which include 3-D printing, specialised radar and motion detectors, the problem has yet to be resolved.

The US role in other spectacular achievements including landing a man on the moon in the late 1960s, and re-fuelling fighter jets in the air, is well-known, but they are struggling to overcome their failure to be able to re-arm missile-loaded naval vessels at sea.

The US is, therefore, seeking access to secure port facilities across the vast Indo-Pacific region. They appear to be more interested in remote places, rather than Japan and Guam which can be easily targeted by adversaries.

The news followed revelations that one of their naval vessels used Australian military facilities in Darwin to re-load missiles on-board the USS Dewey, a destroyer. (3) The Dewey has usually used a barge-like facility at its deployment base in Japan, but only used when the waters are calm. The Australian venture in September has appeared a departure from usual practice and took place with the bare minimum of publicity.

The moves, however, coincide with a short diplomatic statement from Canberra about 'China-proofing' Pacific states; concerns have arisen that China is increasing its diplomatic position across the Pacific and may seek basing facilities for its navy. (4) The concerns have arisen following revelations that the US were no longer the dominant power in the region and that China had successfully challenged traditional hegemonic positions. (5)

The region of the Pacific in question, furthermore, is geographically central to the US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), with borders defined by sensitive military intelligence facilities in Australia, India, Japan and the US. (6)

Countries such as Nauru, Tuvalu, and other small Pacific states, have suddenly developed a highly geo-strategic diplomatic status on account of their position and historical allegiance with the US and Australia, while strengthening diplomatic links with Beijing.

Australia is practicing blatantly colonial relations with several of these countries, purchasing the right to make decisions in relation to their foreign policy positions, The recent $600 million gift to PNG enabling it to have a team in the National Rugby League is a case in point: it is conditional on PNG agreeing to freeze China out of any security relationship in favour of Australia,

They tend to be situated along sensitive island chains which have been used by the US to restrict access and egress by China into the wider Oceania region.

The island chains have also been fortified by the US in recent times as part of a $27.4 billion Pacific Deterrence Initiative. (7)

The recent sudden resignation of Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni, for example, has been conspicuously played-down to avoid unnecessary controversy, although would appear a major confrontation between the traditional elite and the elected government. (8) Tonga, it should be noted, rests on an arc from sensitive Australian military facilities in Queensland. (9) No doubt influence, from elsewhere, was brought to bear.

In conclusion, Australians living near ports and coastal military facilities might like to consider the potential risks for their local neighbourhoods: a human error when military personnel are re-loading missiles would create massive destruction and loss of life, particularly in light of construction projects under-way for storing 300,000 tons of jet fuel just fifteen kms from Darwin's CBD together with the US-led upgrade to the Tindal air-base for rapid deployment across the Indo-Pacific region:

We need an independent foreign policy!

*****

1. US Navy in race to re-load on high seas, Australian, 3 December 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. See: 'China-proofing' Pacific states, Editorial, Australian, 11 December 2024.
5. Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
6. The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
7. US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei, 5 March 2021; and, US Indo-Pacific Command proposed new missile capabilities to deter China, RFA., 5 March 2021.
8. See: PM quits after rift with king, Australian, 10 December 2024.
9. See: Peters Projection, Map of the World, Actual Size.

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Two new publications to promote study and guide practice

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 16 December 2024

At our 16th Congress earlier this year, a proposal was made by a young comrade that a collection of writings by the CPA (M-L) be collated to introduce the theoretical basis guiding our policies to members and other interested people.

At the same time, the decision was taken to compile some of the essential writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao Zedong to promote study and guide our practice.

The one containing writings of the Party is titled "Statements of the CPA (M-L)"; the other is titled "Foundations of the CPA (M-L)'

Both publications are now available as downloadable pdfs in the Media and Archives/Booklets drop down menu on our home page.

We thank the comrades who have produced these booklets and recommend them to our readers.

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Statements of the CPA (M-L)

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 15 December 2024

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Foundations of the CPA (M-L)

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 15 December 2024

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After Trump’s election in the USA - ICOR stands ready for worldwide anti-fascist, anti-imperialist united front and socialism!

Written by: ICOR on 15 December 2024

(Elon Musk and Donald Trump in cryptocurrency agreement. Source: https://cryptorank.io/ )

On November 6, 2024, Donald Trump won the presidential election in the USA and will move into the White House. This means that the USA, an imperialist great power and main warmonger in the world is headed by a president who from various perspectives, is described as ultra-reactionary, right-wing populist or fascist. This increases the danger of US imperialism, which has always started and waged wars and destroyed people and nature, whether under Democrats or Republicans. The monopolies around Trump want to catch up with their aggressively reactionary program, especially in the rivalry with China. This has world-political effects for the masses of people worldwide, especially in crises and danger of war.

Their program: a general attack on workers; the possibility to fire strikers on the spot; attacks on wages; a global environmental catastrophe due to a backward slide on the few environmental policy advances, forced promotion of fossil fuels of oil and gas; intensification of inter-imperialist competition through the aggressive "America first" program; General attack on the working class, the revolutionary as well as the trade union movement and its rights; all the stops of economic warfare with punitive tariffs of up to 100%; bellicosity with threats against Iran, China and everything he calls the "axis of evil"; the Trump administration will continue the Biden policy of genocide in Palestine and Lebanon and may also plan to wage military war against Iran. Racism will be taken to extremes with the planned deportation of eleven million immigrants. The program also includes: closed borders; anti-women policies; an attack on the already completely inadequate social systems; discrimination against LGBTQ people, etc. etc… At the same time, the nationalist and chauvinist program of the monopolies behind Trump is creating further problems for US imperialism itself, because it also depends on a wide range of international relationships.

Millions of people in the US voted for Trump out of their anger at falling living standards, insecurity and distrust of the bourgeois ruling class and international finance capital. Trump demagogically served their hopes with his claims of “secure jobs” and an end to arms supplies to Ukraine. With the extremely undemocratic electoral law and billions in campaign election funds from the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, among others, parts of the masses were persuaded to support Trump by a social media campaign. Anticommunism and social chauvinism have a dangerous influence among parts of the masses. The situation among the working class, the broad masses, is extremely polarized, which also poses a threat to the upswing of the class struggle.

As early as 2017, the ICOR wrote in its resolution on Trump's inauguration: "The inauguration of Donald Trump marks a general tendency of open reaction and has global political repercussions. ... The shift to the right of the new US government is the reaction to the masses' search for an alternative to the existing system." The ICOR supports the worldwide protests against Trump's inauguration.

Today, 8 years on, the world situation is many times more unstable and crisis-ridden; the danger of World War III and the nuclear threat more tangible; the environmental catastrophe an existential crisis for humanity. The US monopolies behind Trump are united in their ultra-reactionary course. In addition to the oil and gas industry, the high-tech sector in particular, which Elon Musk already sees in a top position working closely with the brutal government.

Unlike 8 years ago, the working class in the USA, but also in Europe, is today often polarized and divided, but also much more determined. This is the concern of the monopolies and imperialists and so they are relying on a fascist to corrode the consciousness of the masses, especially the working class, and to suppress the class-conscious workers and revolutionaries. The strike of 30,000 Boeing workers, which has been going on for over 5 weeks, is very significant, as is the successful strike of tens of thousands of dock workers on the east coast of the USA for 3 days at the beginning of October. Militant consciousness is on the rise. Immediately after the election victory, calls were made in many cities to strengthen solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. The first demonstrations against racism and in defense of trade union rights and the right to strike filled the streets of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.

Nevertheless, the danger of fascism in the USA and as a worldwide tendency must by no means be underestimated. All progressive people, especially all revolutionaries, are called upon to work to raise awareness and organize the masses in the spirit of anti-fascism, anti-imperialism and the struggle for socialism. The alternative is not Trump or Harris. Strong revolutionary organizations, the building of a strong Marxist-Leninist party in the USA are the order of the day under the flag of the realistic utopia of our time: the revolutionary overcoming of imperialism and the building of socialism!

Strengthen the ICOR and the anti-imperialist united front against fascism, war and environmental destruction!

Strengthen the Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations all over the world!

Forward to socialism!

Status of the signatories 13.12.2024. Further signing possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info

1. PCPCI Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast)

2. ORC Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo

3. MMLPL Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Line

4. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

5. PCT Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo)

6. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

7. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh

8. SPB(M) Socialist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist)

9. CPI (ML) MassLine Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) MassLine

10. NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

11. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

12. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

13. Krasnyj Klin Gruppa Kommunistov-Revoljucionerov „Krasnyj Klin“ (Group of Communist Revolutionaries “Krasnyj Klin” ), Belarus

14. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

15. MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

16. UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

17. BP (NK-T) Bolşevik Parti (Kuzey Kürdistan-Türkiye) (Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan-Turkey))

18. KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

19. RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

20. UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

21. RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)

22. MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

23. MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

24. KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

25. PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))

26. PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

27. SUCI (C) Socialist Unity Center of India (Communist)

28. CPPDM Chinese People's Party for the Defense of Mao Zedong

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Union membership and workers’ struggle

Written by: Ned K. on 14 December 2024

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just released a report on the percentage of workers in Australia who are members of a Union in August 2024.

The Report said that 13.1% of workers were members of a Union in August 2024 compared with 12.5% of workers in August 2022. The increase in membership was due to an increase in public sector union members.

Union membership in the private (non-government workers) sector actually declined from 8% to 7.9%.

The ABS report says that from 1992 to 2024, union membership has fallen from 40% of all workers to 13.1% of all workers.

Union membership from 1992 to 2024 fell from 43% to 12% for men and from 35% to 14% for women.

The ABS report has a lot of detail in it, including duration of union membership with 66% of union members in August 2024 having been members for longer than 5 years.

The ABS report gives the appearance that the working class has "gone to sleep" as far as collective struggle is concerned, especially workers in the private sector.

This is not the case at all. The report does not explain that 1992 was about the time that big corporate interests, especially multinational corporations succeeded in having the then Labor Government, supported by the ACTU, introduce single site enterprise agreements as being in the best interests of workers. Initially these site-specific enterprise agreements could only be negotiated between an employer and Unions. Then the Labor Government allowed non- Union enterprise agreements.

The new laws divided workers and more conservative governments made further attacks on workers’ collective strength with the Howard Government introducing individual contracts (AWAs) in an attempt to turn all Australian workers in to Howard's vision of millions of individual "enterprising workers" negotiating their own pay and conditions "free" of interference from "third party" Unions.

The ABS latest report on Union Membership would appear to suggest that the multinationals and the likes of the Business Council of Australia had won the class war.

However, the ABS figures hide the magnificent struggles of the working class since 1992 right up to December 2024.

It was the working class, some in Unions, some not, who took to the streets and barricades in support of the Maritime Union of Australia members struggle against Patricks' stevedores and the Howard Government. The ABS figures do not tell the story of the working class organizing Your Rights At Work, Worth Fighting For and throwing the Howard Government out of office in 2007.

More recently, the ABS figures do not show the breakthrough by early childhood education workers in winning a 15% pay rise through a collective agreement covering multiple employers across the early childhood education sector. This was the very reversal of that 1992 non-Union site by site enterprise bargaining.

The ABS figures do not show the tremendous struggle by the whole aged care sector workforce from registered nurses to carers to kitchen workers and chefs to collectively win a 25% wage increase and improved working conditions and staffing levels.

Finally, the ABS figures do not show that despite the decline to 7.9% membership density in the private sector, private sector workers employed in Woolworths dared to struggle and strike for over two weeks to prevent Woolworths from using artificial intelligence devices to increase surplus value from workers every second of their shifts.

Unions are part of the capitalist system as the system is based on a class war between the owners of capital and the workers who produce the wealth of goods and services. Every collective win by workers strengthens the power of the working class as a whole and gives more workers a taste for the decisive struggles that lie ahead

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Oppose Israel’s plans to annex the Occupied West Bank!

Written by: DFLP on 13 December 2024

An important message has been received from the DFLP urging widespread opposition to Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank. The message is reprinted below.

Message from the "Department of Foreign Affairs in DFLP" to Global Parties on the Annexation Plan

Annexation is the highest and most dangerous stage of occupation, requiring resistance locally and condemnation and punishment internationally.

Dear esteemed members of political parties and global popular organizations,

Dear colleagues in international societal, media, human rights, and labor frameworks,

We extend to you the greetings of resilient and steadfast Palestine, standing firm on its land as it faces the genocide being inflicted upon its people across all historic Palestine. We bring to your attention the Zionist annexation plan, which has become an official strategy of the occupying entity. This plan is being implemented daily before the eyes of the international community without encountering the decisive and effective international positions and tools it warrants.

Dear comrades,

In addition to the war crimes and daily massacres being committed in Gaza in full view of the cameras and broadcast live, another crime has been unfolding for some time in the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank and East Jerusalem). This is happening amidst international inaction and silence, which only encourages Israel to proceed with its crime known as the annexation plan. This plan is coupled with American efforts to legitimize the use of the term "Judea and Samaria," the Israeli-preferred terminology rooted in Zionist myths and historical fabrications, rather than the internationally recognized term "occupied West Bank," which includes Jerusalem and is deemed occupied Palestinian land under international resolutions. The latest of these is the United Nations General Assembly resolution in September, which declared that "Israel's presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal and must end."

Western countries are fully aware of the seriousness and danger of the annexation plan. They also understand that the occupation has transitioned from a colonial occupation of the West Bank to a settler-colonial project aiming to annex large swathes of West Bank land and impose Israeli sovereignty over them. Annexation goes beyond occupation; it is the most extreme and dangerous stage the occupation can reach. This process is advancing gradually and strategically, avoiding sharp confrontations with the Palestinians while serving Israel’s interests and tactical goals.

The danger of annexation at this stage lies in the fact that it has now become the official strategy driving Israel’s actions. All measures and decisions, whether military or “civil,” undertaken in the West Bank will align with this plan. To put it more precisely, Israel’s approach to the West Bank and Jerusalem in the coming phase will focus on preparing the infrastructure to facilitate the annexation process. Meanwhile, some international parties continue to discuss the so-called "two-state solution," treating the plan as an extension of traditional occupation policies or as something that does not fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict. As a result, their response is limited to nominal opposition and superficial condemnations that fail to reach the ears of Israeli leaders.

Such positions are fueled by flawed analyses suggesting that annexation will be limited to small areas, downplaying the plan's threat to pacify public sentiment. However, realities on the ground confirm that the annexation plan will encompass the entire West Bank from all directions. For instance, when Israel annexes settlements, it effectively gains control over all surrounding and interconnected cities. Additionally, crossings, bypass roads near the settlements, and so-called military zones will remain under Israeli control. In practical terms, this means that Israel is moving toward the annexation of all West Bank lands, while considering the current Palestinian population density, which far exceeds the settler population (around 145 settlements housing approximately 800,000 settlers compared to about 3.5 million Palestinians).

There are numerous indications that the official announcement of the annexation plan is approaching. Various scenarios are being discussed regarding the method and timing of this announcement. However, a review of reports published in the Israeli media reveals that it will consist of a series of key components and stages:

1. The transfer of powers from the Israeli military to civilian authorities controlled by settler leaders, with direct support from ministers and senior officials in the military and government, will lead to the transition of responsibilities from an occupation authority to a civilian authority enforcing Israeli law. This process has already begun over the past few months.

2. The reclassification of certain areas in the West Bank from Area B to Area C, imposing full Israeli control over them, directly contradicts the Oslo Accords. Palestinian administrative bodies may retain limited functional roles without any security, military, or sovereign authority over these areas. These regions include the Jordan Valley, settlements and their surroundings, and areas adjacent to the separation wall. Gradual measures will also be implemented to displace Palestinians living in Area C, either through financial incentives or by applying security, military, and administrative pressures.

3. Massive budgets are being allocated for settlement construction in the West Bank. Israeli media reports indicate that the far-right Israeli government is reaching out to wealthy Jewish donors in the United States and Europe to fund large-scale settlement projects that will be announced later.

4. Providing military support to settler groups under the pretext of ensuring their security. A primary focus of some Israeli government ministers has become the distribution of weapons to settlers in the West Bank. According to available data, settlers now possess approximately one million firearms—a significant number compared to their population size.

5. Enacting laws and military orders from various ministries to intensify restrictions on Palestinians, including demolishing homes and prohibiting construction. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers are encouraged to build and are offered incentives to move to the West Bank.

6. To make the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state on its land and territory impossible, Israel will not stop at annexing selected Palestinian lands. As part of the annexation plan, Israel intends to divide the West Bank into over 170 isolated areas disconnected from each other. This concept of fragmentation was previously discussed during the signing of the Oslo Accords, with proposals likening the West Bank to Bantustans.

Regardless of international positions, particularly those of Western countries complicit in Israeli schemes through their silence and partnership, the annexation plan proceeds as intended. Even if delayed or slowed down for tactical reasons, its implementation follows the strategic framework Israel has pursued since the Nakba by imposing facts on the ground for both the Palestinian people and the world. This approach is not a single-phase process but rather consists of gradual, phased steps that collectively build the complete strategic structure of the annexation plan—what is referred to as "gradual annexation."

For all these reasons, we reiterate that Western countries are politically hypocritical when they claim to support the so-called "two-state solution" while criticizing Israeli plans in the West Bank for violating international legitimacy and law. They provide Israel with all the means for war, killing, and aggression, while imposing only minimal sanctions on a handful of individuals. Meanwhile, the leaders of extremism and fascism in Israel continue with their plans undeterred by Western positions or criticisms from international organizations.

The Palestinian national movement remains in a phase of national liberation, meaning the current task for the Palestinian people and their political and popular forces is to resist the occupier and its infrastructure through all available forms of struggle. This requires the support of freedom-loving people around the world. Therefore, we address you on behalf of the "Department of Foreign Affairs in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine," urging political parties, societal frameworks, institutions, unions, and opinion-makers to support our people in their resistance to thwart the annexation plan. Just as we have together defeated Zionist projects and plans aimed at eliminating the Palestinian cause, we are confident in your support for our people and their national struggle to live freely on their land, free from occupation—an occupation whose existence on our land remains entirely unacceptable and necessitates resistance in all its forms.

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

- Foreign Affairs Department -

December 2024

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Remain firmly opposed to Zionism, anti-Semitism and all forms of racism

Written by: Nick G. and Alice M. on 11 December 2024

(Above: Nasser Mashni denounces synagogue arson at last Sunday's rally)

Ever since the start of the current Zionist Israeli aggression against Gaza, on October 7, 2023, attempts have been made to equate criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.

The Zionist lobby in Australia is particularly vociferous and influential in using allegations of anti-Semitism to attack supporters of the Palestinian people and critics of Israel’s genocide, many of whom are Jewish people.

People in the media and politics who have defended “Israel’s right to defend itself” by committing wholesale genocide have rushed to condemn any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism every time the Zionist lobby has demanded it. They have sent their police to harass and arrest demonstrators against Zionist crimes.

The arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne’s South East is a case in point.

This was real anti-Semitism at its worst.

It is a hate crime just as was the mass killing of Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. There is silence surrounding other hates crimes targeting Muslims in our community. A replica bomb was left on a car in the driveway of a house flying the Palestinian flag in Sydney.

The family home of the founder of the Burgertory chain, Palestinian activist Hash Tayeh, was firebombed last April in Melbourne, the second time in the past five months that arsonists attacked a property connected to him.

A driveway of a Melbourne house, displaying Palestinian flag and calls for a ceasefire, was graffitied with abusive language. There are many unpublicised political and racist acts against Palestinian supporters.

Last Sunday night a school bus belonging to Adelaide Islamic school IQRA College was set on fire and badly damaged in a blatant act of Islamophobia. It was parked outside bus driver’s house, and deliberately lit before midnight.

Quite correctly, the Muslim community and supporters of Palestine have denounced the synagogue attack.

The Islamic Council of Victoria said it was “saddened” by the attack, and “reiterates that the right of Australians to practice their faith and worship without fear must be upheld, and that places of worship should be respected as spiritual and community havens.”

Hash Tayeh, angered by the double standards surrounding treatment of hate crimes in Australia, nevertheless tweeted “My heart breaks for the synagogue that was firebombed, and I want to help rebuild it.”

At the Palestinian solidarity rally on December 8, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni addressed the crowd, condemning the attack. “Whoever set fire to that synagogue is a racist, is a fascist, is a Nazi,” Mr Mashni said.

The message to anyone who took part in the firebombing who may have come from the ranks of Palestinian supporters was clear: “Piss off!”

At all pro Palestine rallies held every Sunday since 7 October 2023, Mashni and other speakers repeatedly condemn anti-Semitism. “Anti-Semitism and all forms of racism have no place here!” they loudly proclaim to thunderous applause and cheering by tens of thousands.

There is little point speculating about who may have been involved: Nazis, or those who mistakenly think that they can show support for Palestine by using Nazi methods.

The act itself was wrong and only plays into the hands of Zionists by lending credibility to their accusations of anti-Semitism and calls for what are essentially protections of Zionist advocacy.

It is provocation and lays the ground for calls to ban Palestinian rallies, roll out more so-called “anti-terror” powers for the state and armed forces, and jailing protestors. Most of these state powers will continue to be used against the people in many struggles.

From this it can be expected that there will be further surveillance and harassment of those who denounce Zionist aggression and genocide.

As Communists, we have always condemned anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms and disguises.

In the 1930s, and in the shadow of Nazi attacks on Jews, many political leaders of the day were asked to denounce anti-Semitism. Most were silent. Only Stalin made the statement that Jews wanted to hear.

Replying to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States, on January 12, 1931, Stalin said: “National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

“Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

“In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.”

No other major world leader made such a forthright condemnation of anti-Semitism or explained its dangers to working people. Not only did Stalin strongly condemn and denounce anti-Semitism in words, the USSR was the only country to open its borders to persecuted Jewish people fleeing Nazis occupations, pogroms and the holocaust. No other European country would let in Jewish people seeking escape from the Nazi holocaust.

Rather than pandering to the Zionist lobby, the authorities must take the lead in treating all racist hates crimes with the severity they deserve.

Supporters of the Palestinian resistance cannot be silenced or intimidated.

They are firm in their opposition to Zionist aggression.

They are firm in their opposition to anti-Semitism and all forms of racism.

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The reactionaries must condemn all terrorism, including their own

Written by: Nick G. on 10 December 2024

Current events in Syria, and the fire-bombing of a synagogue in Melbourne, have seen the label “terrorist” applied. In particular, it is applied by people in the media and the government who have justified the genocidal terrorism of the Zionist occupation forces against Palestinian civilians, and Palestinian and international health workers, educators, journalists and aid workers.

There are two ways to use the term “terrorist”. They are explored in the following statement from the Political Report to our 14th Congress in 2015. It helps clarify the distinction between a Communist way of viewing what terrorism is, and the 'War on Terror' which was a pretext for all kinds of repression.

We agree that the rebadged al-Qaeda and al-Nusrah forces now operating as the Islamist HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) in Syria and likely to be its new government, were terrorists, and need to show cause why they should not continue to be called terrorists. We agree that ISIS forces attacking the democratic autonomous region of Rojava in North-East Syria were and still are terrorists. But equally, so are the US imperialists and the Israeli Zionists.

So too, for that matter, are persons committing arson against communities in Australia. So too, are young Australian Zionists being recruited into the Israeli Occupation Forces, knowing full well the extent of its terrorist activities in Gaza and the West Bank.

The extract from the Political Report follows:

Groups like ISIS have emerged as a type of international lumpen-proletariat. In advanced capitalist countries the lumpen-proletariat consists of people who cannot or will not live as members of the working class, people broken in spirit by poverty, lack of education and opportunity, health failure, and drugs. Their escape route from all of this is criminal activity and criminal violence through which they seek to empower and enrich themselves. They aspire to live like the idle rich they see at the top of society. ISIS recruits come from all strata of society and include educated and articulate youths. They hate imperialism for its wanton random violence against the communities from which they come and for its failure to embrace the Prophet, but they are not conscious anti-imperialists. They aspire to have an empire of their own, the Caliphate and murder and terrorise any who stand in their way. Their open fighting is directed at armed opponents, including genuine anti-imperialists, but their terrorism is directed at non-combatants, at innocent civilians, including in the imperialist and developed capitalist countries. Theirs is the personally brutal mirror image of the impersonal brutality of imperialist drone attacks and the rain of Zionist phosphorous bombs over Gaza. Whether you behead the person next to you or simply feed coordinates to a drone from the safe distance of Pine Gap, you are equally a terrorist as far as your victims are concerned.

ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks in Australia, France, Britain and elsewhere give the ruling classes of those countries the excuse to intensify surveillance of all progressive politically active people. We have already seen a vast expansion of police and security powers in this regard. We are also seeing the roll-out of a campaign encouraging teachers to identify potentially “radicalised” youths. A number of case studies are presented including a young girl who leaves her supportive family to become an environmental activist. Of course, there is the obligatory case study of a Muslim youth, but the lumping together of people exercising legitimate democratic rights with those coming under the influence of ISIS shows how terrorism enables the ruling class to spread its repressive net ever more widely. The goal of “deradicalising” ISIS followers can never succeed so long as it denies the existence of imperialist violence and terror.

Marxists eschew terrorism. The terrorism of imperialism is the much greater and the more dangerous and perfidious of the two terrorisms we have discussed. It will be directed at the revolutionary anti-imperialist movement when it develops to a particular level of influence in Australia. It will come from the authorised state agencies of violence and it will come from fascist thugs to whom the state will turn a blind eye and encourage. We will only be able to defend the advances we make in the development of the movement for independence from imperialism by countering the violence of the state with the organised resistance of the revolutionary movement. Our activity will arise as a defensive measure and gradually assume an offensive capacity, but it will always be organised against identified agencies of the capitalist state and will never take the form of indiscriminate and random violence in which members of our own class become victims. We will never practice terrorism or endorse terrorist activity.

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Australia: a hub for “US interests”

Written by: (Contributed) on 6 December 2024

(Source: www.asd.gov.au )

Residents of Perth may have noticed the opening of some offices for the Australian Signals Directorate in September. Some limited publicity was forthcoming. What was not so well publicised, however, were the finer points of the Cold War nature of the everyday business of that department: sensitive telecommunications linking the Australian government with their US counterparts, elevating Australia ever further as a regional hub for 'US interests' across the Indo-Pacific and enhancing US-led intelligence-gathering and surveillance facilities.

In September a brief announcement on an official Australian Government website included information concerning the opening of a new Perth State Office under the Redspice program, focussed primarily upon cyber security and signals intelligence. (1) The exact location of the office was not so forthcoming.

The government department, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), however, has a noted presence in West Australia with their Kojarena Geraldtown military facilities which are directly linked into the sensitive Five Eyes, US intelligence and the Echelon system and form part of a global US system of satellite communications. (2) Kojarena is a ground station for satellites stationed above the equator and used for interception. (3)

Like nearly all Australian-based military facilities, upgrades in recent times have followed US-led Cold War directives in wave after wave of militarisation.

A brief announcement in late November, therefore, was perhaps to be expected; Google were following planning to expand its $1 billion undersea cable to 'connect Darwin and Singapore with Christmas Island, a move it says will boost the reliability and resilience of Australia's internet connectivity and provide a new link between the US and Asia … via a … link to the Homomoana cable system which connects with the US' (4)

It noted, furthermore, that, 'new digital pathways for Australia, enhancing the reliability and resilience of the internet within the country and throughout the Indo-Pacific region … via a … new interconnection point between the US and Asia'. (5)

The media releases were carefully edited to avoid unnecessary publicity; information already in the public domain, however, would tend to indicate high-level military and diplomatic planning inside the Pentagon for upgrading Australian-based facilities.

The diplomatic role of the US toward Australia has a long history, dating from the earliest days of the previous Cold War. In mid-1947, for example, Australia was directed to accept its regional responsibilities toward Madagascar, a then French colony on the far side of the Indian Ocean. It was diplomatically noted that 'the direct bearing of events in Madagascar on Australians is in its strategic position … any power that controls the entrances – the Cape of Good Hope; the mouth of the Red Sea; the seaways south of the Malayan Peninsula and of Australia, controls the Indian Ocean'. (6)

And foreign policy responsibilities thrust upon Australia by the US also included wholesale domestic interference inside sovereign affairs: a diplomatic report prepared by US Naval Attache Commander Stephen Jurika Jnr., dated 6 August 1948, noted, 'Australia, its life and history, are dominated by the Communist-controlled unions … until the parliamentary Labor Party is removed from office there is not one chance in ten million that any effective action against Communism can, or will, be taken … Communism was rife in the highest governing circles in Australia'. (7)

Later the same month the new US Ambassador, Myron Cowen, arrived in Australia with the specific instruction from the president and under-secretary of State to do 'everything possible in connection with the Communist problem in Australia'. (8)

With the onset of the present Cold War the US diplomatic mentality has changed little in eight decades. The recent developments with Australian signals are merely the systematic strengthening of a strategic regional hub for 'US interests', with all which that position entails. It is interesting, therefore, to note the threads connecting the previous with the present Cold War.

A reference to Christmas Island has revealed the strategic nature of outlying islands; the island in question has also been closely linked to the nearby Cocos Islands which have been noted as highly strategic territories which possess 'a valued capability which Australia could offer the use of in a major contingency, as those sites would be a genuine gap filler between major bases in Guam and Diego Garcia'. (9)

The fact Guam and Diego Garcia are hubs for 'US interests' on an arc from Pine Gap in Central Australia is not coincidental. They have been upgraded many times.

The strategic location of the Cocos Islands and Christmas Island both resting on an arc from Australian military facilities at Geraldton, likewise, is not coincidental. The islands are located at the entrance of the Sunda Strait and South Java Sea. Even in the previous Cold War the capacity of the military facilities covered a wide area, including West Africa, the Middle East, former Soviet Union and China together with the Indo-Pacific. (see diagram)

Studies of the period concluded with the observation that 'the US has a world-wide network of electronic listening posts engaged in eavesdropping on other nations’ radio traffic and pinpointing the location of transmissions'. (10) Modern mobile telephones also have specialised radar and motion detectors built into their programs, ensuring they are easily traceable using specialist monitoring equipment. (11) The role of the US using the elite intelligence-gathering facilities within the Five Eyes should also not be overlooked; the US regularly out-source intelligence-gathering to their partners. (12)

The intelligence-gathering is now set to be expanded still further through higher levels of US control of the internet; with the onset of the present Cold War it was already noted that the US National Security Agency had 'shifted to finding ways to exploit the global reach of Google, Microsoft, Venizon and other US technical powers'. (13) The military planning would now appear well under-way, with Australia a strategic regional hub for operations.

The US is also planning to expand their three-stage Island Chain Theory based in the Asia-Pacific region to the larger Indo-Pacific arena with fourth and fifth chains; it is not particularly difficult, therefore, to establish the timing of the present implementation of higher level signals intelligence facilities for future and more comprehensive uses across a wider arena of all those countries bordering on the Indian ocean. (14)

Studies of the strategic significance of Christmas Island have already established the ADF have submarine monitoring facilities for access and egress into the Indian Ocean. (15) They, too, would now appear set for an upgrade.

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. See: Australian Government – Australian Signals Directorate, 10 September 2024, Australian Defence Force expands footprint with new Perth State Office.
2. See Wikipedia: ASD.; and, Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station, Kojarena, The Nautilus Institute, 23 October 2024.
3. Nautilus Institute, ibid.
4. Google expands US-Asia sea cable, Australian, 27 November 2024.
5. Ibid.
6. Madagascar's Future Concerns Australia Security, Talk, Monthly Digest of A.B.C. Broadcasts, June 1947, page 64.
7. The Spycatchers – The Official History of ASIO, 1949-63, David Horner, (NSW, 2014), quoted: pp. 78-80.
8. Ibid.
9. Strategic potential of the Cocos Islands and Christmas Island, Airpower / Defence Today, Dr. Carlo Kopp, March 2012.
10. Indian Ocean Zone of Peace, Australian Left Review, Owen Wilkes, (1976), Edition 55/56, page 32.
11. See: US Navy in race to reload on high seas, Australian, 3 December 2024.
12. See: Spyworld, How the C.S.E. spies on Canadians and the world, Mike Frost as told to Michel Gratton, (Toronto, June 1995).
13. The intelligence coup of the century, The Washington Post, 11 February 2020.
14. Wikipedia: Island Chain Theory.
15. Christmas Island, Military Significance, GlobalSecurity, 9 July 2018.

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US - China Trade War Already Intensifying

Written by: Ned K. on 5 December 2024

Rivalry between USA and China has been well under way on many fronts, including trade.

This week the trade war took another turn. On Monday 2 December, the Biden Administration added another 146 Chinese entities to the trade blacklist.

Among the entities are large domestic chip toolmakers and semi-conductor manufacturing plants. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is the fourth time in three years that the US Government tried to restrict China's access to high performance semi-conductor technology.

Just three days later, the Chinese Government imposed a ban on export to the USA of rare earth metals gallium, germamium and antimony.

Gallium is essential for production of semi-conductors and electronics manufacturing.

Germamium is vital in defence and space applications.

Antimony is a brittle silver-coloured metal used in rechargeable batteries, especially in car batteries.

In the last two years, US corporations imported nearly all gallium and nearly 50% of its required germanium. China has been a main supplier to the USA of these minerals. When US corporations cannot import enough of these minerals they have to rely on the US recycling industry of them for supply.

According to the Wall Street Journal, what surprised US authorities this time was the rapidity of China's retaliation with its new trade bans.

The trade war between the USA and China may intensify further under the Trump administration making job security for workers in the USA even worse than it is now.

As for China's rapid retaliatory response to the USA's expansion of its trade blacklist, this is arguably an indication that Chinese social-imperialism sees itself as more than a match for the huff and puff of its declining imperialist rival.

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Woolworths Warehouse Workers' Strike Shows Strength of United Workers

Written by: Ned K. on 4 December 2024

Warehouse workers, members of United Workers Union (UWU), have been on strike since Thursday 21 November 2024.

The strike by 1500 workers across four large Woolworths Distribution Centers (3 in Victoria, 1 in NSW) is "protected industrial action" under the Fair Work Act. Workers are demanding above inflation wage increases and a safe work environment.

21st Century Taylorism

A safe work environment means no implementation by Woolworths of an artificial intelligence "productivity framework" which records a worker's every move and demands a 100% pick rate at all times by all workers.

As one worker explained, "you wake up, you think, 'how am I feeling today? Can I go to work and can I hit 100%?"

This use of technology by Woolworths is the modern-day form of Taylorism, which was used in car factories from the early decades of the 20th Century to ensure that every minute of a worker's time on the production line contributed to an increase in the surplus value produced by each worker and the workforce as a whole.

While striking workers and their UWU Delegates have said they are prepared to negotiate further on wage outcomes in the new Agreement, Woolworth's 21st Century Taylorist "productivity framework" is just not on.

Over decades of site-by-site enterprise bargaining, Woolworths warehouse workers wages have varied from site to site. One of the demands of the 1500 striking warehouse workers is that the base rate for warehouse workers across all four distribution centers be $38 per hour.

Over the decades since the individual site enterprise bargaining has been in place Woolworths have played the divide and conquer game to keep wages as low as possible on each site. The lower the wages, the higher the surplus value extracted from workers.

Their "preferred" union the Shop Distributive and Allied Trades Union (SDA) has been a subservient Woolworths partner by accepting low wage outcomes while members of the more militant union with coverage of warehouse workers (UWU formerly National Union of Workers), in the large Victorian Woolworths warehouses have a history of fighting on for better outcomes.

The current enterprise bargaining situation enabled warehouse workers to take collective strike action at four distribution centers simultaneously, placing the workers in a stronger position. This has been borne out by the growing shortages of goods at Woolworths retail outlets across Victoria, NSW and ACT.

Despite the workers being in a stronger position in their class struggle against the giant retailer Woolworths, the SDA still recommended their members accept Woolworth's low wage offer and the company's "productivity framework".

This attempt to divide the workers had no real effect as the vast majority of workers are not members of the SDA.

In the second week of the strike, Woolworths announced that they were going to open their Dandenong warehouse.

Workers picketed all three entrances and their solidarity and determination resulted in Woolworths retreating. The warehouse never opened and the bus load of scabs that Woolworths planned to drive through the gates to start working never eventuated.

Then Woolworths did the predictable thing of applying to Fair Work Commission to order that the pickets be declared illegal. The Fair Work Commission hears this application on Friday 6 December.

Support For Striking Workers Widens

The attempts by Woolworths to break the picket line only widened the support for the striking warehouse workers. The Building Industry Group of Unions (CFMEU, ETU and AMWU) pledged support in large numbers at the warehouse gates if Fair Work Commission banned UWU members from the picket line.

By this time the federal Labor Government was sticking its nose in behind the scenes and urging both Woolworths and UWU to let the Fair Work Commission find a resolution of the dispute. This is usually code for getting workers back to work before an acceptable outcome to workers is reached.

Working Class Is the Advanced Class

This strike by 1500 workers shows the power of the working class when they take collective action and keep control of their own struggles. The ruling class, on this occasion represented by Woolworths and the federal government will try and steer the struggle out of workers' hands by using other arms of the capitalist state, such as the Fair Work Commission.

So far, the UWU through its National Secretary Tim Kennedy has stuck by the workers. Even the ACTU Secretary Sally McManus made an appearance at the NSW Woolworths warehouse where workers are involved in the strike.

The strike by the 1500 workers is a visible reminder of which class is the socially useful class in society and shows that the ruling capitalists are not needed for a society to operate. It is the working class that produces and distributes the goods and services in society.

Lenin once commented that workers learn more by their own collective actions about their power as a class for themselves than a thousand speeches or leaflets.

As objective conditions for workers deteriorate further under capitalism in Australia, and more workers inevitably take collection actions, more will question the nature of the society they live in and recognize that there is an alternative - an independent, socialist Australia where the likes of Woolworths owners no longer exist as a class.

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The strange case of the replacement for the JP9102 satellite system: who made that decision?

Written by: (Contributed) on 4 December 2024

(Source: www.news.satnews.com)

Those observing the unfolding drama of the replacement for the Australian Defence Force JP9102 satellite system, which was cancelled by Canberra during early November, may have noticed the seemingly contradictory nature of official statements and explanations from government departments.

Serious questions would appear to have arisen about decision-making at the highest levels in Canberra; accuracy and authenticity of media releases remain a matter in question. That is, if the actors in senior positions in Canberra want to be regarded as straightforward and taken at face value.

Satellite systems are invariably about defence and security provision and intelligence-gathering; secrecy surrounding their very existence is inevitable. The stated range of the JP9102 satellite system, nevertheless, revealed areas of interest for Australian-based facilities, operating under US tutelage. With a range from US intelligence facilities on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to the Solomon Islands, and the Artic to Antarctica, the JP9102 was designed to be the pride and joy of the ADF. (1) It was noted that the JP9102 satellite system had been designed to provide 'an uncrackable data network across the ADF, providing communications and data links for its advanced fighter jets, naval assets and the army's land forces'. (2)

With the US pushing their Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) to contain and encircle China it is perhaps no surprise to find the Solomon Islands was geo-strategic point of interest for the JP9102 satellite system; Cold War military hawks based in Canberra have already assessed the past and present government along lines of 'the trenchantly pro-CCP clique in Honiara surrounding Solomons leader Jeremiah Manele and his predecessor as prime minister, Manasseh Sogavara, China's main man who, as Finance Minister, holds the purse strings'. (3)

US-led Cold War hawks are particularly concerned at the Solomon Islands establishing a security agreement with China 'that allows Chinese forces into the Pacific nation in exchange for significant investment from Beijing'. (4) Assessments from Cold War military intelligence are, therefore, not ambiguous; it has been noted, for example, that 'the US recognises China's attempts to expand its network of dependent vassal states into a quasi-military security pact designed to foil US-led alliances and existing multi-lateral security frameworks'. (5) The US fear, furthermore, that the Solomon Islands will be drawn closer to the 'Dark Quad', composed of Russia, Iran and North Korea through closer diplomatic relations with China, which may also eventually include Venezuela. (6)

While the proposed JP9102 satellite system was subsequently cancelled in early November, following five years of military planning, its replacement was shot into space within days.

No doubt the residents of the Solomon Islands now await increased surveillance of their everyday lives, with vast amounts of personal data being used by US and Australian intelligence analysts to profile the whole population to identify supposed 'Chinese interests'.

With the minimum of publicity, SpaceX sent an Optus satellite system into orbit using Falcon 9 rockets; described as 'a secretive military communications satellite … headed into geostationary orbit some 36,000 kms above earth … with a payload that has been shrouded in secrecy to the point of not disclosing any specifics of the mission'. (7)

The event was hardly accompanied by straightforward media releases; in fact, they appeared confused and downright misleading. Or was that the intention?

Following the cancellation of the initial JP9102 system a brief statement from Canberra concluded 'there was no word on when the alternative system would be delivered or how much it would cost … it claimed … the ADF would continue with its current satellite system, which involves purchasing bandwidth from the US military and a commercial provider'. (8)

Even the best made secrets, however, can be difficult to keep under wraps, particularly when the label JP9102 proved to be the name of the project, not the actual satellite system.

An official media release noted, for example, 'Defence confirmed that it will use the Optus-X satellite launched by SpaceX on Monday morning Australian time … and … it will complement our future multi-orbit satellite capabilities to be delivered under project JP9102'. (9) The stated satellite co-ordinates presumably remain the same, across at least 89 ADF military facilities and various ground stations; its geo-stationary orbit, furthermore, are stated as 87.75 degrees. (10)

Publicity surrounding the cancellation of the JP9102 satellite system, nevertheless, proved particularly interesting, following lines highly critical of the federal government from opposition figures only too pleased to push the US Cold War political and military line. They noted 'the looming cancellation is yet another blow to the government's plans to re-arm the ADF to prepare for a potential war with China'. (11) And, the decision is 'a seriously blow to Australia's credibility with the US and other strategic partners'. (12) Another stated 'Labor scrapping the satellites takes sovereign risk to a new level. It will also undermine Australia's defence credibility, just as the US and Britain were relying on Australia to boost Indo-Pacific surveillance'. (13)

Nothing, however, would appear further from the truth!

What has not been so well acknowledged, for example, is that the Pentagon got exactly what they wanted from the new JP9102 replacement satellite system: complete control and inter-operability between the Pentagon and Australia:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Satellites out: defence $7bn hit, Australian, 4 November 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Beijing's Solomons strategy has outflanked Canberra, Lead Editorial, Australian, 12 November 2024.
4. Pacific leader's rejection queried, Australian, 12 November 2024.
5. 'Dark Quad' threat demands urgent action, Defence Report Supplement, Australian, 31 October 2024.
6. Ibid.
7. Secrecy over Musk launch for ADF., Australian, 20 November 2024.
8. Diggers get $40,000 to hang about, Australian, 5 November 2024.
9. Defence to use 'Optus-X satellite launched earlier this week, itnews, 20 November 2024.
10 Australian, op.cit., 4 November 2024; and, SpaceX launches secretive 'OptusX' spacecraft, Space Connect, 18 November 2024.
11. Australian, ibid., 4 November 2024.
12. Ibid.
13. Satellite cancellation shows Labor's priorities are wrong, Lead Editorial, Australian, 5 November 2024.

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All foreign belligerents must withdraw from Syria and stop seizing its territory!

Written by: Nick G. on 4 December2024

Recent events in Syria call for the condemnation of the seizure of territories by proxies of regional expansionists Turkey and Iran.
Syrian government forces have relinquished control over Aleppo and other regions.

The situation is complicated by the continuing presence of Turkish occupation forces who had invaded Syria in 2018 and occupied land along the common border which they had taken from the progressive Kurds. This included the city of Afrin. The Kurdish defence forces and women’s forces (YPG and YPJ) resisted further Turkish incursions into their area known formally as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), and informally as Rojava.

Rojava celebrated the 10th anniversary of its existence earlier this year. It is a region noted for supporting the aspirations of the various components of North and East Syria, including Kurds, Arabs, Syriacs, Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmen, Circassians and Chechens. More than anything, it is noted for its emancipation and empowering of women.

The YPG-YPJ had to also fight powerful ISIS terrorists seeking to seize Rojava. In addition to ISIS, al-Nusrah fought Rojava and is currently threatening it in its new identity as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as violence targets Yazidis and Kurds attempting to flee Islamist forces.

Into the mix has to be added the Syrian National Army (SNA) loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Defence Forces, aligned with the Rojava region, the Syrian Arab Army – part of Assad’s SNA, and the mainly volunteer corps of the pro-Assad National Defence Force.

Also present are US and Iranian military bases. Iran sees the survival of the Syrian government as being crucial to its regional interests and, together with Hezbollah, has provided Assad with security and military support, including drone attacks on ISIS forces.

The U.S. still has an active presence in eastern Syria with around 1000 troops. The US collaborated with the SDF in the fight against ISIS in the lead-up to the creation of Rojava, and closely monitors Assad’s relationship with the Iranians and the Russians who have two major air bases and a naval facility in the country.

According to Saudi Arabia’s Al Majalla website, by the end of the first half of 2022, the number of foreign military bases and locations had reached a total of 830 sites, distributed as follows:

• Iran: 570

• Turkey: 125

• Russia: 105

• US-led coalition: 30

As of December 3 there were already some 75,000 internally displaced persons, mostly Kurds alongside other minorities, as well as Arabs. Many are sleeping outside in freezing weather. Tens of thousands have been transferred out of Shehba/Tel Rifaat region, seized two days ago by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army militias which previously drove the bulk of the Kurdish population and all Yazidis and Christians out of the Afrin region in 2018.

Turkish bombing has continued in Rojava for most of this year.

There is a grave risk of an imminent Turkish-backed assault against DAANES-governed Manbij, with multi-ethnic population of c.300K, creating further destabilisation. In addition, the Kurdish parts of Aleppo have been surrounded and cut off from assistance.

Imperialist rivalry and the ambitions of regional expansionists are tearing Syria apart.

All foreign forces must be withdrawn and Syrian independence respected.

The rights of minorities to self-determination up to an including regional autonomy and secession must be guaranteed by Syria.

US and Russia out!

Turkey and Iran out!

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Reply to a reader

Written by: Nick G. on 4 December 2024

Dear Ken,

I am replying to your comments on our Facebook page about our attitude towards China.

I know you are a long-time reader of our material, and that you were, for a while, a leading member of our Party. They are both good reasons for listening to your criticisms and taking them seriously.

I also acknowledge your personal connections to China through family and friends as a strong basis for your defence of China.

One of your comments is: “At a time when we are facing a hot possible nuclear in Europe and the Middle east i would suggest that the CPAML concentrate on the activities of the United States Israel and their satraps including Australia instead of joining in China bashing.”

Ken, we have posted, to date, 212 articles and statements this year. Four of them have specifically criticised China, and the vast majority have “concentrated on the activities of the United States, Israel and their satraps including Australia.”

In the context of attacking US imperialism’s preparations for war with China, we have sometimes referred to China as an imperialist rival of the US, but that is in the context of depicting US imperialism as the main source of regional and global tensions, and as the number one enemy of the world’s people.

Ken, I don’t dispute that you “personally have seen the great rise in living standards under Xi Jinping”.

Like you, I have been to China many times, and have seen the same thing.

When I first went to China, the Cultural Revolution was still in full swing. Yes, there was poverty, but the power of the landlords had been broken and the wealth of capitalists confiscated. Whilst people were living frugally, the Party was committed to eliminating the gap between town and country, and the bourgeois right manifested in the gap between mental and manual labour.

It is wrong to say that the Cultural Revolution kept the Chinese in poverty. I was in China just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and could see that living standards had gone up. My belief is that if the socialist economy of China had continued past Deng’s restoration of capitalism, it would have continued to improve, and people’s living standards with it, but without the yawning gaps of contemporary China’s class structure.

You say that “Poverty is only glamorous for people who don't have to live in it”. For our part, we do not glamourise poverty, either here or in China.

What we have said (for example, in our Spring 2020 Australian Communist article China and the Widening of Relative Poverty - AC+2020+Spring.pdf ) is that a socialist society committed to the elimination of class differences has become a capitalist society with one of the world’s largest Gini Coefficients, and that whilst many people have been lifted out of absolute poverty, they have been placed into the relative poverty of an entrenched capitalist class system.

Your comment on our post about Banana Man and his flaunting of wealth over a worthless piece of non-art is that we are “China bashing”. Even if we had wanted to, there is no need to when China does such a good job of bashing itself through the ostentation and extravagance of the billionaires who have crept out from under Deng’s reforms.

Ken, you have shared Comrade Xiang Guanqi’s criticism of Xi Jinping Thought 12 times. Yes, we do need to have our profile raised, and may even get more followers thanks to your efforts. However, we question why you have sent it to two pages that support the Palestinian people. What other reason is there for this than to try and undermine our standing with supporters of Palestine? Is it because you think that China supports Palestine, and that any criticism of China is a criticism of Palestine? China played a positive role in bringing together 14 organisations representative of the combined Palestinian resistance. As we said at the time, this was a good thing but China had its own agenda, achieving a united Palestinian statement supporting a “two-state solution” involving a state with which it has had diplomatic relations since 1992 and is currently Israel’s third largest trading partner globally.

You state that “China under Xi Jinping is supporting the Palestinians”. Diplomacy, and China’s vote at the UN, is important, but to send our material to Palestine support groups implies that we are more interested in “China bashing” a friend of the Palestinians, and are therefore not supporting the Palestinians ourselves.

Forty of this year’s articles on our website have been specifically in support of Palestine. That’s an average of a bit more than three a month. They have included reports on rallies, analyses of Zionist aggression, the posting of calls for the release of the long-imprisoned Georges Abdullah in France, and statements by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Regrettably, you did not point this out in your sharing of our article on China with Facebook pages supporting Palestine.

Ken, as you know, there are three nominally Communist parties in Australia, only one of which supports “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and the Thought of Xi Jinping.

One of its leaders was recently interviewed on Chinese television supporting Xi’s multipolarity and peaceful coexistence with US imperialism.

It is important that we seek to cooperate with the other two parties in the interests of our working class, but we do so on the basis of acknowledging our differences.

We have a clear-cut stand on China as a capitalist and social-imperialist country.

It is our right to use the evidence that is available to us to explain that position.

We take your criticisms seriously, hence the length of this reply.

We will, however, have to agree to disagree on China.

Regards,

Nick G.

3 December 2024

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Health Workers For Palestine Lead Adelaide Rally

Written by: Ned K. on 2 December 2024

On Sunday 1 December, Health Care workers from Adelaide's public hospital system led the fortnightly Free Palestine rally at Parliament House steps and then demonstration along busy North Terrace.

The Free Palestine Sunday rallies in Adelaide entered their 14th continuous month. Each rally focused on different aspects of the heroic Palestinian people's struggle against the genocidal occupation by Israel, supported by the USA and other western powers including the Australian Government.

At this rally two public hospital Health Care workers spoke about the many hundreds of hospital workers in Gaza killed from Israeli bombings of hospitals and the thousands of women and children in particular they were caring for in those hospitals.

The speakers strikingly contrasted working as a Health Worker here in Adelaide compared with working in a hospital in Gaza. They led a minute's silence for all those Palestinian Health Workers who lost their lives and for all the children killed by Israeli bombs or missing presumed dead under the vast urban areas reduced to rubble by the bombing of civilian targets.

Then a student nurse addressed the rally and characterized his response to the genocide of the Palestinian people as "attack one, attack all". He said although thousands of kilometres away, he said he felt more solidarity with the Palestinians than any of the politicians of the major political parties in Australia.

Before the demonstration along North Terrace, one of the convenors of AFOPA, Mike Kazam, said that the resilience of the Palestinian people and the raising of voices by thousands of Australians in many different places and organizations and communities had been the main reason why Albanese and Penny Wong had come out with a slightly less pro-USA position on the decision of the International Criminal Court regarding arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his top cronies for war crimes.

He emphasized that people's actions in support of the Palestinians do make a difference and urged all present at the rally to continue participation in the struggle.

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New Government Housing Scheme - Does It Create Affordable Housing?

Written by: Ned K. on 1 December 2024

(Image: www,express.co.uk)

On Thursday 28 November 2024 the Albanese Government's Housing Scheme, to be known as the "Help To Buy Scheme" passed through the Senate.

Without even reading the fine print, it appears to be providing both hope and depression for people desperate to buy their own homes.

The Scheme provides a government financed "equity contribution" of up to 40% of the cost of purchasing a newly built house and up to 30% of the cost of purchasing an existing house put up for sale.

A potential home buyer needs to have a minimum 2% of the price of the house as a deposit.

The home buyer does not have to pay rent on the government owned equity contribution towards the purchase price of the house.

The Scheme will run for 4 years and be available for up to 40,000 eligible low- and middle-income earners. What happens at the end of the 4 years is a case of "your guess is as good as mine".

To be eligible for the Scheme, an individual potential buyer must have income of no more than $90,000 per year. For a couple as potential buyer, their combined income must be no more than $120,000 per year.

If the new home buyer sells the house, the Scheme enables the federal Government to hold a 30% on the property. This means that 30% of the proceeds of sale would go to the Government.

A home buyer under this new "Help To Buy Scheme" will be able to buy back the Government's equity on the house after the first 2 years of occupancy by the home buyer.

The risks for people participating in the Scheme are higher if house prices drop, or if interest rates rise or if the new home buyers' income declines due to insecure work and insecure income levels.

The new Scheme may enable more people to scrape enough money together for the initial purchase of a house which they would not otherwise have. Once having purchased the house, they will be like all other middle- and low-income home buyers who battle to pay the house off as well as all the other aspects of the rising costs of living under capitalism.

Whether working people try to rent or buy, they are always faced with years of housing insecurity, The fundamental cause of this is that the whole housing industry from the design of a building to its completion is based on building and maintaining housing for profit.

Only under socialism will housing of people be affordable and a basic human right rather than a way of capitalists in all the components that make up the housing industry making profit.

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Banana billionaire emerges from Chinese “socialism”.

Written by: Nick G. on 1 December 2024

Once upon a time, there was a socialist country called China. It proudly proclaimed in the song “The East is Red”, that China had “brought forth a Mao Zedong.”

Today, as a capitalist country, the East must be red with embarrassment, for China has brought forth a Justin Sun (Sun Yuchen).

Last week, Sun ate a banana, cunningly disguised as a work of art, that he had bought at auction for 45 million yuan, or $A9.5 million.

Marie Antionette, whaddya reckon?

Sun was born in July 1990. At his age, many Chinese have only experienced hardship and exploitation under the restored relations of capitalist production.
Conditions are bad enough in China’s sweatshop factories, but even “brain-power proletarians” in white collar jobs are subjected to 9-9-6 conditions: working from 9am to 9pm six days a week with unpaid overtime an extra burden.

But Sun managed to get into the prestigious “Beida” (Beijing University) from which he graduated with a history degree. This opened doors to study at the University of Pennsylvania, and from there, a job in 2013 with Silicon Valley’s Ripple Labs, returning to China as its sales rep.

On 2017, Sun began his own blockchain-based operating platform TRON and launched the TRX as its cryptocurrency.

Shortly afterwards, Sun left China following its decision to ban cryptocurrencies.

In 2018, Sub bought out BitTorrent, Inc for $US140 million.

Sun has continued to amass great wealth. And like most of China’s new rich, he is given to ostentatious and extravagant displays of that wealth.

In June 2019, Sun placed the winning $US4.6 million bid to have a private meal with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

In December 2021, Sun announced that he had previously bid $28 million to be the first paying passenger on Blue Origin's first crewed mission into space on the New Shepard. Blue Origin is owned by Amazon founder and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos. Although he had won the auction, he was unable to attend the July 2021 flight due to a scheduling conflict.

On November21, Sun won the banana art auction. He then ate the million dollars banana at a Press conference.

On November 26, Sun announced “We are delighted to have invested $30 million in World Liberty Financial @worldlibertyfi by investing $30 million, making it its largest investor. The US is becoming a blockchain hub thanks to support for Bitcoin by @realDonaldTrump .”

World Liberty Financial, was launched by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in September as his family's cryptocurrency venture.

Sun said in the post that his platform, TRON, is "committed to making America great again and leading innovation." Following his investment in Trump's venture, he became an advisor of World Liberty Financial.

But it is not as though Sun has broken his ties with his homeland and its capitalist-engendering social system because of its cryptocurrency ban.

According to Baidu’s online dictionary, Sun is a member of the 14th Guangzhou Panyu District CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference), Vice President of Guangzhou Youth Internet Development Association, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Davos Forum Global Distinguished Youth Beijing Community, all of which ensure that he has political capital as well as personal capital.

So, this is where Deng Xiaoping’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” has led.

Instead of a Mao Zedong, we have a Sun Yuchen.

And yet there are still people saying they support this phoney “socialism”.

Perhaps they are, poltically, as bent as a banana!

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Criticising Xi Jinping Thought

Written by: Xiang Guanqi on 1 December 2024

Above; A Quotation from Chairman X Source: https://news.cgtn.com/

In Australian Left and progressive circles, there are some people who believe that China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” really is socialism, and that China’s social-imperialist rivalry with US imperialism really is anti-imperialism. Over the next few months, we will provide some of the writings of Comrade Xiang Guanqi, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, now in his 80s, who was a leading Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. We have added some footnotes to our translation of his work where we thought they might be useful – Eds.

Criticism of Xi Jinping’s Thought
Taking the 19th National Congress Political Report as an example

General Secretary Xi Jinping is the biggest revisionist in China, the biggest capitalist-roader in China, and the political representative of the biggest bureaucratic, authoritarian, and monopolistic bourgeoisie in China. When Chairman Mao was alive, the labels and criticisms that were put on revisionists are now very appropriate for General Secretary Xi Jinping.

With such class status and political identity, it is inevitable and understandable that General Secretary Xi Jinping attempted to develop the revisionist "Theory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" on the basis of betraying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and put forward the so-called "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" (hereinafter referred to as "Xi Jinping Thought").

I have long said that "time will prove that Deng Xiaoping Theory has no theory, while Mao Zedong Thought has real thought". Now, I still hold this view. Like all revisionists, from Bernstein and Kautsky to today, from "movement is everything, there is no ultimate goal", to "beef stew with potatoes is communism"(1), to "it doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat", "development is the hard truth" (2), etc., what theory do they have?

None, not at all. Similarly, the arrogant General Secretary Xi Jinping has no theory. Is the dream, the Chinese dream, a theory? Of course not. In fact, if we carefully analyse the so-called "Xi Jinping Thought", we can't find any thought - the thought of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. At most, it is a hodgepodge of some bourgeois fashionable empty words and the dregs of feudal autocratic traditions. These things can only be the opposite of the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the opposite of the theory of scientific socialism. We Communists who adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism must criticise them. I am now fulfilling this obligation.

Revisionists have always claimed to be Marxists. However, they do not really understand Marxism. Deng Xiaoping and his successors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao did not violate this law. Now, General Secretary Xi Jinping is also like this, and he appears to be more sincere, more high-profile, more innovative, and therefore more deceptive. In this case, we cannot but put the criticism of "Xi Jinping Thought" on the agenda.

Please understand, General Secretary Xi Jinping

Asking Xi Jinping for permission to criticise

Article 41 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China clearly states: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or state employee; they have the right to file complaints, accusations or reports to the state organ concerned regarding any illegal or dereliction of duty behaviour by any state organ or state employee, but they must not fabricate or distort facts to make false accusations or frame others.

“The relevant state organs must investigate the facts and handle citizens' complaints, accusations or reports in a responsible manner. No one may suppress or retaliate against them."

This is a fundamental law that every citizen of the People's Republic of China should abide by. Calling the criticism of the masses "unwarranted discussion" is contrary to the provisions of the Constitution and is a gross violation of the Constitution.

As a Communist, we should have a good style of criticism and self-criticism. Chairman Mao said that the presence or absence of criticism and self-criticism is a distinctive mark that distinguishes Communists from other political parties. This is also the difference between a true Communist Party and a revisionist party. Revisionist parties are fascist parties, as Chairman Mao said, and they implement bourgeois fascist dictatorship and do not allow the masses to criticise or even speak. We cannot learn from the revisionist party and cannot do the fascist thing. We should act according to Chairman Mao's correct opinion.

Nowadays, people like to talk about "political rules". Normally carrying out criticism and self-criticism is the political norm for Communists. Whether the party's political life is lively or not depends mainly on whether there is criticism and self-criticism within the party. We still have to listen to Chairman Mao's words, "If people are allowed to speak, the sky will not fall, and we will not collapse. If people are not allowed to speak? Then it is inevitable that one day we will collapse." (People's Daily, June 21, 1967) Especially at present, for such an important and line-significant "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" and the "Political Report of the 19th National Congress" prepared according to this thought, criticism and self-criticism should be allowed throughout the party.

To just brag, and to brag without limit, is not the style of the Communists, and even the bourgeois parties would not bother to do it. I am afraid it is still our feudal national essence. This is a vulgar regression. In his late years (February 11, 1891), our ancestor Engels wrote to Karl Kautsky, "It is also necessary to make people stop being overly cautious in treating party officials - their servants, and stop treating them like perfect bureaucrats, obeying them in everything and not criticising them." It seems that this is an old problem, and it is not surprising that the old disease has recurred now. We can only cure them according to the prescription prescribed by our ancestors - criticism.

Criticism must be based on facts and seek truth from facts. Everyone is studying the "Political Report", and several members of the Standing Committee have also asked the whole party and the people of the country to do the same. Well, let's comment directly on the "Political Report". Naturally, our opinions are mainly critical, because we think this "Report" is poorly written. It has neither the high-level theoretical style of our party during the Chairman's era nor true insights. Instead, it is full of errors and even the writing level is very poor. It is a genuine revisionist report, which is both a product of "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" and a typical example of "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era".

Viewed in this light, perhaps the only value of this report is that it is a very good negative example. Criticizing it from the perspective of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is of positive significance for the entire Party and the people of the country, as it enables them to once again recognize the fundamental differences between Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and revisionism on the question of China.

There are only two possibilities for criticism. One possibility is that the criticism is right, and the other possibility is that the criticism is wrong. We cannot only demand that the criticism is right. We should also allow criticism that is wrong. Following the important advice given by Comrade Xi Zhongxun (3) before his death means protecting different opinions. This is an important summary of the party's historical experience and a major issue concerning whether the party's style is right or not. I hope that General Secretary Xi Jinping, as the core of the Party Central Committee and the core of the Party, will set a good example and handle this issue correctly. We must not be unhappy when we see "little people" raising opinions, and we must not make a fuss, suppress, block, or even arrest people. Let's try it and test whether there is the minimum democratic style that a Communist should have. The fate of this criticism can also be regarded as a small touchstone.

These days, it seems that everyone is too busy to read long articles. It may be because of the fast pace or the impetuousness. Whatever the reason, I have to give in. So, I divide the long articles into sections and titles to make them shorter, and publish them one by one, which may be easier to read.

The term "moderately prosperous society" is not a scientific concept of Marxism

General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly stated in the "Political Report of the 19th National Congress": "The theme of the Congress is: Never forget the original aspiration, keep in mind the mission, hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, win the decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, win the great victory of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and work tirelessly to realize the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."

More than 2,000 years ago, the concept of "moderate prosperity" from the Book of Rites had a great influence in China. It briefly describes the transformation of human society from the primitive public ownership society of Datong (4) to the moderately prosperous private ownership society. This is the memory of ancient history by mankind and the genius summary of thinkers. As far as the moderately prosperous society described in the Book of Rites is concerned, it is nothing more than a relatively self-sufficient and relatively stable class society based on private ownership. The "moderately prosperous society" pursued by later generations is also roughly the same.

What does this have to do with the ideals of the Communists, and with Marxist concepts of socialism and communism, which are scientific socio-economic and social forms?

Nothing at all.

This is not a scientific concept about socio-economic and social forms at all.

According to Deng Xiaoping's explanation, a "well-off society" is nothing more than a society that has solved the problem of food and clothing. For a Communist Party guided by scientific Marxist theory, it is ironic to use such a term as a "well-off society" as its own struggle program. Only Deng Xiaoping, a "big party boss who doesn't read books or newspapers", can do such a stupid thing. This reminds us of the famous saying of another clown, Khrushchev, "Beef stew with potatoes is communism." It is really a coincidence that the two revisionist leaders have such a consistent understanding of communism.

It is sad that the CPC, which bears the name of ‘Chinese Marxism’ and the signboard of ‘socialism’, can accept such a programme. Isn't it obvious to what extent this party has degenerated?

What is even more pathetic is that four decades have passed, and the Political Report of the 19th National Congress, which claims to have ushered in a ‘new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics’, still sets the goal of ‘building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects’ as its current goal of struggle. Doesn't this seem to be a deliberate attempt to vilify Xi Jinping Thought, which is written into the Party Constitution?

Do we still need to popularise Marxist common sense to the revisionist masters?

In the eyes of Marxists, the proletarian communist revolution is, in the final analysis, a change of social system, a revolution to replace the outdated capitalist system that is bound to perish with the communist social system necessary for the new historical development.

This is a social revolution, not a productivity revolution, and certainly not a food and clothing revolution. In the eyes of Marxists, this is a replacement of the socio-economic and social forms. The productivity revolution is the inevitable premise of this social revolution. It is wrong and absurd to set the level of social productivity development as the goal of the Communists. According to the theory demonstrated in the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie has prepared the productivity premise for the realization of socialism and communism. Naturally, the fact of subsequent historical development is that this productivity premise sometimes needs to be supplemented. However, even so, the goal of the Communists' struggle must not be just to put forward the productivity requirements.

As far as China's revolutionary practice is concerned, after the proletariat and the broad masses of working people seized power under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, due to the backward national conditions and backward productivity, there was a very urgent task of developing productivity in order to build socialism. Even Russia, which was much more advanced than China, also had huge deficiencies in productivity. Therefore, Lenin said that Soviet plus electrification is communism. It is not possible to not have electricity. The establishment of a socialist and communist society cannot be solid without its own economic foundation. Developing the economy is the basic task of all socialist countries. This is not a mysterious theoretical issue, it is common sense. As Marx said, human beings cannot survive if they do not produce for a week. People need to eat, wear clothes, and live a better and better life. This is the natural desire of human beings and a matter of course.

However, humans are not ordinary animals. They live in society and in groups. While pursuing material life, humans also pursue spiritual life and social life. In the long history of human private ownership class society, while creating their own material life, humans also created their own social life and spiritual life.

However, as Marx liked to use the "alienation" viewpoint in his youth, all the progress of productivity created by humans has in turn brought endless suffering to humans. It seems that the progress of productivity has brought humans their own regression and the loss of human nature, that is, alienation. This is the fundamental characteristic and fundamental weakness of human class society. The great discovery of Marxism tells us that only when human history has developed to this day can we defeat the last class society, the capitalist society, and create a socialist society and a communist society through hard efforts and struggles. If we only talk about productivity and food and clothing, we will completely deviate from the actual process of human social historical development, and of course we will also deviate from the Marxist view of historical materialism.

The great ideal of communism is to eliminate the historical limitations of class society, eliminate private ownership, eliminate classes, and eliminate the superstructure and ideology corresponding to these foundations through the proletarian communist revolution under the possible conditions provided by history. This is what the "Communist Manifesto" calls for to achieve "two breaks", thereby enabling mankind to reproduce its good nature at a higher historical level and truly realise human freedom, equality, and fraternity (as Engels said at the end of "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State").

This is a difficult historical process of continuous revolution. The Communists exist and take on the responsibility of leading this historical process. In this historical process, any principles, policies, and programs formulated by the Communists cannot deviate from the ultimate goal of achieving communism, which is the overall basic goal of struggle.

Marx discussed socialism, Lenin combined practice with more discussion, and Chairman Mao proposed the theory of socialist continuous revolution. In summary, the discussion of the revolutionary mentors explained that socialism is a process of continuous revolution of the social system from the perspectives of politics, economy, ideology and culture. We should not only talk about the development of productivity and the solution of the problem of food and clothing, but also talk about the historical conditions for the elimination of classes from the perspectives of economic relations, political relations, ideological and cultural relations, and we should also talk about the issue of people, that is, the issue of human liberation. As Lenin said, socialism is the elimination of classes. The elimination of classes is not just a matter of productivity, nor is it a matter of food and clothing. When defining their historical tasks, the Communists must not only have economic indicators, but also, and even more so, political indicators, ideological and cultural indicators, indicators for the transformation of people, and indicators for the entire society. However, the word "moderately prosperous" has obliterated all of this. If we only talk about food and clothing, even pigs and dogs need food and clothing. How can this be written into the Communist Party's program? Isn't this too insulting to the Chinese Communists and the Chinese people?

It is neither surprising nor accidental that such a foolish act has occurred. First, these revisionists are not communists at all. As Deng Xiaoping himself admitted, he himself did not know what socialism is. He was not clear about socialism, let alone communism. In their minds, boosting production is everything, and the so-called "development is the hard truth" means this. This is obviously contrary to the Communist Party's goal of struggle solemnly declared in the Communist Manifesto.

Second, these revisionists do not understand the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism at all. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a revolutionary doctrine, but this revolutionary doctrine is based on scientific theory, not a subjective good wish and pursuit. For more than 40 years, from Deng Xiaoping to the present, where is the theoretical cultivation of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism among the revisionist rulers? They only have pragmatism, not scientific research, so they can only say things like "cat theory", "touch theory", "breakthrough theory" (5) , and even "moderately prosperous" which is a vague statement, and they use their power to impose it on the whole party.

Third, the fundamental problem of these revisionists is still their class standpoint. The theory of communism is ultimately for the proletariat and the broad masses of working people to rise up and seek liberation, to replace private ownership with public ownership, to eliminate exploitation and classes; the dictatorship of the proletariat is also for this purpose. Therefore, every step forward in the cause of socialism and communism, the first and foremost consideration is the emancipation of the proletariat and the masses of the working people, which is not just a question of material productive forces or the level of economic development, but a question of what kind of society is to be constructed, or, as it is often said, the question of why the people are there. Deng Xiaoping and other revisionists have no concept of the masses in their minds. Their position is that of the bureaucratic, autocratic, and monopolistic bourgeoisie. Their “don’t care” means that they don’t care about the life and death of the working people, or their liberation. Their “hard truth” results in letting the bourgeoisie get rich first, especially letting the bureaucratic, autocratic, and monopolistic bourgeoisie get rich first. Their so-called “moderately prosperous” is just to give the people “food and clothing”, a minimum condition that can guarantee the reproduction of labour, but they themselves are more than “moderately prosperous”? They have long been wealthy tycoons and big bourgeoisie with huge wealth in their hands. Therefore, they will not and dare not disclose their property.

When we say "never forget our original aspiration", what is the "original aspiration"? It means building socialism and communism. However, the concept of "moderately prosperous society" cannot express the scientific concept of socialism and communism, the ideal of the Communists, and the "original aspiration" that truly belongs to the proletariat and the broad masses of working people. To paraphrase the words of the revolutionary mentor, throw away the dirty shirt of "moderately prosperous society"! It damages the noble image of the Communists.

We must hold high the red flag of communism and implement into practice the specific requirements of every step forward, from politics, economy, ideology and culture to the development of society as a whole. This is what our great cause of communism requires, this is what embodies the scientific thought of continuous revolution of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and this is the right path for mankind.

This is not a small matter, but a major one, the so-called ‘what flag to hold and what path to take’. Whether or not we can draw a clear line with Deng Xiaoping's revisionist line, and whether or not we are going back to Deng Xiaoping's evil path of restoring capitalism, are all centrally reflected in this question of the programme. There can only be one choice, and there can be no compromise. Whether to build a ‘moderately prosperous society’ or a socialist or communist society is a test for General Secretary Xi Jinping, for every member of the Communist Party, and for the entire nation.

The correct answer of history is clear and unshakeable: socialism and communism are the only correct choice for the Chinese people.

We want a socialist and communist society, not a ‘moderately prosperous society’!

10th November 2017

(1) Following the 1956 Hungarian Counter-revolution, Hungary’s revisionist leader promised an increase in living standards, referred to approvingly by Khrushchev as “goulash communism” – Trans.

(2) On his infamous Southern Tour at the star of 1992, Deng said “It is necessary to pay attention to the stable and coordinated development of the economy, but stability and coordination are also relative, not absolute. Development is the hard truth. This question needs to be clarified.” A similar expression in English is “the last word”. He was advocating that economic development must take precedence over socialist principles – Trans.

(3) Xi Zhongxun (October 15, 1913 – May 24, 2002) is the father of Xi Jinping. He became a member of the Communist Party of China in 1928. In 1932, Xi Zhongxun launched the Liangdang Mutiny, and then successively served as the chairman of the Soviet Government of the Shaanxi-Gansu Border Region and the secretary of the Guanzhong Special Committee of the Communist Party of China. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Xi Zhongxun served as secretary of the Northwest Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and political commissar of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningjin-Sui Joint Defense Army. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Xi Zhongxun served as a member of the Central People's Government, and a member of the People's Revolutionary Military Committee of the Central People's Government. Xi Zhongxun was criticised during the Cultural Revolution and emerged from it to follow the revisionist line of Deng Xiaoping – Trans.

(4) Datong is both the name of a city in Shanxi Province and also the title of an ancient book, translated as “The World of Great Harmony”. The book depicts an ideal world where everyone is virtuous, everyone respects the elderly, everyone loves the young, there is no unevenness, and no one is lacking warmth – Trans.

(5) “Cat theory” refers to Deng Xiaoping’s encouragement to ignore the colour of the cat “so long as it catches mice”; "crossing the river by feeling the stones", also known as “touch theory”, was a Chinese folk expression popularised by Chen Yun, an associate of Deng Xiaoping, and advocated ignoring theory and the experience of predecessors to fid one’s way by pragmatism and experiment; “breakthrough theory” is Deng Xiaoping’s call for the courage to try and dare to break into the world as the practical method underlining all reform. Deng said “reform and opening up should be more bold, dare to experiment, do not be like a woman with small feet. If you see what you want, you should try boldly and break through boldly” – Trans.

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US Capital Eyeing Rented Apartment Market

Written by: Ned K. on 30 November 2024

(Above: Gladstone apartment block, South Melbourne Photo: www.thegladstone.com.au)

On Thursday 28 November the federal Government's Housing Scheme and Build To Rent Scheme passed through the Senate with the last-minute support of The Greens.

The two Bills became law in the same week that there were more media reports of examples of people having to live in over-crowded, unhygienic rented rooms within flats to avoid living on the streets. The room renting is called "hot bedding" which is sharing the same beds in over-crowded beds of up to 20 people per room and living rooms partitioned for more sleeping places. Sub-letting in large cities like Sydney is also common where there is no written lease, rent paid in cash, no return on bond deposits and no proof to fight evictions. In the same week, it was announced that Perth had overtaken Sydney as the most expensive city to rent with one-bedroom flats being rented for $550 per week.

Prime Minister Albanese was visibly relieved to see the housing and rent related Bills become law. Will they solve the affordable housing and rental crisis in Australia? Not likely. The fundamental reason the Bills will not solve the crisis is that the schemes arising from the Bills obey the private for-profit engine of capitalism.

Build To Rent Scheme

In this article, let's take a look at the Build To Rent Scheme. In a second article to follow, we'll have a look at the Government's new Housing Scheme.

The Build To Rent Scheme opens the gates for imperialist capital investment in the housing apartment sector. This follows its presence in Australia in the overseas student accommodation market and in commercial and industrial property markets. The Scheme is called a "tax reform" because big overseas capital investors in apartment blocks will get the with-holding tax rate of 30% reduced to the same 15% rate that applies for commercial and industrial property.

At the same time, foreign capital investors in building apartment blocks will get a capital works tax reduction increase from 2.5% to 4%. This allows expenses to be depreciated over a 25-year period rather than the current 40 years. The only restriction on the foreign capital investors is that tenants must be what is called long Term Rental which means a minimum of three years with the same tenant.

There are no conditions placed on the rent price of the apartments, so the Scheme's "carrots" offered to foreign capital do not guarantee that the rents will be "affordable".

An example of the foreign capital "interest" in the apartment rental market is Greystar, from Charleston in South Carolina in the USA. Described as an "American juggernaut" by Real Commercial, Greystar has already built its first "built to rent" apartment towers in Gladstone Street in South Melbourne and called the three-tower apartment block Gladstone which has 700 units in all.

Greystar has real estate investments in apartments valued at $US315 billion.

Greystar boss Bob Faith wants to "team up" with pension funds and other sources of finance capital to build more apartment towers and attract middle-income earners to occupy them as long-term renters. Greystar is also planning to enter the overseas student accommodation sector in Australia through a takeover of Singapore based GIC.

The Albanese Government and previous governments are well known for being tied in so many ways to US imperialism. Now the apartment rental sector in Australia can be added to the list!

Affordable housing for working people, retired people, students, unemployed will only be possible to its fullest extent when Australian economy is owned by the people and all sectors of the economy run for people's needs, not profits.

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American mining giant destroys Australia’s native forests

Written by: Leo A. on 29 November 2024

For generations, Australia’s natural resources have been plundered by foreign bourgeois interests. As the nation currently playing the largest role in preventing our true independence, it should come as no surprise that the United Sates plays a large hand in this.

Jarrah forest is a unique ecosystem consisting of tall, open forest dominated by the Jarrah tree Eucalyptus marginata. This ecosystem can be found in exactly one location on the entire planet, in the Southwest Botanical Province of Western Australia. American aluminium giant Alcoa, which is based in the state of Pennsylvania, has been mining the land this ecosystem sits on for bauxite since the 1960s. A new scientific review published in the journal Restoration Ecology has revealed that damage to the affected land may be permanent.

Alcoa is officially required to rehabilitate the land it mines, but hasn’t completed this for any of the 280 square kilometres it has cleared. The company claims that the land it has mined can be restored, but the new review casts doubt on this, describing Alcoa’s efforts as “substandard” and on a “poor to declining trajectory”. Endangered species affected include Carnaby's black cockatoos, quokkas, and western ringtail possums.

Jess Beckerling, executive director of Conservation Council WA, stated that it is “absurd” that Alcoa is permitted to continue evading environmental legislation, adding that “once these forests are gone, they’re gone forever”. Of course, none of the company’s key figures in Pittsburgh care about this. Even back in America, Alcoa has been criticised for its environmental record, and in 2008 was ranked 15th among corporations emitting airborne pollutants in the United States. For comparison, Boeing ranked 47th.

At both the state and federal level, Australia’s so-called “leaders” allow the natural ecosystems of our landmass to be torn up and trampled over for the sake of profit, by both foreign and domestic interests. While efforts can and should be made to slow down this ecological tragedy under the current system, only an independent and socialist Australia will be capable of ensuring the permanent preservation and recovery of our environment.

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A Message from the Foreign Affairs Department of DFLP Regarding the ICC Decision

Written by: DFLP on 25 November 2024

The First Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued two arrest warrants on November 21, 2024, against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. They are charged with committing crimes against humanity, including murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, as well as war crimes, such as using starvation as a method of warfare. These decisions were made unanimously by the court's 18 judges. Additionally, the court issued two unanimous rulings rejecting requests submitted by Israel on September 26, 2024. The first challenged the ICC’s jurisdiction over the situation in the State of Palestine and its applicability to Israeli citizens, while the second sought to suspend proceedings concerning arrest warrant requests.

In January 2024, Mexico and Chile referred the situation in Palestine to the ICC Prosecutor, requesting an investigation into potential crimes under its jurisdiction. This was followed by submissions from several countries and human rights organizations accusing Israel of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide. In mid-May of the same year, the ICC Prosecutor requested the First Pre-Trial Chamber to issue arrest warrants related to the situation in the State of Palestine. This development triggered significant pressure from some Western countries on the ICC judges to influence judicial processes and prevent the issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli officials. Israel, meanwhile, was reassured by Western promises that no such warrants would be issued.

However, given Israel’s failure to investigate war crimes committed by its forces in Gaza and the West Bank, and as the crime of genocide in Gaza became a global public issue due to widespread demonstrations across world cities demanding an end to the killing of the Palestinian people, the ICC judges—bound by their legal oaths—had no option but to issue arrest warrants. This decision was based on available evidence, documents, and data, particularly as the ICC Prosecutor had previously attempted to visit Israeli settlements near Gaza but was barred from entering the area, in what appeared to be an Israeli effort to obstruct the ICC’s work.

Although the ICC has issued arrest warrants in the past, the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant have garnered significant attention worldwide due to the growing international importance of the Palestinian cause and the extensive protection provided to Israel and its leaders by Western nations. These leaders have long avoided accountability before international justice despite committing numerous crimes against the Palestinian people in particular and the Arab peoples in general. This marks the first time in the history of international justice and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that arrest warrants have been issued against Israeli officials—a historic precedent that all countries, including those not signatories to the Rome Statute, should respect and implement. The warrants represent not only a victory for Palestine and the families of the martyrs who fell in the ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank but also a victory for justice, international law, and humanity’s values.

The significance of these warrants lies in their targeting of Israeli officials at the pinnacle of the state’s fascist hierarchy, demonstrating that "Israel as a state," through all its institutions, is responsible for crimes committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. This carries several implications:

First: It is clear that these arrest warrants will spark debates in some countries, despite the high professionalism demonstrated by the ICC judges, who hail from states that are allies of Israel. This reflects the double standards and political hypocrisy in addressing similar issues, particularly when compared to the widespread approval by the same countries for the arrest warrant issued against the Russian president.

Second: Mere declarations of respect and commitment to ICC decisions by the international community, particularly Western states, are insufficient. These must be accompanied by punitive measures against the occupying state, similar to sanctions imposed on other nations, which targeted government institutions and individuals linked to official authorities.

Third: Countries supplying weapons to Israel must halt such support. Germany, for instance, explicitly stated that its stance on arms deliveries to Israel remains unchanged following the ICC's decision, raising the need for increased pressure on arms-supplying states and companies. This issue extends to military companies and civilian institutions that provide equipment used by the Israeli army for military purposes.

Fourth: International organizations, especially UN agencies and regional bodies, must refuse to allow Netanyahu and Gallant to address their platforms or participate in any political discussions or forums. Civil, health, educational, and cultural organizations worldwide should sever all relations with Israel and its institutions, reassessing these ties to avoid supporting a state now pursued by the highest international court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Regardless of the fate of these warrants, they remain an indelible mark of shame for Netanyahu and his supporters, even in death. The warrants restore some credibility to international judicial and legal systems, which had eroded due to their failure to hold Israel accountable for defying international will to the extent of enacting laws labeling UN organizations, such as the UNRWA, as terrorist entities. This places the world at a crossroads, testing the credibility of systems established post-World War II to ensure global security and stability.

While there is much speculation about the ICC's motives behind issuing these arrest warrants, it is undeniable that the court’s move would not have been possible without the sacrifices and steadfastness of the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. This is a definitive indictment of the fascist nature of the occupation state, led by Netanyahu and his coalition partners, the pillars of contemporary fascism (Ben-Gvir and Smotrich).

These arrest warrants target the apex of Israel’s criminal hierarchy, but this hierarchy rests on a broad base. It is therefore imperative for the ICC to expand its pursuit of other war criminals within the occupying state, including ministers, officers, and security officials whose responsibilities for the crimes against the Palestinian people are no less significant than those of Netanyahu and Gallant.

If Israel is confident in its claims of innocence and compliance with international law, it should allow the accused to stand trial and present their evidence. However, Israel’s frantic appeals for immediate support from the United States and Western allies indicate that it has little to present in its defense, resorting instead to repeated accusations of antisemitism and other tactics designed to divert attention from its crimes against the Palestinian people.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Foreign Affairs Department welcomes the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister. We consider this step the beginning of a long journey of tireless struggle involving all advocates of freedom, democracy, and international law, including both general and humanitarian law, to uphold the principle of "no impunity," which has historically allowed the Israeli army to continue its crimes since 1948. Failure to hold perpetrators accountable would amount to complicity by international political, legal, and judicial frameworks in these crimes.

We simultaneously condemn the U.S. administration’s stance against the ICC, its judges, and rulings. This position reveals the true intentions of the United States, which seeks to undermine the international system and its institutions—such as the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the ICC, and other agencies—replacing them with a U.S.-dominated global order based on militarized relationships and alliances, in direct opposition to the principles of democracy and the rights of peoples to live in peace and security on their land while developing their economies and resources.

The international community must defend its institutions and confront U.S. policies, thwarting its plans in favor of a multipolar world order that respects cultural diversity and the rights of nations to choose political systems that serve their interests.

We call on all states, signatories and non-signatories to the Rome Statute, to support the ICC as a tool of international justice, shielding it from Western and U.S. pressures aimed at paralyzing its role or obstructing the execution of arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and others proven to have committed war crimes against the Palestinian people. Popular movements, political parties, and unions worldwide are urged to intensify their efforts to pressure states hostile to international law, advocating for justice and accountability while cutting all ties with Israeli war criminals.

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Foreign Affairs Department –
November 2024

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Revolutionary Fighting Program

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 25 November 2024

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

For an Independent, Socialist Australia!

REVOLUTIONARY FIGHTING PROGRAM OF THE

COMMUNIST PARTY OF AUSTRALIA (MARXIST-LENINIST)

The Australian people are facing a crisis of rising cost of living, housing, healthcare, aged care, climate change, attacks on workers, unions and democratic rights and threat of a major war, and much more.

At the same time the enormous wealth created by working people of this country is taken by multinational corporations, the dominant section of the capitalist ruling class. The main contradiction in Australia is between the Australian people and US imperialism.

The Australian people demand, are entitled to and we fight for:

1. Australia to be free from all foreign and local corporate control

We must take control of our national resources, industries, banks and institutions to run society in the interests of the people, not multinational corporations. Only then can people’s needs and protection of the environment be met and communities flourish for the benefit of all.

2. An Australia that guarantees full, dignified and secure employment for all

The immense wealth created by the labour of millions of Australia’s working people must be put in their hands to build local, sustainable industries and secure employment for all. Australia’s wealth belongs to the Australian people, not the multinational corporations.

3. The right of every Australian to have secure and dignified housing

We fight for a society that guarantees access to decent and dignified housing for every Australian. Homelessness, housing insecurity and poverty have no place in a modern society.

4. Universal, properly funded public education that serves the wellbeing of all people and needs of society.

We believe in a system of education that empowers the people, to build a society that benefits the people.

An education system must serve the peoples’ needs as members of modern society. Through public education, the people must be able to fully develop their own intellectual capabilities and gain the practical skills necessary for each to live empowered and enriched social lives. The Australian education system must be guided by the needs of its peoples’ intellectual and practical development, not by the needs of private investment, private industry nor for the preservation of conservative and reactionary ideologies.

5. Free and high-quality health care of all Australians

We fight for free, high quality public healthcare system for all based on public need, not private profit.

Health care should be a social service, not for private profit.

The Australian people deserve and require full access to a high-quality health system that allows them to lead physically and mentally healthy lives.

6. The rights of all working people to a decent standard of living

Every worker has the right to a decent standard of living, safe working conditions and economic security.

In today’s capitalist society the benefits of surplus value (including profits) created by the labour of workers don’t go to the working class, the biggest class in our society. These huge profits are pocketed by a tiny but powerful capitalist class which privately owns the means of production.

The wealth created by working people needs to be taken out of the hands of this tiny corporate class and put in the hands of working people to ensure this wealth goes to the provision of decent and secure standards of living, free health care, education, childcare, proper housing, aged care and protection of the environment.

The advances in industry, technology, natural and medical sciences must be controlled and guided by working people, to provide full and secure employment, to lift the well-being of people and the environment, not enrich a handful of corporations.

7. We stand in struggle with the working class

For the right to strike, to organise, for decent wages and conditions, for justice, peace, and solidarity with working people around the world. We fight for independent working class demands not tied to parliamentary parties.

8. End Australia’s subservience to the USA.

We fight for Australia’s independence.

Close all US and foreign military and intelligence bases; expel all US troops.

Cancel AUKUS and the Force Posture Agreement and develop a foreign policy that stipulates the sovereignty and independence of Australia while respecting and upholding the sovereignty of all countries and peoples.

The US-Australia military “alliance” embodies the dominance of US imperialism over Australia and its subservient ruling class.

The subservient Australian government is spending hundreds of billions of people’s taxes in turning Australia into a US base and a launching pad for US-led imperialist wars. The hundreds of billions of dollars of public funds must be used for the needs of the people, not for embedding the military industrial complex in Australia’s industries, economy and education.

Build Australia’s sovereign defence industries for the self - defence of Australia, not for US imperialist wars. The US-Australia alliance is the real and only threat to Australian people’s peace, security and sovereignty.

The Australian people want no part in US-led imperialist wars of aggression.

9. Sovereignty and liberation of Australia’s First People

With the First Peoples we fight for the decolonisation and liberation of Indigenous Australians. This means economic and political self-determination, genuine land rights, reparations, the rights to autonomy and genuine and enforceable Treaties. Australia will never be genuinely independent without the First Peoples winning their sovereignty and self-determination.

10. We fight multinational fossil fuel corporations to protect the environment and biodiversity.

The damage to the environment as a result of capitalist plunder has reached potentially catastrophic proportions for humanity and the planet.
The united struggle of the people can challenge and resist the domination of multinational fossil fuel corporations and hasten their demise.

11. Independent Socialist Australia

End US imperialist domination of Australia economically, politically, militarily and culturally.

Establishment of an independent Australian socialist republic, run by and for working people of this country. Socialist Independence means also an end to foreign interference by sub-imperial ruling class at the behest of U.S Imperialism.

The Australian parliament serves the international corporations that robs the country and its people of its wealth and fails to invest this wealth back into public healthcare, education, housing and all other people’s needs. We believe that the real democracy and people power will grow out of people’s own grass roots mass organisations and movements based on participatory democracy under the leadership of the working class.

12. Independent people’s mass organisations and struggle

A people’s united anti-imperialist mass movement will free Australia from foreign and local corporate control and build the country to meet the needs and wellbeing of the people and the environment.

Australia’s people have a rich and proud tradition of struggle against oppression and injustice. It began with the First People’s armed resistance to brutal British colonisation of their people. It was taken up by the impoverished miners in the 1854 Eureka uprising against the oppressive British colonial authorities.

The rebels fought for justice, a decent standard of living and independence from Britain. Australian people’s resistance to exploitation and the struggle for a better life and justice continues today.

The Australian people refuse to live in a system that concentrates obscene wealth to the apex of society while condemning ordinary Australians and workers to insecurity, poverty and oppression. The Australian people know what sort of society they want to live in.

We continue the fight for an independent socialist Australia.

Link to full General Program: Vanguard - Communist Party of Australia Marxist Leninist

This CPA-ML Fighting Program is published in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle and other anti-imperialist struggles around the world.

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The financial black hole that is AUKUS

Written by: Nick G. on 22 November 2024

Former Australian Defence Force head Sir Angus Houston, has warned that without a significant budget boost, the AUKUS arrangements will cause the government to “cannibalise” other “defence” projects.

He warned of signs of budget pressure emerging already. Earlier this month, Australia killed a $5.3 billion satellite contract with Lockheed Martin, with one analyst saying more cuts will likely have to happen as the true cost of AUKUS emerges. (“True cost” is an admission that there will be substantial blow-outs beyond the current projected cost of $368 billion, or $33.6 million per day over the next 30 years).

Houston is a loyal servant of US imperialism’s stranglehold on Australia and was not criticising AUKUS.

He was calling for an increase in the “defence” budget to accommodate the cost of AUKUS.

As co-leader of the recent Defence Strategic Review, he had projected a $55.5 billion budget for 2024-25, rising to $67.9 billion in 2027-28 — roughly 2.2 percent of GDP.

The government of US empire loyalists has pledged to increase defence spending by $50.3 billion over the next decade, with the plan being to hit $100 billion by 2033. That would put the country at 2.4 percent of GDP.

Now Houston is calling for “defence” spending to be raised to “3% plus” of GDP going into the next decade.

“Three per cent plus” by 2030 would add tens of billions to the “defence” budget, billions that would have to be diverted from housing, health, country roads and other socially urgent budgetary requirements.

This is at a time when the economy is slowing, not growing.

Recent polls indicate that a growing number of Australians are questioning AUKUS.

We have to focus our mass work on raising questioning to the level of demands for the cancellation of AUKUS.

The goal of anti-imperialist independence and socialism is being brought into AUKUS discussions.

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G20 – Chinese social-imperialism on the march

Written by: Nick G. on 21 November 2024

(Above: Xi Jinping addresses the G20 in Brazil. Photo: Xinhua)

Chinese President Xi Jinping's remarks at the 19th G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he called for building a fair and equitable global governance system and outlined China's eight actions for global development, outflanked rival US imperialism, currently floundering between the final days of the Biden administration and the aggressive protectionism promised by incoming President Trump.

The soft diplomacy and honeyed words from the Chinese President hark back to the days when under Khrushchev’s phoney “communism”, the world was promised “peaceful coexistence”. Khrushchev’s “peaceful coexistence” assumed that imperialism, and US imperialism in particular, would give up their butcher’s knives and turn into Buddhas just because the Soviet Union was now promising to peacefully accommodate their demands by ceasing support for national liberation and other revolutionary struggles.

Lenin and Stalin correctly saw peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems as desirable and necessary for the Soviet Union’s peaceful construction of socialism. But they had no illusions about the inevitability of wars so long as imperialism existed, and placed, alongside their policy of peaceful coexistence, their internationalist duty to support revolutionary struggle.

“Soviet Russia,” said Lenin, “considers it her greatest pride to help the workers of the whole world in their difficult struggle for the overthrow of capitalism.”
Xi Jinping said nothing about the dangers of imperialism from his G20 platform.

"We should keep in mind that mankind lives in a community with a shared future, see each other's development as opportunities rather than challenges, and view each other as partners rather than rivals," he said.

He fed the illusion that imperialist rivalry could somehow benefit humanity, asking US imperialism to work with his own Chinese social-imperialism to “promote an equal and orderly multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization."

Fighting hunger and poverty has become a priority issue at this year's G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, with the first session of the G20 Summit focusing on the issue and a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty launched, with China having decided to join as a key participant.

Sometimes praised for lifting hundreds of millions of its own people out of poverty, Chinese social-imperialism portrays itself as a champion of global poverty alleviation through its “partnerships” with countries of the Global South.

But China exports capital for the same reason as the US and other imperialist countries: to capture sources of raw materials and to extract surplus-value from the labour-power of workers in countries made dependent on Chinese capital.

China itself is a negative example of capitalist “poverty alleviation”. In Chairman Mao’s time, advancing along the socialist road, it was one of the world’s most egalitarian and least socially polarised countries.

China is a wealthier country today than it was at any time during the era of Chairman Mao. The capitalist mode of production, however, ensures the unequal distribution of that wealth. The social relations of China, the great gaps that socialism was successfully reducing, have deteriorated as the material wealth has increased. Capitalist methods in China have resulted in a faster elimination of absolute poverty, but at the cost of entrenching massive relative inequality and a new class structure.

China’s contribution to “global poverty alleviation” will impose the same development pattern of wealth for a few and a widening of the gap between the lucky few and the mass of the people.

It is regrettable that in our country, the same sort of people who fell for Khrushchev’s phoney communism and “peaceful coexistence” have also fallen for “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and “stability through multipolarity”.

In the absence of a clearly proletarian class outlook, and without a conscious struggle to understand and repudiate revisionism, the illusions spread by Xi Jinping fall on fertile ground.

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The strange case of the JP9102 satellite system

Written by: (Contributed) on 18 November2024

(Above: A March 2022 statement by Boeing of its investment in the JP9102 satellite Image from www.ex2.com.au/)

Controversy surrounding the decision in Canberra to cancel research and development of a sensitive satellite system has raised interesting issues and divisions within the corridors of power. Reliable information in the public domain from elsewhere, however, has already revealed that the decision was taken following US research and development of different systems, raising serious concerns about interoperability between the Pentagon and Australia.

In early November an official Australian government announcement that the proposed JP9102 satellite system was to be cancelled led to a prolonged series of controversial statements surrounding defence and security provision. (1) The initial research for the development of the sophisticated satellite system began in 2019, and was placed for tender in 2021; Lockheed Martin had been selected to deliver the system last year. (2)

Information emerging about the JP9102 system has revealed it was to have included 'multiple ground stations across Australia … and … two new satellite operations centres'. (3)

It was also recorded as operational 'across a vast region, from the central Indian Ocean (Diego Garcia) to Solomon Islands, and from the Artic to the Antarctic'. (4)

The range and the capacity of the JP9102 system was centred on an area of Indonesia where planning for a new capital city, Nusantara, is also under-way; controversy has already arisen due to the role of China with the planning and construction and their later diplomatic role. Nusantara is strategically placed midway on a sensitive US intelligence arc from Diego Garcia to Guam from Pine Gap, over the line, and below the actual straight line from Diego Garcia and Guam. (5)

Composed of three to five satellites specifically for the Indo-Pacific region, the JP9102 contract was hindered by delay leading to its eventual cancellation. (6) A Senate committee was recently informed that '$90m of taxpayers' money had been wasted on the project'. (7)

Initial planning for the JP9102 geosynchronous system, nevertheless, included provision for it to be stationed at about 36,500 kms above earth, and to provide a multitude of roles including an 'uncrackable data network for communications and data links for our advanced fighter jets, naval assets and land forces'. (8) It was officially noted, however, that the whole JP9102 system was assessed as increasingly vulnerable due to 'increasingly aggressive and provocative Chinese and Russian counter-space operations across the full range of Earth orbits'. (9)

Reports that China had recently test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile in the Pacific, also heightened fears of the vulnerability of the JP9102 system. (10)

While the decision taken by Canberra to cancel the JP9102 system resulted in tidal waves of finger-pointing and controversy, reliable information elsewhere provided the main reasons for the decision.

It has been noted that the US has developed a tendency to move away from single-orbit constellations due to their vulnerability; moves are already afoot for the Pentagon to prioritise multi-orbit capability and low-earth orbit communications systems. (11)

Interoperability between the US systems and that of their allies appear to have been the main reason for the decision to cancel the JP9102. A statement from Canberra following the controversy noted, however, 'the ADF needed a more resilient system than the one that was originally planned because of new technology which enables satellites to literally be shot out of the sky'. (12)

An official statement from Canberra noted, furthermore, 'the project (JP9102), which would have been the nation's biggest space investment – was originally envisaged as a sovereign owned and operated system, but that might no longer be what the ADF would get. Under the revised plan … the ADF could potentially pay for guaranteed access to a satellite system operated by an ally or commercial vendor'. (13)

It was noted, furthermore, the 'US Space Development Agency (SDA) has awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to build satellites for the SDA's Transport Layer low-earth orbit communications system'. (14)

In conclusion, during the meantime, the Australian government and Defence will be using the following systems for regional military and security provision:

1. Optus C-1 satellite;
2. Intelsat IS – 22;
3. US Space Forces SATCOM., WGS network. (15)

An accompanying statement from the Chief of Joint Capabilities, Susan Coyle, stated 'the department would work with partners and vendors next year to provide advice on an accelerated pathway to deliver alternative capability to the ADF by the early 2030s if not sooner. (16)

The decision to cancel the JP9102 system was taken, however, to comply with the Pentagon-led interoperability:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Satellites go out: defence in $7 bn hit, Australian, 4 November 2024.
2. Diggers to get $40k bonus to hang about, Australian, 5 November 2024.
3. Lockheed Martin to deliver, Australian Government – Defence, 3 April 2023.
4. Satellites go out, Australian, op.cit., 4 November 2024.
5. See: Indonesia's new capital city, Monash University, 12 September 2022; and, Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
6. Satellites go out, Australian, op.cit., 4 November 2024.
7. Budget 'prioritisation' in satellite plan axing, Australian, 7 November 2024.
8. Moving toward control of our space domain, Defence Report Supplement, Australian, 31 October 2024; and, Letter, Ross McDonald, Gordon, NSW., e Australian, 6 November 2024.
9. Moving toward control of our space domain, ibid., Australian, 31 October 2024.
10. Chinese missile launched in Pacific, Australian, 26 September 2024.
11. Defence confirms JP9102 cancellation, ADM., Hanwha Defence Australia, 4 November 2024.
12. Budget 'prioritisation' in satellite plan axing, op.cit., Australian, 7 November 2024.
13. Ibid.
14. Defence confirms JP9102 cancellation, op.cit., ADM., 4 November 2024.
15. Ibid.
16. Budget 'prioritisation' in satellite plan axing, op.cit., Australian, 7 November 2024.

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Nullarbor Plain Environment Threatened By Proposed "Green" Hydrogen Energy Hub

Written by: Ned K. on 18 November2024

"Developers" Intercontinental Energy and CWP Global are planning one of the largest "green" hydrogen energy production hubs on the Nullarbor Plain north of Eucla. The project involves building a desalination plant, use of ground water in the Basin below the Nullarbor, 3,000 wind turbines and 60 million solar panels. The multinational corporations involved claim it will produce 3.5 million tonnes of "green" hydrogen a year for the Australian and international market.

According to The Weekend Australian of 16-17 November, the corporations involved in this proposal formed a "partnership" with Korea Electric Power Corporation, the largest South Korean electricity provider.

Venture capitalists Paris-headquartered Hy24, and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation GIC have together sunk equity investment totalling $US115 million ($180 million) into the project.

The project will involve hydrogen electrolysers, water and hydrogen pipelines, a new port and the clearing of over 27,000 hectares of Nullarbor Plain land.

The corporations involved claim 10% of the venture will be owned by the First Nations Mirning people who have native title rights to the area. InterContinental (46 per cent), CWP Global (44 per cent) account for the remaining 90% ownership.

Intercontinental Energy and CWP Global had previously begun a similar-sized green hydrogen project in the Pilbara, the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH). In 2022, British multinational BP bought into the project and took over its operations, renaming it the Australian Renewable Energy Hub.

Scientists say that the project will be a disaster for the Nullabor Plain environment which includes extensive underground caves and unique fauna.

The corporations and WA Government of course say that "avoidance of impact" on environment and marine life is their highest priority!

The scientists say "The caves have preserved ancient underground landscapes, environmental histories and fauna that have remained frozen in time for hundreds of thousands and even millions of years".

The network of the cave system and groundwater system is so interconnected that scientists say that the project cannot avoid or mitigate harm to this environmentally fragile area.

In 1994 the area in question in a report to the UN found that the Nullarbor karsts met World Heritage criteria.

The message from the scientists is "go build your ‘green’ hydrogen hub somewhere else"!

In the hands of multinational corporations and their governments at state and federal level, "development" for profits come first, especially when they throw in the argument that projects like this one are renewable energy projects and not fossil fuel projects.

This puts traditional owners, the Mirning, in a difficult conflict-of-interest situation.

The Mirning are the traditional owners of the Nullarbor, and Mirning Green Energy, whch holds 10% equity in the project, is the commercial arm of the Mirning Traditional Lands Aboriginal Corporation (MTLAC).

In 2017 the Mirning People were granted native title over the land on which the developers now want to build, which means before any development can go ahead, an Indigenous Land Use Agreement must be negotiated.

"Our cave systems are our storylines," MTLAC chair Shilloh Peel said.

"Each family is connected to each cave, as well as the rock holes that provide water to the caves.

"We need to bring our people along with us … and we would have to make sure that all our cultural sites, heritage sites are protected."

However renewable energy projects are not much use to the struggle against capitalism's global warming crisis if the projects destroy the environment, including the cultural heritage of First Nations peoples.

What's the answer then?

As an interim demand, all renewable energy projects should be nationalised rather than in the hands of "developers" and only proceed by agreement with First Nations peoples.

Only an independent socialist Australia will maximize Australia's contribution to saving the planet.

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Out for International Environmental Day of Action: November 16, 2024

Written by: ICOR on 14 November 2024

COP29, the UN’s yearly Climate Change Conference, is currently underway in Baku, Azerbaijan. The International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR) recently released a call for action on the environmental implications – Eds.

There are many important and far-reaching issues facing the world today – economic crises, political crises and wars. All this is further exacerbated by the life-threatening danger of the existential climate catastrophe. The WHO estimates that 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to the climate catastrophe. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone. Besides warmer climates, there have been more severe droughts, more intense forest fires and stronger storms in recent years than ever before. The melting of sea ice, glaciers, etc. is expected to make sea levels rise all over the world and submerging low-lying coastal cities and even countries. The plundering of people and nature is in the process of destroying the basic conditions for human existence on earth. The current capitalist and imperialist world system does not seem to care about this, and is deliberately driving this process forward.

The wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere are destroying nature and worsening the human suffering. In the course of its military aggression the Russian Federation has contaminated Ukrainian territory with huge quantities of substances which are a threat to nature and human life. The destruction of the Dnieper hydroelectric station by Russia caused an environmental disaster in a huge area of Ukraine. The occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by Russia and the recurring Russian provocations with artillery exchanges on the plant grounds create the ever-present danger of a nuclear catastrophe affecting all Europe. A particular danger of environmental destruction emanates from US imperialism as main warmonger.

The recent 5th World Conference of the ICOR concluded: “The ICOR denounces imperialism as the main cause of the global environmental catastrophe that has already begun! With its reckless striving for maximum profit, it utterly exploits humanity and nature and gradually destroys their unity. … On all continents, further features of environmental destruction are visible, such as the danger to the world seas and forests, the species extinction, destruction of the ozone layer, etc.”

The 29th UN Climate Conference (COP 29) is due to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November this year. In a country whose main export products are oil and natural gas. The share of renewable energies in energy production there fell from 3.3 to 1.1 percent between 2010 and 2020. Human rights organizations are denouncing the suppression and arrest of environmental activists in the run-up to the summit.

The COP (Conference of Parties) meetings have been held since the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 – but to little effect and a great deal of greenwashing. Finally, a quantitative target was agreed at COP 21 in 2015 in the Paris Agreement. This was signed by 196 countries. However, humanity is further from this goal than ever. The problem was that this quantitative target was only a world-wide target, but not for each nation. For the first time, in COP 28 in Dubai in 2023 the word “fossil fuels” was mentioned in the resolution with the vague platitude that all signatories will start the “transitioning away from fossil fuels”. No quantitative promises have been made by any government. The promise of the Paris Agreement was that the world would restrict the rise in temperatures from the pre-industrial revolution era to 1.5 degrees centigrade. We are already over this temperature by 1.1 to 1.3 degrees (depending upon the source – NASA reports a rise of 1.36 degrees since the 1850-1900 period). According to the EU climate service Copernicus, in August, for the 13th time in 14 months, the 1.5 degree mark has already been exceeded. The continent of Europe has warmed almost twice as much. The 1.5 degree target is now an unattainable pipe dream. Another target was to set net deforestation to 0 by 2030. This target is definitely not going to be met by the capitalist world, given the available statistics, which show net deforestation of over 47 million hectares even in the last decade.

The ICOR also denounces the worldwide fascist deniers of the environmental catastrophe. Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement when he was president and is expected to do so again if elected. Fascism is finally an open, brutal method to preserve capitalism. As it is this capitalist-imperialist system that has brought climate catastrophe, fascism sees itself as obliged to oppose climate catastrophe in effect.

The 5th ICOR World Conference concluded: “Today, the environmental struggle must be society changing, and in socialism the unity of humanity and nature has to be fought for again and reinforced. The ICOR criticizes illusions and greenwashing in capitalism through monopolies and the parties representing them, as well as the reformist division of environmental protection and jobs. It recognizes the leading role of the working class in the environmental struggle.”

As a guideline for its environmental policy, it has decided: “The ICOR will denounce those responsible, for example at the World Climate Conference, will organize solidarity when regional catastrophes occur, work to build consciousness and organize the struggle and,given a regular race against time, promote the struggle for socialism. The international coordination and cooperation also of environmental struggles, is of greatest importance.”

Resolute struggle for socialism to save humanity and to preserve the unity of humanity and nature!

Forward with the ICOR and the international United Front in the struggle to change society for the better!

“Climate reporter” 27.3. 2024

Status of the signatories 08.11.2024. Further signing possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info

1. UPC-Manidem Union des Populations du Cameroun - Manifeste National pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie (Union of Populations of Cameroon - National Manifesto for the Establishment of Democracy)

2. CPK Communist Party of Kenya

3. MMLPL Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Line

4. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

5. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

6. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh

7. CPI (ML) MassLine Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) MassLine

8. NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

9. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

10. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

11. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

12. MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

13. UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

14. BP (NK-T) Bolşevik Parti (Kuzey Kürdistan-Türkiye) (Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan-Turkey))

15. KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

16. RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

17. UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

18. MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

19. TKP-ML Türkiye Komünist Partisi – Marksist-Leninist (Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist-Leninist)

20. MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

21. KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

22. UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia

23. PCC-M Partido Comunista de Colombia – Maoista (Communist Party of Colombia - Maoist)

24. PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))

25. PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

26. SUCI (C) Socialist Unity Center of India (Communist)

27. CPPDM Chinese People's Party for the Defense of Mao Zedong

28. Chinese Communists (MLM) Chinese Communists (Marxist Leninist Maoist)

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Media and CFMEU Administrators threaten rank and file fightback

Written by: Louisa L. on 14 November 2024

Multi-sided attacks against NSW CFMEU members increased in the lead-up to a strike and rally organised by rank and file workers on Tuesday 12 November. Yet thousands of fired-up ETU, CFMEU and Plumbers Union members still lit up Sydney streets with their demands.

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) labelled NSW “Australia’s most lawless” branch. In two editions it targeted a leading delegate of 30 years standing. The failed and now disbanded Construction Commission (ABCC) also systematically targeted him for “illegally” refusing to speak to its inspectors. It once charged him for refusing to take down a crane’s Eureka Flag. It also threatened construction company managers for not taking action against him.

AFR intimated he was a thug and criminal. Yet his father, who became honorary President of the NSW Builders Federation as a rank and file worker, fought in the lead against gangster control of the union, alongside Jack Mundey and Norm Gallagher. Like father, like son, both incorruptible, both putting the needs of construction workers before their own.

Invitation to sack workers

The two NSW Administrators also got in on the act. First, they instructed organisers not to support the strike.

Next, they texted all members demanding a law designed to cripple or completely destroy unions (its giant legal bills paid with CFMEU members’ money) “must be decided in court”.

Warning members not to attend, they pretended concern, “We do not want to see any member … put at risk of losing their job.” But it’s also a disguised threat to construction companies and subbies to keep their workers under control, in attacks that benefit billionaire developers and their trillionaire financiers.

Administrators then directly extended the invitation to employers to sack workers, telling them any sacked worker would not be assisted by the Administrator-controlled, so-called union. Giant developer Lendlease immediately threatened any worker who walked out with the sack.

A parade of nominee companies make up Lendlease’s Top 20 security holders. Nominee companies invest on behalf of multiple different corporations and individuals. They are mostly run by foreign banks and finance companies, some with Australian offices. Investors use nominees to hide their identities.
Lendlease’s 2023 Annual Report also revealed the five biggest “substantial security holders” within these hidden holdings. Number one is Aware Super, holding 8.56%.

But most importantly the second, third and fourth biggest are three closely linked US finance corporations – State Street Corporation, BlackRock Group and the Vanguard Group, who control 19.19% of Lendlease. As a bloc, it gives them great power to make decisions.

Defend workers and challenge Administrators

Many workers and even delegates were cowed by intimidation and deliberate misinformation. At knock off time the day before, the Administrators, calling themselves “NSW CFMEU”, sent every member a text saying there was “no CFMEU rally” the next day.

In the wash up, Australian Financial Review again attacked the most prominent rank and file leader, after he called for members to prepare each other for massive industrial action if the High Court challenge to ALP-Coalition legal threats and thuggery against workers failed. It also deliberately named his employer company, to pressure its managers.

Rank and file delegates are leading this critically important fightback. United, they have the collective experience to defend each other and challenge the Administrators’ attempts to divide and conquer.

Community outreach by support organisations is informing the general public of truth of this dangerous legislation, which looks and smells exactly like the Nazi Labour Front of the 1930s. There’s clear untapped interest and support among the general public, and plenty to be done.

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Dare to struggle, dare to win against Administrator: CFMEU Sydney Rally

Written by: Tovaris on 13 November 2024

More than 2000 construction workers courageously defied the fascistic administrator to march in Sydney on 12 November. This was despite a desperate letter sent from CFMEU NSW administrators and class traitors Chris Christodoulou and Philip Pasfield urging members not to join the rally, which was followed up by a pathetic text message sent to all members stating that there was no rally on 12 November.

The rally was strongly supported from the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU), the Meat Industry Union (AMIEU) and the Plumbers Union (PPTEU). Despite the lower numbers of this rally compared with the last few CFMEU rallies in Sydney, the tone and mood was significantly more militant.
CFMEU representative Denis McNamara clearly and correctly called for support from the rest of the Australian working class: “If all workers are beside us, we will never be defeated!” This statement was met by thunderous applause from workers in attendance. McNamara also addressed members on the need to strike indefinitely if the sacked union leaders of the CFMEU lost their High Court challenge to the fascistic administration.

Allan Hicks from the ETU spoke of the scourge of the Masters Builders Association who teamed up with CFMEU administrators and visited NSW job sites in the lead-up to the rally to convince union members not to come to the rally. Hicks stated that threatening imprisonment of unionists who defy the administrator would not deter workers from fighting for their rights.

Loukas Kakogiannis from RAFFWU told of the traitorous nature of the ALP and ACTU in not supporting retail workers against rampant wage theft from corporate giants Coles and Woolworths. Kakogiannis had a great reception from workers when he stated “At RAFFWU, we know what side we are on!”

Meat Workers Union representative Jacqui read out a statement denouncing the sacking of the 270 officials of the CFMEU without trial and spoke of how the legislation used against the CFMEU will certainly be used as a blueprint to attack other unions, especially with a Federal election looming in the near future.

Chris Seet from the Plumbers Union spoke out on the need to stick together with the CFMEU “who are courageous and standing for their rights and dignity”. Seet pledged support from the Plumbers union all the way in CFMEU members combating the fascistic administrator imposed upon them.

Elected NSW CFMEU Secretary Darren Greenfield, who was removed by the fascistic administrator from his elected position, spoke of his immense pride in the courageous actions of CFMEU members acting against the administrator. Greenfield correctly spoke of the utmost need to get the CFMEU back in control by union members and gave a warning about the fascistic administrator organising “ALP hacks on a union ticket to run the CFMEU that suits their aims”.

Placards from the ‘Democracy on Trial’ campaign group were proudly held overhead by CFMEU members, with the message ‘Our right to innocence until proven guilty in under threat’ – referring to how the capitalist class can remove the so-called rights of people at any time.

Importantly, rail workers, nurses and teachers have met to plan to fight back against the cost of living crisis imposed by the capitalists against the Australian people. Only when all Australian workers politically run the country will we see a system where workers’ labour provides healthcare, education, transport and housing for all people as a guaranteed right. The struggle of CFMEU members against the fascistic administrator is proving a great training site and ultimately instructive for all workers to unite against the capitalist ruling class.

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Richard Boyle: Hero not Criminal

Written by: Tom R. on 12 November 2024

On Monday 11 November, Richard Boyle appeared in the Adelaide District Court where a date was set for his trial to start in November next year. The Alliance Against Political Persecutions organised a rally outside the court in support. Around a 100 people turned out to back him. Barbara Pocock Green's Senator, Jodie Sard from Adelaide for Assange and Amnesty International, and Derek Burke from IPAN-SA spoke about Boyle's case and the importance of whistle-blowers. Singers from Stay Human Project sang songs of satire against the unjust treatment of those who speak truth to power.

The following is the speech given by Derek Burke, Convener of IPAN-SA.

Over 12 months ago, we were all here to protest the persecution of the whistleblower, Richard Boyle. He has been dragged before the courts for divulging the Australian Tax Office’s unfair and unethical debt recovery practices.
Richard exposed how his area of the ATO was instructed to use heavy-handed tactics to recover money from those with tax debts.
Now that his bid in the High Court has failed, he appears set to stand trial over those charges. He is now facing 24 charges and the charges carry a maximum sentence of up to 46 years.

The Australian whistleblower protection and the Public Interest Disclosure Act are a failure. In fact they are a sham. The Act only applies to the act of disclosure rather than steps taken to make that disclosure.

How else are you able to disclose malfeasance if you can't take steps to disclose it? The law is an ass!

The Public Interest Disclosure Act is a contradictory Act, a Catch-22. It is only there for optics and ends up protecting the powerful rather than the powerless.

Our Rule of Law equally reflects what our so-called democracy is; a big sham! The Rule of Law protects the power of elites and the wealthy. Similarly, with our so-called democracy, we have the worst elections that big money can buy.

Have you noticed that the corporate donors always win after an election and the ordinary voters get next to nothing? In effect we are ruled by a plutocracy.

Richard Boyle, Julian Assange, David McBride, Daniel Duggan, Bernard Colleary, Witness K and J have had to face authoritarian law that is in place to hide the truth and entrench injustice.

Julian Assange suffered 7 years confinement in the Ecuadorian Embassy and 5 years solitary imprisonment in Belmarsh prison until he pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Espionage Act in exchange for immediate release. This the penalty for exposing US military war crimes.

David McBride, the Australian Army lawyer and whistleblower who provided the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with documents that contained information about war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, was prosecuted for unlawfully disclosing Commonwealth documents.

For his trouble with speaking truth to power, he was sentenced to 5 years and 8 months in prison, with a non-parole period of 2 years and 3 months. Once again, the act of taking steps to make a disclosure is what has criminalised McBride. This is plain and simple authoritarianism.

We can see authoritarianism at work with the Albanese Labor government cracking down on unions and their enterprise agreements. Labor's plans to destroy the CFMEU and place it under administration have got little to do with the union's alleged involvement with organized crime.

Victoria's Labor premier Jacinta Allan made that clear when she terminated existing enterprise agreements moments after the federal government moved against the CFMEU and placed it under administration.

In reality, the Labor government is doing the bidding of the construction industry bosses to end pattern bargaining under government administration.

Compare this to the treatment of the banks who were never put under administration nor broken up when they were found guilty of criminal behaviour and corruption by the Royal Commission.

Now we see Richard Boyle being sacrificed on an authoritarian alter in favour of the powerful Australian Tax Office for exposing their crimes.

The lesson is quite clear: do not embarrass or expose crimes of the powerful or else they'll make an example of you so that others will not dare be a whistleblower.

We must not tire of supporting Richard Boyle, David McBride and Daniel Duggan whatever happens to them. The real criminals should be put in gaol, the powerful who cover up their crimes, not the brave whistleblowers.

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West Australia's Rare Earth Metals to Feed US Department of Defense Refinery in Texas

Written by: Ned K. on 10 November 2024

Above: Lynas’s Mt Weld mine, WA. Photo: lynasrareearths.com/projects/

High grade Rare Earth minerals mined at Lynas Mt Weld mine in Western Australia are in demand from both US and European corporations and governments. Both the US and European governments are very keen to usurp China's control over the Rare Earth minerals commodity.

Lynas Rare Earths, a nominally Australian owned corporation, also owns the world's largest single Rare Earths processing plant in Malaysia where the Rare Earth oxides mined at Mt Weld are processed and exported to Asia, Europe and the USA.

The final processed products include minerals vital for electronics, wind turbines, hybrid and electric vehicle and magnets used in high-tech military equipment and defence applications.

Last week, the federal Labor Government Resources Minister Madelaine King officially opened the Lynas owned $800 million Rare Earths cracking and leaching plant in Kalgoorlie.

The end product from this plant is bound for a refinery in Texas financed by the US Government.

This "partnership" started under Trump's first term of office as US President.

The Albanese Labor Government and the CEO of Lynas are banking on the new Trump administration continuing the import of the Rare Earth mineral from the newly established cracking and leaching plant in Kalgoorlie, rather than the Trump administration building its own cracking and leaching plant under Trump's "Make America Great Again" story.

The Rare Earth mineral deposits in Western Australia and other areas of the country are in US and European corporations’ and governments' sights. They want the minerals so they can decrease their dependence on China's Rare Earth minerals.

Rare Earth minerals should be used primarily for development of advanced manufacturing for peaceful purposes for the benefit of Australian people and people of developing countries rather than for use by the US and European powers' military arsenals.

The Australian Government is subservient to US imperialist interests in the latter's competition with China. This subservience is reflected in the destination of Rare Earth minerals to the US Department of Defense refinery in Texas.

Australia's Rare Earth minerals and their processing (the new "gold") should be nationalised and used for peaceful purposes, not for the benefit of the US war machine.

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Sleepwalking to war?

Written by: (Contributed) on 8 November 2024

(Abandoned since 1946, and largely taken over by the jungle, US imperialism plans to re-commission the airfields from which they sent the planes to drop atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. Photo - news9live.com)

Dramatic increases in Australia's defence budgets planned for the next decade, are best assessed in the context of interoperability with US-led regional military planning; being an ally is not a cheap option.

US-led defence and security planning for Indo-Pacific region, likewise, has a direct bearing upon Australia's active participation as a major ally for 'US interests'.

The announcement that Canberra will be increasing defence budgets has revealed a heightened preparation for regional 'real-war scenarios':

TOTAL DEFENCE FUNDING

2024/25 - $55.7 billion
2026 - $58.4 billion
2027/28 - $67.4 billion
2034/35 - $100 billion (1)

The projections have been designed to enhance the position of the US-led military-industrial complex and Wall Street with their cohorts in the 'Defence State' of South Australia.

Australia, despite its geographical position, has been continually pushed higher up US military agendas for regional operations for 'US interests'. In fact, it has been openly acknowledged that 'Australia would still be a strategic backwater for the US if China had not developed such long-range offensive weapons capable of hitting Guam and other US bases in the region'. (2)

A high-level diplomatic statement from Michael McCaul, chair of the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, furthermore, stated 'Australia had become the central base for operations for America's military to deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific'. (3) An official statement from Canberra, for example, included reference that 'Australia has gone from being the periphery in importance to the US to the essential core'. (4)

The moves have included large-scale US troop rotations through Australia and upgrades to military facilities for 'enhancing a ring of military bases spanning the coastline from Perth to Townsville to make them available to US forces in a conflict'. (5)

The moves rest on earlier sensitive US intelligence facilities based at Pine Gap in the 1970s;
control, and even accountability, by Australian governments was considered controversial by the Pentagon. It set the Whitlam administrations in Canberra on a well-publicised collision course with the White House and Pentagon which eventually led to the sacking of Whitlam by the Governor-General. (6)

The later publication of a top-secret telex revealed just how fraught the diplomatic relations between the US and Australia had become during the period: three points emerged; the CIA was bypassing the Australian government, they had deceived Canberra and were threatening to break diplomatic relations. (7)

The controversy still continues to the present day; it has never been resolved. Later studies of the Pine Gap facilities have concluded with the point that they provide 'a vital contribution to the US war-fighting mission … and they integrate … Australia into US war-fighting machinery'. (8)

Hidden within the recent defence budgets lie references to interoperability with Australian-based equipment and facilities being compatible with US-led models. It is not difficult to find examples in numerous defence publication in the public domain. (9) The Pentagon, furthermore, remains preoccupied with retaining their control over that of their allies; political leaders in Canberra and provincial states have willing accepted the 'deal', reducing Australia to a regional sub-imperial power for 'US interests'. (10) References in a recent Australian military publication actually referred to the Western Pacific, a vast area many thousands of kms from Australia and composed of numerous 'independent' countries as recognised by the United Nations, as 'our front yard'. (11) So much for their sovereignty.

The continued failure of the Pentagon to cede control of equipment and facilities based in Australia has, however, raised serious questions about our sovereignty. Statements issued by the Pentagon, therefore, about 'pooling of sovereignty … and … increasing enmeshing of the military forces of both countries' are best viewed as political spin, devoid of meaningful content and designed to deflect public opinion and controversy. (12)

Moves by the US to re-establish sensitive military facilities on Tinian (15 degrees north, 145 degrees east), a remote Pacific Island in the Northern Marianas, have revealed just how close Australia has been drawn into US-led planning for 'real-war scenarios'. It would appear not coincidental that Tinian is strategically and centrally placed within the boundaries of the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy which is defined by the linking of intelligence facilities at Pine Gap with counterparts in India, Japan and on the west coast of the US. (13)

With the bare minimum of publicity, the US has begun moves to create a major military hub on Tinian, which was abandoned in 1946 following its landing strips being used by the USAF for bombing Japan at the end of the Second World War. The 39 square mile island, with three thousand population who are US citizens, has been officially earmarked to 'become an extensive facility'. (14) With a budget of US$78 million, the USAF are seeking to transform Tinian as part of a network of 'smaller, dispersed locations … to … provide more options for joint force commanders' with larger airbases such as nearby Guam being assessed as susceptible to attacks; the proposed Tinian facilities can be regarded as a Pentagon-planned fall-back position in time of war. (15)

Other details about the Tinian planning reveal a great deal about the mindset of those who lurk inside the corridors of power inside the Pentagon, and their planning. The extensive US$409 million jungle clearance contract was awarded to Texas-based Fluor, which has historically been closely associated with oil and gas exploration; the area of the Pacific is regarded as rich in natural resources. (16)

Secondly, Tinian rests on the same arc which swings from Diego Garcia to Guam from Pine Gap in Central Australia. (17) Both remote US intelligence facilities have been upgraded in recent decades to become hubs for military operations, with Darwin Harbour as a support centre.

No doubt, somewhere in the recent $7 billion allocated by Canberra for use over the next decade to 'revolutionise its air and missile defence systems under a new agreement with the US … for … strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific', recent US-led developments in Tinian will be taken into account. (18)

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Defence's big budget boost, The Financial Review, 14 May 2024.
2. See: US forces get the nod to help contain China, The Weekend Australian, 14-15 September 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. See: The Secret State, Richard Hall, (Australia, 1978), page 144, 146, 169, 173, pp. 176-77, pp. 184-86, page 202.
7. See: The CIA's Australian Connection, Denis Freney, (Sydney, 1977), Chapter 6, The CIA and the Kerr coup, pp. 26-31.
8. Sub-Imperial Power, Clinton Fernandes, (Melbourne, 2002), page 43.
9. See: Indian Ocean Defence and Security, Special Report, Australian, 24 July 2024; and, Land Forces 2024, Special Report, Australian, 11 September 2024.
10. See: Sub-Imperial Power, op.cit., Clinton Fernandes.
11. AUKUS nuclear submarines will also be a game-changer for the army, Land Forces 2024, Special Report, Australian, 11 September 2024.
12. Weekend Australian, op.cit., 14-15 September 2024.
13. See: Diagram, US Indo-Pacific Strategy, The Reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
14. US Air Force to reclaim Pacific airfield, CNN., 21 December 2023; and, US Air Force scatters to survive, Australian, 22 October 2024.
15. Ibid.
16. US Air Force issues $409 m award, Asia-Pacific, 11 April 2024.
17. See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
18. $7 bn deal to bolster missile, air defence, Australian, 23 October 2024.

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Condemn the DPRK’s sending of troops to the Ukrainian conflict.

Written by: Nick G. on 6 November 2024

(Source: CNN.com)

First reports are arriving of fighting between Ukrainian and DPRK troops.

As much as we have always supported and praised heroic North Korea’s defiance of US imperialism, we cannot endorse its support for Russian imperialist aggression against Ukraine.

The Ukrainian conflict was born of rivalry between the US and European imperialist bloc on one side, and the Russian imperialists on the other.

Its origins can be traced back to the string-pulling exercised by Virginia Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in 2014, at the time of the Maidan Rebellion that brought down the Ukrainian government. Nuland directed the subsequent coup, declaring who should, and shouldn’t be in the new regime, and monopolizing the conspiracy so as to exclude the European Union and telling US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt “Fuck the EU.”

In the face of provocations instigated by US imperialism and NATO, the Russians unleashed a so-called “limited” action, in the form of a “special military action”, against Ukraine. Ostensibly this was to protect the interests of Russian-speaking separatists in Eastern Ukraine, whose declarations of independence had long been ignored by Moscow, and to root out the influence of open Nazis and their influence within Ukrainian political and military circles.

Despite this complicated situation, the fact remains that Russian imperialism committed an act of aggression. That act determined that theirs was an unjust war, and the Ukrainians’, irrespective of the capitalist nature of their ruling class, and its embrace of the US/NATO imperialists, was a just war.

Putin’s “limited” action has required the suppression of civil liberties in Russia and a massive cost in armaments and lives. These both represent significant drains on Russia.

Putin has now had to seek reinforcements. Despite supporting Putin politically, the Belarusians have resisted direct involvement in Ukraine. The DPRK’s involvement may, however, induce the fascist leader of the Chechen Republic President, Ramzan Kadyrov, to follow through on his threat to send 80,000 “volunteers” to support the Russians in Ukraine.

In an act of desperation, Putin signed a treaty on military assistance with the DPRK on Jue 19, 2024. According to the Treaty, North Korea and Russia “shall immediately provide military and other assistance” to the other party if it “falls into a state of war due to armed invasion from an individual or multiple states.”

The Russians claim that the Treaty came into operation because the Ukrainians have waged war against the four counties in the east of Ukraine that Russia says have “voluntarily” supported their annexation to Russia. According to the logic of the Russian imperialists, their war of aggression against Ukraine has now become a “war of defence” against Ukraine’s invasion of its own territory.

Russia can also claim that the Ukrainian’s August seizure of Russian territory in the region near Kursk also constituted “armed invasion”.

However, given Russia’s original sin of having first invaded Ukraine, the counter-incursion by Ukraine is not the beginning of a new “armed invasion”, but a continuation of a war begun by the Russians.

It is believed that DPRK troops have already clashed with Ukrainian forces inside the Russian zone taken by Ukraine.

Far from being close to ending, everything points to the Ukrainian conflict intensifying and dragging on with further unspeakable suffering on both sides. The US has so far been content to only supply Ukraine with arms sufficient to tie the Russians down so as to exhaust them in a prolonged war.

There are signs too, particularly from the Trump camp, that the US should let the Russians win so as to engage with greater focus on preparations for war with their main rival, Chinese social-imperialism.

Russia's aggression against the Ukrainian people is bound to fail, and North Korea's joining as an ally at this time means it will only share the consequences of such defeat with Russia.

Whatever the outcome of the US election, the system of US imperialism will remain in place, and ensure that the people of Europe and the world will face being sacrificed in the interests of defending and expanding US global hegemony.

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NSW Teachers Win New Award

Written by: Seb A. on 6 November 2024

Above: NSW teachers vote for new Award October28. Photo: NSWTF Facebook

New South Wales public school teachers have held mass meetings across the state to vote for acceptance of an offer for a new award. 97% of NSW Teachers Federation members attending the meetings voted in favour of the new award on 28 October.

The pay rise is 9% over the three years of the Award, and 0.5% superannuation increases each year, which is the baseline offer the NSW government announced for public sector workers in NSW after the 2023 election of the Minns ALP state government.

While this pay rise keeps NSW teachers up with official inflation figures, the real significant gains of the new award are to workload and conditions. With teachers leaving in droves because of the piling up of unsustainable workload since 2012 under the regime of the neoliberal Department of Education Local Schools, Local Decisions agenda and the worst teacher shortage in decades, these improvements are vital in ensuring teachers’ work health and safety and a healthy work-life balance.

Around twenty improvements have been achieved, with some of the more significant including a one hour weekly limit to before and after school meetings enshrined in the Award. Over recent years, schools have seen dramatic increases in after and before school meetings with hours often spent weekly in meetings before and after school with no real benefit to teachers or students. This win will significantly decrease the unsustainable workload burden that is seeing so many teachers leave schools.

Classroom teachers themselves will now determine 50% of what they do on the eight student-free School Development Days each year. These days are when teachers engage in professional learning and development and prepare for the school year; however, all too often they become opportunities for irrelevant top-down determined professional learning, no consultation, and teachers doing all their real preparation outside of school hours. This means that now classroom teachers will have much more opportunity to use these days for what they are most useful for: actually preparing quality lessons for our students.

These wins would never have been made without the committed and unified strike action members took during the More Than Thanks campaign that won NSW teacher unionists the previous award last year, and which made them the highest paid teachers in the country.

From the perspective of building teacher union strength, the improvements won in the new award will be an opportunity to empower union activists to push back locally and put power in teachers’ hands to have a say in determining what their work day looks like.

The new award will also see the development of a new consultation framework that will mandate that teachers have a say when there are proposals to change or add to their workload at the school level.

While a major objective of the union was not achieved in the new award, the granting of an additional two weekly hours of release from face-to-face teaching to deal with the increased administrative workload that teachers have been burdened with, the wins discussed above place teacher unionists in a strong position to further build union strength and be ready to campaign for those goals as yet unachieved.

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Unionists In SA Celebrate 140 Year Anniversary of United Trades and Labour Council

Written by: Ned K. on 2 November 2024

CFMEU members in SA staying strong: delegates' training a couple of days ago (CFMEU Facebook)

On Friday 1st October over 150 Union Organizers attended the annual SA Unions Organizing Conference which also celebrated the 140th anniversary of the SA United Trades and Labour Council which formed in 1884.

In 1884, the name "Trades and Labour" was fitting because at that time most of the recognized Unions consisted of trades people and most of them were men.

140 years later, the same body goes by the name SA Unions which is more appropriate as the make-up of union membership is far broader now than workers with a trade. There are many more union members who do not have a formal trade and about 50% of members of Unions in SA are women workers.
That fact was reflected in the large number of women Organizers at the SA Unions Conference on Friday.

The Conference came at a difficult time for the relatively new SA Unions Secretary Dale Beasley. He has had the task of uniting the affiliated Unions at the state level following the federal Labor Government's disgraceful attack on construction workers by placing their Division of the CFMEU into the hands of an Administrator.

To Dale's credit he demonstrated for all to see, including two ALP MPs who were guest-speakers, that workers’ collective organizations are quite capable of discussing differences and working out problems internally through democratic processes.

There were strongly held views among Organizers at the Conference regarding the actions of the federal Labor Government against the CFMEU. Everyone had a chance to speak and despite differences of opinion, everyone's view was respected.

One of the guest-speakers at the Conference was the Industrial Relations Minister Murray Watt. He copped plenty of criticism from Organizers about the implications for workers of a Labor Government interfering in the internal affairs of a Union, paving the way for deeper attacks on workers' mass organizations by future governments particularly a government led by Dutton. Murray Watt did not retreat from the official Labor Government position that it was united with Unions as the political arm of the "labor movement" and that the Government's aim was to ensure that the Construction Division of the CFMEU returned to running its own affairs no later than 3 years under an Administrator!

One of the women Organizers at the Conference said to Watt in so many words that if he and other Labor MPs wanted union members' support in the coming federal election campaign, he and they had better take on board that many union members are extremely concerned about the Government's interference in the internal affairs of a Union.

Murray Watt did appear to be quite surprised at the level of anxiety among Organizers and he left the Conference with plenty to think about. He was particularly surprised and embarrassed to know that in SA there was no Union Official with the authority to go on to a building site to investigate a health and safety issue on the site. The reason for this was that the Government's new laws against the CFMEU resulted in all the relevant Officials of the Construction Division being given "the bullet" by the Government appointed Administrator!

This dangerous situation of construction workers in SA not being able to have their Union Official come on site to investigate a safety issue was seen as absurd by Conference Organizers.

They had just heard from the first guest-speaker, Kyam Maher, the SA Labor Government Attorney General about recent reforms to the Health and Safety laws in SA. The new laws enable a Union to take a safety issue caused by employer neglect to the South Australian Employment Tribunal (SAET), effectively as an industrial matter.

Organizers at the Conference were under no illusions about the coming attacks on workers if a Dutton led Coalition wins the fast-approaching federal election. They acknowledged the changes to the Fair Work Act mentioned by Murray Watt in his speech, such as Same Job - Same Pay, Multi-Employer Bargaining, Delegate Rights and tighter laws around definition of a Casual worker.

They also realized that workers’ and their Unions’ solidarity and collective strength is needed irrespective of which political party forms government under capitalism.

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Israel's Approval of the Law Banning UNRWA: A Declaration of Total War on the United Nations and Palestinian Refugees

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 30 October 2024

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine's Foreign Affairs Department: Either respect the charter or get expelled from the United Nations.

Ladies and gentlemen in political parties and parliaments worldwide,

Dear friends in international community, media, human rights, and trade union frameworks,

To all free individuals and those with a living conscience in our world,

In a dangerous precedent, the Israeli parliament (on November 28) passed a law banning the activities of one of the United Nations agencies in Israel, namely the "United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees" (UNRWA), which employs around 30,000 staff members. The parliament had previously voted in July 2024 to classify UNRWA as a "terrorist organization."
Days before the new law's vote, the UN Security Council, the United Nations, and dozens of countries and international institutions—including some allied with Israel—called for the project to be withdrawn and not approved due to its legal violations and humanitarian consequences that would affect millions of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, who depend on UNRWA for health, education, and social relief services. Despite this, Israel insisted on its position and proceeded with the law, disregarding global opinions and the humanitarian fallout.

What does banning UNRWA's activities in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza mean?
Since its establishment in 1949 by the UN General Assembly under resolution 302, UNRWA has operated freely in the West Bank and Gaza to provide education, health, and relief services to refugees. After Israel's occupation of all Palestinian territories in 1967, an agreement was signed with UNRWA to regulate its work and grant it freedom of movement and necessary exemptions. However, this agreement has effectively been annulled by the law's approval, depriving UNRWA of many rights and privileges that would prevent it from operating, including:

The cancellation of all privileges and immunities granted to international diplomatic missions, including the cessation of tax and customs exemptions, lifting protections for UNRWA staff, facilities, and vehicles, severing communications with it, and barring it from any activity in areas Israel considers "sovereign."

The classification of the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem as illegal, housing over 100,000 Palestinian refugees, which will adversely affect the camp's legal status and gradually facilitate collaboration with armed settler gangs to displace its residents in preparation for dismantling it.

UNRWA facilities in the West Bank will be targeted by the occupation army based on Israeli laws purportedly for combating terrorism, allowing settlers, who have previously besieged UNRWA offices and called for their burning, to invade them.

Beyond the legal descriptions of Israel's step, which not only violates the conditions for Israel's admission to the United Nations but also contradicts the UN Charter, which mandates respect as a fundamental principle and a condition for membership—particularly in Articles 2 and 105 that state: "All members shall provide every assistance to the United Nations in any action it takes in accordance with this Charter" (Article 2), and "The organization shall enjoy in the territory of each member such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the fulfillment of its purposes..." (Article 105). This means facilitating UNRWA's work and granting it the privileges and exemptions is a fundamental requirement outlined in the Charter, not a decision of the occupying state to revoke at will.

The Israeli law is akin to a declaration of true war against the United Nations and its various institutions, following the Israeli foreign minister's declaration of the UN Secretary-General as "persona non grata," among other UN officials. It presents the international community with a genuine challenge regarding its reputation and credibility, as UNRWA is one of the organizations under the UN, both in terms of its foundation and its regular program renewals. Thus, defending Palestinian refugees in this case is also a defense of the international organization’s reputation.

Despite the considerable risks posed to refugees and the services provided to them by UNRWA, the law's impact on the right of return will remain limited, especially if the UN and Arab countries show the will to confront it and nullify it. The right of return derives its strength not only from the existence of UNRWA—important though that is—but primarily from the natural and historical right of refugees to their land. This right, as affirmed by numerous international resolutions, and I say by courts and international legal scholars, does not expire with the passage of time, no matter how many years go by, especially as millions of refugees still carry its banner. Secondly, it is a right supported by UN resolution 194 and dozens of other international resolutions that do not grant a right to refugees but rather affirm an existing, established right that predates resolution 194.

Since UNRWA constitutes one of the foundations upon which the right of return is established—including resolution 194, the existence of camps, and the legal definition of a refugee—these elements will remain even after the law is enacted. What the law proposes is the opening of a new battle added to the series of struggles waged by the Palestinian people and freedom-loving individuals worldwide. Because while Israel may impose the law's implementation through its military and occupying force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it cannot do so in areas where refugees reside outside Palestine, numbering over six million.

The world's silence over Israel's crimes and the pressure on international courts and judicial frameworks have led Israel to feel protected under the American veto and support from Western and allied countries, facilitating its persistent violations of the UN Charter and human rights. This has encouraged it to continually challenge the international community and reject its resolutions, including tearing the Charter apart at the United Nations platform by the Israeli representative last May.

The approval of the law reflects a disregard for what remains of the international system, and it would not have occurred with such arrogance were it not for the unlimited support Israel receives from the United States in particular, and the silence or even complicity of Western countries in allowing Israel to evade accountability for decades for its breaches of international resolutions and its continued criminal acts and genocide against the Palestinian people.

Moreover, Israel's insistence on continuing its comprehensive war against the United Nations, represented by UNRWA and other international organizations and institutions, necessitates more than condemnation and denunciation. The time has come for the United Nations to take swift responsibility in enacting measures to expel Israel and isolate it from the UN.

On behalf of the "foreign Affairs Department of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine," as we present this overview of the Israeli law declaring war on the UN and UNRWA, we are confident that this serious development will be on your agenda in your future movements opposing the genocidal war perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples, and in favor of supportive stances from your governments, aimed at isolating Israel and forcing it to respect the international community and its supportive positions for the Palestinian people and their national rights, rejecting the fascism represented by Israel with direct support from the United States and some Western countries that continue to practice political hypocrisy in their public rejection of Israel’s actions while providing it with unlimited support for its policies of killing, terrorism, and rebellion against the international system and its political, legal, human rights, and humanitarian foundations.

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine's foreign Affairs Department

-30 October 2024-

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Geelong rally builds solidarity with Palestine, slams war industries

Written by: Bill F. on 27 October 2024

On Saturday 26 October, a lively rally in Geelong attracted more than 200 people opposed to the slaughter and shameful murder of the Palestinian and Lebanese people by the Israeli Zionists.

The rally was organised by local anti-war and anti-AUKUS groups, IPAN Geelong and Vic SouthWest, with assistance and participation from other organisations with similar concerns.

Location for the rally was a local strip of parkland directly opposite the electoral office of Richard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Defence, and number one collaborator with the war plans of US imperialism. Needless to say, there were more cops protecting his office than concerned about the “safety” of demonstrators.

If Marles happened to be looking out the window at his fine view across the park onto the harbour, he would have seen a host of Palestinian flags, anti-war banners and placards, stalls, a barbeque, and heard loud anti-war songs. It got even more lively when a 15-car motorcade of Palestine supporters arrived from Melbourne, honking horns and waving to the crowd as they circled the median strip between Marles’ office and the park.

Speakers at the rally included a local Geelong councillor, anti-war activists and Palestine-Lebanon activists. As well as condemning the Israeli genocidal agenda, they exposed the role of US imperialism as the main enabler and apologist for the ongoing war crimes.

Maritime Union Deputy Branch Secretary David Ball reported on the International Transport Workers Federation Congress in Spain, which had passed a resolution of solidarity with Palestine.

The Albanese government also copped a good swipe for its slavish echoing of US foreign policy, its AUKUS war-alliance and its promotion of a new weapons industry in the name of revitalising Australian manufacturing. Following on the Elbit contract between the federal government and the Israeli weapons company, the city of Geelong is now being promoted as a weapons manufacturing centre. Not only Marles, but the Geelong City Council and a mob called Geelong Defence Alliance is pushing this barrow.

With the US Presidential election only days away, the situation is fluid. Nevertheless, sections of the Australian people are becoming more aware of the threat of war and the risks of the US alliance/AUKUS and are increasingly uneasy about the future. This was also reflected by the good number of passing cars that waved or honked the rally as they drove by.

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Building industry and parliamentary squabble over how best to exploit construction workers

Written by: Ned K. on 27 October 2024

Last week the extreme right wing think tank H.R. Nicholls Society held a conference in Melbourne. At the conference one of the Liberal Party leaders, Angus Taylor said if the Liberals won the next federal election in 2025 it would deregister the CFMEU as a way of controlling construction workers.

The Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn contradicted Taylor's position by saying that administration was a better way to control construction workers.

Wawn said, "If they (CFMEU) were deregistered, they (construction workers) would still have the opportunity to be a bargaining agent under the current laws, and, as such, it is a far more effective way to control their behaviour and to become a lawful union by administration." (The Australian 26-27 October)

The Master Builders Australia CEO position aligns with the current Labor Government position of putting the CFMEU in administration and then having the "independent" Administrator preparing the way for a new CFMEU "responsible" leadership under the guise of ridding construction worksites of bikies,

New Industrial Relations Minister Watt said the federal government "took swift action to clean up the union"!

So, at the moment it looks like the federal Labor Government gets the tick of approval from the big builders, while Dutton and Taylor and the Liberal "Opposition" are left out in the cold - for now!

Meanwhile the mainstream media report that workers who ride motor bikes (bikies) are still working in construction jobs and that they are even helping getting construction jobs for people they know who have just completed a prison sentence!

What do the Murdoch press and other mainstream media expect people coming out of prison to do? Apply for a CEO job somewhere perhaps instead of returning to the type of jobs they are skilled at, such as construction work? If construction workers returning from a prison term are banned from the industry, how do they survive without resorting to stealing to buy a loaf of bread, so to speak?

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Port Adelaide Community Opposes AUKUS

Written by: Nick G. on 27 October 2024

More than 120 residents of the Port Adelaide area attended a meeting yesterday, called by the Port Adelaide Community Opposes AUKUS (PACOA).

The meeting began with MC and local resident Eileen Darley introducing former WA Senator Jo Valentine by video link. Jo expressed solidarity from WA opponents of AUKUS and gave a detailed account of developments over there.

The meeting closed with messages of solidarity from the Wollongong Against War and Nukes (WAWAN) group which has held very large protests against a suggested nuclear submarine base at Pt. Kembla harbour.

Residents then brainstormed ideas for further developing their campaign against AUKUS and the radioactive waste it brings.

Speakers at the meeting included former SA Senator Rex Patrick (who will be standing as a Senate candidate with the Jacqui Lambie Network – Lambie herself was seated in the audience), economist Prof. Al Rainnie, Michael Williss (speaking as a member of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network, IPAN), Amanda Ruler from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War), and co-leader of the Greens in the SA Parliament, Tammie Franks.

We are reprinting here the talk by Michael Williss.

Talk at the Take Action Against AUKUS meeting October 26, 2024
Port Adelaide Community Opposes AUKUS

Thank you for inviting me to speak on the unceded lands of the Kaurna people. What a pity Australia is not an unceded independent nation state instead of a grovelling puppet of the United States.

But let’s start in the traditional way…with a pub quiz.

I’m going to list ten wars, and I want to know the odd one out: Sudan Campaign, Boxer Rebellion. Boer War, WW1, WW2, Korea, Malayan Emergency, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Yes, the odd one out was WW2 – the only one of the ten in which our national independence and sovereignty were threatened. Japan bombed northern Australia at least 111 times between February 1942 and November 1943. The first time Darwin was hit, 262 aircraft killed at least 235 people and caused immense damage. Other places hit over a nearly two-year stretch included Broome, Katherine, Townsville, Wyndham, Port Headland, Mossman, Milingimbi, Exmouth, Horn Island, Bathurst Island.

Every other war, in my opinion, has seen us surrender our capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy, and blindly follow either the British or the US imperialists into wars not required for Australia’s defence.

That is why AUKUS and talk of war preparations by the US against China don’t unduly worry some people. Apart from WW2, our wars have been fought “up there” or “over there”. A war with China, some think, will follow that pattern. If we follow the US into war with China, it is unlikely that these people have considered Australian cities looking like parts of Ukraine or Gaza or Beirut. Osborne and surrounds are just such a potential target.

Bur Gillard, Rudd, Abbott, Morrison and Albanese have almost guaranteed that as a continental-sized air craft carrier for the US military, we have cities and suburbs that will almost certainly be hit in a Chinese retaliation against our participation in a US war against China.

Post WW2 we have had US bases here: Pine Gap and North West Cape spring to mind. But a qualitative change occurred when Obama’s pivot to Asia was married to Gillard’s cheerleading for the US Empire.

Obama’s pivot occurred in the first year of Gillard as PM. Starting in 2012 with 200 Marines, their Darwin rotation has grown to around 2,500 Marines.
U.S. aircraft, including bombers and surveillance planes, use Australian airbases, such as RAAF Base Tindal and RAAF Base Amberley. US B-52s can be nuclear armed, and Wong accepts this as the US’s right not to disclose. US B-2 bombers just recently bombed Yemen having used Australia as a stop-over.

The Force Posture Agreement (FPA) between the United States and Australia, signed in 2014, significantly enhances the U.S. military presence in Australia by formalising and expanding military cooperation between the two countries. It provides US forces with access to critical Australian military bases and infrastructure, including ports and airfields and allows them to station fuel dumps, equipment, and munitions wherever they like.

We are upgrading submarine docking facilities in WA at a cost of $20 billion, chicken feed perhaps alongside the $368 billion submarine arrangements.

Our country has been handed to the US on a plate. You have no doubt seen statements by Paul Keating, Gareth Evans and Bob Carr deploring the surrender of our independence through the AUKUS arrangements.

As much as Morrison likes to boast of his role in creating AUKUS, it was really a rerun of an idea first put to Australia by the US in October2013 after Tony Abbott had defeated Kevin Rudd. Morrison was in Abbott’s Cabinet and would have known of the US proposal that Australia operate 10 or 12 Virginia class submarines. Under AUKUS he simply tweaked the proposal for leasing the submarines into purchasing them.

Former PM Malcom Fraser saw the dangers to Australia of such a submarine deal, saying that “The reliance by Australia on the United States for military communications in reality means that we cannot conduct operations unless the United States approves of them. That is a derogation of sovereignty” (Fraser, Dangerous Allies p. 256).

He would no doubt laugh at the idea that flying an Australian flag on an AUKUS sub would allow us to make our own decisions.

We must stand up for the independence of Australia and break the US stranglehold on the decision-makers in the Liberal and Labor parties.

Thank you.

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Fight Against Inequality Forum – 16 October 2024

Written by: Shirley Winton on 26 October 2024

We reprint a talk given by Shirley Winton at a public forum in Melbourne on 16 October, Fighting Inequality. Shirley's talk addressed military spending in Australia and the US Alliance.

Shirley spoke as a member of No AUKUS Coalition Vic and Independent and Peaceful Australia (Vic).

Thank you for inviting me to speak at this forum. I hope my talk on military spending in Australia will be of some use in building the fight for justice and equality.

I’m on the land of Wurundjeri people of Kulan Nation. I pay my respects to traditional owners of this unceded county. I stand in solidarity with the First Nations people in their long fight for justice, sovereignty and Just treaties. Always was always will be Aboriginal land.

I want to start my talk by briefly putting this period of rapid global militarisation in a broader context. World wide, capitalism is in crisis of overproduction. Goods are flooding markets, remain unsold as people’s incomes shrink, jobs disappear, social services are cut back resulting in many not able to buy even necessities of life. Government funds for social services are drying up as corporations demand more government funding for their profit making.

For example, in Germany today some of the world’s biggest car manufacturers are closing down, or dramatically cutting back their production lines. Tens of thousands of workers are being laid off, mainly as a result of competition from China’s cheaper vehicles flooding the European markets.

Finance capital, that is the multinational global assets management corporations, control trillions of dollars of world’s assets and make decisions that ensure the trillions are invested in industries where profit returns are maximised, biggest and fastest. Not for a secure and dignified life of all people and protection of the environment.

At the same time more wars are breaking out. The main drive for most of these wars is competition between big powers for control of shrinking markets and resources. The military industrial complex makes huge profits from wars and destruction.

In today’s world, weapons manufacturing industries are the most rapidly expanding profitable sectors of the economy. It is in these industries that many of the world’s finance corporations, or assets managers, are investing billions and trillions of the world’s wealth.

For example, Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest weapons manufacturer, is owned and controlled by the world’s 3 biggest assets managers. BlackRock, State and Vanguard. Governments are the biggest customers of weapons corporations, ploughing billions of people’s taxes into the war machines.

Lockheed Martin’s biggest customer is the US government.

The Australian government has contracted Lockheed Martin $500,000 million for weapons manufacturing, that’s half $billion of people’s taxes taken away from the urgent needs of the people, public housing, public education, healthcare, community services, to build the global US war machine. And this is only one of top global weapons corporations to whom the Australian government is gifting people’s taxes. Elbit, Israeli weapons company involved in the Gaza genocide has been awarded $917 million contract by the Victorian government.

BlackRock, the world’s largest assets management, worth $10 trillion, is one of the main investors in Lockheed Martin. It has enormous power in decision making. BlackRock controls pension funds, private health and medical companies, construction companies – wherever profit can be made BlackRock will be found. I’m only stating this to illustrate how the wealth created by the labour of ordinary people of this country is being parcelled out to a handful of financial and weapons corporations. This enormous wealth, created by millions of Australia’s working people, must be taken out of the hands of these parasitic corporations, and used for the urgent needs of the people.

The world’s top 5 weapons corporations are embedding themselves in Australia’s economy, industries, education. Australia’s economy and industries are being militarised, workers’ jobs and livelihood are becoming more dependent on weapons corporations. Weapons manufacturing for multinational corporations is now a rapidly growing industry in this country, integrating Australia’s economy and industries into the US military industrial complex.

Under US direction Australia has removed all barriers to the export of arms. Now integral to US weapons supply chain Australia will have no control over where and how these weapons are used. Sovereignty over our self-defence industry and policies has been surrendered.

The Australian government’s military expenditure has nothing to do with defence of Australia. Only turning Australia into a weapons production expanding line, a US military base, and a launching pad for US war with China.

As well as enormous costs of embedded multinational weapons corporations in Australia’s economy, the demands of AUKUS and the US-Australia alliance on public expenditure are eyewatering.

Just to name a few:

AUKUS and Force Posture Agreement

AUKUS and Force Posture Agreement are locking Australian into US imperialist wars and its military industrial complex.

Australia’s defence policies and military infrastructure are indistinguishable from the US military machine, under the US command. Our taxes feed the US war economy. AUKUS and Force Posture Agreement is complete integration and subservience of Australia’s defence, military and foreign policies into the US war machine.

In 2014 the Australian government and the US signed the Force Posture Agreement which gives the US unimpeded access to most of Australia’s military and defence facilities and infrastructure, from where the US is allowed to conduct wars of aggression.

The US is demanding Australia increases our military defence budget to fund the hugely expanding US militarisation of Australia and in Asia-Pacific.

AUKUS –has nothing to do with defence of Australia. It is a US war machine to instigate war with China.

The US-led AUKUS is militarising Australia’s economy, industries and education. Syphoning off billions from public health, education, aged care, social services, environment. The world’s top 10 multinational weapons corporations -Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE, Raytheon, Northrop, GE, Thales - are embedding themselves in our schools, universities, defence and military establishments, infiltrating and advising governments, political parties and government bureaucracies. They have strong influence over government policies that benefit only their profit making.

AUKUS PILLAR 1

This extensive US militarisation of Australia is a burden on the people of Australia. Australian government has committed to purchasing 8 US and UK nuclear powered submarines at a cost of more than $368 billion. That’s $33 million a day of peoples’ taxes at a time of cost of living crisis, more people living in poverty, housing crisis, underfunded struggling public health, education and social services, unaffordable child care and aged care, and devastating climate change. In addition, under pressure from US and UK the Australian government has committed $10 billion more to US and UK shipyards to build nuclear submarines but without any guarantee from US and UK that they will be delivered on time or delivered at all. The $10 billion of our taxes will be used to prop up ailing US and UK shipbuilding yards, and the US and UK economies. This is the extent of the Australian government’s subservience to major imperialist powers.

The cost of militarisation of Australia as a US base and its proxy in imperialist wars is a major burden on Australian people.

AUKUS Pillar 2 expenditure

The Australian government has committed to spend $765 billion in military spending between 2024-2034. The $368 billion on nuclear powered submarines is not included in this $765 billion.

The $765 billion is for upgrading and building new ports and military air bases to host giant US war ships and submarines, F35 and B52 bombers, some carrying nuclear weapons, missiles. Expanding and building new military facilities, installations and spy bases; hosting thousands of continuously rotating US marines stationed in northern territory. Northern territory is being turned into a major US military base under US command.

It is predicted that the lifetime cost of AUKUS 1 and 2 is likely to be $2 trillion to $3 trillion.

Australian people are paying a huge price. The cost of militarisation of Australia as a US base and its proxy in an imperialist war with China is a major burden on Australian people. The only beneficiaries are the US imperial power and the military industrial complex – weapons corporations

The entire system is geared to make profits, not for needs of the people and the environment.

Workers not only face the day to day hardships of rising cost of living, housing crisis, but the threat of a major war. We carry the main heavy burdens of these imperialist wars. The cost of AUKUS, nuclear submarines and the Australia-US military alliance will deepen the economic hardships for the people, worsen climate crisis and accelerate the march to war. It will be a war of aggression led by the US, with Australia, its deputy sheriff, and an expandable nuclear target.

This is the price we are paying for being in the US-Australia military alliance.

The government is telling the Australian people a big lie that AUKUS, military spending and wars will ensure security for us. But nothing could be further from truth. AUKUS, US-Australia military alliance and climate crisis are the real threat to our security and people’s well being.

The only security for the people is decent and dignified housing for all, properly funded public health and education, high quality aged care and child care, secure and dignified jobs for all, decent social and community services, an independent foreign policy and living in peace with the people of Asia Pacific.

And while we meet here the people of Gaza are being wiped out by these same masters of wars.

Same corporations and their governments inflicting the horrendous genocide on the people of Gaza and Lebanon.

Shirley Winton

Member of No AUKUS Vic and IPAN - Victoria

16 October 2024.

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Support Rojava – condemn Erdogan’s attacks on the liberated region

Written by: Nick G. on 25 October 2024

(Above: destruction casued by Turkish bombs, Rojava, 24 October 2024)

With the world focussed on the continuing atrocity of Zionist Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, and its aggression against Lebanon, the Turkish authorities have resumed intensive bombing of the mainly Kurdish stronghold of Rojava in neighbouring north-eastern Syria (NES).

For the last couple of days, the Turkish fascist regime has carried out airstrikes on 42 sites in NES, including Qamishlo, Kobane, Amude, and Derik. To date, 12 civilians have been killed and 25 wounded. The strikes are still ongoing, and included several power stations, 2 bakeries, a health centre, and grain silos. In past months, the Turkish forces had burnt large areas of food crops in an effort to starve the Rojava people.

These attacks indicate Turkey’s intention to control these areas and displace their residents, in order to crush the democratic and progressive Rojava revolution. Itis contrary to what was being promoted about the peace talks between the Kurds and Turkey that were expected to start this month. The attacks show that Turkey is not seeking peace with the Kurds, but rather seeking to exterminate them under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

This repeated targeting of service facilities is leading to a humanitarian disaster in an area that is home to millions of people, who are already suffering from severe fuel and gas shortages as a result of Turkey’s repeated targeting of infrastructure facilities in previous years.

The same Erdogan who correctly condemns Zionist genocide against the Palestinians is head of a fascist government whose values are threatened by the example of the Rojava revolution.

“The only reason Turkey attacks is because we are a threat to their fascism. The society here is the antidote to the state's poison!” said one resident of Rojava.

(Above: the people of Kobane protest the bombing, October 24,2024)

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The US, UK and the sufferings of the Chagos Islands

Written by: (Contributed) on 25 October 2024

Above: September 2018 Chagos Islanders protest at the Hague

An intelligence-type assessment and report about the Indian Ocean region has revealed just how close Australia has been drawn into US-led regional military provision.

In early October the Starmer government in Westminster announced that Britain was ceding sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius; a new 99-year lease for Diego Garcia, however, was also part of the package thereby allowing the US to continue to use the island for its sensitive intelligence facilities well into the next century. (1) The agreement was officially greeted by US President Biden, with the announcement, 'I applaud the historic agreement and conclusion of negotiations between the Republic of Mauritius and the UK on the status of the Chagos Archipelago'. (2)

Moves will soon take place to enable Chagos Islanders the right to return to islands from which they were displaced decades ago. Those former residents of Diego Garcia, however, will not be allowed the right of return.

The decision follows decades of legal proceedings and court cases. It would appear that the continued British colonial-type control of the remote islands was eventually regarded as increasingly untenable.

Situated about halfway between Africa and Indonesia, the Chagos Islands remain highly geo-strategic and central to the Indian Ocean. No reference was made in the report about recent Pentagon proposals to enlarge their present three-stage Asia-Pacific Island Chain Theory to include fourth and fifth chains across the wider Indo-Pacific; the Chagos Islands are, potentially, an important part of the proposals and more useful to the Pentagon when inhabited by local people who possess first-hand knowledge of the terrain, rather than being uninhabited and vulnerable to incursions from elsewhere. (3)

The Chagos Islanders were forcibly removed from the homelands in the late 1960s, when the British government began high-level diplomacy with the US to eventually use Diego Garcia for intelligence facilities. Opened in early 1973, the facilities were linked to similar facilities at Silvermine, South Africa, Argentina and Pine Gap, Australia, as the Southern Ocean Defence Plan (SODP). (4)

On a Peters Projection World Map, Actual Size, the four nodes of the SODP are all equidistant, revealing the range and capacity of the satellite and radar system. (5) The SODP was primarily concerned with the military control of the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean, and came to include numerous further formal and informal military agreements. (6)

There has remained little controversy about who controlled the intelligence network; fixed direct radio communications with Whitehall were routed through Mauritius, and the US through Puerto Rica. (7)

The US-led intelligence facilities have been subject to almost continual upgrades for hegemonic purposes. (8) The basic function of the facilities, however, has remained the same, from the previous Cold War to the present one. More recent upgrades have included both Diego Garcia and its counterpart in Guam becoming hubs for US-led military operations, with Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia being the support centre; both hubs rest on an arc from Pine Gap, Central Australia. (9)

The US, however, has had problems, historically, with the whole SODP; the role of South Africa raised serious questions about US support for Apartheid, the inclusion of Argentina, likewise, was difficult due to the Dirty War and later invasion of the Malvinas. Those in control, therefore, hid behind diplomatic silence as a matter of course. It continues.

The matters, however, came to a head during the 1975 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kingston, Jamaica, where Gough Whitlam, representing Australia, played a significant part in supporting the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace, normalising diplomatic relations with Cuba, and supporting national liberation movements in South Africa, Angola and Mozambique. (10) They proved controversial.

The moves were also reinforced by the British Labour Government of the time, led by Harold Wilson, not renewing the Simonstown Agreement, and thereby isolating Apartheid South Africa.

The fact that Whitlam was dismissed later the same year and Harold Wilson, also suddenly announcing his retirement early in 1976, has left little to the imagination about hidden hands at work inside the corridors of Commonwealth power and the displeasure they had caused the faceless wonders who maintain the huge bureaucracies through which their patrons wield class and state power.

The intelligence-type assessment and report from Canberra did not take any of the above into account; it began, nevertheless, in classic Cold War-style with an opening sentence 'that Australia and the US are livid with the Starmer Labour government in London over its giveaway of a major military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean that is vital to Western interests'. (11) So much for the well-publicised Biden statement, quoted above!

In an indignant, terse writing style the statement then continued, noting, 'for Australia, Diego Garcia is a strategic asset available for military operations in the Indian Ocean and beyond. It anchors Australia's presence in the Indian Ocean and provides a friendly port in the vastness of the region'. (12)

Throughout the whole statement concern was raised that the present government in Mauritius 'is under increasing Chinese influence … with fears arising that … Chinese surveillance ships, no doubt disguised as fishing fleets, will be able to monitor the US long-range bombers stationed at the base'. (13) No recognition was given to the fact China has, more likely than not, used satellite surveillance of the US intelligence facilities based on Diego Garcia for decades.

Fears apparently exist that Mauritius will follow the lead of the Maldives which has a government supportive of China, alongside Beijing's moves across the Indo-Pacific to establish the String of Pearls of useful outposts in Ski Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. (14)

In order to reinforce the Cold War nature of the assessment and report attention was drawn to noted left wing influences; references to Trotskyist groups inside the British Labour Party were used together with criticism of Foreign Secretary David Lammy who was quoted as labelling Donald Trump as a 'woman-hating, neo-Nazi sociopath'. (15) The Australian, furthermore, takes every opportunity to applaud Trump, despite his continued appalling behaviour and attitudes. Elsewhere, a massive five column highly critical feature spread about the Starmer government and its declining popularity in another edition of their newspaper, did not contain a single reference to the Chagos Islands controversy. (16)

In conclusion, the intelligence services have used a classic ploy to 'leak' an assessment and report into mainstream Australian media in order to polarise opinion against Labour governments, both in the UK and Australia. They then sit back from their hidden vantage points in government bureaucracies and use the eyes and ears of their agents in secret networks to assess the political fallout before moving onto their next project. The real life Slow Horses have been at work with a covert operation. It has also shown vividly how those lurking within the corridors of power recruit from right-wing groups and compliant media outlets to serve the interests of those wielding class and state power:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. UK cedes key islands to China ally, The Weekend Australian, 5-6 October 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. See: Wikipedia -Island Chain Theory, Fourth and Fifth Chains, Indian Ocean.
4. Wikipedia: Diego Garcia; and, 'Maritime Operational and Communications HQ', The Star (South Africa), 10 March 1973; and, Security in the Mountain, The Star (South Africa), 17 March 1973; and, Not in Europe Alone, John Biggs-Davidson M.P., Brassey's Annual: Defence and the Armed Forces, (1972), pp. 78-89; and, Essential Instruments of US strategy – Two New Gendarmes: Iran and South Africa, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 1976; and, The UKUSA SIGINT Network, The Ties that Bind, J.T. Richelson and Des Ball, (Sydney, 1985), page 323.
5. See: Map of the World, Peters Projection, Actual Size, New Internationalist.
6. See: The politics of South Atlantic Security: a survey of proposals for a South Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Andrew Hurrell, Journal of International Affairs, February 1983, pp. 179-93.
7. Star, op.cit., 17 March 1973.
8. See: Diego Garcia and Africa's Security, Oye Ogunbadejo, Third World Quarterly Journal, Volume 4, Number 1, December 1982, pp. 105-20.
9. US intensifies military presence in the Indo-Pacific, The Global Times (Beijing), 24 July 2018; and, Map of the World, Peters Projection, op.cit., Actual Size.
10. CHOGM, Kingston, Jamaica, 29 April-6 May 1975, Final Communique, Sections: 13-26.
11. China's boost in the Indian Ocean, Editorial, Australian, 18 October 2024.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. See: Trust in flames as Kier Starmer hurtles to earth, The Weekend Australian, 19-20 October 2024.

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Urgent Appeal from the DFLP

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 24 October 2024

The CPA (M-L) has received an urgent request for assistance from the Foreign Office of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). No doubt ways will be found to support this request. Smash Zionist aggression! – eds.

Urgent Appeal from the "Department of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Front" to all free people in the world to provide humanitarian support to displaced
people from the Palestinian and Lebanese populations.

Dear comrades and brothers,

Political parties, activists, and free people across the world,

The "Department of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine" sends you its greetings and expresses its appreciation for your constant support for the Palestinian people, their national and human rights, and your rejection of the genocidal war being carried out by the fascist government in Israel. We address you while the scent of death spreads across Lebanon and the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing barbaric Israeli bombardment of civilian residential areas and the popular environment that supports the resistance. Despite the immense human suffering, the resistance continues to raise its banner, understanding the objectives of the aggression and recognizing the involvement of Western countries, particularly the United States of
America.

Given the ongoing Israeli aggression on Lebanon, which has lasted for more than three weeks, resulting in the displacement of more than 1.2 million people from southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and the Bekaa region in eastern Lebanon, it represents one of the largest displacement movements Lebanon has witnessed.

The humanitarian suffering has dramatically worsened as the relevant authorities are unable to face the challenges imposed by this aggression, especially the Lebanese government, which developed a national plan to confront the humanitarian repercussions. However, due to the scale and brutality of the aggression, the state is unable to fully respond to the massive humanitarian needs, especially as Lebanon was already suffering from a severe economic crisis prior to the war, owing to the collapse of the Lebanese currency against the US dollar.

As for the Palestinian refugees, a large number of them, particularly from Palestinian camps in southern Lebanon—such as the Rashidieh Camp, the Buss Camp, and the Bourj al-Shamali Camp—and Palestinian communities in southern Lebanon, like Shabriha, Qasmiyeh, Aitaniya, Wasta, Abu al-Aswad, Jamjim, and Kfarbadda, have also been displaced. In addition, many have fled from Palestinian camps in the southern suburbs of Beirut, such as Shatila and Bourj al-Barajneh, and some Palestinian residential clusters in the Bekaa region.

Most of these Palestinian refugees have left their homes and camps after some of them were bombed, leading to casualties. The number of displaced Palestinian refugees is estimated to be more than 60,000. Most have taken refuge in areas like Sidon, where Ain al-Hilweh Camp has received more than 1,500 families, while Mar Elias Camp in Beirut has received 360 families, and Nahr al-Bared Camp has welcomed over 3,000 families in northern Lebanon, along with the al-Bada Camp.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has established shelters for displaced people in several areas, including Siblin Institute, Yaebod School in Bir Hassan, and some of its schools in Sidon and northern Lebanon. However, some of these shelters were closed within 72 hours of opening due to the inability to meet the refugees' needs, as UNRWA lacks the necessary funding. Previously, we and other popular bodies had warned of the shortcomings of the emergency plan announced by UNRWA, and its inability to meet even the minimum repercussions of the displacement, due to inadequate funding and perhaps flawed estimates by UNRWA's management.

The catastrophic situation faced by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who have fled their homes exceeds the capacity of UNRWA, social institutions, and popular committees. Often, aid from civil society and associations is distributed to Lebanese displaced persons and shelters that house people outside of the Palestinian camps, including UNRWA's shelters, which accommodate Palestinians, Lebanese, and individuals from other nationalities.

Therefore, displaced Palestinian refugees from the camps and Palestinian communities need basic life necessities such as sleeping mats, food aid, medical supplies, financial assistance, and cleaning materials, especially as we approach the winter season. The continuation of the aggression for an extended period will likely exacerbate this issue, making it a real problem that must be addressed on multiple levels and from now on.

We call upon you to provide as much relief support as possible to the displaced families to meet their daily needs, by coordinating with social institutions working among the displaced. We have full confidence that our comrades, friends, and all supporters of the Palestinian and Lebanese people will respond to this call. Any support, no matter how simple or modest, is a significant contribution to thwarting the goals of the Israeli-American aggression.

"Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine"
- Department of Foreign Affairs –
- October 23, 2024

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Book Review: Nature, Culture and Inequality

Written by: Duncan B. on 21 October 2024

Thomas Piketty, the author of Nature, Culture and Inequality is a French economist who specialises in the study of global inequality in its various forms. He was an editor of the World Inequality Report 2022, issued by the World Inequality Database.

Inequality of income and inequality of wealth are two important measures of inequality in a country. What percentage of income and wealth go to the top 10% of society compared to the bottom 10%? We see that in most countries, especially countries like the US the top 10% have the biggest share of the income and wealth of the country. The bottom 10% have only a very small percentage of the income and wealth. In Australia the top 20% control 48% of the income and 64% of the wealth. The bottom 20% have 4% of the income and 17% of the wealth.

In many countries the difference in income and wealth possessed by the top 10% is actually increasing at the expense of the bottom 10%. The level of inequality in a country can be influenced by government policies such as taxation systems that favour the richest individuals and companies over the ordinary people. Tax cuts for the highest income earners and numerous concessions for companies are examples of this. In Australia we have taxation concessions around housing such as negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions which favour investors who may own many houses over would-be first home buyers, contributing to inequality in the housing market.

The spokesmen for capitalism try to tell us that inequality is inevitable. Piketty says, “Those who benefit most from a system tend, for obvious reasons, to see inequalities as part of the natural order, and they are apt to characterise disparities as permanent and inevitable, warning against any change that might threaten the existing harmony.”

He cites Sweden as an example of country that went from being a highly unequal country to an extremely egalitarian country, thanks to the policies of social-democratic governments from 1932 to the 1990s. (As Marxists we say that this does not alter the fact that Sweden is still a capitalist country.)

The neo-liberal policies pursued by governments overseas and in Australia greatly increased inequality as health, education, aged care, transport, energy and other sectors of the economy were handed over to the “market” for capitalists to extract billions of dollars in profits from them. Piketty calls for all of these to be taken back out of the market and returned to the public sphere.

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Support for Palestinian people's struggle continues to grow.

Written by: Ned K. on 20 October 2024

The recent assassination of Palestinian leader Yahya Sinwar by the Israeli Defense Force has not dampened the spirits of the Palestinian people, nor the level of support across the world for the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Zionist Israeli regime and its imperialist backers.

Even in the relatively small city of Adelaide, attendance at this Sunday 20 October rally following Sinwar's assassination increased in numbers. Speakers from Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) and Adelaide Sister's Association pointed out that the struggle of the Palestinian people did not start on 7 October 2023 and the mass media portrayal of the assassination of individual leaders of the Palestinian resistance movement since that time as a decisive victory for the Israeli Zionist regime ignored the fact that the struggle of the Palestinian people against the imperialist created Zionist state of Israel has been going on for over 70 years.

In fact, if the makeup of the people at the Adelaide rally is any indication, there are more people than ever from different backgrounds and communities attending.

One AFOPA speaker pointed out how quick off the mark was Foreign Minister Penny Wong and PM Albanese to champion sanctions against Iran, but no sanctions on the Zionist state of Israel. The AFOPA speaker said it was plain for the people of the world to see that for the Australian, US and other western governments, Palestinian lives are worth less than Israeli lives.

The AFOPA speaker also reported that on this same weekend as the Sunday 20 October rally, the ALP annual State Convention finally passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire and end of occupied territories by Israel and for recognition of a state of Palestine.

He said this resolution was welcome news and although not the strongest worded resolution in support of the Palestinian people, it reflected the growing dissatisfaction of rank-and-file ALP members with the ALP leadership support for Israel.

A University student leader also spoke at the Adelaide rally and said that it was important to support future protest rallies, including rallies at a conference of arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Saab, BAE and others being held at the Marriot Hotel in Adelaide in mid-November

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Meat…the worker!

Written by: (Contributed) on 14 October 2024

Above: Meatworkers' union at Brisbane Labor Day rally

The following statement from a meat worker was posted to the reddit internet platform. We are reposting it because it is a powerful statement about the class structure of capitalist Australia. The general resides in the particular: this one workers’ awakening is true of many workers whose next step is to find and join the revolutionary party of the working class – eds.

When I started to read about socialism a lot of things started making sense.

I work in a meat factory, and I've experienced first hand how the capitalist system is unbalanced. We do 12-14 hour days, and our bodies are wrecked.
I work primarily in small goods production, and my back is already at a point where I can feel it deteriorating as is my right shoulder, from all the heavy lifting of 20 - 30kg tubs of meat, and I'm only 31.

The older, experienced butchers though… man, their hands are completely mangled. All have carpel tunnel syndrome. All need to have buckets of hot water on standby to dunk their hands in just to numb the pain of their repetitive work. We are, quite literally, wrecking our bodies to earn a pittance to just live in society and get by.

Meanwhile, the bosses are millionaires with giant houses, expensive cars and $700 pairs of RM Williams'.

Then I factor in that I am one of the luckier ones with a stable and full-time job, and that many are struggling in worse financial situations than myself.

Working here these last few years is what has slowly built my interest in socialism. I was completely apolitical before, but now I have experienced first hand how flawed capitalism is, and how unsustainable it is, and socialism seems to be the answer to me.

Exactly what kind of socialism, I am not sure yet.

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On the death of Dr G.N. Saibaba, fighter for freedom.

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 14 October 2024

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) joins comrades around the word in mourning the death of Comrade Dr. G. N. Saibaba, an outstanding fighter for the liberation of the Indian people.

The wheelchair-bound Saibaba, who was 90% disabled due to a childhood bout with polio, was undergoing treatment at Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in Telangana’s Hyderabad district, where he was admitted 10 days ago due to ill health. His aides said he suffered a heart attack around 8 pm and was declared dead by doctors at the hospital at 8:30 pm.

Dr. Saibaba, who had been employed at Delhi University and had long campaigned for the rights of the poor and working masses of India, was arrested on May 9, 2014 for alleged ties to the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and involvement in activities deemed as waging war against the nation. His arrest came under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

At that time, Dr. Saibaba was convenor of the ‘Forum Against War On People’ against Operation Green Hunt, the military campaign against the armed fighters of the Maoist Party.

Dr Saibaba was acquitted by the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court on March 5 of this year, nearly 10 years after he was first arrested. The Bombay High Court found that the prosecution had not proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. Of course, the real cause for his acquittal was the campaign, Indian and international, that had been waged for his release.

Speaking of his ten years in gaol, Dr. Saibaba said: “Prison is a microcosm of the external world, where all the societal evils are even more pronounced than outside.”

“Caste-based discrimination is rampant in prison, and works are assigned based on the caste of inmates. In fact, assignment of jobs based on caste is mentioned in the jail manual too,” Dr Saibaba said.

The amended Prisons Act 1894 allows ‘mild bodily torture’ as a means to control and discipline prisoners. While there is no way one can protest against such a system except through a hunger strike, even that would yield no result unless amplified by voices outside the prison.

Under the pretext of mild torture, all prisoners are beaten up upon arrival without reason. The only exceptions are gangsters, politicians of repute and ‘Naxal cases’, Dr Saibaba said.

We express our deepest condolences to the family, friends and comrades of the outstanding fighter for freedom, Dr Saibaba.

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A voice from the women of Gaza

Written by: Dr. Maryam Abu Daqqa on 14 October 2024

Children slaughtered by the Zionists, Deir al-Baleh, August 20, 2024

The following statement was presented at a webinar of the International Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Fascist United Front last night. There were 88 participants from 23 countries. Ours was one of the participating organisations. First speaker was Comrade Fouad Baker from the Foreign Office of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The author of the following statement, from Gaza, could not, of course, attend in person – eds.

Contribution to the United Front webinar on October 13, 2024

Webinarbeitrag 13.10.24 Dr. Maryam Abu Daqqa from Palestine, Gaza Strip

Dear brothers, Dear sisters, Dear comrade Monica

Greetings of steadfastness and struggle. I would like to update you on the situation in our region and our activities to meet the challenge.After a year of war of extermination in Palestine in general and Ezzat in particular, now it is continuing in our brotherly Lebanon.

The Zionist occupation and the actual participation of global imperialism led by the United States of America means the Lebanese people are threatened with completing the genocide of all Arab countries and the axis of resistance that supports our people.

Amidst the suspicious silence of the international community, the fascist occupation aims to kill women and children and justifies this by saying that children are the future and therefore they must be killed. Women are killed because they give birth to heroes, so their lineage must be cut off. There have been 42 thousand martyrs, 72% of whom were women and children. 18 thousand children lost their mothers or fathers, or both. 15 thousand cancer patients, most of them women, have no treatment and are banned from traveling from the country. 97 thousand have been wounded, 73 percent of them women and children More than 29 thousand missing people are under rescue. They destroyed the hospitals, the bodies of the victims were devoured by dogs. They did not leave a wall or a road without bulldozing it. They killed everything, trees, people, and pilgrims.Their goals are clear: to eliminate our people, displace them, and seize our land.

They want the reoccupation of Gaza and the West Bank and the displacement of our people in the West Bank They do not recognize that there is a Palestinian people and they aspire to achieve their dream of Greater Israel and oppose the implementation of the peace process. The oppressive Zionist leadership is expanding its expansionist ambitions and committing border crimes.There is no deterrent to it. Neither the UN Security Council, nor the General Assembly, nor the International Court of Justice, nor the International Criminal Court can stop them.The American veto is ready to support the entity and continue the massacres in Palestine and Lebanon.

Now in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, the Asna fronts, despite the siege and destruction, despite the ongoing massacres Palestinians, and at the forefront, the Palestinian woman has endured and continues to endure what mountains cannot bear. It's unfair. It takes volumes to talk about the suffering of our people, especially women and girls, whose dreams we have lost.They are now in dire need of support in all areas.They are fully aware that freedom is theirs against the presence of occupation, so the struggle for women’s freedom requires freedom for men.Therefore, we find Palestinian women taking initiatives to care for children and trying to support them psychologically and teach them. And helping the wounded and their families in addition to seminars and broadcasts about female prisoners and women's special needs. And the suffering of our people, children, wounded and the siege. Not for the first time, Palestinian women are raped, and there is systematic torture of male and female prisoners. More than fifty male and female prisoners were killed under torture in the prisons during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. We continue to participate in various Arab and international conferences to expose the Zionist entity and its agents. We continue to help bereaved families and orphans.We can do nothing but this.

Dear sisters, let us build a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital!

End the occupation to the corners.
Freedom for our families and our brave prisoners.
Glory to the martyrs and a speedy recovery to the wounded.
Victory to our people and all struggling peoples!
Shame on the Zionists and global imperialism, led by America, the head of the snake.

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US imperialism strengthens grip on class and state power in the Philippines

Written by: (Contributed) on 11 October 2024

Above; Filipinos protest the visit of Austin and Blinken on Juy 30, 2024. Source KMU website

Controversy surrounding members of the Duterte family in the Philippines has raised serious considerations about their longer-term viability as a political dynasty. The former president, Rodrigo Duterte, would appear to have lost much of his support and faces an uncertain future. The resurgent Marcos oligarchy, backed by the US, has returned the Philippines to its past Cold War diplomatic status as a compliant participant for 'US interests'. What the outcome of these developments means for the Philippine working-class and their progressive organisations remains unclear; their struggles, nevertheless, continue!

An official statement from Philippine academic and social commentator, Antonio J. Montalvan II, that, 'we are seeing the end of the Duterte dynasty … it … will emasculate the once-untouchable power of the Duterte's', has captured both the timing and the gravity of problems facing Duterte family members and some of their closest associates. (1) Duterte's daughter, Sara, who is currently vice-president of the country, is facing the prospect of criminal charges, together with former president Rodrigo, facing charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

Rodrigo Duterte was elected to presidential office with a huge majority in 2016, successfully pushing oligarchies away from the centre of the political power they had dominated for decades. Within a short time of taking office Duterte announced the Philippines would be pursuing an independent foreign policy. (2) The country had been previously a central regional part of US-led foreign policy, with both Washington and the Pentagon dominating decision-making. (3)

The US, historically, regarded the Philippines as the centre of an arc as the most reliably vantage point, with one wing swinging toward the more developed countries of North-east Asia and the other swinging toward the lesser developed but natural resource rich countries of South-east Asia. (4)

While the US and other allies had troops stationed in the Philippines, control was more often than not exerted through oligarchies and Triads at almost every strategic point inside the ramshackle governing administration in Manila and elsewhere in the provinces. The presidential election of Duterte, at a superficial level, was a rejection by the mass of the Philippine population to end political chicanery and rampant corruption and begin afresh.

The ensuing period was marked by optimism and an upsurge in worker's militancy and the struggle for raising the basic minimum wage; a large part of the Philippine working class, for example, works in the informal sector of the economy, where important industrial struggles for trade-union organisation and recognition for basic wages remain of central importance for the whole movement.

Those retaining traditional class and state power were initially thrust back onto defensive tactics. The strongly anti-Communist state apparatus, including the armed forces and their associates, continued, nevertheless, to follow US hegemonic positions, wherever possible. On 7 May 2018, for example, the Philippines engaged in the Balikatan joint military exercises with the US which included: participation with Australia and Japan; the start of building construction inside existing military bases for five US facilities 'wherein the super-power can preposition military equipment and supplies for its exclusive use in operations in the Asia-Pacific region'. (5)

The military facilities accessed by the US included:

a military warehouse in the Basa Air Base, Pampanga;
Antonio Bautista Air Base, Palawan;
Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija;
Lumbia Air Base, Cagayan de Oro City;
Mactan-Benito Air Base, Cebu City. (6)

While Duterte's moves to negotiate a peace settlement with the Communist-led New People's Army (NPA) was initially greeted, it eventually led to very little being achieved. In fact, the NPA used the period to expand their guerilla operations and recruit large numbers of younger people. The diplomatic position of the US toward the NPA has been, historically, conducted along lines of 'low-intensity' methods; US military intervention, however, has always been an agenda item if the NPA were able to 'achieve enough momentum to create significant destabilisation or even victory'. (7)

Throughout the whole period the Marcos oligarchy surreptitiously recouped their famous 'Marcos millions', huge financial assets amassed by Marcos senior during the previous Cold War. The Philippines, during that time and the present, remains a 'kleptocracy', with widespread corruption. Having repossessed their ill-gotten gains the Marcos oligarchy then set about regaining political power which they had lost with the tumultuous upheavals of 1986. Their objectives were achieved following the Duterte presidential period.

After winning the 2022 national elections Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. established his presidential office to quickly swing the country back into its more traditional US-led role with a compliant administration in Manila. To date, the administration has slavishly followed US-led diplomatic hostilities with China, largely in the South China Seas.

The US and their Philippine associates, however, appear to have now set their sights on removing any lasting support linked to the Duterte family, which continues to be seen as an obstacle to US-led supremacy. It had shown just how high the stakes have become for Washington and the Pentagon when dealing with countries inside their sphere of influence.

By using a convicted drug trafficker and former customs intelligence officer, Jimmy Guban, allegations have been levelled at some of Duterte's associates, including his son, Paolo, who is a congressman, and Manases Carpio, husband of Sara, that a total of 355 kgs of crystal methamphetamine was smuggled into the Philippines. (8) Whether he has been a credible witness remains, as yet, to be established by usual legal procedures, which in the Philippines can best be viewed as highly questionable.

Elsewhere, further allegations levelled at Apollo Quiboloy, head of a spurious quasi-religious cult, the Owners of the Universe, for involvement in fraud, currency smuggling, human trafficking and a child sex ring, have ensnared Sara Duterte who has been one of his most conspicuous supporters. (9)

Rodrigo Duterte, furthermore, is also being considered for possible legal proceedings with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his sanctioning of extra-judicial killings of about 13,000 alleged drug traffickers; the ICC has been actively involved in extensive investigations of the killings since 2017 as crimes against humanity. (10)

With the Philippines safely back inside the US fold, its linkage into the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) has also taken place; it is now fully incorporated as a lower-level partner alongside South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and others, with the US-Japan alliance having been upgraded to a global partnership. (11)

The IPS is one of the main regional mechanisms through which the US pushes the present Cold War, which has serious implications for all levels of subject societies. A particularly relevant additional factor has been the recent high-level military-diplomatic talks between the US and the Marcos administration whereby the Pentagon have provided US$500 million of 'foreign military financing'. (12)

Declassified military-diplomatic documents from the previous Cold War reveal a great deal about US positions toward their compliant allies. US-led intelligence agents were trained and instructed to infiltrate every organisation open to penetration, with intelligence-gathering aimed at profiling whole populations for identification. (13) The main target for special attention, however, were those identified responsible for opposition to the US Defence Department 'during peacetime and all levels of conflict'. (14) With the US preoccupied with provoking hostilities and a confrontation with China in the South China Seas, the Philippines has been placed in a front-line position of US-led military planning, with all which that position entails; criticism of the US-China hostilities is very difficult.

It is important to note that while the military documentation was declassified, it was also subsequently updated to serve more recent developments which obviously include interception of on-line telecommunications. The basic parts of the military directives remain fully operational.

Subsequent Pentagon intelligence material which was also leaked during the early years of the so-called New World Order of the 1990s, for example, revealed just how high the US had placed the Philippines onto their agendas for the retention of traditional hegemonic diplomatic positions. The period was marked by the triumphalism of capitalism and imperialism, and the closure of prominent US military facilities in the country. In February 1992 the leakage of highly classified intelligence material, nevertheless, revealed US-led preparations for a regional war 'to defend the lives of US citizens threatened by instability in the Philippines', if, and when, required. (15)

One notable feature of Cold War politics is the difficulty, therefore, for progressive organisations to operate openly without outside external interference; the eyes and the ears of class and state power intrude from every possible vantage point, with almost unlimited amounts of finance for bribery and corruption which stifle all levels of Philippine society.

In the Philippines recent studies of the US-led interference and its effect upon the working-class have included waves of eliminations and disappearances of local trade-union activists and other repression.

At the level of employment, the Philippine working-class operate within an economy which has retained many features of neo-colonialism and semi-feudalism, dependent upon foreign investment through international financial institutions controlled largely by the US.

Recent studies have found that while official unemployment statistics record it affecting only 3.1 per cent of the workforce or 1.62 million workers, in reality it is not particularly accurate; the informal nature of much employment is hidden through bureaucratic manipulation. (16) The problem is compounded by massive under-employment of a relatively well-educated workforce which has risen to 12.1 per cent of the workforce and 6.08 million workers. (17) Many workers require more than one job to survive.

While the main Philippine trade union organisation, the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), has demanded the government implement the P1,200 basic minimum wage, many employers openly flout the regulations and seek to contain and isolate trade-union activists. The KMU operate in extremely difficult, and dangerous, circumstances.

The struggles of the Philippine working class and their progressive organisations, nevertheless, continue unabated from the previous Cold War to the present one:

Ever Onward to Victory!

1. Manila's Duterte dynasty on the brink, Australian, 18 September 2024.
2. See: Tightening Phil military involvement with the US, The Philippine Star, 5 May 2018.
3. See: The objectives of the US., The Guardian, 6 August 2003.
4. Ibid.
5. Philippine Star, op.cit., 5 May 2018.
6. Ibid.
7. Tracking covert actions into the future, Philip Agee, Covert Action – the roots of terrorism, Edited - Ellen Ray and William Shaap, (Melbourne, 2003), page 13.
8. Australian, op.cit., 18 September 2024.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
12. Austin-Blinken visit, KMU., (Philippines), Official Website, 30 June 2024.
13. See: Army Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program, Army Regulation 381-20, Declassified 1993; and, Army's project X had a wider audience, The Washington Post, 6 March 1997; and, 'The CIA cleanses itself', The New York Times, 4 March 1997.
14. AR 381-20, ibid., Mission and Policy, Reference 1.5, page 1.
15. Tracking covert actions into the future, Philip Agee, op.cit., pp. 9-10;
16. See: On the June 2024 Labor Force Survey: Low quality jobs, meager wages, KMU Official Website: posted 8 August 2024.
17. Ibid.

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IPAN Conference 2024: Sleepwalking into War

Written by: Allan M. on 9 October 2024

ETU Queensland Branch presentation at IPAN Conference

The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network's (IPAN) 2024 conference took place in Perth on October 4-6. The conference, titled Sleepwalking into War, focussed on combatting the increasing subservience of the Australian political class to the military, political, and economic demands on the United States of America.

Opening with a peaceful protest at the entrance of HMAS Stirling naval base, the epicentre of our government's ambition to become a nuclear vassal state, the conference continued into a three-day program where speakers and attendees from around the country gathered to discuss Australia's involvement in the violent U.S imperial system and formulate actions to build an independent and peaceful nation.

With speakers ranging from First Nations leaders, student activists who led university encampments, and to Senators such as Fatima Payman and Jordan Steele-John, the conference heard an incredibly diverse range of voices and perspectives on the impacts of the U.S led imperial capitalist system.

The talks laid bare the reality of Australia's situation on the international stage. The Australian capitalist class, and their politician collaborators, are willing hostages to U.S interests. Our government has sold out our sovereignty in exchange for a handful of board positions, meagre investment in a select few Australian companies, and the empty promise of some killing machines.

The U.S has now received political assurance that Australian industrial capacity will be increasingly folded into the U.S military-industrial supply chain, without any say in how their outputs will be used.

Our government would be hard-pressed to back out of this deal and regain our national self-determination, not that they have any interest to do so. Speakers clearly articulated how our government's willing subordination to the U.S results in their complicity to the crimes perpetrated by the imperial regime. Australia's involvement in the F-35 fighter jet supply chain, and our participation in the revolving door of import and export contracts for weapons, means our government has allowed our country to participate in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the destructive war being inflamed in the middle-east. This is despite the Australian people clearly wanting an end to this brutal, criminal conflict and wanting our country to make free and independent decisions.

Many speakers presented alternative pathways for Australia that demonstrated how our country can be safe and secure without relying on the U.S.

An independent future was shown as not only easily attainable, but vitally important in allowing us to develop the things important to Australian communities, such as health, education, and meaningful employment. Organisers facilitated discussions to formulate future actions in building a movement to end Australia's role in imperialism and lead an independent and peaceful country.

The organisations comprising IPAN will be drawing lessons from these discussions and putting it into practice.

What is immediately clear, as always for our work, is that the capitalist political cartel of Labor and Liberal will not change the violent status quo. It is people power that will provide peace and independence for our country.

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Retired military leaders – “Climate, not China, is Australia’s main threat”

Written by: Nick G. on 9 October 2024

A group led mainly by retired military personnel has just released a new report that says climate change is the “greatest security threat to Australia and to societies around the world”.

The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group (ASLCG) is headed by Admiral Chris Barrie (Ret’d), Chief of the Australian Defence Force from 1998 to 2002, and includes three other senior retired military leaders, and three civilian including Ian Dunlop, former chair of the Australian Coal Association.

In releasing the latest ASLCG report, Protect, Prevent and Prepare, Barrie said that "climate, not China, is the biggest security issue”

While not directly mentioning the $368 billion AUKUS spend, Barrie said “All the billions of resources being put into confronting China will not help one iota in dealing with the greatest threat to our future security in Australia and the region — and that is climate disruption. We have just seen Hurricane Helene in the US cause damage estimated at $A230 billion in costs—equivalent to nearly 40% of Australia’s annual federal budget. In just one storm! And with only 2-6% of affected properties insured, the financial and social toll is immense.”

The ASLCG report criticises Australian governments past and present, saying “Inadequate action by Australian governments has left our nation poorly prepared to face global warming’s consequences, and Australia remains “missing in action” on climate-security risks”.

“…right now climate-security risks are not being fully assessed or understood in Australia. There is a poor understanding of the systemic security risks posed by climate change, which constitutes a major strategic gap. As a result, Australia is failing in its responsibilities as a global citizen, as a major strategic defence ally, and to protect people. Our nation is ill-prepared for climate impacts and the security implications in one of the highest risk regions in the world, the Indo-Pacific.”

The ASLCG report comes just two weeks after the Albanese government gave the greenlight to three massive coal mine expansions in NSW that will operate as far into the future as 2066 and fuel over a billion tonnes of carbon emissions. This is more than three times Australia’s current total annual emissions.

We can expect the report to be either ignored or attacked and discredited by Murdoch’s unAustralian newspaper and his paid stable of reactionary hacks at Sky News.

As for the current government, we can expect Albanese, Marles and Wong to continue their disgraceful service to US imperialism and its preparations for war with China.

In anticipation of the ASLCG report being ignored, Admiral Barrie said: “The analysis we have done is so shocking people don’t want to believe it, but that is what the evidence from senior security experts as well as the world’s best scientists is telling us, and I think they are right. A national conversation about the need to ‘Protect, Prevent and Prepare’ is beyond urgent.”

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Would Albanese call Pemulwuy a “terrorist”?

Written by: Ned K. on 7 October 2024

Monday 7th October 2024 was the anniversary of the Palestinian Hamas attack on Israeli settlers just north of Gaza. These armed attacks by Hamas were called the acts of a "terrorist organization" by Albanese and his government, echoing the words of the USA President Biden and many other western countries.

On this same day 7th October 2024, The Australian newspaper headline quoted Israel's Ambassador to Australia as saying "Israel Protecting free world" by the Israeli state's bombing of Gaza and now Lebanon with the thousands of people killed as a result.

Resistance by the indigenous Palestinian people to the settler state of Israel created by the Zionists backed by British and USA empires has been labelled as "terrorism" by them. The Australian Prime Minister Albanese automatically follows them.

In 2023 the Prime Minister Albanese and his Government put a great amount of time into the Voice for First Nations Indigenous people in Australia. His actions, we are led to believe, were his way to show his support for Indigenous people in Australia.

He prided himself in his support for Indigenous people in Australia.

On this same day 7th October 2024, I was reading "Always Was, Always Will Be" by First Nations person and MUA Assistant National Secretary, Thomas Mayo.

In his book, Mayo talks about the armed resistance by First Nations people to the British colonial settlers in then New South Wales in the late 1700s and 1800s.

One passage from his book showed similarities between the armed resistance of First Nations people in New South Wales at that time and the armed resistance of Indigenous Palestinians against the Israeli Government forces and Israeli settlers in 2023-24.

Thomas Mayo writes,

"To the west of Sydney in the fertile lands of the Burramattagal clan of the Dharrug nation, the British established their first inland settlement, along with government farms that were vital to supporting a growing population of colonists...From 1792, Pemulwuy led his warriors in guerrilla warfare across Bidigal lands, strategically burning buildings, taking crops and attacking travellers.

At the height of these raids, in March 1797, he and 100 warriors fought in what has become known as the battle of Parramatta against armed soldiers and settlers".

Pemulwuy was shot in the head during this battle, captured by the colonial settlers but escaped to courageously lead his people. Eventually on 2 June 1802 he was shot dead by a colonial settler. He was decapitated and his head sent to the fascist Sir Joseph Banks in England to add to a skull colllection of Indigenous people from lands that became British colonies.

I asked myself, would the Prime Minister call Pemulwuy a "terrorist"? If he would answer yes, then how shallow was his Voice campaign? If he would answer no, Pemulwuy was a fighter against settler colonialism, then how hypocritical to call any Indigenous Palestinian organization, or individual Indigenous Palestinian leader, "terrorist"?

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Defending the CFMEU in SA

Written by: (Contributed) on 7 October 2024

Currently the Albo government and the Liberals (with the support of the ACTU) are rolling over to the employers and attempting to totally crush militant workers organisation, in this case the CFMEU. Through parliament they passed a bill giving extraordinary powers to stamping out strong worker organisations (CFMEU), workers’ right and conditions.

With one TV show and a total anti-worker media the puppets have stood up in Federal parliament to attack the whole membership of the CFMEU. All this with the support of the bump me into parliament ACTU and a few other weak union officials. All under the guise of getting rid of John Setka and a few bikies. No, this is a planned task to rid workers of their power to organise, particularly with strength in a strong union.

Here in South Australia there was a belief we should be ok. WRONG. Our Premiere Peter Mali acted early, called on the police to get in and investigate find the bikies and corruption and bullying. This was done, a report was given to government. It wasn’t tabled wasn’t told to members of the CFMEU or the media. Why not? Probably because the report said there was no evidence of corruption, bikies or bullying. It came out after the report was leaked.

Doesn’t end there. The premier has asked for the administrators to also include the state arm of the union, the Australian Building and Construction Workers Federation (ABCWF), this is after the police report. Even more the same man and government has sacked the representative of the CFMEU off the CITB (Construction Industry Training Board) along with the CEPU (although it is still on board). Together they represent the bulk of workers in the industry.

In SA we are affected like the other states. We have had sackings with life time employment bans including our secretary Marcus Pare sacked by the administrator Mark Irving, supported by the appointed state administrator. Here according to the police report these people are not guilty or accused of any wrong doing. Neither administrator has any onsite experience of construction.

While some weaker unions have gone silent along with some members of the ALP others haven’t. The CEPU have held joint meetings with the CFMEU and joint plans are in progress on how to oppose this bill and work towards looking after and improving the working conditions of all SA members. Members are urged to stay financial and to encourage work mates to join.

EBA’s and site visits will still happen but without strong elected leadership the daily struggle will be harder. Bosses have already started to push back on EBAs and their entitlements.

The CFMEU membership have used the call “IF UNDER ATTACK FIGHT BACK!”

It’s now time to put these words into action

When a Labor government attacked and deregistered the BLF in the 80’s the union may have gone but the spirit and fight didn't. Many of those members and ideas formed part of the CFMEU.

Long live the spirit of Eureka!

DARE TO STRUGGLE!
DARE TO WIN!

A union member since the 1960’s

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Another Dairy Industry Casualty

Written by: Duncan B. on 4 October 2024

(Murray Bridge News Photo: Peri Strathearn)

In late September this year South Australian dairy processor Beston Global Foods was placed into administration, making it the thirteenth dairy processor to suffer the same fate since mid-2022.

The company blamed high operating costs, including interest costs, energy, labour and the farm gate price paid to farmers for their milk. They also blamed a high level of dairy products being imported into Australia.

About 160 jobs in two factories are at risk, and farmers who supply the company are in limbo. In July the company sold its meat processing section, Provincial Food Group, to raise some cash to pay down some of its debt to the bank. Unfortunately for Beston, a proposed buyout of Beston’s dairy processing arm by Japanese company Megmilk Snow Brand fell through.

Beston joins other high-profile dairy companies in trouble, including the famous King Island Cheese factory, owned by the Canadian dairy giant Saputo, which wants to close the King Island factory down in mid-2025. King Islanders are worried about the effects this will have on jobs on the island, other King Island businesses and the prospects for the island’s young people.

Another famous Australian company at risk was dessert manufacturer Sara Lee, which went into administration last November. Fortunately for Australian sweet-tooths a rescuer was found for Sara Lee. It is also uncertain what the effects on dairy processing in Australia will be if New Zealand dairy company Fonterra goes through with its proposed sale of its Australian assets.

As we have previously reported the Australian dairy industry has seen a reduction in the amount of milk produced in Australia, as many dairy farmers leave the industry due to rising input costs and receiving payment for their milk from processors that barely allows them to break even, let alone make a profit.

The chief financial officer of Saputo recently sparked outrage among dairy farmers when he said that the company wanted to keep farm gate prices low for as long as possible. He said, “We’re hopeful that this milk price will stick for as long as we can.”

In early September, ACTU secretary Michele O’Neil joined striking Saputo maintenance workers outside Saputo’s Burnie (Tas) plant. She lashed Saputo, saying that the company had badly treated workers and farmers time and time again. She said, “Saputo is a huge multinational. In the past two years they’ve made more than $1bn in profit globally. Between 2022 and 2023, they paid their CEO more than a 300% pay increase, where his pay went up from $1.6m to $5.1 m-so they’re not showing good faith. This shows a disrespect for farmers as well as workers.”

Michele O’Neil’s comments reinforce what Vanguard has been saying for a long time. Farmers and workers have the same common enemy. There is a strong basis for unity between these two important sections of Australian society.

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CPA (M-L) October 7 Statement

Written by: Alice M. on 6 October 2024

Power to the Palestinian National Liberation struggle!
People of the world unite and fight against Zionist Israel colonialism and US imperialism!
Condemn the Australian government complicity in the mass slaughter of people of Palestine and Lebanon!

The 7th October, 2023, Palestinian break out from the Gaza concentration camp signalled a turning point in the courageous Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation and self-determination.

The break out sent a message to the world that the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s brutal occupation would never be defeated.

Despite Zionist Israel’s slaughter of over 42,000 Palestinians, hundreds of thousands more injured, maimed and buried in rubble, despite wiping out 85% of Gaza’s infrastructure, schools, hospitals, child care centres, mosques and churches, the fascist Zionist state is nowhere near destroying Palestinian resistance.

On the contrary. Palestinian resistance has only grown in numbers, more united and determined to end the US backed occupation. For every Palestinian massacred, injured and displaced in Gaza and West Bank, scores more have joined the resistance and the fight for liberation. Israel is learning the lessons of every colonial and imperialist power - that the struggle for freedom and liberation, against occupation and oppression, can never be crushed.

The fascist Israeli genocide of the people of Gaza that followed 7th October has broadened and mobilised the global Palestine solidarity movement to end the occupation, and stop the US-led imperialist powers financing and arming Israel. The heroic Palestinian resistance is showing the world the naked reality of 77 years of Israeli brutal colonial occupation backed to the hilt politically, financially and militarily by US-led western imperialist powers.

For the US, Israel is a vital strategic base in the Middle East for safeguarding and projecting US imperialist interests economically, politically and militarily in the region. In 1986 Biden famously said: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.” Without US imperialist backing the monstrous Zionist colonial state would not be able to survive for as long as it has unleashing the carnage on the Palestinian people.

The true face of US imperialism and the fascist Zionist state are on full display for the world to see.

The Palestinian national liberation struggle is at front and centre, leading and uniting global anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles, inspiring the oppressed, the exploited, people’s movements for independence, peace and against imperialist war.

In extending their attacks on the people of Lebanon, Iran and Yemen, the rulers of Israel and the US are facing a common fate of frustration and defeat, and ultimately extinction, at the hands of the masses fighting for liberation.

Internally, Israel is imploding politically and economically. Beneath the veneer and deception of unity generated by Israel’s ruling class, Israel is a deeply divided occupying colonial state viciously oppressing the Palestinian people, and increasingly its own critics. The colonial and racist Zionist ideology has weaponised and exploited the WW2 holocaust to control the Jewish people to manage and enforce the European ruling class’s colonial occupation. A common method practised by empires and colonisers to subjugate the colonised.

The Israeli fascist state violently attacks its own peaceful protesters or any critics of Israel’s racist policies and occupation. Peaceful protests are brutally attacked by the Israeli police. Even groups of ultra orthodox Jews protesting peacefully against genocide and the occupation are violently attacked, bashed and violently kicked by the repressive Israeli police.

Growing numbers of army regular and reserve soldiers are refusing to take part in genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Instead, many have spent years in gaol, ostracised and vilified publicly; some shunned by their families and friends. Since the Gaza blitzkrieg the number of refuseniks is growing exponentially in numbers and organisations, and is predicted to grow with the invasion of Lebanon.

• Zionism and imperialism create racism to divide and subjugate the people.

• The Lebanon invasion is repeating Gaza war crimes. Already at the start of the invasion over 2,000 Lebanese people have been killed and more than 1.2 million displaced.

• Extending war to Lebanon and Iran is intended to draw attention away from Israel’s failure to destroy resistance in Gaza and the West Bank.

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Australia not so lucky country for migrant workers

Written by: Ned K. on 6 October 2024

(Above: migrant workers are an imrtant part of the Australian working class. UWU Facebook page)

Migrant workers have been coming to Australia since the earliest times since British colonialism first invaded the lands of First Nations people in the late 1700s. After the Second World War, new migrant workers from predominantly European countries were able to find full time jobs in government departments, large government projects or in factories in manufacturing industries.

Public housing was more accessible and affordable and with plenty of overtime available, many workers had enough savings for a deposit to buy a modest house in a working class suburb.

The concentration of large numbers of migrant workers in large workplaces enabled them to organize in unions to win relative job security and improvement in wages in conditions. For many, the "Australian dream" of owning your own home which they had heard about when making the decision to migrate to Australia seemed like a reality.

In the 21st Century, there are still many new migrants coming from Europe but also many more coming from Asian, Middle-Eastern, African and South American countries.

They come with the same aspirations of building better lives for themselves and their families as previous waves of migrants. On arrival they also see the expansion of suburbs and strive to become new home buyers. In fact, they see this as more of a necessity than migrants who arrived in the second half of the 20th century because of the collapse of public housing by governments across Australia.

They also find an Australia where full-time jobs for are the exception for their communities rather than the rule.

So they are forced to often work two or three jobs to make enough money to pay the rent and bills, let alone to save enough money for a deposit on a house.

Most of the available jobs for them are via labour hire agencies or with contractor capitalists who themselves live a precarious existence competing with other contractors to win work from governments (who have outsourced work) or large multinational corporations who dominate most industries in an Australia stripped of its manufacturing base by overseas-owned capital and compliant Australian governments.

Despite the difficulties they face, new migrant workers strive to "make it" in their new country they now call home. So they walk the thin line between maintaining and improving their economic situation and economic disaster due to the decisions made by the big corporations in pursuit of profit maximization.

Recently I saw an example of how precarious the situation is for some new migrant families and communities.

About 40 migrant workers were working for a cleaning contractor in a large shopping center owned by a Queensland based property developer. The contractor had won work at the center at a lower price than that of their competitors. The workers employed by the contractor were mainly part time workers with a few full-time.

Many of the workers took the job because it enabled them to work their second job which was also part-time. For example, some would work three days a week in the evening for about 4 hours so they could work a second job in the morning. A few had full time hours and had set themselves up as self-employed in another occupation as well outside of their full-time job. A couple of these workers had been balancing this workload of about 16 hours a day in total which enabled them to save enough to buy and pay off a house, their new home in a new land.

Then one day out of the blue their contractor boss announced a whole revamp of the roster system which reduced the total working hours of the 40 workers.

More of the work was moved to reduce shift rate hours worked and hence income of workers. This was not the main impact though of the changes to the roster system. The main impact was that it meant a lot of workers would have to give up the job completely to keep their second job or the reverse, give up their second job to keep the shopping center job.

Problems for workers did not stop there. Even if some workers were able to keep both their part-time jobs, the new roster system meant they had to re-arrange with their partners who would look after the children, and would the new roster system mean their partner then had to give up their job or cut their hours to make sure one parent at least was able to look after their children. One worker was beside himself. He had thought that with the hard work and long hours of three jobs between himself and his partner that it was safe to really live the "Australian dream" by buying a second house and renting it out as part of building some economic security for his family. Now a roster change was throwing all that up in the air.

Their contractor boss made the roster system changes to make-up lost profits caused by their company winning the contract with the property developer on such a low price that the only way to make a profit was to cut labour costs.

As the workers were only employed under the minimum conditions of the Award, there was no such legal requirement that rosters could only be changed by agreement. All the boss had to do (reluctantly apparently) was go through a process which had the appearance of consultation with the workers and their union.

Workers in their desperation to block the new roster system met with the property developer to see if they'd tell the contractor to leave the rosters as they were.

However, the property owner washed their hands of the whole matter "satisfied" that the contractor had sufficiently "consulted" with the workers.

These migrant workers are very resilient and their communities stick together and support each other and they will live to fight another day.
Wen seeing this happen, I thought what a cruel system is capitalism but also for the large majority of people, what a useless society it is. It just doesn't work for people on so many different levels.

Time is now for an independent, socialist Australia where First Nations and working people run and organize society for the benefit of people, including new migrants like those working for this contractor in the shopping centre.

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SA Ambo’s election shows workers want their unions to fight regardless of who holds office

Written by: Nick G. on 4 October 2024

The election of a new leader for the Ambulance Employees Association in South Australian reflects the desire of union members for their union to pursue their objectives free of any alignment with the Labor Party.

Like ambulance services around the country, SA ambos and the community are angry at continuing problems with ramping where unwell or injured persons are delivered to hospitals but are unable to be admitted, so are kept for hours in ambulances parked at the doors of the hospitals.

The problems in SA became so acute a couple of years ago under a State Liberal government that Labor ran a single issue campaign, promising to fix ramping and was duly elected.

Despite opening a half a dozen new 24/7 ambulance stations across the metropolitan area and in several country locations, and despite an extra 27 ambulances added to the fleet over last two years and extra beds created for hospitals, ramping not only remains a problem, but has worsened.

In the lead-up to the last election, the ambulance union ran a highly visible campaign. Ambulances carried chalked messages damning the Liberals and calling for public support, and stories of critical incidents, including of people dying while being ramped, filled the media.

But after the election, the heat was lifted from the incoming Labor government, the AEA disappeared from the media, and ambulances went unchalked.

But the crisis kept on delivering bad news. Last December, a 54-year-old man died after waiting more than 10 hours for an ambulance. In July, an 83-year-old woman spent 12 hours waiting to be admitted to the Royal Adelaide Hospital overnight. The same month saw the worst ramping on record, with more than 5500 hours of ramping for the month - equivalent to 15 ambulance crews ramped, unavailable for the community, every single day.

The crisis continued into August when at one point up to 54 ambulances were ramped across Adelaide Hospitals, 17 of which were ramped at Flinders Medical Centre alone, some for up to 7 hours.

Meanwhile 23 emergency cases remained uncovered in the community.

Paramedic Paul Ekkelboom contested the AEA election for the General Secretary position on a campaign headlined by the promise of re-establishing the AEA’s political independence, and including promises to empower AEA representatives, have a stronger stance and advocacy on ramping, and a preparedness to take legal and industrial action. He won the election with 801 to 342 votes.

The election result clearly shows that workers want their union to have the capacity to fight for their interests regardless of which party holds office.

We say “holds office” rather than “gets into power” because real power resides in the boardrooms of the giant local and overseas monopolies that control the economy, and hence the political and legal structures that sustain their rule.

The demand that unions adhere to an independent working class agenda, not “go soft” on Labor when it holds office, and even disaffiliate from it to secure their independence, is bound to grow.

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CPA (M-L) paper: International Theoretical Conference on Economic Crises of Imperialism March 2024

Written by: CPA (M-L) on March 2024

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Murdoch media’s blindness and indifference to the far-right

Written by: (Contributed) on 1 October 2024

Two recent developments have shown just how obtuse so-called informed opinion and government departments have become when dealing with the resurgence of the far-right in Australia. Both developments reveal an intellectual blindness and indifference to violent political actors who seek to enforce their far-right ideologies upon civil society by targeting ethnic minorities, other vulnerable people and using terrorist strategies of tension. The problem is particularly important when assessed in the context of recent developments in the Middle East and their bearing upon Australia.

In mid-August the Australian newspaper published a large feature spread about the UK riots, which had been caused by far-right groups. (1) The article formed part of a typical right-wing analysis of the far-right, without any reference to the philosophical basis of their reactionary thought; economic problems, for the far-right, are measured in ethnic and racist criteria with immigration invariably seen as the sole cause. Ethnic-based analysis also forms part of elitist thought and white supremacy, with other ethnic groups down-graded as less able and worthwhile for meaningful social inclusion.

The Australian article then followed the standard right-wing diversion tactic of ignoring the very real economic problems at the heart of the issue, caused by over four decades of economic rationalism which was used to pillage and plunder British society. Politicians and financiers had a field-day implementing user-pays economic philosophies designed specifically to destroy the welfare state and essential services and therefore penalise the working-class.

The Australian article then went to considerable lengths to praise the work of Margaret Thatcher, the main architect of economic rationalism; she was regarded as being responsible for restoring traditional authority patterns in British society, without any reference to class and state repression which was the order of the day during her Conservative administrations of the 1980s in Westminster.

A closer study of the Australian article has revealed strong underlying links to the so-called National Civic Council (NCC), an Australian far-right political group. In fact, emphasis in the article is remarkably similar to that presented on official NCC websites. (2) The organisation portrays itself as 'centrist', with an emphasis upon reason and family values; it is, however, anything but that, and a classic Cold War-type front organisation with a common pattern of operation symptomatic of intelligence agencies.

Established in the 1950s, during the previous Cold War, the NCC was essentially an anti-Communist organisation with strong links into the Catholic hierarchy. It ran anti-Communist campaigns through highly secretive and shadowy networks in Australia which proved highly divisive for the ALP and trade-union movement, thereby strengthening the hand of those wielding class and state power by weakening political opposition.

The NCC also found a place for war criminals and those who had colluded with fascist and neo-Nazi organisations; those wielding class and state power conveniently turned a blind eye to the connection, as it clearly served their interests. (3)

The NCC also served Canberra and their US-based patrons well. Its linkage with ASIO and wider regional US military and intelligence operations, have been well recorded. (4) At a regional level the NCC, for example, was one of the main players behind the establishment of ASEAN, then a staunchly anti-Communist trade body designed to isolate Vietnam and strengthen US hegemonic positions. (5)

The NCC is best viewed in the context of inter-war clerico-fascist organisations which drew upon extreme religious positions to enforce class and state power in an era when economic malaise created the conditions for political upheaval. General Franco, the Spanish despot, would appear to have been their role model for an effective leader. Peron, in Argentina, was another.

With the demise of the previous Cold War and subsequent present day one, it is no great surprise to find the NCC has relaunched itself in the manner which it has, using deceitful and duplicitous methods of operation. Under new national president Luke McCormack, elected in March last year, the NCC aims to revitalise the decentralised model of its founder, BA Santamaria. The fact it is able to preach its advocacy of strong government in a major Australian media outlet is evidence, in itself, of their continued threat; strong government, for the NCC, is achieved by weak and ineffective opposition.

The recent investigation into the 2022 killing of police officers at Wieambilla in Queensland is another example of the same official mind-set of those residing inside the corridors of power when dealing with the far-right. The whole investigation has remained riddled with contradictions. An official position of the investigators noted those responsible were a Christian fundamentalist group who believed in 'premillennialism'; they believed in the second coming based on a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation. (6)

Elsewhere, quirky covers for far-right terrorism have not been difficult to establish: references to 'Justiciar Knights' and other fringe dwellers, for example, have been officially assessed by intelligence services and found to be directly linked to terrorism. (7)

Great stress, throughout the Wieambilla investigation, has been placed upon the nature of the autonomous cell of terrorists responsible for the killings. The three members of the Train family were regarded as an insular group, with the denial 'that there is anyone else in Australia that participated or assisted in this attack'. (8) But what about the international terrorist connections? Elsewhere, for example, it was officially noted that at '6am on the day of the attack, they had been attempting to convince a woman to move from the US and join them'. (9) She was presumably regarded as an asset for the far-right cell of terrorists.

Another investigator was responsible for the official denial that the Train terrorist cell was not linked to the far-right Sovereign Citizens Movement (SCM), the far-right movement which has pushed a political line that government institutions and their laws and regulations are non-legitimate and they, therefore, become legitimate targets for terrorist action. (10)

Evidence to the contrary about the Train family has not proved difficult to establish: it has been recorded from reliable sources that Gareth Train was 'an active participant in Australian fringe conspiracy forums and websites'. (11) It was noted, furthermore, that 'Gareth Train … had been … unable to find fulfilment from fringe political and SCM's … as early as … June 2021'. (12) Train was regarded as espousing SCM views on-line in a large number of emails. (13)

While the investigation has received a statement to the effect that the Trains 'were suffering shared delusions linked to their Christian beliefs when they ambushed four officers who entered their property at Wieambilla', very little time has been spent acknowledging the direct linkage between the terrorist cell and far-right political movements. (14)

In conclusion, the two recent developments reveal an ideological blindness and indifference by those wielding class and state power when dealing with the far-right.

Questions, therefore, arise: official commentary from Canberra from December 2022, for example, highlighted problems arising with so-called 'new forms of terrorism … which represent … a significant departure from religious fundamentalism that historically accounted for most of ASIO's caseload'. (15) While there was no specific reference to radical Islam, it was presumably the main factor concerned. Related commentary has revealed, for example, a narrow focus of 'persons of interest', while disregarding other, highly relevant criteria, about far-right terrorism and strategies of tension. Who were the analysts? And what interests were they serving?

The problem, furthermore, would appear to have considerable relevance for the present-day federal government when dealing with issues arising in the Middle East which have a direct bearing upon Australia. The present Israeli government in Tel Aviv is of a far-right political nature. A great deal of the political discourse from Canberra has revealed an almost mediocre level of understanding of basic issues and slavish adherence to US diplomatic positions and those of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. The significance of intelligence assessments and who is actually providing the analysis is, for example, a foremost consideration; particularly when those concerned got it wrong.

Whether those up yonder will provide any meaningful answers to the problem of the resurgence of the far-right in Australia, remains, as yet, to be established. It would appear from their present performance to be highly unlikely.

1. Crisis of authority, identity politics at heart of UK riots, Australian, 13 August 2024.
2. See Web-site: The National Civic Council – For a Stronger Australia.
3. See: Sanctuary! Nazi fugitives in Australia, Mark Aarons, (Victoria, 1989), with specific reference to pp.239-40, pp. 293-94; and, Obituary: Lyenko Urbanchich, (1922-2006), Ardent Nazi took Liberal to extremes, The Weekend Sydney Morning Herald, 4-5 March 2006; and, A fight against the Right, The Weekend Australian, 22-23 September 2007.
4. Catholic spies in ASIO's network, Australian, 11 August 2017; and, Ted Serong, Anne Blair, (Victoria, 2002), numerous references, pp. 1-203.
5. Benign spymaster built global network, Australian, 3 March 1998.
6. Fatal attack on cops 'religious terror', Australian, 17 February 2023.
7. See: Justiciar Knights, The Global Intelligence Files, ref: https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/15/1548871_-ct-justiciar-knights-.html
8. Australian, op.cit., 17 February 2023.
9. Trains 'recruiting among Christian extremist group', Australian, 14 August 2024.
10. Australian, op.cit., 17 February 2023.
11. See: Experts renew warnings, Crikey, 13-14 December 2022.
12. Australian, op.cit., 14 August 2024.
13. Ibid.; and, Crikey, op.cit., 13-14 December 2022.
14. 'Police ambush was an act of terror', Australian, 29 August 2024.
15. Right-wing extremist fears drive gun reform, The Weekend Australian, 4-5 February 2023.

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Workers' Struggle Goes Well Beyond "Protected Industrial Action"

Written by: Ned K. on 27 September2024

Hardly a day goes by without workers somewhere in Australia taking "protected industrial action" to win unresolved claims from Enterprise Agreement negotiations with their immediate employer.

Workers who are union members continue to use the "protected industrial action" provisions of the Fair Work Act to protect and/or advance their incomes and working conditions. Use of these provisions has led to some workers taking collective industrial action for the first time against a single employer across different worksites.

A current example of this is warehouse workers employed by German multinational logistics company DHL.

These workers are taking rolling strike action in pursuit of wage increases of up to 10% per year just to catch up to average wages in warehousing enterprise agreements. Workers in the iron ore and coal mining industries in WA and Queensland are using the new multi-employer bargaining provisions of the Fair Work Act to increase wages across large sections of these industries. The big multinational mining companies are desperate to prevent these workers from uniting across their industry.

Eventually these types of struggles around new enterprise agreements are resolved. Sometimes the workers win all their industrial demands in full, sometimes in part.

However, the longer-term win for thousands of workers who have union enterprise agreements is that the agreements often contain clauses which increase their capacity to remain organized through the whole life of their enterprise agreements. Many agreements now contain clauses that force the boss to recognize workers' elected representatives and provide paid time meetings of union members and paid time union induction meetings with new starters.

Workers have also won clauses in agreements that require the boss to maintain the status quo if there is any workplace issue in dispute. The better organization on the job that workers maintain during the life of an enterprise agreement, the less chance of the boss clawing back workers’ hard won gains.

These organizing rights clauses that workers win in agreements are important to frustrate the boss's attempts to disorganize workers during the life of an agreement.

The Fair Work Act does not allow workers to legally take industrial action during the life of an agreement. The Act protects the boss from workers' industrial action for all but the limited bargaining period for a new agreement.

For example, no matter what the industry, many bosses who are forced to agree to higher wage increases in an enterprise agreement, will try and claw back their total labour costs during the life of the agreement by not replacing workers who leave or changing rosters to avoid penalty rates or increasing workloads.

The multinational corporations and other large employers and their governments (Labor or Liberal) are well aware that the current Fair Work Act gives them a dream run of preventing workers’ collective action for nearly the whole cycle of the enterprise agreement process.

A campaign to force the government to scrap the "protected industrial action" provision and replace it in the Fair Work Act with provisions for workers' right to withdraw their labour at any time they deem it necessary is long overdue.

The chances of such a campaign being initiated by the ACTU current leadership are well non-existent for fear of getting too off-side with the current government. Such a campaign will need to be generated by workers themselves.

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Zionist genocide and its Nazi character

Written by: Alan Jackson on 27 September 2024

(From the X account Torah Jews by Orthodox Jews who oppose Zionism)

As of writing, Zionist genocidal escalation has rapidly increased its pace and has once again spread its industrialised killing of Palestinians to Lebanon. They have done this through a kind technique showing how truly advanced the Israeli Offense Force is at apartheid and genocide. The techniques used are villainous and could come out of a ridiculous over the top spy B movie.

The most recent attacks have consisted of a shipment of pagers intercepted by the IDF that was headed for Lebanon. This was “targeted” at Hezbollah, so the Zionists say, but they seem to fail to realise or mention that Hezbollah is a governmental body and as such distributes and works with public services. Pagers are most used in hospitals and because of this hospital workers and many other public servants were injured and killed. This can only be defined as indiscriminate - there is no other word. This was terrorism from the top to the bottom. The next day walkie-talkies began to blow up with some blowing up at funerals being held for people murdered in the pager attack the previous day. Israel has given up on its more intricate dealings and dark arts heading straight back to what it knows best. Blasting Lebanon with missiles and slaughtering another Arab population.

Israel’s escalation is being treated in a vacuum by Zionists and mainstream media alike and is being blamed on the Al-Aqsa flood. It is all being explained as Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of October 7th, which is being treated as a terrorist attack. The Al-Aqsa flood was not a terrorist attack and was meticulously planned and executed. Most importantly as Israel has shown, meticulousness does not remove genocidal intent, the Al-Aqsa flood was a national liberatory resistance from Palestinians in the world’s largest concentration camp. The Al-Aqsa flood was a resistance to settler-colonialism that the Australian government, regretfully living in a settler-colony, must uphold. The industrialised genocide of the Arab population within and around Palestine since the 1940s with beginnings in the 1920s, can only be compared with the Nazis and their industrialised slaughter of the Jewish population.

Israel being a Zionist and mostly Jewish state has used the memory of the holocaust to justify apartheid and cast the antisemitism of the Nazis onto the resistance. This is not only a disgusting use of the history and memory of the holocaust, but also purposefully disingenuous and incorrect. The Al-Aqsa flood is as justified as the Jewish ghetto uprisings during Nazi occupation.

The most important thing to understand about the Al-Aqsa flood is that events don’t happen in a vacuum. Especially an uprising. This is a response to decades and decades of Zionist attempts at occupation since the 1920s. The Zionists often either deny the 1947-8 Nakba or try to explain it in a gentle way. They Gish gallop and pamper their words, despite the evidence that the Zionists are and were completely intent on the ethnic cleansing and displacement of the Palestinian population.

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and political activist born in Haifa in 1954. His book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine 2006 Oneworld Publications, London (2023 edition) contains many examples of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine.

Referring to the December 1947 Hagana (Zionist paramilitary organisation founded in 1920 and forerunner of the so-called Israeli “Defence” Forces in 1948), the Hagana second-in-command Yigal Allon said: “We could have taken Jaffa by now easily and should have attacked the villages around Tel Aviv. We have to go for a series of ‘collective punishments’ even if there are children living in the houses.” (p. 64-5)

On 1 January, 1948, the leader of the Zionists and “founder” of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, approvingly copied these words of Allon into his diary: “There is a need now for strong and brutal reaction. We need to be accurate about the timing, place and those we hit. If we accuse a family, we need to harm them without mercy, women and children included. Otherwise, this is not an effective reaction. During the operation there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty.” (p.69)

Pappe provides extensive evidence of orders to the Israeli army for the extensive destruction of whole villages and for the destruction of hundreds of houses in Palestinian residential areas of Haifa and Tiberius, as well as the poisoning of Palestinian water supplies with typhoid germs (p. 100-101), and mass executions of Palestinian village “males between the age of ten and fifty” (p.110).

The complete destruction and utter disregard for human life has been consistent and has been a necessity for the settler-colonial state with its specific goals and ideology. Being in a perfect strategic position in the middle east with similar values to the imperialists, Israel became a running dog for Yankee imperialism much like Australia. Israel is so vital to US Imperialism that the president of the United States Joe Biden has outright said “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.”

The industrialised ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Arabs by Israel and Zionists can only be compared with the Nazis. There is no other comparison in recent history. It is indiscriminate yet ethnically targeted. Their creativity in their murder devices is absolutely reminiscent of the Nazis.

Israel is enforced by settler garrisons that are armed by the Israeli government and act as armed units surrounding the cities making sure Palestinians stay far away. They act as the Native Police did during earlier colonisation of Australia. The reason they are so similar is because they both were participating fervently in settler colonial projects. They were on the frontier and were the most radicalised as a result.

The liberal argument is that Netanyahu and the far right ‘Likud’ are the issue and once they are ousted or removed from power, all will be good. This argument doesn’t understand why this is happening. This argument ignores upwards of 100 years of history of the displacement and obliteration of the Palestinian people. What they don’t understand is that settler-colonial and fascist violence is inherent and imbedded in Zionism and the Israeli state by extension.

It must be understood that Palestinian resistance is justified, and that “political power grows out the barrel of a gun.” The Al-Aqsa flood should be upheld and learnt from.

Have you ever thought to yourself what side of history you would’ve been on during Nazi occupation, the Holocaust or Apartheid South Africa. Now is your chance to choose and know you are on the right side of history. History will absolve the resistance.

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US, Japan and the Indo-Pacific Strategy

Written by: (Contributed) on 24 September 2024

(Above; Danjo Islands Source: voiceofalexamdria.com)

A big increase in Japan's defence budget can be regarded as a move by the Pentagon for allies to make substantial contributions for involvement in US-led military and security provision and the Indo-Pacific Strategy. Recent diplomatic hostility by Japan toward China, over an alleged incursion into airspace of strategic islands in the East China Sea, is best viewed in the context of the IPS as the basis of US regional foreign policy.

In August, Japan's defence ministry requested 8.5 trillion yen ($87billion) for the next fiscal year; it has amounted to their largest ever request, forming part of a five year 43 trillion yen budget, to March 2028. (1) The request was approved, although appears to have been a significant factor in the resignation of Prime Minister Fumio Kishada, whose approval rating slumped drastically. (2) Moves by successive Japanese governments to re-interpret clause 9 of their pacifist constitution have not proved particularly popular with many voters.

The 2024 Japanese defence also rested upon a previous one, whereby a 16.5 per cent increase the previous year, was allocated for realignment with US military forces. (3)

It is important to note that an estimated third of the 2024 defence budget has been allocated for 'satellite constellation', aimed at China, Russia and the DPRK. (4) Espionage and intelligence-gathering has become a Cold War obsession with the Pentagon; the US-led IPS, for example, also includes the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), 'which effectively allows for unlimited sharing of all military information'. (5) What actually constitutes military information is also categorised by what might be useful, not what is necessarily the case.

Elsewhere, across the vast Indo-Pacific region, many countries are following similar military upgrades, with increased budgets. In Australia, defence budgets are likely to place huge burdens on successive generations, effectively placing the country into almost unpayable long-term debts.

The moves closely follow the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) which has included Japan being upgraded to the diplomatic position of a global alliance partner; the IPS then rests upon the 'quad', encircling and containing China from all sides. (6)

The significance of Australia within the IPS should not be under-estimated; recent high-level diplomacy between Canberra and Tokyo has included an official invitation for elite marines from the Japanese Rapid Deployment Brigade to participate in trilateral exercises with Australian and US counterpart in northern Australia. The move was accompanied by an official statement that 'this is a really huge opportunity for our three defence forces to operate in an amphibious context'. (7)

Other countries as US allies are then placed inside the IPS framework as lower-level partners, with specific responsibilities for hosting sensitive US military facilities. (8) The placing, by the US, of networks of precision strike missiles on island chains, has become commonplace; the so-called Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI), has formed part of a large budget allocation of $27.4 billion. (9)

A recent official media statement from the US acting Under-Secretary for the Navy, Tom Mancinelli, has left little to the imagination: the Indo-Pacific has been described as the US 'priority theatre … and … the US Navy was laser-focussed on the Pacific region'. (10)

US intelligence assessments have continually drawn attention to the closer diplomatic relations between China and Russia as problematic. The balance of forces is swinging away from traditional US hegemonic positions; China has become the largest trading partner of most countries across the Indo-Pacific region.

A recent allegation by Japan that a Chinese Y-9 surveillance aircraft had violated their sovereignty off the strategic Danjo Islands, however, has shown just how tense diplomatic relations have become between US-led positions and China. The tiny Danjo islands, in the East China Seas, are uninhabited although close to China's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). (11) Situated at 32 degrees north and 128 degrees east, the sovereignty of the Danjo islands is not contested and face the important Chinese port of Shanghai; the five islands are not inhabited and cover an area of 4.7 square kms, rising to 281 metres above sea level.

Other islands in the area are contested between China and Japan and other countries, and remain sensitive and potentially problematic. Moves by the US to establish the IPS, for example, were accompanied by Japan nationalising 280 islands, of a total of an estimated four hundred strategic land-masses which have served as demarcation lines for territorial waters; they were referred to in government papers as 'important national territories'. (12)

While the alleged Danjo incursion was of only two minutes duration, the Japanese air force scrambled a full alert. Later commentary suggested the incursion had taken place as 'China was probing Japan's air defence network, seeking to obtain intelligence … as Japan … expands defence co-operation with the US and other countries in the region'. (13)

The speed of the Japanese air force reaction to the alleged incursion would tend to indicate the whole area of the East China Sea was under close surveillance. Japan is known to possess extensive Signals-Intelligence (SIGINT) facilities and a network of listening stations with extended range. (14) Whether sensitive military facilities are based on the Danjo islands was not, however, officially divulged. The fact the alleged incursion was also given high-level media coverage in Australia has, nevertheless, also remained a factor in assessing its diplomatic significance in the context of the IPS.

1. Back off, Japan and Philippines tell China, Australian, 2 September 2024.
2. Japanese PM jumps before he's pushed, Australian, 15 August 2024; and, Japan's Defence Ministry seeks record budget, Military,com, 30 August 2024.
3. Japan approves 16.5 per cent increase in defence spending for FY 2024, The Diplomat, 22 December 2023.
4. Military.com, op.cit., 30 August 2024.
5. The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIAS., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
6. Ibid.
7. Top End to host elite Japanese marines, Australian, 6 September 2024.
8. Hankyoreh, op.cit., 12 November 2019.
9. See: US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei Asia, 5 March 2021; and, US Indo-Pacific Command proposes new missile capabilities to deter China, RFA., 5 March 2021.
10. Indo-Pacific is our priority theatre: US Navy boss, Australian, 4 September 2024.
11. Australian, op.cit., 2 September 2024; and, Chinese spy plane, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 2024.
12. Japan to nationalise 280 islands, The Age (Melbourne), 10 January 2014.
13. Japan says Chinese aircraft incursion, The Star, 27 August 2024; and, Janes: Chinese Y-9 electronic warfare aircraft infringes Japan air space, 27 August 2024.
14. See: Japan – Naicho – Cabinet Research Office, Intelligence Services, Espionage, Spies and Secrets, Richard M. Bennett, (London, 2002), pp. 163-65.

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"When we stand together as the working class, our victory is assured” — ‘Line in the Sand’ rally, Melbourne, 18 September.

Written by: Ashley C. and Tony A. on 21 September 2024

More than just an option, defiance is our duty: we truly have a world to win. Construction Unions Dare Workers to Struggle

On Wednesday, over 50,000 construction union members walked off their worksites and onto the streets of the Melbourne CBD to mark the beginning of the ‘Line in the Sand’ fighting campaign led by the CFMEU, ETU, PPTEU and AMWU.

The ‘Line in the Sand’ fightback will last for the five-year period of the CFMEU’s administration and will form a concerted action by unions to ensure that the conditions of workers are not torn away from them during this latest attack against organised labour by capital.

The decision to hold the Wednesday rally was voted up by 700 delegates at the Building Industry Group’s joint construction union delegates’ meeting last week, along with the Target 1000 campaign to sign Victorian construction workers onto 1000 EBAs (enterprise bargaining agreements) across the state.

The sunny September morning in Melbourne saw workers and community supporters congregate before the columns of the Victorian Trades Hall, where powerful speeches were delivered by union officials and members pledging united and protracted struggle to defend the CFMEU and all unions.

“How good is this? Tens of thousands of construction workers hitting the streets yet again” said Zach Smith, National Secretary of the CFMEU's Construction and General Division, “This is why this union and building workers in this state and across Australia will never be defeated, because tens of thousands of workers have walked off the job today and are standing here for their rights and conditions.”

Troy Gray, State Secretary of the ETU Victoria Branch, told the rally that the CFMEU’s administration would not be the main focus of the rally, and instead the rally is demonstrating the unified industrial power of workers in the construction industry. “By turning up in big numbers today you are putting all the politicians on notice. We’ve had enough. We’ve drawn a line in the sand,” said Gray. Pointing to the precarious and dangerous nature of work within the construction industry, Gray outlined the importance of fighting for EBAs, particularly as opportunistic employers have sought to erode wages and conditions amid the CFMEU’s forced takeover by the government.

Mass mobilisation sweeps aside anti-worker laws

Speakers at the rally sent a strong message to bosses and the government that workers and their unions will not be intimidated by the anti-worker laws, and will continue to take illegal industrial action. “If there is a continued attack on the working conditions and living standards of Victorian construction workers for the building industry group of unions, we will call a third rally, and that third rally will be on a Wednesday, and there’ll be a call for a 72-hour stoppage.”

A proud CFMEU member bravely gave her first public speech to her comrades, highlighting the importance of workers safety and conditions, and the importance of the union to the advancement of non-male construction workers. She led the chant “Line in the sand! United we stand!”

Tens of thousands of workers proudly marched under the flags of their unions and of the Eureka southern cross towards Flagstaff Gardens, completely filling across 5 blocks along LaTrobe street from Victoria street to the Gardens. The mass rally was led by an enormous banner CFMEU HERE TO STAY.

The 50,000 eventually gathered directly across the road from the Federal Court building, where less than a month ago the CFMEU had been mounting its case against Fair Work’s appointment of an administrator before the ALP overrode the proceedings and changed the law with the ACTU’s blessing. The ACTU building itself stands within earshot of the Gardens, and if Sally McManus had just stepped outside, she would have heard the cries of ‘Union Power!’ reverberating through the streets.

Line in the Sand

The solidarity of mass rallies defying unjust laws will give more confidence to workers in the great power of organized working class standing up and fighting back, as the campaign builds further momentum. The Line in the Sand campaign is inspiring struggle carried in Zach Smith’s message to all workers:

“It’s the message that today’s rally will echo far beyond the construction workers that are here, it will echo through the halls of parliament and across the boardroom tables of corporate Australia.

“Today we’re drawing a line in the sand. That’s what we’re doing today. As working people, when we stand together as the working class, our victory is assured if we stand together and fight together, and today we will be sending a very clear message across those corporate boardrooms, across the halls of parliament, that we’re drawing a line in the sand.

“So what does that mean? It means that we’re not going to let any employer use administration to take wages and conditions backwards. We’re not gonna let any business use this situation to take our hard won safety rights backwards and put workers at risk. The line in the sand also means that politicians, that parliaments, will not take our conditions backwards either, or introduce draconian anti-worker laws. The line in the sand means that you won’t touch our delegates, our shop stewards, and our HSRs who are the backbone of representation on site and are the backbone of our union. That’s what the line in the sand is all about.

“We’re not going to take a backwards step! We’re not going to let administration mean that any worker goes backwards, loses hard-won wages and conditions. 170 years of struggle, and there’ll be 170 years more because we will stand together, we will come out of this period and we’ll be stronger than ever!”

Fight for an Independent Working Class Agenda

Let this be an example to all workers that it is possible to take back our unions, and clear the way for a truly independent working class agenda.
It is certainly a welcome and impressive act of defiance. The relative lack of commentary from senior ALP members on the developments emerging since their brazen takeover of the union suggests that they were certainly caught off guard.

It was in the lead up to the 2022 election, Anthony Albanese appealed to the audience of the Australian Financial Review business summit: "If Labor is successful in the coming federal election, I will take my lead from Bob Hawke and his successor Paul Keating". Indeed, first as tragedy, then as farce. Continuing to showcase the extent of his disengagement from the increasingly precarious conditions faced by workers in Australia, it certainly appears that the possibility of stoking the wrath of 140,000 construction workers across the country was, if considered at all, an afterthought.

He certainly embodies the smugness and arrogance of the very class he serves, as it has become increasingly obvious that his confidence and cocksureness in executing such a brazen declaration of class warfare stemmed purely from the magnates of finance and business to whom he addressed his electoral appeal. Of course, he knew the move would rustle a few feathers, maybe cost him a few votes, but to him and his ilk it would seem the working class represent little more than passive subjects, who will sit down and take whatever is thrown at them. It is increasingly difficult to imagine that he seriously considered the possibility of the situation unfolding as it has.

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All power to construction workers : CFMEU Sydney Rally

Written by: Tovaris on 20 September 2024

Around 7000 construction workers walked off the job in Sydney to rally against the ongoing fascistic 'administration' of their union.

At the previous rally, CFMEU representative Dennis McNamara stated in his speech: "This is the spark that the working class needs to light fires everywhere!" This view has gripped the masses of the CFMEU members - many spoke of the need to forge the broadest possible alliances with other unions, members of the public and other progressive organisations.

So far the Electrical Trades Union NSW Branch (ETU) has provided the most support on the ground - while officials, delegates and members of the Maritime Union of Australia Sydney Branch (MUA), Plumbers and Pipes Trade union (PPTEU) and Australian Manufacturers Workers Union NSW Branch (AMWU) were also in attendance and gave speeches in support.

Multiple CFMEU members spoke of the need to welcome struggle - especially when wages and conditions are attacked. CFMEU members are aware that the attack on the CFMEU is a ruling class reaction to their successful EBA campaign rather than accusations of corruption which is the narrative the traitor capitalist media is going for.

Cries of 'Reinstate Darren Greenfield', 'Reinstate Rita Mallia', reinstate 'Michael Greenfield' and 'Our Union, Our Choice' were generally well received on the ground.

We applaud the CFMEU leadership-in-exile for their exemplary focus on militant trade unionism protecting and serving their members. We also applaud the growing understanding within the CFMEU membership that only when workers run the country that they built will they see an end to the parasitic politicians attacking their union, livelihoods and wages and conditions.

Only when construction and all other workers who built this country run the country will they see a system where workers' labour provides healthcare, education, transport and housing for all people. At the moment in the capitalist system, CFMEU members are unwillingly paying an unelected bureaucrat 'administrator' over $500 000 a year to destroy their union for the 'crime' of being a successful and militant union.

We call on all power to us, your construction comrades and the broadest possible support to us and back to all workers with the understanding that we are all struggling against the ruling class who are waging a campaign against the wages and conditions of every worker in Australia. "

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Book Review - BINA

Written by: Duncan B. on 16 September 2024

Bina- First Nations Languages Old and New is a book everybody should read.

At the time of the colonisation of Australia there were around 440 Indigenous languages spoken in Australia. This number was quickly reduced as murder, disease and dispossession wiped out thousands of Indigenous people. The remainder were herded onto missions or government stations where they were forbidden to speak their language under threat of punishment. The children were separated from their parents, making it difficult for parents to pass on their language and culture. Throughout Bina there are many accounts of massacres and ill-treatment of Indigenous people at the hands of station owners, police and government officials.

Bina tells the story of this tragic destruction of Indigenous languages and how communities are working to save and preserve their languages and pass them on to future generations. Indigenous and non-Indigenous linguists are combining archival research and field work to discover the vocabulary and grammar of Indigenous languages and record the speech of elders who are the last remaining speakers of a language before it is too late.

Thanks to their efforts, Indigenous languages are undergoing a revival with Indigenous languages again being taught in schools and being promoted through both traditional song and dance and modern means such as opera, rock music and rap.

Indigenous languages are more than just a means of communication. They embody the speaker’s kinship relations and their relationship to Country and the environment. Precious knowledge of the seasons, food supply, fire management and astronomy would be lost if Indigenous languages become extinct.

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Vietnam complicit in Zionist genocide

Written by: Nick G. on 16 September 2024

(Above: The MV Kathrin Source: www.presstv.ir )

The international arms trade that helps sustain Israeli Zionism’s attempted genocide of Palestinians was recently revealed to have a surprising participant.

Surprising, that is, for the millions of people around the globe who actively campaigned for Vietnam’s defeat of US imperialism during the US War of Aggression Against Vietnam.

Defying all the odds, the Vietnamese people led by Comrade Ho Chi Minh, persisted in their people’s war, liberated the South, and drove the US imperialists ignominiously from their shores, proving the truth that “A weak nation can defeat a strong, a small nation can defeat a big. The people of a small country can certainly defeat aggression by a big country, if only they dare to rise in struggle, dare to take up arms and grasp in their own hands the destiny of their country. This is a law of history” (Mao Zedong).

This is the law of history that is on the side of the courageous Palestinian people.

Why then has Vietnam sided with the Zionists and attempted to provide them with explosives for use in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?

The answer is that Vietnam has taken the road of capitalist development, and places the growth of capital above the growth of the Palestinian resistance.

Money doesn’t talk, sang Bob Dylan, it swears.

So, what is the obscenity in which Vietnam has participated?

On July 21 the MV Kathrin left the port of Hai Phong, Vietnam, loaded with 8 containers of RDX (Hexogen) explosives destined for Israel. RDX is the explosive agent in C-4 plastic explosive and a key ingredient in Semtex. It is a component in Elbit’s explosives.

The ship was also loaded with 60 containers of the explosive TNT.

The RDX was manufactured by the Vietnamese Ministry of Defence’s Factory Z113 and loaded on the ship in Hai Phong.

UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese said on August 31, “These explosives are reportedly key components in the aircraft bombs and missiles that Israel is deploying against besieged Gaza and in its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians.”

Imperialist capital makes this trade possible

A complex web of intersecting capitals, each hungry for profits, makes Vietnam’s trade in explosives with Israel possible.

German capital is utilised through the ship’s owner, Lubeca Marine Germany GMBH. It is operated by Danish capital in the form of Ocean 7 Project through AGL (Africa Global Logistics). AGL, a logistics operator in Africa, is headquartered in Puteaux, France and owned by French capital. AGL operates independently but is part of the Cargo Division of the Italo-Swiss MSC group.

Portugal gains revenue from German capital by registering or flagging the ship.

Israel has two ports, Ashdod and Haifa, capable of docking the MV Kathrin, but its destination is the Slovenian port of Koper. Slovenia profits from the exercise with docking, unloading and transportation fees. This is the second time in the last few months that the Slovenian port has been involved in the illegal weapons transfers to Israel, despite the International Court of Justice’s decision that it was plausibly perpetrating genocide. It raises the question of what is being evaded or concealed by unloading its cargo in Slovenia.

Once it was revealed that the Kathrin was carrying Vietnamese explosives to Israel, world opinion took a stand in support of the Palestinians. The Kathrin sought permission to dock in Namibia’s port of Walvis Bay.

On August 24, after approaches from the Palestinian BDS Committee and Namibian human rights organisations, the Namibian government cancelled the docking permit for the Kathrin.

Over the next five days, Portuguese Palestine solidarity organizations and parliamentarians called on their government to de-flag the Kathrin.

On August 29, the Portuguese Foreign Minister claimed that the Kathrin is not transporting ready-made weapons, is not headed to Israel, that Portugal in all cases carries no responsibility, and that this arms trade has “commercial purpose” – a flimsy excuse not to take action.

Portuguese activists are still campaigning for Portugal to deflag the ship.

Meanwhile, denied access to the Namibian port, the Kathrin headed for Angola, which, on September 5 refused to dock the ship. This meant no Southern African state had given harbour to the vessel carrying military supplies for apartheid Israel’s ongoing Gaza genocide.

It remains to be seen when the Kathrin will dock at Koper, Slovenia and what arrangements will be made to transport the explosives to Israel.

The Vietnamese-Israel arms trade

Israel and Vietnam have developed a significant arms trade relationship in recent years, driven by Vietnam's efforts to expand its regional influence and Israel's advanced military technologies.

Israel and Vietnam have signed several military cooperation agreements, leading to growing military ties. These agreements focus on technology transfers, training, and the sale of military equipment.

Israel’s SPYDER (Surface-to-air PYthon and DERby) surface-to-air missile system is one of the major deals, helping Vietnam enhance its military capabilities. Rafael is the prime contractor and Israel Aerospace Industries is the major subcontractor for the SPYDER program.

Israeli drone technology has also been provided to Vietnam, strengthening its surveillance and reconnaissance capacities.

Vietnam has procured Israeli small arms, such as rifles and machine guns, to modernize its infantry forces.

Drawing on its field experience in oppressing the Palestinians, Israel provides training for Vietnamese military personnel, focusing on the use of advanced weapons systems, cybersecurity, and intelligence. Additionally, Israel has assisted Vietnam in setting up domestic production lines for defence equipment through technology transfers, allowing Vietnam to produce Israeli-designed weapons locally.

Israel is known for its expertise in cybersecurity, and Vietnam has been keen to acquire Israeli technology and expertise to bolster its cyber capacity. The Israeli company Cellebrite has sold its surveillance and phone hacking technology to Vietnam for use against critics of the regime.

Vietnamese revisionism complicit with imperialism’s war on the people

The last word deserves to go to Vietnamese online blogger Hồng Thủy Lưu, who, on August 30, wrote:

As a “Communist” Party, trained by Chairman Hồ himself, through 45 years of waging the National–Democratic Revolution, the “Communist” Party of Vietnam should also stay true to its name and its history.

On the contrary, the “Socialist Republic of Vietnam”, led by the “Communist” Party of Vietnam itself, is a trusted ally of the genocidal Zionists and anti-people Hindutva…

If the Party doesn’t stand on the side of the people of the world, then it doesn’t deserve the title “Communist Party”. They are more the Revisionist Party of Vietnam. The government they rule directly assists the reactionaries in doing genocide. That proves that the Party and the Government itself are the biggest reactionaries in Vietnam.

They also express antagonism with their own “comrades” (this refers to the genuine Communists in struggle; for the Party declares itself Communist). Back in May, the electronic newspaper of the Gia Lai province Party Branch praised the Indian reactionaries for “killing many Maoists”. They call guerilla soldiers “terrorists”. This is not the only case where this has happened. They have called the Palestinian, Indian, and Filipino freedom fighters “terrorists” many times. This demonstrated how antagonistic they are to the world revolution.

OPPOSE ACTIONS THAT AID GENOCIDE!

THE PEOPLE OF VIETNAM STAND WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD!

DOWN WITH THE VIETNAMESE REVISIONISTS!

LONG LIVE THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLE IN PALESTINE

REVOLUTIONARIES ARE NOT TERRORISTS!

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Support grows for CFMEU

Written by: Nick G. on 13 September 2024

The SA Branch Executive of the Communications, Electricity and Plumbing Union (CEPU) voted on Wednesday night to disaffiliate from the SA Branch of the ALP.

The vote came as a tragic accident on a Queensland building site confirmed the dangerous nature of the industry and the consequent need for a union prepared to defy restrictions on right of entry.

And a newsletter from Left faction unions and members of the SA ALP said of the CFMEU being placed under Administration that “The object of this exercise is not to punish the guilty. It is to shut down a militant trade union which the Government (and its friends in the construction industry) find an inconvenience. If there were actual, evidence-based, allegations of criminality in the industry, then surely there are enough laws to bring charges and court cases to deal with them. That’s how the law is meant to work – rather than accusation and trial by media, followed by Government decree.”

The newsletter concluded that “if the Party leadership is going to start attacking unions that it doesn’t like or that get in its way, socialists in the Labor Party might have to consider whether they would be better off in a Party that actually defends working class interests.”

John Adley, SA Branch Secretary of the CEPU said in a message to members: “The damaging impacts of this legislation on workers will be felt wider than just the construction industry. The legislation is a ‘how to guide’ for any future government to destroy any trade union.”

Meanwhile, in Queensland, a worker was seriously injured on the taxpayer-funded Centenary Bridge Upgrade project after head contractor BMD repeatedly restricted union officials from accessing the worksite.

On Tuesday afternoon the worker was impaled in the neck after falling over a trip hazard and landing in a sheet of mesh.

CFMEU officials were onsite to investigate on Wednesday morning, ending several months of having their access to the site restricted by BMD.

Of the several thousand alleged acts of illegality by CFMEU officials raised by the capitalist media, the vast majority arise from CFMEU organisers courageously defying the restrictions on their right of entry to building sites precisely for the purpose of servicing the needs of members, with health and safety in the dangerous industry first among their concerns.

Rank and file members of the CFMEU are organising to defend their union.

These are early days in what will be a long struggle.

The ruling class and its anti-worker government have done their homework this time, and we are in for a protracted and drawn out struggle.

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BOOK REVIEW---CULTURE IS NOT AN INDUSTRY

Written by: Duncan B. on 12 September 2024

Justin O’Connor, the author of Culture Is Not An Industry - Reclaiming Art and Culture For The Common Good is Professor of Cultural Economy at the University of South Australia. The book is one of the Manchester Capitalism book series. This series of books investigates various aspects of the capitalist system.

Culture Is Not An Industry tells the story of how twenty-five years ago the British Government, following neo-liberal policies, rebranded art and culture as “creative industries.” Culture went from being “a public good to a private commodity economy driven by individual sovereign consumers.”

The author says that “the key argument of the book is that culture, as an object of public policy, should be moved out of “industry” and back into the sphere of public responsibility along health, education, social welfare and basic infrastructure.”

A considerable part of modern culture is controlled by mainly US media and technology companies such as Disney, Amazon, Google and Apple. They control streaming services such as You Tube and Spotify. Recording labels, cinema theatre chains, amusement parks, concert promotion and event ticketing are owned by a handful of companies. At the same time many artists, writers, musicians and other cultural workers are poorly paid and lead precarious existences.

Culture Is Not An Industry discusses many different aspects of culture and the need to get it out of the hands of the bureaucrats and bean counters. It is worth reading by anyone working in culture or who is interested in culture.

However, I do not agree with the author’s criticism of Marx’s theory of class society having a legal, political, and intellectual superstructure erected on an economic base, which Marx put forward in his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. This theory is central to our understanding as Marxists of the structure of class society, and the place of culture in the superstructure.

Culture is an important component of the struggle for independence and socialism in Australia. It must be taken out of the hands of the capitalists and returned to the workers and their allies in the struggle.

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Hervey Bay Sheraton leaflet

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 11 September 2024

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Disrupt War - YouTube

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Disrupt Land Forces

Written by: Nick G. on 11 September 2024

A great rap by Red Menace on the Land Forces 2024 death expo.

Watch here: Disrupt War - YouTube

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Exercise Kakadu begins in Darwin

Written by: Nick G. on 11 September 2024

(Above: Three German Airforce (Luftwaffe) EF2000 Eurofighter Typhoons and a NATO Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport Aircraft (MRTT) fly over HMAS Hobart during Exercise Kakadu 2022. Photo: www.navy.gov.au )

From Melbourne in the south, where tens of thousands are protesting the Land Forces death expo, to Darwin in the north, where Exercise Kakadu is getting underway, the dangers of imperialist war are becoming ever clearer.

Exercise Kakadu is a maritime naval exercise held every two years.

Growing in size and complexity since its inception in 1993, this year’s exercise includes warships, helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft from participating nations with more than 3,000 uniformed personnel participating.

This year's exercise, scheduled for Sept. 9-20, will involve 13 warships, including a Collins class submarine, and aircraft from navies and air forces representing 11 countries.

The exercise is held concurrently with a commanders' conference, where military leaders from more than 30 countries are represented.

Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond said “This year the focus is on interoperability with greater integration of our international partners in all aspects of the exercise.”

This is simply code for ensuring that “partners” all are prepared to operate under the dictate of the US imperialists in whatever provocations they design against their imperialist rival, China.

This was confirmed by the US side.

"Thank you to the Royal Australian Navy for bringing this group of nations together to conduct important training in the region," said Vice Adm. Fred Kacher, commander of U.S. 7th Fleet. "The work we are doing here provides our navies a valuable opportunity to advance interoperability and address shared maritime security challenges."

Exercise Kakadu has nothing to do with the defence of Australia, and everything to do with the maintenance of US regional hegemony.

Any increase in the “interoperability” of Australian armed forces with those of the US represents a further weakening of our independence and sovereignty.

For genuine anti-imperialist independence and socialism!

(See our Leaflets page for an agitationallealfet being distributed aroud Hervey Bay)

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The Torquay Towers and The People of Hervey Bays struggle against it

Written by: (Contributed) on 10 September 2024

(Above - The proposed development. Photo: www.theurbandeveloper.com )

A coastal city with a focus on tourism must consistently strive in a capitalist economy to keep its worth for its profiteers. How can this city survive on tourism when what generates its worth in the for-profit economy will also inevitably destroy it? Tourism is not a sustainable pillar of a city's economy and is a short-term profitable source for its investors. There must be a focus on all essential factors to creating an effective and balanced economy that has its people in command. Only this can ensure health and longevity for the city and its population.

Hervey Bay, the unceded and traditional land of the Badtjala People, is undergoing large developmental projects. Development is not necessarily bad, and Hervey Bay needs development, so what is creating uproar within the community? Why is it that there has been constant backlash against the local and state government for the developments in Hervey Bay? Should not the community be rejoicing in the city’s much needed development? The answer lies in the question and answer of who this development is for, and what its impacts are for both sides.

The most recent construction that is affecting the people of Hervey Bay is the development of the 18 storeys ‘Torquay Towers’ or the Sheraton Resort. The people of Hervey Bay clearly see the destructive socioeconomic and environmental impacts of this construction and therefore are extremely concerned with the consequences it will bring. The Torquay Towers are not only destructive but are not in the interest of the people of Hervey Bay.

The government, local profiteers and landlords have put a focus on Hervey Bay as a city for tourism and retirement. As a result, there are limited educational options past grade 12, and students pursuing an education are apt to leave and not come back.

When a city is built on being a place for tourism and retirement, gentrification Is inevitable and there is no mobilisation for its youth. The youth leave and there is more focus placed on tourism and retirement to combat this contradiction. As you would expect this further exacerbates the contradiction and more material and finances are contributed to the very thing creating the unevenness in the contradiction.

The Torquay Towers are a prime example of this contradiction. This 18-storey monstrosity makes it “the ‘largest’ hotel development north of Brisbane”. Not only will this look ridiculous compared to all other buildings around it, with the current largest in the bay being 6 storeys, not even being close to its size and offensiveness, it will bring devastating environmental impacts to the reef due to its two towers that will shine over the reef causing coral bleaching it will almost be out of a Tolkien novel.

Mayor George Seymour is well aware of the public outrage to the point that at a council meeting with some of the public, due to heckling, he threatened to close the meeting. It has already been apparent Seymour doesn’t care for the residents of Hervey Bay or their wishes and demands with this being one of the most blatant, opportunistic and sell-out of his actions yet. It is clear that he will not be swayed in his convictions and the people must demonstrate their outrage of this.

Hervey Bay is facing a housing crisis, the government and profiteers are struggling to house its own population, yet the profiteers and government have the audacity to green light its largest tourism project yet. Under capitalism housing becomes a commodity and becoming homeless, which despite the many injustices of past economic systems, becomes a possibility. Even under Feudal systems homelessness was not something the people had to face. Housing must not be a commodity; it is a right.

Australia is facing a cost-of-living crisis nationwide and yet they have the audacity to greenlight a $450 million dollar tourist venture.

We the people of Hervey Bay who are struggling in these desperate times must not relent in the struggle against this development. We have already been mobilised against it with an inspirational spirit, but we must not relent.

The corrupt and bureaucratic Landlords, Profiteers, Government and Seymour must feel the power of the people in unity. They must be challenged. For the longevity of Hervey Bay and the spirit of resistance nationwide.

We must challenge the development of the Sheraton Hotel/Torquay Towers and all future developments that are putting profit over people and environment. Be creative, be persistent and challenge the destructive status quo. Hervey Bay is symptomatic of a nation-wide issue of Capitalism and settler-colonialism and its destructive and irreversible effects we as a country must change.

Do we really want the rich to sip champagne at the Sheraton while the people ponder prosperity?

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DFLP calls for arming West Bank Palestinians

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 10 September 2024

A message from the Foreign Affairs department at DFLP to the world’s parties about the crimes of Israeli settlers.

For these reasons... we call for the arming of the Palestinian people in the West Bank to combat Israeli settlers’ terrorism.

The terrorist acts committed by Zionist settlers in the West Bank under the protection of the occupation army cannot be seen as a reaction to the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation.

Rather, one of the reasons for this operation is the ongoing and past actions of the occupation army and settlers against the land and people of Palestine in the West Bank, including the repeated aggression against Palestinian cities and camps. In this context, numerous crimes committed before October 7 can be cited, such as the burning of the town of Huwara in Nablus Governorate in February 2023, the kidnapping and burning alive of the boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir in Shuafat, Jerusalem, in 2014 by settlers, the burning of the Dawabsha family's home in the village of Duma in Nablus, leading to the martyrdom of an 18-month-old infant, in addition to dozens of Palestinians who were martyred by settlers in their homes, fields, roads, schools, and public places.

The United Nations, the European Union, and Western countries have condemned the crimes of the settlers. Some described their criminal actions as horrific and a direct result of settlement policies and repeated instances of impunity. Others demanded the Israeli government to immediately stop these unacceptable acts, while some said that the settlers’ attacks on Palestinian civilians must stop. However, these positions and statements did not stop the crimes or curb their fascism. On the contrary, some Zionist gangs increased their defiance of Western positions by expanding the scope of their criminal acts and settlement activities. The result on the ground is that the settlers are becoming more ferocious and fascistic, and their leaders are expanding restrictions on the Palestinian landowners, whether through “laws” from Israeli bodies that have no legal authority to deal with another people and occupied Palestinian lands, or through military and administrative decisions from the army and its various apparatuses, or through field procedures that impose a new reality of occupation and settlement by legalizing land theft or expanding the granting of permits to settlers to build in the West Bank while restricting Palestinian construction and demolishing their buildings under the pretext that they are illegal.

While the occupation army continues to commit genocidal crimes against civilians in the Gaza Strip for more than ten months, political genocide continues in the West Bank by imposing the annexation and resolution plan by official bodies and settlement institutions working according to their own agenda, disregarding international condemnations. Since October 7, for example, Palestinian and international institutions have recorded more than 300 attacks against Palestinians by settlers, including shootings, vehicular assaults, house and field burnings, invasions of cities, camps, and remote communities, uprooting of trees, and road closures, in addition to the army’s operations of bombing, invasions, destruction, and arrests.

The goal of these practices is no longer a secret. Dozens of Israeli officials, including ministers and security and military officials, openly take responsibility for these crimes and their goals, which aim to expel the largest number of Palestinians. The recent plan by Smotrich to expand the scope and powers of security, military, and civil control for the army and its institutions is just one example of dozens of plans overseen by senior officials in the Israeli government and army.

Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich speaks of a clear plan to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state by increasing the number of Jewish settlements and settlers in the West Bank. Security Minister Ben-Gvir calls for unleashing more settlement outposts and launching a large-scale military operation to eliminate thousands of Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Israeli government tries to portray to the world that it is enforcing the law in the West Bank, through the Prime Minister’s criticism of the crimes committed by the settlers against Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s positions do not change the fact that the fascist and racist right-wing government in Israel, with all its components, oversees the arming of settlers, whether through ministers in the government and settlement institutions or through the occupation army itself and security institutions. Ben-Gvir has admitted more than once that through his ministry, he has armed 100,000 settlers and that there are 300,000 requests on the ministry’s table, in addition to approximately 165,000 weapons that were distributed to settlers before the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation. This confirms that Israel’s crimes, by its army and settlers, are not isolated from the plan that Israel seeks to impose in the West Bank, which is the annexation plan, ignoring the condemnations, appeals, and international and UN positions rejecting Israel’s practices in the West Bank.

What the media and Western embassy reports present about the increasing severity of settler crimes only reflects a small part of the reality that all Palestinian cities, camps, and communities in the West Bank are daily subjected to settler aggression and crimes, which are accompanied by repeated aggression carried out by the occupation army in many cities and camps. This indicates that there is a real partnership and division of roles between the army and settlement organizations that are unusually active in the West Bank, heavily armed with the latest weapons and an extermination and fascist ideology that believes only in killing and terrorism as a means to achieve its plans, repeating the experience of 1948, when Zionist gangs committed dozens of massacres against Palestinian civilians, resulting in the displacement of more than three-quarters of a million Palestinians who are still refugees in neighboring Arab countries and within Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian people view the positions of some Western countries, especially the United States, which consider settler crimes against Palestinians as mere violence, as partners in the crime, practicing political hypocrisy daily, in comparison with their positions on Palestinian resistance and the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, which came as a natural and necessary response to Israeli crimes and terrorism in various forms accumulated over the past decades. They ignore the fact that settlement and occupation are the highest forms of terrorism according to international laws, and that imposing individual sanctions on a small number of settlers is nothing but encouragement for the occupying state and the leaders, organizations, and militias of the settlers to continue committing their crimes. All forms of settlement are illegal and terrorism, as is the occupation that sponsors, encourages, and legitimizes the theft of Palestinian land.

For all these reasons, we in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine call for the arming of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the formation of defense committees for Palestinian cities, villages, and camps to confront settler gangs and the incursions of the occupation army, to be the protective shield alongside the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatuses so that they together defend the land and national dignity, raising the cost of Israeli colonial and occupation presence on Palestinian land, and sending a message to the international community that our people are tired of unanswered appeals, complaints, and positions, and will take their cause into their own hands, no matter the price and sacrifices required, to make the occupation understand clearly that our land will not be desecrated, and every inch of it will cost the occupier dearly.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
-Department of Foreign Afairs-
08/09/2024

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Inspiring Speakers At Free Palestine Rally In Adelaide

Written by: Ned K. on 9 September 2024

Supporters of the Palestinian people continue to take to the streets in cities all around the world.In some cities such as London, the numbers of people attending is in the hundreds of thousands.

In smaller cities such as Adelaide in South Australia they are much smaller, but no less important and effective.

On Sunday 8 September supporters of the Palestinian people rallied as they have done every second Sunday since October last year when the Israeli Government and its Defence Force commenced their intense attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza.

This latest Sunday rally, although small in numbers, was even more important and notable for the following reasons

1. It follows the Israeli Government’s expansion of its military offensive targeting Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank

2. This Adelaide rally was addressed by an Australian Services Union member who outlined the support for Palestinian people from union members from a growing number of Unions, even those like her Union that are affiliated to the ALP

3. A Palestinian woman who lives in Adelaide spoke with amazing clarity about what life in Australia is like for the Palestinian diaspora. With incredible feeling expressed in her voice, she explained that the Palestinian diaspora are not ok here. They feel completely alienated due to the Australian Government’s support and indifference for the Zionist regime’s genocide against the people of Gaza. She said the Palestinian people here despair that while feeling ignored here, they can hardly somehow return to their Palestinian homeland.

So, she asked “What can we do?”

She said the Palestinian diaspora will never give up fighting for the liberation of Palestinians from the Israeli Zionist regime and thanked people across Australia and the world who stood alongside Palestinians in their struggle for liberation.

Many people at the rally went to her side to personally express their support and congratulate her on speaking with such passion combined with clarity of why Palestinians will never give up!

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CEPU exercises right-to-disconnect

Written by: Nick G. on 9 September 2024

(Above: CFMEU members in Perth supporting their union)

When ACTU Secretary Sally McManus announced at the end of August the very welcome win of the right-to-disconnect, she probably had no idea that unions supporting the CFMEU would exercise it to disconnect from the ACTU and the ALP.

That is just what the 100,000-strong Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union has done, voting to disaffiliate from the ACTU and to withhold more than $1m in donations to the Labor Party ahead of the 2025 federal election.

The tactic is reminiscent of the period in the union movement in Victoria where in 1961 the more militant industrial unions created a bloc called the Trade Unionists’ Defence Committee to oppose the influence of the right-wing National Civic Council, and subsequently of the Victorian Trades Hall itself when it came under the control of the NCC in 1967.Two years later, the THC refused to oppose the gaoling of Tramways Union Secretary (and Vice-Chairman of our Party), Clarrie O’Shea. A group of 27 “rebel unions” coalesced around the Socialist Left of the ALP in Victoria.

The 27 "rebel unions" defied the ACTU directive to all unions and workers not to join the strike in support of striking Tramways Union members and their Secretary Clarrie O'Shea.

Today’s action by the CEPU is a measure of rank-and-file workers’ anger at the ALP and ACTU for their attack on, and attempt to destroy, the CFMEU.

The move to no longer make donations to the ALP has been welcomed by many workers. More unions and their members are calling for/considering disaffiliation from the ALP. Unions must be free to pursue the interests of their members regardless of which party of capitalism holds office. There should be no holding back on actions on the grounds that they might prevent Labor from gaining office, or embarrass it when it is in office.

The right of workers, in their unions, to pursue an agenda independent of the parliamentary fortunes of the ALP, must be fought for.

Time will tell whether disaffiliation from the ACTU is supported by enough unions to be worth pursuing. For the moment, it reflects workers’ anger at the treachery of the ACTU, and that is a good thing.

This is not about John Setka, or bikies or criminals. It is about defending the working class and their unions from the coordinated attacks by capital.

The SA Police Commissioner has just reported to the SA Government that as far as bikies or organised crime goes within the SA Branch of the CFMEU, there is “nothing to be overly concerned about”.

Yet the million-dollar man Mark Irving, (he is being paid $1.9m of CFMEU members' own funds over 3 years to destroy their union), has placed the SA Branch under Administration and sacked the popular State Secretary, Marcus Parè.

It is all about destroying a tough union and leaving its members to the tender mercies of a bunch of tough employers.

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Deep-Sea mining could quickly destroy marine ecosystems for profit

Written by: Leo A. on 9 September 2024

(Above: Capitalism is not interested in nodules’ oxygenating of the seas, but only in those components that grease the wheels of private profit. Image from Flickr Commons)

It is common in our current time that the pursuit of profit will irreparably damage or destroy a unique ecosystem before it can be protected, or before it has even been properly studied. Of all Australia’s ecosystems, the least studied by far is the deep sea which surrounds our nation’s coasts. Over a third of the seafloor within Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone has yet to be mapped, and globally this figure is even higher.

Much of the abyssal seafloor is covered in polymetallic nodules. These are pebble-like objects containing large amounts of manganese and other metals. A deep-sea mining industry based on the harvesting of these nodules is already inching toward production. Tests conducted in the 1980s showed that collecting them off the seafloor can be accomplished on a large scale – and the sections of seafloor harvested by these tests are still “dead zones” to this day.

This is because the nodules aren’t just rocks. A research study published in late July has shown that they play a critical role in keeping the deep sea habitable for its wildlife. Specifically, the nodules produce oxygen in the water which deep-sea organisms consume. It appears that this is due to the high voltage potentials of the nodule surfaces, which cause seawater electrolysis. In other words, the nodules split small amounts of the surrounding water into hydrogen and oxygen, the latter of which “dissolves” back into the water. This allows the environment to stay oxygenated without the need for photosynthesis.

Now imagine what will happen if this vital component of the abyssal ecosystem is harvested en masse. Without enough dissolved oxygen in the water, marine animals could suffocate to extinction. Many of these could go extinct without ever being discovered at all. Australia has more abyssal seafloor in its territory than almost any other nation, and so it is critical that we make the efforts necessary to protect our deep-sea environment, before greedy capitalists destroy it for a profit.

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The fraud of the Healthy Forests Foundation

Written by: Leo A. on 9 September 2024

(Above: Blinky Bill says "Hands off our forests!")

In late June, a new environmental NGO launched which calls itself the Healthy Forests Foundation. Within a matter of weeks, an ABC investigation exposed the true nature of this organisation – a front for some of the most powerful logging interests in Australia.

This is not the first time that big industries directly involved in causing environmental harm have created puppet organisations like this. Back in 2018, the federal government gave a $444 million grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. Attention was quickly brought to the corporate interests involved with the foundation, such as the obvious presence of major fossil fuel executives. Something similar is now happening here.

The Healthy Forests Foundation was registered on June 28. Two days later on June 30, one of Australia’s biggest logging companies, VicForests, shut its doors and ceased to exist following controversies of widespread and systemic illegal logging, and of spying on activists. The connection between the two groups is easy to spot. For example, the CEO and managing director of the Healthy Forests Foundation, Monique Dawson, was also the CEO of VicForests. Within weeks, several other former staff from VicForests joined the company, along with the CEO of a major logging lobby group in Victoria. Another powerful logger that’s found its way onto the board of the foundation is Pentar, a private company that both runs its own logging operations and also processes native timber.

The Healthy Forests Foundation says it's a not-for-profit environmental organisation, focused on protecting and restoring the health of Australia's forests. But it’s just a front. It’s just a way of keeping the logging industry going, with all the same industry players as before.

Meanwhile, there are many organisations in Australia who truly do have our forests’ best interests at heart. We must understand the distinction between true environmental activism and the trojan horses the capitalist class throws in our path to mislead us. Ultimately, the restoration of our forests to a truly healthy state will only be possible in an independent, socialist Australia.

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People's culture against imperialist Land Forces

Written by: Red Menace on 9 September 2024

This banger by Red Menace expresses all our rage, frustration and determination to dismantle the war machine in 2024.

After 10 months of struggle to #freepalestine from genocidal occupation, we plan to take on the military industrial complex at home - to #disruptlandforces.

While weapons corporations are making a killing, the people and the planet suffer again and again and again. This time, we are drawing a line in the sand. No more! No more flesh for cash or blood for oil.

No. More. War.

Watch on Youtube here.

Or here on Instagram.

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Freedom for Georges Abdallah!

Written by: United Campaign for the Release of Georges Abdallah on 9 September 2024

We have previously mentioned the campaign for the release of Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese Communist who worked with the Palestine Liberation Organisation. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in France for killing a US military attache and an Israeli diplomat. He is now the longest-serving prisoner in Europe. Hs case comes up for review, coincidentally, on October 7.

We reprint below a call for his release by the Free Georges Abdallah Committee. We have signed the call. The Committee, in thanking us for our signature, has indicated the importance of every expression of proletarian internationalism.

They wrote: “Good evening comrades, Thank you for your signature and for your constant and unconditional support for our comrade Georges Abdallah. Your commitment helps make this cause visible on the international level and this has a very important echo here. Long live proletarian internationalism! Let's continue the fight! Let's free Georges Abdallah! Solidarity greetings.”

Their statement follows - eds.

Freedom for Georges Abdallah!

October 1984 – October 2024: 40 years in prison is enough! On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released!

October 7! The news is official: on October 7, 2024, the sentencing court will hold a hearing in Lannemezan to rule on the request for release on parole and expulsion from France filed more than a year ago by Georges Abdallah's lawyer.

October 1984 - October 2024: this decisive hearing will confirm, to the nearest few days, the 40 years of detention in France of our comrade.

October 1984 - October 2024: we expect this hearing to result in the decision to release Georges Abdallah, this exceptional prisoner, the oldest political detainee in France and probably in Europe.

October 1984 - October 2024: 40 years of detention after a conviction handed down following an iniquitous political-police setup and a first lawyer betraying his client by working for the secret services, 40 years of detention despite the end of his security sentence 25 years ago, 40 years of detention while his requests for release were twice accepted at first instance... then rejected on appeal by the prosecution under orders from the government!

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He who has had to face from the beginning the exceptional measures and laws aggravating the standards of the "rule of law" (special assize court, preventive detention, etc.).

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He whose perpetual detention has been denounced by many institutions and even former senior officials of the country.

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He who has already filed nine requests for release. The last one, dating from 2012, having been accepted... on condition that the Minister of the Interior sign an expulsion order, which E. Valls (like his successors) refused to do. This denial of a court decision was thus commented on in 2022 by the public rapporteur of the administrative court: "Such a solution is hardly satisfactory, but no other seems conceivable to us within the legal framework. We must hope that the situation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah can evolve by other means." […] "It is quite obvious that the continued detention of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, for almost thirty-eight years, obeys considerations of an extra-legal nature that escape you."

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He who has therefore constantly been the object of pressure from political power, as when a Minister of Justice, J.-J. Urvoas, allowed himself to announce that "real life imprisonment" applies to Georges Abdallah. He who has also been repeatedly subjected to pressure from the highest authorities of the United States, demanding that the French government find a way to keep Georges Abdallah in prison.

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He whose return his country, Lebanon, has been officially demanding for a long time.

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! We, the signatories of this text, proclaim and demand it and we will not stop chanting it, writing it, posting it and demonstrating it during a new and powerful month of mobilization, until this date of October 7.

This balance of power, a decisive issue for the release of our comrade, we have been building for many years. Today, there are thousands and thousands of us, in France and around the world, mobilizing, in various forms and respecting our diversity, to achieve our sole objective: to free Georges Abdallah.

As our comrade says: "Victory or victory!" This is why we will not give up until this victory, and this while fully respecting the political identity of Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese revolutionary activist, communist, fighter in the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people. The one who will be freed is indeed a symbol of resistance to oppression, who has never denied himself throughout these 40 years behind the walls. But it is in this lifelong struggle that we also recognize the indispensable internationalist solidarity with the struggles of peoples for their liberation and their legitimate right to free themselves from exploitation and domination.

In the final stretch of this new legal offensive launched by Georges Abdallah, all of us, signatories of this text, commit to supporting his approach by making it resonate wherever we are, until the hearing on October 7 - and if necessary even after, in particular on October 26 where a new national demonstration will take place in Lannemezan - to increase the pressure on the French State and finally succeed in making it give in.

So, let's increase the pressure even more to snatch victory, keeping in mind what Georges Abdallah told us in 2022: "The various solidarity initiatives that you have developed in this international campaign for a month provide a stinging denial to those who were banking on the loss of momentum of your mobilization."

May a thousand initiatives flourish from September 7 to October 7, 2024 for this international month of coordinated actions, everywhere in France, in the streets and in the neighborhoods, in the universities and even in the Assembly, on the walls and in the media, and internationally in front of French embassies and consulates.

May a thousand initiatives flourish to finally obtain the freedom of Georges Abdallah by making our solidarity cry heard: "Georges Abdallah, your comrades are here!"

40 years in prison, a whole life of fighting! Freedom for Georges Abdallah!

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be freed! On October 7, Georges Abdallah will be free!

Paris, August 22, 2024
United campaign for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

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CPA (M-L) concludes 16th Congress

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 8 August 2024

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) recently concluded its 16th Congress.

The Congress was held as a process of consultation and discussion over 6 months, beginning on the 60th anniversary of its founding in March 1964.

Congress delegates read submissions from members and approved various changes to the Party Program, adopted a report on the international situation and one on the work of the 15th Central Committee.

Motions were debated and adopted on our ICOR affiliation and on retaining an Australian focus in our work.

Younger members were brought onto the new Central Committee, which then elected the following office-bearers.

Chairperson: Nick G.

Vice-Chairperson: Alice M.

Congress also discussed our ongoing priorities and tasks and referred a number of matters to the incoming Central Committee.

Congress reaffirmed our determination to build the revolutionary movement for the achievement of socialism and anti-imperialist independence.

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Message from the "Department of Foreign Affairs at DFLP": Aggression on the West Bank

Written by: DFLP on 3 September 2024

(Above: The war criminal Netanyahu points to a map from which the West Bank has been erased, as per the policy of his Likud Party.)

In response to the desires and pressures of the fascist and extremist wing-right in Israel, the Israeli occupation army launched a military aggression on August 28th, targeting several cities and Palestinian camps in the West Bank. The stated goal was to eliminate the Palestinian resistance and its military arms. In line with this goal, the aim is to reshape Palestinian areas to align with Israeli plans, which involve emptying certain areas of their inhabitants to expand colonial settlement areas

This operation cannot be viewed as a reaction to any specific event, but rather as a new aggression that continues the systematic killing practiced by the occupation army against the Palestinian people in various areas of the West Bank. According to international law, United Nations resolutions, and the recognition of hundreds of countries around the world, these areas are Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. The Palestinian people have the right to resort to various forms of struggle and resistance to liberate these lands and exercise their national rights freely, far from all forms of occupation and dependency.

This aggression also occurs within the framework of two interconnected issues: the first being the genocide committed in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues to benefit from the support provided by the Western and NATO international alliance to achieve the greatest possible ground gains. The second issue is the attempt to impose the Zionist plan known as the "Decisive Plan" through blood and fire. This plan has been openly announced by several Israeli officials, in clear defiance not only of the Palestinian people but also of the entire international system, which has failed to translate its resolutions into reality on the ground and has also failed to provide protection to a people living under occupation.

By examining the general outlines of the "Annexation and Decisive Plan," it becomes clear that Israel is working to detail this plan, which confines Palestinians to distant cantons on a very small geographical area. According to Israeli visions, this area only needs an improved living reality, which Israel will work to develop, completely ignoring all Palestinian political and national rights. Based on this, Israel presents the Palestinian people with three options:
The first option is to accept the annexation plan and "peacefully" coexist with the occupation and its future projects, with the possibility of creating job opportunities and open commercial areas, as was suggested by the Manama Workshop held in Bahrain in 2019 as part of the arrangements for the American Deal of the Century.

The second option is the opening of the door to "voluntary migration" with Israeli financial and administrative facilitation. This will be done after several steps that Israel will take, which are likely to force the majority of Palestinians to choose this option. These include laws and decisions that restrict Palestinians in their land, and harassment by heavily armed occupation soldiers and settlers.

The third option, for those who reject the first two, is persecution, killing, and imprisonment. This is what is currently happening in the cities and camps of the West Bank and on the roads and streets connecting the Palestinian cities and camps.

Therefore, the invasions of cities and camps, the displacement of residents, the destruction of infrastructure, and the perpetration of mass massacres are part of a well-thought-out process that shifts the war of displacement, annexation, and ethnic cleansing to its comprehensive bloody phase. In this phase, the occupying state resorts to all types of weapons, from warplanes to tanks, bulldozers, artillery bombardment, the imposition of blockades on hospitals, the obstruction of medical teams, and turning the northern West Bank, in particular, into a theater of gratuitous killing, extending the brutal aggression happening in the Gaza Strip.

The successive massacres and crimes against the Palestinian people throughout the years of occupation, which have escalated in recent years with the rise of the fascist right to power in Israel, accompanied by the deliberate destruction of infrastructure, will not succeed in breaking the will of the Palestinian people or in implementing the displacement and annexation plans pursued by Israel and some of its officials. Instead, they will only ignite and expand the resistance, increasing its creativity in its forms.

The occupation has previously carried out a similar operation during the "Defensive Shield" aggression in 2002, when Israel mobilized more than 30,000 soldiers, fulfilling an electoral promise made by Ariel Sharon to his voters under the slogan "Let the army win," with the aim of crushing the intifada. However, after about five weeks (from March 29th to May 10th) of killing, bombing, destruction, and using all of its immense power without any restraints, Israel failed to achieve a decisive victory despite the heavy human losses among the Palestinian people. It also failed to crush the resistance, which only increased its intensity inside Israel. The only thing Israel succeeded in was violating Palestinian Authority areas and breaking the geographic divisions imposed by the Oslo Accords in the distribution of security, military, and functional control between the Authority and Israel. This reasserted Israel’s direct occupation, ignoring the agreements signed with it, confirming the true intentions and goals behind those agreements.

Today, what the occupation army and its settlers are committing in the West Bank can only be seen as collusion and partnership by some Western powers, led by the United States of America, and a disgraceful Arab and international silence that provides the occupying enemy with all the reasons for strength and arrogance, encouraging it to continue the genocide, which is nearing the end of its first year in the Gaza Strip, aiming to liquidate the Palestinian cause in service of Western imperialist countries and the Zionist movement's dominance over the Middle East and the world.

Israel's practices and its method of dealing with the Gaza Strip, through siege, wars, destruction, and humiliation, were among the reasons, along with others, that led to the eruption of resistance and the development of its capabilities, culminating in the "Al-Aqsa Flood." What is happening today in the West Bank is a prelude that requires all components of the Palestinian national liberation movement, led by the security institutions affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, to defend the Palestinian land and its owners who face the dangers of death, displacement, imprisonment, and abuse as part of the ethnic cleansing operations committed by the Israeli occupation. Every free person in the world must understand that the volcano of revolution in Palestine may cool down a bit, but its fire will never go out. The great explosion is inevitable and will be a major revolution that will burn all those who conspired, shirked, and contributed to the crime committed by the Israeli fascist army against the Palestinian people.

We, in the "Department of Foreign Affairs at DFLP”, place this information in the hands of political parties and social frameworks of all kinds. We call for expanding their actions and deepening their engagement with what is happening to exert pressure on their governments for more balanced positions that align with the minimum humanitarian, ethical, political, and legal standards, all of which are being violated by the Israeli fascism supported by the United States and Western countries.

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
-Department of Foreign Affairs-
02/09/2024

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Culture Serves the Ruling Class

Written by: Duncan B. on 1 September 2024

("Creativity belongs to the working class" courtesy of Earth Liberation Studios)

Marx wrote in his Preface and Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, “In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, which are independent of their will, namely, relations of production corresponding to a determinate stage of development of their material forces of production.

The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which there arises a legal and political superstructure and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life-process in general.”

Culture, being part of the intellectual life-process is part of the superstructure of a class society. The dominant culture in class society is the culture of the dominant class. Under capitalism, the dominant culture is capitalist culture. Under socialism, the dominant culture is socialist culture.

As Mao Zedong wrote in Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, “In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or is independent of politics.”

Mao pointed out that revolutionary literature and art are an indispensable part of the revolutionary cause. He said, “If we had no literature and art even in the broadest and most ordinary sense, we could not carry on the revolutionary movement and win victory.”

In Australia the capitalist class is the dominant class, and the dominant culture is capitalist culture, in particular the culture of US imperialism. For nearly 100 years Australia has been bombarded with US culture, through Hollywood, American music, streaming services and social media.

Australia has long had its own vibrant culture which is continually being swamped by US culture. We have over 60,000 years of indigenous culture expressed through art, music and dance. We have a proud working class culture, further enriched by the migrants from many countries who have brought their culture to Australia.

Marx and Engels wrote in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid wage-labourers.”

This is true in Australia, not only for poets but for other creative people. Very few Australian actors, writers, artists or musicians are able to make a living from what they create. They often live in poverty, holding precarious casual jobs in order to survive and continue creating. Writers often lead a hand-to-mouth existence while living in hope of winning a literary prize to boost their meagre earnings. Many artists are also struggling to survive while trying to get their works seen by the public.

In Australia nearly half of Australian musicians earned less than $6000 a year from their talents, according to a poll conducted by the Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance. Only about one in five musicians are able to make a living from their music.

Sixty-four percent of musicians earned less than $15,000 a year, while median earnings for musicians who mainly draw their income from music are from $48,000 to $60,000 a year. This is poor recompense for the hours spent on the road and rehearsing on top of the actual performance. The lockdowns during COVID made the situation worse as actors and musicians were unable to perform during that time.

The very existence of writers, artists and musicians is coming under threat from Artificial Intelligence. We are already seeing works of art, music and literature created by AI. Musicians and songwriters are concerned that tech companies are using their creations to train AI without payment, causing them financial loss. Actors fear being replaced by AI-generated clones.

Under socialism actors, writers, artists, musicians and other cultural workers would be valued and respected and provided with the means and resources to contribute to enriching society without having to worry where their next meal is coming from.

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Pacific Islands Forum beset by problematic scenarios.

Written by: (Contributed) on 3 September 2024

The officially stated agenda of the Pacific Island Forum (PIF), 2024, hosted by Tonga, was couched in various criteria and concerns relevant for their eighteen member countries. Other US-led considerations were not, however, openly publicised, and subject to official diplomatic silence.

Specific issues arising from a US-led agenda, nevertheless, proved difficult for them to hide amidst their regional Indo-Pacific defence and security provision and escalating diplomatic hostilities with China.

The 2024 PIF took place during the last week of August in a region racked with US-led diplomatic hostilities toward China. The influential Pacific body, nevertheless, issued briefly stated agenda items couched in language designed specifically to not create division within the organisation and a regional environment fraught with problems. (1) Recent developments have been important: the Pacific, historically, was regarded by the US as a backwater; a multitude of small islands and countries with low levels of economic development that did not attract much diplomatic attention from Washington and the Pentagon. (2) There was not much of an assessed threat to 'US interests' and hegemony.

The rise of China as a serious regional and global competitor to traditional US hegemonic positions, however, has resulted in the US increasing their defence and security provision following revelations from a US Congress commission in 2019, 'that the US is no longer clearly superior to the threats it faces around the world … and the US … would struggle to win a conflict against China'. (3)

The enlarged Indo-Pacific region has also been subdivided by the US into island chains planned to restrict China's access and egress across the wider region, with newer plans in place to add fourth and fifth chains across the vast Indian Ocean.

The issue of Taiwan and its recognition by some PIF member countries has also remained a pressing and divisive consideration. Three Micronesian countries, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Palau, officially recognise Taiwan, with full diplomatic links. Other PIF member countries across Polynesia and the South Pacific recognise China.

An attempt by the Solomon Islands to exclude Taiwan proved unsuccessful, although revealed deep divisions inside the PIF, which also have direct bearing upon US Island Chain Theory. Taiwan, which hosts a large clandestine US diplomatic presence, marks a central position with the first and second chains, restricting China's ability to openly access and have egress with Oceania. (4) The fact Oceania includes Australia and New Zealand, two member countries of the elite Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, reveals the importance of ICT for the Pentagon's military planning.

Moves by the US to push the Philippines into a central role with hostilities toward China in the South China Seas, likewise, has some direct bearing upon the PIF. (5) About twenty per cent of Palau's tiny population are ethnic Filipinos. (6) Elsewhere, across the PIF member countries, large number of Philippine guest workers provide essential services. All PIF member countries have large Chinese ethnic minorities, some with several centuries of standing; the US-led Cold War has had serious implications for the Pacific.

The 2024 PIF, therefore, has taken place in a regional environment which can best be described as problematic. PIF member countries, for example, acknowledge climate change is an issue of central importance, and the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres attended the forum 'to demand fresh efforts by the world's biggest carbon emitters to phase out fossil fuels … with outcomes including … extreme weather events from raging tropical cyclones to record ocean heat-waves'. (7) Guterres, in fact, used the PIF opening ceremony to propose a ' fossil fuel-free Pacific … as a … blue-print for the world. (8)

A diplomatic statement issued by Fiji in June contained a warning for PIF member countries with 'poly-crisis in which climate change, human security, trans-national crime, and geopolitical competition were reinforcing and exacerbating one another'. (9)

The US, meanwhile, represented by Kurt Campbell, Deputy Secretary of State and well-known China hawk, did not even bother to openly discuss the PIF diplomatic statements; the US had other agenda considerations, 'as Washington moves to strengthen engagement with Pacific nations'. (10) While the US placed great emphasis upon diplomatic recognition of 'the centrality of the grouping to the region's future in recent AUSMIN talks in Washington'; the US position can hardly be regarded as diplomacy in good faith. (11) It is little other than an attempt by Washington and the Pentagon to maintain the Pacific as a region of 'US interests', marked by political interference and neo-colonial economic relations. The region is rich in natural resources and mineral deposits, including rare earths.

It is, however, the manner in which the US has pushed its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) into the Pacific that has become a major diplomatic issue for PIF member countries. Silence has prevailed. The moves, however, have been accompanied by a massive US-led upgrade and build-up of their presence in northern Australia. 'Australia … it has been officially announced in Washington … has become the central base of operations for America's military … a recently announced boost to US bomber deployments to Australia's Top End bases would enable America to project power across the region'. (12) The moves have also been accompanied by proposals to upgrade US troop rotations in northern Australia from the existing 2,500 a year, to a 'full expeditionary force of 16,000 personnel'. (13)

Marked by the elevation of Japan as a major global US alliance partner, the IPS rests upon the so-called 'Quad', consisting of the US, Japan, Australia and India; China has been effectively hemmed in from all sides. (14) The recent incorporation of the Philippines into the IPS on the basis of a lower-level partner was marked by references to military-to-military engagement and a 'defensive web of partners and allies'. (15)

PIF member countries have been watching these developments with a sense of unease; they stand to be drawn into escalating US-led diplomatic rivalries with China, which remains their largest and most important trading partner.

Recent developments in Palau, for example, reveal just how high the stakes have become for the US in the Pacific.

Palau, with a population of 18,000 spread across five hundred small islands and atolls, is directly linked into US diplomacy through the Compact of Free Association (CFA) together with the Marshal Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. Palau has huge strategic significance for the Philippines, marking the boundaries of the Philippine Sea which are contested by China and patrolled by US marine forces responsible for security provision.

A recent decision by the US to use Palau for an 'over the horizon' radar system designed to be fully operational in 2026, has been accompanied by the upgrading of local airfields across the Pacific. (16) The $120 million system is composed of Receiver and Transmitter terminals, based in the northern part of Palau in Babeldaos and in the south at Angaur, at opposite ends of strategic island chains.(17)

The new Palau radar system also forms part of a matrix linked to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, two hubs for 'US interests'. The former is then linked directly to US intelligence facilities based in Pine Gap, Central Australia which swings on an arc to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean; Guam and Diego Garcia have been upgraded as hubs for military operations, Darwen, in northern Australia, is the support centre. (18)

All US defence and security 'hubs' are correspondingly linked to 'spokes', their formation extending the power of the US deeper into the Pacific and Indian Ocean, enhancing their IPS. (19) There is little ambiguity about the role of the IPS facilities based in Palau; it has already been noted it has been designed to boost the US role in the Pacific. (20)

While it has been noted there has been political opposition to the new US facilities in Palau, it is also important to note Australia has provided a significant role for the establishment of US-led regionally controlled intelligence facilities, including the IPS:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. See Website: Pacific Islands Forum, Release: 12 April 2024, Joint Media Release: Tonga, 10 April 2024; and, China proxy pushes Taiwan ban, Australian, 26 August 2024.
2. See: Pacific Forum, The US Indo-Pacific Strategy, 23 February 2021.
3. Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
4. See: Beijing keeps a wary eye on new US Taipei outpost, Australian, 18 June 2018.
5. South China Sea raises fear of a super-power war, Australian, 21 August 2024.
6. Philippines vows to resolve maritime dispute with Palau, The Philippine Star, 24 September 2021.
7. Australian, op.cit., 26 August 2024.
8. ALP gas plan irks Pacific leaders, Australian, 28 August 2024.
9. Australian, op.cit., 26 August 2024.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Deterrence starts at the Top (End), The Weekend Australian, 17-18 August 2024.
13. Call to boost US marines' presence in Top End, Australian, 7 August 2024.
14. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
15. Manila adds to its security network, Australian, 26 July 2024.
16. See: US missile defence proposal, Reuters, 21 December 2023; and, US plans, RFA., 1 November 2023.
17. A new radar installation in the Pacific, Popular Science, 5 January 2023; and, RFA., ibid., 1 November 2023.
18. See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size; and, US intensifies military presence in the Indo-Pacific, The Global Times (Beijing), 24 July 2018.
19. Palau-based radar, Geo-Indo-Pacific, 27 July 2024.
20. Reuters, ibid., 21 December 2023.

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Turkey: Freedom for the Prisoners of the Kobanê Case!

Written by: Solidarity Initiative for Figen Yüksekdag on 2 September 2024

We have been contacted by the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) of Turkey and asked to publicise the case of leaders arrested in 2016 for supporting the Kurdish revolutionary forces in Kobane in neighbouring Syria.

The HDP is a social democratic party with representation in the Turkish parliament. It is not a revolutionary party but has opposed the reactionary, fascist Erdogan regime.

In 2014, it called for demonstrations in support of Kobane, whose majority Kurdish people were fighting a life and death battle with ISIS. They were ultimately successful but the region they have liberated in north-east Syria presents a threat to Turkey, which keeps its own Kurds under draconian control, and is today bombing the Syrian Kurds.

We support the right of the HDP to support Kobane and to oppose the Erdogan regime – eds.

.....................

Freedom for the Prisoners of the Kobanê Case!

On May 16, 2024, the protracted “Kobanê Case” in Turkey concluded with an immense verdict of 407 years in prison for former board members and leading figures of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), including former co-chairs Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş, who have been detained since November 4, 2016. Those convicted in this trial stand as symbols of the relentless fight for equality, justice, and freedom in Turkey.

The resistance of the people of Kobanê against the brutal ISIS attack in October 2014 garnered global sympathy and political and practical support. Thanks to the heroic resistance of the Kurdish freedom fighters and international solidarity, Kobanê did not fall; instead, it marked the beginning of ISIS's defeat. The HDP's solidarity with the people of Kobanê and its call for support for this people is a completely democratic and legitimate right and cannot be used as a pretext for this trial.

The Kobanê Trial has clearly demonstrated that the judiciary in Turkey is not independent and has become an extension of political power. Ongoing bans against the HDP, arrests and suppression of democratic opposition, restrictions on assembly and demonstration rights, the isolation of prisoners and denial of their medical care, and media censorship are all manifestations of the multifaceted attack on democratic freedoms in Turkey. This is also evident in the non-implementation of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments, such as those in the cases of Yüksekdağ, Demirtaş, and Kavala.

We view the trials and lengthy sentences against the HDP's leading figures as expressions of the Erdoğan dictatorship's efforts to suppress democratic opposition. We express our solidarity with Figen Yüksekdağ, Selahattin Demirtaş, and all those convicted in this trial, who steadfastly stand against this injustice and for democracy and political freedom.

We demand the annulment of the sentences for the prisoners of the Kobanê show trial and the immediate release of Figen Yüksekdağ, Selahattin Demirtaş, Alp Altınörs, Ali Ürküt, Aynur Aşan, Bülent Parmaksız, Dilek Yağlı, Günay Kubilay, İsmail Şengül, Nazmi Gür, Pervin Oduncu, and Zeynep Ölbeci.
............
Who is Figen Yüksekdağ?

Figen Yüksekdağ is pioneering advocate for freedom and equality and a representative of the socialist movement in Turkey. Born on November 9, 1971, in Adana-Ceyhan, she was introduced to socialist ideals during her school years. Her political activities led her into conflict with the Turkish state at a young age, resulting in arrests and repression. As a student, she was involved in various student associations advocating for democratic and social rights, including the High School Students' Association (LÖB), the Working High School Students' Association, and the Association of Democratic High School Students.

During her university years, Yüksekdağ founded student unions and later worked as a journalist for various socialist publications such as the youth magazine Özgür Gençlik and the weekly newspaper Atılım. Her commitment to women's rights was evident in her role as editor of the magazine Sosyalist Kadın (Socialist Woman).

Her political activities intensified in 2002 when she became the spokesperson for the Socialist Platform of the Oppressed. Despite serving a one-year prison sentence in 2006, she continued her work and contributed to the founding of the Working Women's Association. Her participation in the funeral of the socialist intellectual Kutsiye Bozoklar in 2009 led to another arrest.

In 2010, she played a key role in founding the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and became its chairperson. Amidst a period of global political upheaval, including the Arab uprisings and the Gezi Park uprising in Turkey in 2013, as well as growing social protests against the global economic crisis, she participated in the founding process of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). In June 2014, she was elected as co-chair of the HDP alongside Selahattin Demirtaş.

As a Member of Parliament for the Kurdish region of Van from 2015 to 2018, Yüksekdağ faced constant attacks and repression from the Turkish government, which viewed her position and the role of the HDP as a threat. On November 4, 2016, she was arrested along with other leading HDP representatives as part of the so-called Kobanê trial.

Even in prison, Yüksekdağ continued her resistance. Her poetry collection The Walls Will Collapse, written in prison, was banned and confiscated. Yüksekdağ remains a symbolic figure in the fight for women's freedom, the self-determination of peoples, and against exploitation and oppression, both inside and outside the prison walls.

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Study of Marxism-Leninism is the key to understanding the role of the ALP and unions

Written by: Nick G on 29 August 2024

The magnificent response by construction workers to the attempted destruction of their union has included disgust at the perceived betrayal of workers by the Labor Party. That disgust has extended to all but a few in the leadership of the union movement for failing to show solidarity with, and to support, the CFMEU.

We understand the labelling of Albanese and McManus as class traitors.

People who have to work for a living and who join the ALP believing it will advance their interests are entitled to feel betrayed. Union members who are organised by their union to spend hours door-knocking for Labor in the lead-up to an election, or who loyally stand at polling booths handing out Labor “how-to-vote” cards are entitled to feel betrayed.

It all fits a pattern.

For such people there is hope for parliamentary means of achieving “fairness” through a Labor (or Greens) party. The sentiment behind this hope is quite resilient.

Despite all the betrayals by Labor governments, some people seem unable to break out of a cycle of hoping for a better deal than they are going to get from the Liberals, and then losing heart every time Labor wins office and backtracks on its promises to the point where it seems indistinguishable from the more open party of big business. We respect this sentiment, but do not share it. We need to break out of its dead-end cycle.

As a Marxist-Leninist Party, we believe that study of revolutionary theory is the key to really understanding the role of the Labor Party and of unions.

We could (and do) refer interested readers to the writers of the classic texts of this theory.

But at the present time of Labor’s attacks on the CFMEU, and of the failure of most unions to repel those attacks, we strongly recommend two texts that are immersed in the reality of Australian conditions. They are embedded in the reality of the need to understand the Labor Party and of the unions associated with it.

In 1965, one year after the founding of our Party following a split in the original Communist Party of Australia (CPA), our founding Chairperson Ted Hill wrote Looking Backward: Looking Forward (Revolutionary Socialist Politics Against Trade Union and Parliamentary Politics).

Hill disputed the view then dominant in the CPA that the Labor Party was a “two-class” party, that it was simultaneously a party of the working class and a party of the capitalist class.

He examined the circumstances under which unions had created the Labor Party.

It was born from the defeat of the prolonged strikes of the early 1890s when workers looked for other ways to take on the capitalists.

“They wanted to use the bourgeois parliament to enact measures that would satisfy the workers’ demands to improve their own lot.”

There was insufficient experience to understand that the state was an apparatus for the suppression of the working class by the capitalist class, and insufficient experience to understand that parliament was a part of that state apparatus and not a neutral institution independent of the capitalist state.

“Thus, they accepted capitalism in two ways: (1) their demands accepted the social system of capitalism, (2) their methods of achieving them accepted the social institution of capitalism – parliament.”

These acceptances meant that although born from and based in communities of working class people, the character of the Labor Party was not “two-class” but “one class” - that it would be a party of capitalism and would work to make capitalism more acceptable to the working class on one hand, and the working class more acceptable to capitalism on the other hand.

That latter function of the Labor Party is the reason for its attempted destruction of the CFMEU.

The reluctance of unions affiliated to the Labor Party to embarrass it in any way, to endanger its chances of winning office, or, in in office, of retaining it, explain their collusion with a party of capitalism that attacks the working class.

But it is more than that. Unions are required for their legal existence to be tied in a thousand and one ways to industrial rules set up by the capitalist class. And they become part of capitalism through their accumulated assets, including investments and property, all of which they hold on the condition that they do not break the rules, that they accept the decisions of bodies created by the capitalist class to play the role of “independent umpires”.

All of this is the subject of Looking Backward: Looking Forward.

In October 1974, while the Whitlam government was still in office, and had the task of taking the country out of the stultifying era of conservative party rule, Hill wrote The Labor Party? Dr Evatt – The Petrov Affair – The Whitlam Government.

It drew on Hill’s collaboration with Evatt as a lawyer representing the Communist Party at the Petrov Royal Commission, and the first years of Whitlam’s government, to make a closer examination of the nature of the ALP as a party of capitalism.

In our introduction to a 2023 pdf of the book, we wrote: “Since this book was written, additional experience has arisen of Labor in office, including its attacks on the workers through the Accord, its pioneering of neo-liberalism under Hawke and Keating, its keeping the unions under control through Fair Work Australia, its further opening of Australian territory to the US military under Gillard, and the continuation of that treachery via AUKUS under Albanese, Wong and Marles. All these later phenomena can be best understood by learning from the example set by Hill in his analysis of the Labor Party.”

For interested readers, Looking Backward: Looking Forward (which we have just republished) is available as a pdf and an e-book here: Books & Pamphlets — E F HILL .

Hill’s The Labor Party? is available as a pdf here: EFHs+The+Labor+Party+FINAL2.pdf (cpaml.org)

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Attacks on Greens MP reveal ruling class distortions and weakness

Written by: Nick G. on 28 August 2024

Yesterday’s massive rallies by construction workers took place under conditions of an ALP and ACTU direction that no unions should attend or otherwise show their support.

With the exception of a few defiant unions including the Maritime Union and the Electrical Trades Union, union leaders complied with the directive. Some organisers from other unions did attend, but were forbidden to carry union flags or wear clothing that identified their union.

In their place, a few brave politicians did speak. In a previous article we have referred to SA Upper House member Connie Benaros, the first to speak at the Adelaide rally. Also present was Greens upper house member Tammy Franks, a long-time supporter of progressive issues and union rights.

In Brisbane, the Greens federal MP, Max Chandler-Mather, expressed his support for the CFMEU, and said that Labor’s placing of the union under Administration and sacking of 270 officials and delegates was “an attack on every worker in the country”.

From the ruling class point of view, the Greens MP had broken ranks. He had showed that the allegations of criminals and bikies having infiltrated the union just did not wash. He did not believe that they justified the destruction of the most militant union in the country.

He had to be punished.

Chandler-Mather was interviewed that night by the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson. There was really no pretence at an interview at all. Ferguson was aggressive, spiteful and concerned only to interrogate Chandler-Mather about why he would share a stage with the CFMEU, allowing him only a few seconds to respond before interrupting him and aggressively repeating the same question over and over.

(Ferguson: wrong to stand with Aussie workers, but OK to snuggle up to notorious US far-right fascist Steve Bannon)

Chandler-Mather seemed astounded by the vitriol, but gathered his wits to explain that the Labor government had acted on the basis of unproven allegations that should have been referred to a court of law and not subjected to trial by the media.

He did not apologise for supporting CFMEU members.

But the attack on Chandler-Mather did not stop there.

On this morning’s (Wednesday) AM program on ABC radio, reporter Rachel Mealey returned to Chandler-Mather’s attendance at the Brisbane rally, saying he had accused Labor of “turning its back on all workers by putting the CFMEU into administration”.

She then stated that Workplace Relations minister Murray Watt “says he's appalled the Greens would share a stage with organisers in front of a crowd where nazi symbolism was on display”.

Then we heard Watt saying it was “very, very disturbing that we saw a Green MP, Max Chandler-Mather, decide to share a stage with the construction union in Brisbane yesterday, despite those placards invoking Nazi references, despite the coffins with the Prime Minister’s face…”

To try and discredit Chandler-Mather in this way shows just how desperate the government is to stop any support being expressed for a union they are hell-bent on destroying in the interests of big foreign and local capital.

Readers can see the content of the “Nazi symbolism” and “Nazi references” in the photo above.

Even blind Freddie can see that it is anti-Nazi. It is condemning Albanese for setting out to destroy militant unions just as Adolf Hitler did in Nazi Germany.

There is nothing sympathetic towards, or supportive of Nazism.

In the same photo is a placard depicting ACTU leader Sally McManus as “Sally McThatcher”.

Does that make it an expression of support for the union destroyer Maggie Thatcher?

We applaud Max Chandler-Mather.

As for the placards drawing parallels between Albanese and Hitler, we say the more the better.

As for those gutless union leaders and their leader Sally McThatcher, we remind them to revisit the words of Germany’s Pastor Niemoller, imprisoned by Hitler from 1937 to 1945: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”

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Sacking of CFMEU rank and file reps a wake-up call for all workers

Written by: Ned K. on 28 August 2024

(Above: CFMEU members take to the streets in Melbourne)

The new industrial laws enabling the CFMEU to be put in control of an Administrator are a wake-up call for all Unions and all workers.

On the first day of his new job, the Administrator sacked over 200 elected construction worker union representatives, most of whom are workers, not Union Officials.

A few weeks earlier, industrial Awards and the Fair Work Act included Delegate Rights to be inserted in Awards and to apply as a minimum standard in enterprise agreements.

The Delegate Rights were hailed by the federal government as evidence of its support for democracy for workers in their workplaces. They now had the right to elect their workplace Union representative. Many workers support the new Delegate Rights as a step towards organizing in their workplace and across whole industries and sectors of the economy.

Many must now be thinking the new Delegate Rights will be at risk, along with their whole Union, if the employers and their governments think workers' leadership on the job and collective strength is getting too powerful.

Workers are getting the government's message loud and clear - "You can have your Union, but we and the employers hold the upper hand. We can appoint an Administrator and prevent all your active workplace Delegates from being on committees of management or councils of the Union ".

It is true that bosses have always tried to terminate workers' leaders in workplaces who are effective and who cannot be "bought off" or moved out of harm's way to some isolated position in the workplace. However, the new industrial laws aimed initially at construction workers take the armoury of laws and measures aimed at diluting or destroying the collective bourgeois legal rights to another level.

The new laws are showing workers the limitations of official Union organizational structures, even at the workplace level where workers elect their own Delegates. The current situation for CFMEU members is that while they may still have a Delegate in their workplace, the official organization of the Union across worksites and the whole country is now dismantled.

The rallies held by CFMEU members and supporters on Tuesday 27 August in capital cities showed that construction workers are determined to remain united as CFMEU members. They will find appropriate ways to organize to protect pay and conditions.

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CFMEU members defy threats to defend their union

Written by: Nick G. and others on 27 August 2024

Many tens of thousands of construction workers around Australia walked off the job to attend rallies called to fight the attack on their union, the CFMEU. They did so in defiance of Labor Prime Minister Albanese and his Ministers, who had threatened workers with a range of penalties for taking “unprotected” industrial action.

Albanese showed his true colours by paraphrasing the notorious anti-worker Maggie Thatcher, saying “This government is not for turning”. Even before he had made his remark, workers were making placards reading “Thatcher would be proud”.

In Brisbane, at least 10,000 building workers and others filled out the Queens Gardens and surrounding streets. There were speakers from CFMEU leadership, CFMEU "youth crew", ETU and others. It was a very militant atmosphere, according to comrades who sent a report to us. Workers also walked off the job in Cairns.

In Adelaide, probably 1,000 people rallied at Parliament House steps. The important thing though was that CFMEU members on all CBD sites walked off and marched to the steps of Parliament House. The mood was one of anger, but determination to stay strong together. Speakers included CFMEU reps, John Adley the ETU Secretary, an MUA rep and Jamie Newlyn, Assistant National Secretary of the MUA. Connie Bonaros, a member of the State’s Upper House, pledged her support for the union and its members.

(Adelaide: workers show politicians the true face of democracy)

There were Organizers there from AMWU and UWU and several industrial lawyers, but many unions had no official executive officer presence at the rally. SA Unions was not present,

They followed the ACTU Executive resolution, moved by the right-wing Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Union (SDA), which supports the appointment of the Administrator by the Government via the Fair Work Commission.

These unions are tied to the ALP being in government in Canberra so more concerned about keeping the money flowing to the ALP election campaign than the attack on the working class and all unions.

Melbourne rally

In Melbourne, between 50,000 and 60,000 construction workers and other building industry unionists (ETU, AMWU, Plumbers) downed tools and walked off their jobs to take unprotected illegal action to defend the CFMEU and all unions. It was the biggest and most militant mobilization of workers since the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) waterfront dispute in 1998 and the 2007 Your Rights at Work Worth Fighting For.

Once again, a vicious pre-planned attack by the bosses, supported by their Labor government and their courts conspired to cripple and destroy a militant union. The Labor Party parliamentarians and their mates in the ACTU colluded with the big end of town in slandering and vilifying decent hard-working construction workers and their elected union delegates.

Congratulations Albo and the Labor government! You have re-injected class politics and struggle into the union movement and brought about the biggest national mobilisation of the working class this century! At a time when cost of living pressure bites, housing becomes unaffordable, there are shortages in hospitals, schools, and social services are cut to the bone, Albo and the government can find hundreds and billions of people’s taxes on US nuclear powered submarine and expand US military bases across Australia for the next US-led war. Why are we not surprised? The Labor Party is only there to mislead and divide the working class, keep workers passive, and sell us out to US imperialism and its corporate monopolies. The ALP is showing its true despicable colours in looking after big business.

As Mao would say "Lifting a rock only to drop it on one's own feet".

Workers are not mugs, not to be taken for granted. They know a scab act and how to deal with it. CFMEU workers know how to fight, they know what solidarity means. That’s how they protect and improve their wages and conditions in the face of greedy developers and shifty lawyers.

(Above: the CFMEU Women's detachment)

Leading the march in Melbourne was a large and very vocal contingent of CFMEU Women, proudly waving their union flags. Along with many CFMEU flags were the flags of other unions and a few Eureka flags as well. The city was paralyzed, streets clogged with agitated workers, a sea of orange and yellow safety jackets. At the start and end of the march, powerful speeches by delegates, former officials, members of other friendly unions, from veteran BLF comrades, all were greeted with cheers and chanting: “CFMEU-here to stay!”

This is just the start, the opening salvo.

• 60,000 workers marched from the Victorian Trades Hall to Fair Work Commission which one of the speakers called the “bosses courts”.

• A retired CFMEU official told the rally construction worker’ victories for wages and conditions, for union rights, have been won more often than not through illegal collective action of mobilized construction workers and their supporters.

• Speaker after speaker pledged to continue the fight to defend the CFMEU and all unions and received rousing approval.

There is Power in the mobilized and united working class. Dare to Struggle, Dare to WIN!

In Sydney, nearly than 10,000 applauded sacked CFMEU NSW state secretary Darren Greenfield when he attacked Australian Council of Trade Unions leader Sally McManus for selling the union out to the Labor Party.

A Party leaflet distributed at the Adelaide rally described the government-appointed Administrator, Mark Irving, as a union lawyer turned union destroyer.

It said: “The ALP, which has always been a party of capitalism, has cleverly utilized people with ties to unions as its CFMEU “administrators”. It is helping to divide union responses to the attack on the CFMEU by covering them with a veneer of union complicity.

“Chief administrator, Mark Irving KC, worked for many unions. The union lawyer is now a union destroyer. He is joined in his attacks on the CFMEU by Grahame McCulloch as its Victorian administrator. He was once head of the union covering university academics.”

Further reports of rallies around the country may come in to us, and will be posted as they arrive.

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Attack on Construction Workers' Union Is All About Profits and Destroying Workers Collective Power

Written by: Ned K. on 26 August 2024

On Friday 23 August CFMEU members experienced the first day of their Union being in the hands of federal government enabled Administrators. As soon as this happened two hundred elected Officials and Councillors of the CFMEU from all over Australia were terminated from their roles by the Administrator.

The day before, Thursday 22 August the big business finance capital mouthpiece Australian Financial Review had front page article with headlines, " Builders act to take on CFMEU".

The article was most informative. It reported that at least some major building companies that had Enterprise Agreements with the CFMEU intended to remove "CFMEU vetoes and other restrictions" which enabled the Union to have some degree of influence on which sub-contractors the primary building company engaged.

One of the builders named is the WeBuild Group who are the principal contractor on the largest infrastructure project in NSW, the Sydney Metro Western Airport line.

The article also quoted the Master Builders Association NSW Executive Director Brian Seidler saying,

"In the last two weeks, there's been a groundswell of contractors that have indicated they've been dissatisfied with their enterprise agreement, not so much with the rates but the imposition of having to consult the union before letting subcontracts on even though they've won the job".

Seidler went on, "This fundamentally gives the union the power of veto and to dictate who is on the job and eventually to control the job. We're already seeing a trend where the union is saying, “You must choose from a list of union EBA subcontractors."

Seidler said builders did not want to be bound to " use union-sanctioned labour."

Initially, construction workers on a large site may maintain their current pay and conditions to give the appearance that the bosses and federal government are not after the workers, just the elected Union reps, from job site Delegate to the Union executive level.

However, the rot is likely to set in earlier for construction workers employed by the subcontractors on a large site or project. Eventually with turnover of labour, the big builders hope to destroy the collective strength of the workers through employment of non-union labour.

Their strategy is bound to fail. The very nature of construction work and the contractors' quest for extracting more surplus value from workers to realise more profit will unite workers and move them to appropriate collective action to protect their own pay and conditions and importantly, health and safety on the job.

The other dilemma for the bosses is that while they dream of having a docile, hardworking workforce, the reality is that they need workers who know what they are doing and thousands of them are CFMEU members and likely to stand by each other no matter what.

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DFLP statement on "educational genocide" in Palestine

Written by: DFLP on 22 August 2024

Above: Palestinian school children killed by Israeli bombing of Deir al-Balah

We are making available a statement sent to us by the Foreign Relations Department of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on Israel's deliberate policy of destroying the educational infrastructure and curriculum of Palestinian education. Staff and students are frontline victims of Israel's reduction of schools and universities to rubble - eds.

Israel targets all components of education, and we will defend our present and future with all forms of resistance

The term "educational genocide" has been widely used since it was used by a group of United Nations experts in a report published last April. In this report, the experts defined the meaning of this term as "a deliberate effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an act known as educational genocide," which expresses "the systematic erasure of education through the arrest, detention, or killing of teachers, students, and employees, and the destruction of educational infrastructure."

Through the atrocities committed by the fascist occupation army in the Gaza Strip, the scale of the genocide has exceeded in its brutality all the limits of legal and humanitarian descriptions. There is a comprehensive destruction of everything on the land of the Strip, from civilian facilities (more than 150 thousand of housing units were completely destroyed, 200 thousand were partially destroyed, and 80 thousand became uninhabitable), the destruction or damage of 195 heritage sites and hundreds of hospitals and health centers, 227 mosques and 3 churches, the destruction and damage of 13 public libraries, in addition to the destruction of dozens of centers that house displaced persons and UNRWA warehouses, including areas that the occupation army designated as safe, not to mention the destruction of the headquarters of government and media institutions and cutting off water supplies and destroying water wells with the aim of making the war of hunger and thirst declared by the Israeli occupation army a success.

Since 1948, the Zionist gangs, which played a fundamental role in displacing civilians from their cities and villages by force of terror and massacres, have placed education as a direct target, by targeting schools and educational institutions that were spread throughout Palestinian cities and towns, and worked to destroy and loot them and turn some of them into military centers, as happened in the schools of Jaffa, Deir Yassin and Tantura. Which the gangs have taken as military headquarters to carry out their crimes..

At the present time, schools and universities have not been spared from the crimes of the occupation, and the criminal record of the occupation records the storming of hundreds of schools and universities and the arrest of students and members of the teaching staff, not to mention the destruction of some of them and the besieging of others, as happened in 1992 when Al-Najah National University was besieged for 4 days with more than 5,000 students, teachers and workers inside.

The occupation's war on education has increased in intensity since 2011 when it began a process of distorting the Palestinian curricula specially in East Jerusalem, and launched a propaganda campaign against these curricula, claiming that they incite terrorism, violence and hatred. On this basis, the occupation has waged numerous wars in international forums against the Palestinian curricula, and has placed the curricula of the UNRWA in the circle of direct targeting in an incitement campaign that we have never witnessed before, which has led to some countries aligning with false Israeli narratives, and making the matter of funding subject to political conditions that some European Union countries, the United States, Canada and others have begun to set.

During the previous years, the occupation threatened to demolish more than 50 schools, and actually demolished many of them in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Cases of assault on students at checkpoints were recorded, in addition to the occupation army attacking schools, throwing tear gas at them and vandalizing their contents, as well as attacking and storming universities several times, vandalizing student housing, classrooms and student bloc offices, and pursuing students and capturing thousands of them while they were in their homes or on their school benches, most of them without any charges. The occupation also refused to grant permits to renovate schools unless the occupation's official curricula are adopted at all educational levels.

Through the war of extermination that the occupation forces have been waging against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip for (18 years), the occupation is taking education and educational institutions as direct targets, since education poses a threat to its security, as it claims.

The result is that more than 630,000 students have been deprived of education during the current year (88,000 of whom are university students). The occupation also destroyed more than 400 educational institutions, including schools, universities and institutes in Gaza, using some university buildings as military barracks. More than 400 university professors were martyred (20 of whom held the rank of professor and 59 held doctoral degrees), and nearly ten thousand school and university students were martyred as part of the university genocide war. For the first time since the beginning of secondary school exams in Palestine, Gaza is out of the exams, after the fascist war deprived more than 36 thousand students from taking the secondary school exams that qualify them to enter university.

According to experts, the educational process in the Gaza Strip will not return to what it was and this requires great efforts, due to the extent of the destruction and sabotage that befell the educational institutions that the occupation intended to sabotage and destroy. A number of experts have described the occupation’s aggression by the United Nations Human Rights Council as “a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the foundations of Palestinian society.” “When schools are destroyed, hopes and dreams are destroyed as well.” Isn’t what is happening in line with the UN’s definition of “educational genocide”? Indeed, what has happened on the ground is almost more widespread than the previous definition.
.
The systematic aggression and comprehensive war carried out by the Israeli occupation targeting all aspects of life and the future in the Gaza Strip, including education and culture, is something we place first in the hands of international organizations concerned with education, childhood and society issues, and even those concerned with humanitarian issues, and second in the hands of the countries allied with Israel that still claim to defend the human being and his rights, including his right to obtain education.

The "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation and the operations that preceded it and the forms of Palestinian resistance and rejection that will follow it, come within the framework of defending the present and future of the Palestinian people and their right to their land, homes, schools, universities and hospitals.. Their right to resort to all forms of resistance in order to remain free and proud, deciding their future away from occupation, colonialism and dependency. Palestine, which has been free and proud throughout history, will remain struggling for its freedom, rejecting all forms of submission and slavery.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Department of Foreign Affairs -

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US Indo-Pacific Strategy heightens Korean Peninsula tensions

Written by: (Contributed) on 21 August 2024

Yoon suk-Yeol at the US Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - Flickr

Relations between the two Koreas have reached their lowest diplomatic point in decades. The escalation of diplomatic tensions on the Korean peninsula, however, are best viewed in the context of the South Korean (ROK) presidential administration of Yoon Suk-yeol locking the country securely within the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). It has led a situation where the northern DPRK has responded by dropping their established doctrine of peaceful re-unification across the peninsula and subsequently increasing the likelihood of even greater hostilities.

In early August the northern DPRK began military initiatives which included the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers near to its border with the southern ROK. (1)

An official diplomatic statement issued by Pyongyang announced the move had been taken to defend its sovereignty, and that the country regarded the ROK as its 'principal enemy'. (2)

Behind the scenes, other initiatives, likewise, have included the suspension of government agencies linked to unification, and further questioning of the controversial maritime boundaries between the two countries. (3)

Both governments in Seoul and Pyongyang, historically, have had large departments staffed with civil servants employed for long-term planning where 'elaborate proposals were laid for unification, with co-operation leading to a loose federation and eventual merging of the two countries'. (4)

Secondly, the DPRK recognise the Military Demarcation Line, which was an extension of the 1953 armistice line, as the border between the two states. The ROK, to the contrary, claim the Northern Limit Line drawn up by the US, which deny the DPRK access to a twelve mile maritime boundary accepted under international law. It has always been a major diplomatic impasse; the ROK regularly use the disputed area to conduct US-led naval and related military exercises which the DPRK regard as a possible forerunner for a further military incursion into their sovereign territory.

The recent moves, therefore, depict a polarisation of diplomacy, away from a divided peninsula based upon kinship and a homogeneous peoples, toward a strained relationship between two countries. As many families have distant members in either country, the whole move away from a planned and eventual unification has some bearing upon political opinions of civil society.

It is important to note the official position of China toward the ROK during the period of the previous Moon Jae-in presidential administration was cordial; official diplomatic positions included reference to the previous government not 'following Washington's fanatical path … and … the Blue House's reluctance to be involved in anti-China campaigns'. (5) The same period was also marked by higher levels of constructive diplomacy between the two Koreas.

President Yoon Suk-yeol is not a popular political leader, he has faced numerous protests and mass demonstrations since taking office 'on the tightest of margins in South Korea's electoral history … President Yoon has been making good on his promises to the US, shaping, sculpting, and subordinating South Korea military, economic, and foreign interests to align with US policy and goals'. (6) While President Yoon Suk-yeon has played down recent diplomatic hostilities with the DPRK, he, and his supporters, have been held largely responsible for creating the conditions for the overturning of moves toward eventual unification.

It is no surprise to find the Yoon presidential administration has been conducting a witch-hunt of political opponents and threatened to use the ROK's repressive legislation from the previous Cold War, when the country was a military dictatorship, to stifle organised opposition. Articles 4, 7,8, and 10, of the notorious South Korean National Security Law aimed at curtailing pro-DPRK sentiments, has already been cited for possible use against those organising protests and demonstrations against the 'US militarisation of the country'. (7)

The presidential administration of Yoon Suk-yeon has also been responsible for placing the ROK firmly inside the US-led IPS; the US-led military agreement is regarded as establishing a 'united front against China', and, in effect, its allies, including the DPRK. (8) Over several years the US have placed Japan as a senior partner in their IPS global alliance, resting upon the so-called 'Quad' which has been designed to encircle and contain China's diplomatic influences. (9) The ROK, together with other Indo-Pacific countries, are regarded as lower-level partners in a regional intelligence framework. It is highly significant to note, furthermore, the changing nature of intelligence-gathering, from information about the DPRK's nuclear program, to the 'sharing of all military information'. (10)

The IPS, however, rests upon earlier US-led intelligence gathering networks established over a decade ago with a region-wide missile defence and radar systems designed for 'laying the foundations … to … combine US ballistic-missile defences with those of regional powers, particularly Japan, South Korea and Australia'. (11) Moves by the previous Moon Jae-in presidential administration in Seoul to establish cordial diplomatic relations with the DPRK, were regarded by the Pentagon as hindering their grand regional planning, despite it being regarded favourably by many South Korean people. (12)

Evidence the IPS has now replaced earlier intelligence-gathering networks was illustrated in the recent official media release which included information about heavy rainfall in the northern part of the DPRK, which appear to have caused population movements; the US-led surveillance system has moved from a preoccupation solely with armaments to a general and wide-scale monitoring of the whole of the country. (13)

The upgrading of US-led surveillance systems targeting the DPRK has also coincided with the US Defence Intelligence Agency recruiting and training an estimated 1,600 intelligence-collectors inside systems marked by a 'convergence of the military and intelligence agencies that has blurred their once-distinct mission, capabilities and even their leadership ranks'. (14) The strained diplomatic relations are based on streams of intelligence assessments, which focus upon supposed threats to 'US interests'.

The DPRK has, under the circumstances, now lost interest in cultivating friendlier diplomatic relations with its southern neighbour; recent US-led developments run counter to previous ideals and interests. Whether the DPRK policy changes can be regarded as temporary or permanent depend largely upon political developments in the ROK.

It is not surprising, therefore, to note an official diplomatic statement from Pyongyang about the recent developments included a reference to 'a significant and strategic shift due to the transformation of the US-led alliances into nuclear-based military blocs'. (15) It has been marked by what the DPRK regard as suitable and appropriate defence and security precautions, aimed at sending 'an effective message to the US'. (16)

These same US-led regional foreign policies and the IPS have considerable bearing upon Australia:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Kim moves missile launchers to border, Australian, 6 August 2024.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.; and, Kim stamps out dream of unification, Australian, 18 January 2024.

4. Ibid., Australian, 18 January 2024.

5. See: Seoul's balancing act between Beijing and Washington set to remain, The Global Times (Beijing), 27 May 2021.

6. South Korean witch-hunt mounts against Yoon's opponents, The Asia Times, 23 January 2023.

7. Ibid.

8. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. See: US seeks new Asia defences, The Wall Street Journal, 24-26 August 2012.

12. Hankyoreh, op.cit., 12 November 2019.

13. Australian, op.cit., 6 August 2024.

14. Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

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Vanguard (vanguard-cpaml.blogspot.com)

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Statement of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 17 August 2024

We have been sent an important statement by the CentralCommittee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.We reproduce below the DFLP's own summary of the statement, the full version of which will appear on our blog: Vanguard (vanguard-cpaml.blogspot.com)

14 August 2024

"The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine" in a full session of its Central Committee:

• Fieldwork and collaboration with allies to pressure the occupying state into implementing UN Security Council Resolutions 2735 and 2728, ceasing hostilities against our people, and fully withdrawing from Gaza.

• Immediate efforts to implement the outcomes of the Beijing Declaration, including convening the Temporary Leadership Framework and forming a National Unity Government.

The Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine held a comprehensive session named after "The Martyr Leaders: Ismail Haniyeh, Talal Abu Zarifa, Fuad Shukr." The session produced a political statement that praised the resilience and sacrifices of our people, united with the valiant resistance in Gaza and the West Bank. The statement emphasized:

• Collaborating with brothers, friends, and international organizations to enforce Resolutions 2735 and 2728, halt all hostilities, and withdraw from Gaza. Practical steps should include breaking the siege, providing aid, returning displaced persons, rebuilding the health system, and initiating a national reconstruction project.

• Structuring all forms of struggle to confront the Israeli annexation war in the West Bank, undermining the foundations of the national project through a series of field and "legal" measures that violate international laws and legitimacy, including the Knesset's decision to reject the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to perpetuate administrative autonomy over the people as an alternative solution under occupation.

• Calling on the political leadership of the Palestinian Authority to abandon the policy of relying on American promises, free itself from the constraints and obligations of the Oslo Accords, and act according to the decisions of the National and Central Councils of the Palestine Liberation Organization by reassessing relations with the occupying state, withdrawing recognition of it, stopping all forms of security coordination with it, and disengaging from the Israeli economy in favor of the national project under a comprehensive national struggle strategy, and to work in the field to structure the struggles of comprehensive popular resistance under a unified national leadership that includes everyone.

• Rebuilding the Palestinian political system on democratic foundations through general elections based on full proportional representation, with a national solution to the issue of elections in Jerusalem. • Affirming the Democratic Front's initiative from 16/01/2020 as a temporary measure to include all factions in the Central Council until general elections can be held.

• Continuing efforts to hold Israel accountable through international courts, affirming the illegitimacy of its occupation, and prosecuting Israeli war criminals.

• Condemning Israeli and American policies targeting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the right of return for refugees to their homes and properties and confronting the policies of demonizing and financially besieging it.

The Central Committee also sent its revolutionary greetings to the state of South Africa and all the countries participating in its complaint before the International Court of Justice. It also saluted our heroic prisoners, emphasizing the need to internationalize their cause and continue defending their political, social, and human rights in the face of the enemy state's policy of oppression and abuse.

It also extended its revolutionary greetings to the heroes of the resistance and all the fighters in the field, and to the families of our prisoners and martyrs. By naming its session "The Martyr Leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Talal Abu Zarifa, Fuad Shukr," the Central Committee pays tribute to the martyrs of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and everyone who was martyred on the land of Palestine in the face of the occupation and its settlers.

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Attack on CFMEU attacks every Australian worker

Written by: Clarrie Broz on 17 August 2024

When examining a media frenzy, it is useful to first investigate who stands to gain from the story presented. Blackrock, the biggest United States investment firm in construction has $8.7 trillion in assets. The second highest US investment firm is Vanguard group who have $8.6 trillion in assets.

These obscene profits and levels of commodity accumulation come largely from the labour of Australian construction workers. This is indisputable – without the workers, the sector stops. Construction workers have engaged in relentless struggle for union member input on their wages and conditions. It is instructive to quote from Paddy Malone, who was elected as Secretary of the Victorian Builders Labourers’ Federation in 1941, who wrote the following in a letter to construction workers:

“Your day to day struggles referred to are never ending due to the present cruel system of capitalist exploitation. The constant drive for profit by employers and especially by the big monopolies intensifies with each passing month and therefore the living standards of you and your family are continually being depressed.

"Because of this we must continue to build strong organisation on the job so that we can effectively fight to maintain and improve our living standards; but still more important is the need to begin in a more conscious way than ever before to strike blows at the root cause of our day to day problems, and that means to challenge the social system of capitalism itself.

“Only by doing so and by taking part in the wider working class struggle to establish working class political power shall we be able to have things organised for the benefit of the people and not for a few billionaire organisations.”

The struggle to defend the union of construction workers is deeply tied to opposing the biggest criminals in Australian society – not the small-time alleged bikies, ex-convicts or thugs on construction sites given a trial by media – but the parasites at the top of Blackrock and Vanguard Group who pull the strings behind the scenes.

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Instability of Capitalist Economy Is Ever Present

Written by: Ned K. on 17 August 2024

Photo: Whyalla Steelworks by Mangrove Rat, Flickr Commons

Australia is a capitalist economy in which capitalists compete with each other for markets and market share to increase profits. Capitalists also look for ways to increase exploitation of workers to increase surplus value produced by workers. The relative strength of the capitalists and workers is uneven across different industries and within an industry.

This situation is even more precarious for workers when their employer is highly dependent on overseas markets to sell their products and realize profits,
The iron ore and steel industry is a current example of how precarious this situation can become.

At the Whyalla Steel Works, the UK based multinational owner, GFC Alliance announced the sacking of 50 workers and blamed "poor conditions in global steel markets". GFC Alliance recently closed one of its steel works in Eastern Europe. At Whyalla, subcontractors report late payments by GFC Alliance.

The main union at the Whyalla Steel Works is fearful that more sackings will come. The Mayor of Whyalla is talking up GFC Alliance's commitment to the steel plant and its plan to produce high quality "green steel".

There is some truth in GFC's statement that the conditions in global steel markets are poor.

On the following day of the announcement of the 50 sackings, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) ran an article headed "Iron Ore crash dims budget surplus hopes". Iron ore prices have dropped 30% this year which may lead readers to think that a drop in iron ore prices should be good for steel makers like GFC Alliance in Whyalla by lowering their cost of production.

However, the reason for the drop in iron ore prices according to the AFR is that the demand for iron ore to Australia's main iron ore export market has declined due to a drop in production of steel by China's massive steel works. The drop in demand for steel in China is due to the collapse of the new housing market in China.

Australia's capitalist economy in earlier times depended greatly on export of wool to the UK in particular.

Since the mid-20th Century, reliance "on the sheep's back" became "reliance on iron ore".

For the economy as a whole and the Australian Government's economic plans leading into a federal election year, what happens to the iron ore and steel industry in Australia and indeed in China may be the difference between winning and losing the election.

The AFR article argues that a $US10 a ton drop in (iron ore prices) below what has been forecast inflicts a $2.4 billion hit to revenue in 2024-25 and $4.5 billion over two years."

The chairperson of China's huge Baowu steel works in Shanghai, Hu Wangming, said the challenge for the iron ore producers could be worse than in 2008 and 2015 when iron ore prices fell below $40 a ton.

US finance capital corporation, Morgans, estimates that iron ore needs to trade at between $80 -$100 a ton for the supplier to break even.

In Australia, the iron ore "suppliers" are multinational corporations like BHP and Rio Tinto. While the iron ore industry is under their control, the job security of both iron ore and steel workers is at risk and the Australian Government budget forecasts are guess work, a wing and a prayer at best.

Workers and their families in towns like Whyalla and their surrounding iron ore mines have a long history of class struggle and they produce some of the highest steel in the world from iron ore mined in Australia.

A progressive Labor Government would nationalize the iron ore and steel industries to eliminate Australia's dependence on iron ore exports and import of inferior quality steel from places like South Korea, Japan and China.

The monopoly capitalists’ economists in Australia keep a close eye on international market trends. They advise governments on what is coming, but they never advise governments to nationalize key industries for the well-being of Australians and the country's economic stability.

That is why working people and their allies need to fight for an independent, socialist economy for Australia.

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Cracks Within ALP Ranks Widen Over AUKUS

Written by: Ned K. on 16 August 2024

First there was former Treasurer and PM Paul Keating despairing over the ALP leadership's AUKUS "marriage". Now he is joined by former ALP Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans.

An article in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) on Friday 16 August is headed, "Evans torpedoes Marles, Albanese over AUKUS".

Evans is quoted by the AFR from a talk he gave at a conference on AUKUS held recently in Canberra at the Australian National University.

Evans characterized Richard Marles' "love for the US" as "so dewy-eyed as to defy parody."

As for Albanese, Evans is quoted as saying he "is still preoccupied with avoiding being wedged as weak on security and has never given great attention to the complexities of foreign and defence policy and that seems unlikely to change."

As for Penny Wong, the current Foreign Minister, Evans generously said that she was "far more beady-eyed, and instinctively wary of overcommitment to America's view of itself". However, according to the AFR article, Evans also said that she had been "unwilling to rock the boat".

It is possible that there are contradictions between Albanese and Marles on the one hand and Penny Wong on the other hand on how they try and "sell" AUKUS to the Australian people. However, they are united in their support for AUKUS and Australia-US Alliance and the growing military presence of the US in Australia, not to mention their siding with the US and Zionist regime in Israel.

Evans clearly distanced himself from all three ALP leaders when he said at the conference, AUKUS would "likely prove one of the worst foreign and defence policy decisions our country has made, not only putting at profound risk our sovereign independence, but generating more risk than reward for the very national security it promises to protect."

Evans and Keating express the views and concerns of many people in Australia, including rank and file members of the ALP in sub-branches and members of a growing number of Unions affiliated to the ALP.

Albanese's family were migrants from Italy. He talks a lot about acting in "the national interest".

How different is his subservience to the modern-day colonial/imperialist powers of the USA and UK compared with another Italian migrant and scholar, Rafaello Carboni, who shouted to the diggers at the Eureka Stockade, Ballarat in reference to British colonialism,

"I hate the oppressor, let him wear a red, blue, white or black coat!"

Carboni called on the miners at the Eureka Stockade in 1854, irrespective of nationality, religion or colour to salute the Southern Cross flag, the symbol of independence from the then colonial power.

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Book Review: The Invisible Doctrine - The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How it Came to Control Your Life)

Written by: Duncan B. on 15 August 2024

The Invisible Doctrine. The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came To Control Your Life) by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison is a small book in size and length (162 pages plus endnotes), but it gives an excellent summary of the history of neoliberalism and its origins in the 1930s in the theories of economists such as Friedrich Hayek.

Neoliberalist policies advocate the relaxation of financial controls, privatisation of public services and utilities, reduction in taxes on the wealthy and reduction of social services. Neoliberalism seeks total freedom for capitalists to do whatever they want, free from trade unions, labour laws, environmental regulations or any other restraint on capitalism.

Neoliberalism was quickly accepted by many big corporations such as General Motors, and widely promoted by supposedly independent think tanks. Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK adopted neoliberalism whole-heartedly. Neoliberal policies were carried out to their fullest extent in Chile after Pinochet’s coup in 1973, enforced by Pinochet’s fascist dictatorship. The short time as Prime Minister of the UK by Truss, and Trump’s presidency of the US are modern examples of neoliberalism in action.

The Invisible Doctrine exposes how the promoters of neoliberalism hide their activities behind a smokescreen of conspiracy theories, culture wars and phoney environmental campaigns. We are currently seeing one of these in Australia, being whipped up by the National Party to try to get farmers to oppose wind farms, solar power sites and the transmission lines which they require.

The book’s scope does not cover neoliberalism in Australia, but Australians have suffered from the adoption of neoliberal policies by a succession of both Labor and Liberal governments.

The damage from neoliberalism reached its peak in Victoria under the Kennett Liberal government (1992-1999 ). Victoria suffered from the privatisation of the State Electricity Commission, public transport and other utilities and the forced amalgamation of local councils. Thousands of workers lost their jobs and Victorians continue to experience higher prices and worse levels of service as a result.

The Invisible Doctrine offers a wealth of information about neoliberalism, but offers little in the way of solutions. The authors propose to “enhance democracy” through what they call “deliberative participatory democracy.” This sees people coming together in community assemblies at the municipal level to make decisions about their communities. These theories of course offer no challenge to capitalism. Only the workers and their allies engaging in revolutionary struggle can overthrow capitalism.

The CPA (M-L) fighting Programme gives us a way forward in uniting the people in opposition to the harmful effects of neoliberal policies on the Australian people.

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Bangladesh: Eradicate Hasina-Awami-Indian fascism completely and utterly.

Written by: Proletarian Party of Bangladesh on 13August 2024

(Photo by Shaharik Istik Raz on Flickr.)

Bangladesh: Eradicate Hasina-Awami-Indian fascism completely and utterly.
Struggle for the Establishment of the Governance of the Struggling Students, Workers, Peasants, Poor, Middle class.

(August 5, 2024. Extended reprint: August 8, 2024)
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The 15-year Hasina-Awami misrule has finally come to an end. The students have won a great victory in their fearless movement. To achieve this goal, many different political forces and masses have made immense sacrifices and conducted valiant armed and unarmed struggles for the past decade and a half. In this continuation, around 350 lives were lost to achieve this feat at the last minute. Several thousand people were injured. Over five hundred people lost their eyes. Many more have become permanently crippled. 15,000 or more people were taken into custody. In addition to that, thousands of political activists and common people have been killed, and millions of people have suffered oppression and unjust arrests in the past 15 years. False cases have been filed against hundreds of thousands of people.

However, this victory is not the end of the fight, rather it is just the beginning. There is still a long way to go. Because the oppressed cannot be liberated until the power or rule of the bona fide struggling masses is established. That has been experienced many times in the past—in '69, '71, '75, and '90. Even after shaking off the main enemy sitting on the neck, the puppets of the ruling elite bourgeoisie have seized power. To prevent this, the struggling masses must struggle for the right political agenda. Currently, an "interim government" has been formed under the initiative of the military and the bureaucrats. We shall rationally insist that the hopes of the oppressed students for emancipation from fascism be fulfilled. In light of this, we would like to draw attention to a few key points below.

1. To establish a provisional government composed of representatives of all anti-fascist classes, professions, communities, and democratic political forces instead of an externally imposed government led by pro-western ex-military, civilian bureaucrats, bourgeois intellectuals, professionals, and elite bourgeoisie representatives.
- Strongly oppose the imposition of martial law, so-called army-backed governments, or the imposition of a state of emergency.
- Complete repeal of the constitution that allows fascism.
- Promulgation of a new constitution and basic principles of a state system favourable to the democratic system.
- Abolition of the district council, sub-district, and UP formed on the blueprint of fascism.
- Formation of “mass committees” of farmers, workers, labourers, students, youth, middle class, religious and ethnic minorities, progressive and democratic intellectuals at all levels of society starting from village/neighborhood, and having the administrative work done by them. To form an armed “Mass Militia” under them to counter any anti-Mass threat and attack.
- Creating an environment for fair elections based on the elimination of fascism, the development of mass power, and the urgent demands of the anti-fascist democratic forces, especially the workers, peasants, students, and masses.

2. Arresting and punishing all Awami godfathers who are the main pillars of Hasina-India fascists and have dominated all spheres of state and society for the past 15 years.
- Hasina's fascist allies included cabinet members, parliamentarians, powerful bureaucrats, powerful military officers, tyrannical officers of Police-RAB-DB, big businessmen, media magnates, so-called student-youth terrorists, abominable and identified elites among judges, professionals, cultural leaders, etc. Publish a list of names of all these people and arrest them. Disarm them all.
- Immediate release of prisoners in "Aynaghar," a torture prison maintained by the Hasina-loyalist DGFI. Publish a white paper on this.
- Immediate abolition of the murderous RAB force.
- Publishing the list of public enemies involved in murder, disappearance, rape, and money laundering, and prosecuting them under the speedy trial law.
-Banning the Chhatra League, Jubo League, and Hasina-Awami League as terrorist and fascist organizations. Depriving them of their political rights.
- Confiscation of all properties of the above. Confiscation of all agricultural lands, wetlands, residential plots, and commercial plots occupied by Awami fascists. Free distribution of agricultural land to landless-poor farmers. Opening of reservoirs to fishermen.

3. The immediate release of all political leaders and activists of all political parties and struggling people who were tortured and imprisoned during the last 15 years of fascist rule, especially in the last July movement. The withdrawing of all cases brought against them.

4. Opening universities and educational institutions immediately. Lifting the curfew, sending the army back to the barracks. Deploying of BGB immediately to guard the borders. Having the university halls managed by student committees. De-fascistization and reformation of the administration of universities.

5. Publishing the list with the names, addresses, and ages of all those killed during the fascist regime, especially in recent movements. The state should provide compensation to the affected families. All injured should be provided with medical treatment at state’s expense. Those who have already undergone treatment at their own expense should be compensated. A white paper on the injured should be published. Those responsible should be punished severely.
- Listing the general police—Ansar—BGB and army personnel, and common people killed in various anarchic activities that followed the fall of Hasina and honoring them socially.

6. All anti-national agreements and understandings with foreign countries, especially with India, by the Hasina-Awami government in the last 15 years must be cancelled.
- The Rampal Power Plant destroying the Sundarbans should be stopped immediately.
- Immediate cessation of providing India with train and road corridors through Bangladesh, giving them the responsibility for the Teesta project, buying electricity from India at a high price etc.
- Announcing no new agreement or compromise with India until India publicly apologises for supporting Hasina's fascism.
- To be fully alert of subversive or potentially aggressive activities of Indian expansionists. Condemning their harbouring of Hasina/Awami fugitives in India and demanding their handover to Bangladesh.
- Strictly opposing all imperialist meddling and conspiracy, including those of America, China, and Russia, on internal matters of the country.

7. Immediate repeal of all black laws, including the Service Act, Digital Act, and Industrial Police.

8. Accepting the legitimate demands of workers, farmers, fishermen, poor and working urbanites, tenants, students, teachers, and musicians. Implement stringent measures immediately to break up syndicates and regulate commodity pricing. Taking strict measures to stop extortion and bribery by the Hasina-Awami Fascist bureaucrats and police regarding sidewalk traders, hawkers, transport workers, markets, buying and selling land, building houses, getting government jobs, etc. Strictly controlling the change of hands of extortion and of expropriation. Taking strict measures to prevent persecution and attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.

If the interim government is not formed and run in the above way, it will be a imperialist-comprador bourgeois government based on the existing fascist structure, which will not be able to fulfil the aspirations of the struggling masses.

The above demands are not a complete program. Rather, these are only some preliminary outlines for creating an anti-fascist environment and system. Hence many more amendments may be made to it, and specifications have to be made that can be finalised based on the opinion of the serious anti-fascist fighting forces.

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Our proletarian party has not only fought relentlessly against the recently expelled Hasina fascism but also outlined a genuine revolutionary program for real liberation from all imperialism, including that of America-China-Russia, Indian expansionism, and their crony elite bourgeoisie, semi-feudal exploitation-control. The party is thus conducting a continuous struggle for the real independence of the country and the empowerment of the masses of people, including the workers, peasants, and middle class, and the establishment of a truly democratic society. The ongoing anti-fascist struggle is a part of this. We are working to fight to the end and lead it to victory. The ultimate goal of the fight is to establish a society without exploitation in the country and move towards communism worldwide.

To advance that goal and to achieve a real revolution, the oppressed people must take up arms, build an army of their own, and build a rural-based people's war based on the program of agrarian revolution. All struggles should be conducted based on this aim and work. The advanced section of students and youth must be equipped with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. They should be organized into a revolutionary party. Only then can their today's sacrifice and struggle progress towards success.

-Central Committee, Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla.

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What do wine industry and early childhood education workers have in common?

Written by: Ned K. on 11 August 2024

(Above: Winery workers in the Barossa take action. Source UWU facebook page)

Wine industry workers employed by Pernod Ricard in the Barossa Valley last week escalated industrial action to strike action. They are using the limited rights of workers to take "protected industrial action" during a bargaining period for a new Enterprise Agreement. Their key demands are for above inflation rate pay increases and a three-year Enterprise Agreement.

In the previous Enterprise Agreement workers accepted wage increases below the inflation rate. Cost of living pressures on wine industry workers are no different from those experienced by any other worker and in their view, Pernod Ricard is a French owned multinational corporation whose profits go into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pernod Ricard want a one-year Agreement so that the sell off of their wineries in the Barossa Valley to Accolade will make it easier for Accolade to force through changes they want to workers’ conditions when they become the workers' employer. Accolade has been owned by the Carlyle Group, an American private equity company, since 2018.

So, the strike by wine industry workers is also very much about job security of conditions they have won over many years of previous struggles.

The workers have a lot of community support in the Barossa Valley. They also are well organized on the job with good networks of leaders in the wineries, enabling them to make collective decisions on when to intensify their "protected actions" in a way that keeps pressure on the employer to agree to their key demands.

At the same time as wine industry workers took strike action against multinational Pernod Ricard, the Albanese Government finally announced that Early Childhood Education workers would have their wages increased by 15%. Labor had dragged its heels in showing their hand on funding wage increases for Early Childhood sector workers, with this procrastination extending back to the days of Rudd and Gillard Governments.

The 15% increase will be split into a 10% increase from December 2024 and another 5% increase from December 2025. The increases, funded by the federal government, are conditional on Early Childhood Education Centres increasing fees paid by parents to a maximum of 4.4% over the next year. The Centre employers will only be provided with increased funding for the wage increases once they complete Fair Work approved enterprise agreements with their workers and their Union.

Why did the Albanese Government make the announcement for a 15% wage increase to these workers at this time?

Early Childhood Education Centres have become essential for the operation of capitalism in Australia. Employers in all industries require both men and women workers, and parents with young children need Centres to be able to both work. Whether two parent or single parent families, workers need to work to survive and keep up with rising living costs.

However, the wages in the sector are so low that turnover of labour is high, and attracting new workers to Early Childhood Education has reached an all-time low.

So, the Albanese Government did the sector's employers a favour by raising wages of the workers.

What the Albanese Government announcement of the 15% wage increase did not say was that the Early Childhood workers had forced major private sector employers in the sector to negotiate a multi-employer Enterprise Agreement with a demand for a 25% wage increase.

Workers elected hundreds of Delegates across Australia to represent them in the negotiations and like the Pernod Ricard Delegates in the wine industry, they and their members were well organized and in a strong enough position to take sector wide strike action ('protected industrial action') if the Government did not announce a substantial funding of wage increases for the sector.

The mainly women workers also knew that the Albanese Government has an election coming up pretty soon. Early Childhood Education workers on the war path at election time would be a headache for any current government.

The actual industrial action by winery workers and the threat of sector wide industrial action by Early Childhood workers show that vastly different sections of the working class relying on the power of the collective are a mighty force.

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ICOR statement: Full solidarity with the workers and the broad masses in Kenya!

Written by: ICOR on 11 August 2024

(Above: anti-Ruto demonstrators in Nairobi. Photo/Courtesy)

The revolutionary world organisation ICOR declares its full solidarity with the workers, the broad masses and the Communist Party of Kenya (CPK). The CPK's detailed and profound information to all ICOR organisations (printed in full on the ICOR website) shows how valuable transnational revolutionary cooperation is: The bourgeois media show clashes between the masses and the police at best mention the trigger. But they cover up the deeper connections in the imperialist world system and even more so they conceal the justified demands and the socialist way out of capitalist conditions.

In contrast our Kenyan comrades inform us: »Kenya has a protest culture that dates back to the pre-colonial days. However, the protests that took place between 18th June 2024 and 25th June 2024 and are scheduled to continue for days to come are unprecedented in Kenya’s modern history. The ongoing demonstraitons that started as the anti-Finance Bill protests and have since morphed into the anti-President William Ruto protests have attracted hundreds of thousands, probably over a million young and brave protesters in all cities and major towns across the country.

The fact of the matter is that the ongoing demonstrations are not merely a result of the rejection of the Finance Bill, but a result of the neo-liberal capitalism onslaught; failed campagin promises; and government arrogance that had deepened since President William Ruto was sworn in on 13th September 2022. The promises ranged from better wages for the workers, to free sanitary pads for women. He promised to reduce taxation, improve the business environment for those in the informal economy and to reduce external borrowing. He promised to lower the cost of living, in particular the cost of fuel and food.

At the start of his Presidency, President Ruto spoke against the practice of African leaders travelling abroad to borrow money in a disorganised and humiliating manner. At the international level, Ruto spoke several times against the IMF/World Bank hegemony. Yet none of the campaign promises were being fulfilled. In the first Budget estimates under the Ruto administration billions were disproportionately allocated to luxury, travel and wasteful expenditure. At the same time, austerity measures were applied in education, health, social services, and democratic governance. It wasn’t long before it became clear to the Kenyan public that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had a heavy hand in the drafting of that national budget. Senior government officials and politicians allied to the ruling party were shamelessly displaying their newfound wealth, with some showing off shoes, clothes and watches worth millions of Kenya shillings.

On 13th June 2024 the 2024/2025 national budget of 3.9 trillion Kenya shillings was presented in parliament and subseuqently the Finance Bill was also presented. Again, just like the previous year, wasteful and senseless expenditure dominated the budget, and tax sources were expanded in a manner that would worsen the high cost of living and push more people into abject poverty. Kenyans reacted to the proposed increased taxation on social media, particularly on Tiktok and Twitter, but the government responded in a patronising and arrogant manner.

A second protest was planned by several activists and was scheduled for 18th June 2024. To the surprise of many including the planners, the turnout was huge, and it was largely made up of self-mobilised youths. The demonstrators were very young and brave men and women, with the women taking the lead. On 20th June 2024, huge protests across the country erupted. Hundreds of thousands of young Kenyans turned out for the demonstrations in Nairobi and they eventually managed to break through the police blockade and literally occupy parliament. At the end of it, 12 demonstrators were killed by the police while hundreds were hospitalised with gunshot woulds and other injuries. The protests were loud and clear not only in the city centre but in the estates and in other cities and towns. Later that day, a tough talking (but visibly shaken) President addressed the nation and announced the deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces to deal with the situation. The masses in their response dared the President and announced demonstrations for 27th June 2024. A day later, the President made a hasty retreat.

In spite of the President’s refusal to assent to the Finance Bill, the masses are not satisfied. Calls for „Ruto Must Go“ still reign in the air. Due to the spontaneous nature of the demonstrations that lack a clear organisational and ideolgical agenda, there lacks a concrete way forward. Our task as CPK is to ensure that revolutionary ideas reach the masses since it is only when revolutionary ideas reach the masses that they become a revolutionary force. It is only by strengthening the presently weak subjective forces that revolutionary change can be born out of these popular struggles. Indeed, if the subjective forces were strong and well organised, then historic revolutionary changes would have taken place in the aftermath of the recent protests.

Above all, there is no doubt that the protests are a result of the existing crisis of capitalism, and the only solution is to organise for the defeat of capitalism and to build socialism and communism.

Immediate demands are among many others:

• Immediately arrest and prosecute all the scurity officers who ordered/conducted the killings, abductions and state violence that was meted on peaceful demonstrators and perceived organisers;

• Cut all ties with the IMF and World Bank;

• Remove all taxes from agricultural inputs and ensure that small scale agriculture is tax free;

• Ensure that healthcare services in all public hospitals are free and of high quality;

• Revoke the inclusion of Kenya as a NATO ally;

• Clear condemnation of war crimes and mass murder of the Palestinian people in violation of international law;

• Remove all foreign military bases in Kenya within the next 6 months.«

Long live the struggle of the mases in Kenya!

Strenghten the Communist Party of Kenya!

Status of the signatories 04.08.2024. Further signing possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info

1. ORC Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo

2. CPK Communist Party of Kenya

3. MMLPL Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Line

4. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

5. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

6. NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

7. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

8. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

9. БКП Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)

10. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

11. MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

12. KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

13. RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

14. UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

15. RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)

16. MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

17. MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

18. KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

19. UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia

20. UoC Union of Cypriots, Cyprus

21. PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))

22. PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

23. CPPDM Chinese People's Party for the Defense of Mao Zedong

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Department of Foreign Affairs department at DFLP: “Targeting Children in Gaza is a crime that requires legal prosecution”

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 10 August 2024

(Above: It is hard to believe that descendants of the victims of Nazism could place such statementson Twitter/X)

Since its foundation as a political theory of settler colonialism by Theodor Hertzl in 1896, Zionism has attempted to cloak itself in the religious teachings of Judaism. This has continued to the present time when, in justification for the current war of genocide, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cited Old Testament storied of the destruction of the Amalekites, a people that the Israelites were ordered to wipe out in an act of revenge. The Israelites, according to the Torah, were instructed “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” On October 29 last year, he called on Israelis to “remember what Amalek has done to you”, and added that Israeli soldiers were part of a legacy that goes back 3,000 years. This is the background to Israel’s war against children, referred to in the statement from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine below – eds.

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Department of Foreign Affairs department at DFLP: “Targeting Children in Gaza is a crime that requires legal prosecution”

We call the international organizations to use the weapons of the law to protect childhood and prosecute the leaders and soldiers of the occupation

The number of children martyrs in Gaza has surpassed the number of murdered children on the span of 4 years in all conflicts around the world.

The number of “UNRWA” workers who were martyred in this conflict is the highest ever since the establishment of the United Nations.

During the early days of the genocidal war on the Gaza strip, the prime ministers of the Israeli enemy said: “There will be no civilian authority in the Gaza Strip that teaches its children to hate Israel”. This is a diplomatic statement that aligns with the Israeli saying: “A good Arab is a dead Arab”. It also resonates with historical and religious Jewish myths and with religious edicts that explicitly call for killing of Palestinian children. Numerous Jewish rabbis have previously called for the “killing of Gazan children and women, even if a million or more were killed, because that is in accordance with Jewish teachings.”

Based on this, there is no need to elaborate on the fact that the Zionist project is not merely a colonial, settler, exclusionary, and replacement project but also a genocidal project that originates from the belief that the human factor is the decisive factor in the conflict. Therefore, every opportunity to terrorize non-Jews must be seized. This is what justifies the Israeli army’s insistence on mass killing and targeting of women and children. It is no coincidence that the majority of the martyrs in the Gaza Strip are women and children.

The numerical data confirms that there is a clear targeting not only of children in Gaza specifically and Palestine generally but also of the infrastructure that supports childhood, like the education sector and its facilities, including staff and schools. And according to figures from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees “UNRWA”, “The number of murdered children in Gaza in only 4 months (from November 20, 2023, to February 20,2024) exceeds the number of murdered children in all of the conflicts around the world in the last 4 years.”

To ensure the killing of as many children as possible in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army adopted a scorched-earth policy of mass destruction, including homes, civilian facilities, hospitals, schools, places of worship, refugee camps, international and press offices. This is confirmed by a statement from the commissioner-general of UNRWA, which summarizes Israel’s intent to kill as many Palestinians as possible. The commissioner-general says: “since the start of the war, we lost 202 of our employees in the Gaza strip. These people were teachers, doctors, nurses, relief and social worker, engineers, logistics and support staff, and professional in technology, media, and communication. This number of fatalities is the highest among workers killed in a single conflict since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.”

Throughout the first seven months of the aggression, Israel killed approximately 6649 school students, in addition to the martyrdom of 547 university students, and 334 school teachers and around a 100 university professors.

According to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 286 public schools, 65 UNRWA schools, and 31 university campuses in the Gaza Strip were destroyed. 57 schools in the west bank were also raided and vandalized. 133 public schools were used as shelters in the Gaza Strip, a huge number of which got bombed with tons of explosives.

Educational Institutions were targeted and destroyed either partially or completely, which resulted in around 630,000 school students and 88,000 university students being deprived of their natural right to education.

These reasons, among others, prompted the UN Secretary General to include Israel on the UN’s “list of shame” for the Israeli army’s violation of children’s rights in the conflict. Especially since there is a strong belief amongst international organizations concerned with education that Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian education sector completely, known as educational genocide. This involves the systemic eradication of education by arresting, detaining, or killing of the students, educators, workers, and destroying educational infrastructure. This constitutes a violation not only of international and humanitarian law, but also of the minimum of ethical and humanitarian standards which have collapsed under the rubble of houses that sheltered children, women, and civilians.

We do not highlight anything new when we shed the light on the occupation’s crime against the Palestinian people in general and against children and childhood in particular. We are confident that the concerned international organizations and institutions possess much more information than mentioned in this brief letter. This is only a simple attempt to awaken some remnants of international conscience and to restore justice and international and humanitarian law that turns a blind eye when it comes to a crime committed by Israel.

On behalf of the “Department of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” we call on the UN Secretary-General and the Commissioner-General of UNRWA to use the weapon of law to protect children and childhood in Palestine by filing lawsuits in international and local courts against occupation soldiers and their leaders, both on the political and military level. We also urge “UNICEF” to continue its work not only in exposing Israel’s practices against childhood and education in Palestine but also in seriously striving to secure a healthy environment that ensures a dignified life for the children of Palestine. This will never happen as long as Zionist fascism, which thrives on criminal and terrorist ideology that fueled by historical and religious myths, persist. Thus, every possible international effort is required to eliminate it now rather than later, given its significant threat not only to Palestinians but to the entire world.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
-Department of Foreign Affairs-
- August 2024 -

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Dreyfus must release Dan Duggan

Written by: Nick G. on 8 August 2024

US-born naturalised Australian citizen Dan Duggan was seized by the Australian Federal Police 18 months ago.

He has been held in maximum security solitary confinement ever since whilst the US imperialists seek his extradition to face charges under US law.

The main charges relate to his perfectly legal training of pilots in South Africa, some of whom were Chinese. He had broken no Australian law.

A secondary law is a trumped-up charge of money laundering, brought against him by the US to prevent his wife selling a property they own to finance his legal costs.

Our Party has provided $500 to assist with those costs. Others who can afford to do so should consider it as part of the fight to defend Australian sovereignty and the rights of our citizens against arbitrary interference by a vengeful US imperialism.

Rather than explain the politics of this injustice ourselves, we refer readers to this excellent piece on the Sydney Criminal Lawyers website: Dan Duggan: Another Australian Citizen the US Is Questionably Seeking to Extradite (sydneycriminallawyers.com.au)

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Defend Australia from the US!

Written by: Nick G. on 7 August 2924

The 2024 AUSMIN (Australia-US Ministerial) Talks have just concluded. Attended by each countries’ Ministers for Defence and Foreign Affairs, what has not concluded is the steady occupation of Australia by US forces readying for war with China.

The two sides announced today a series of joint initiatives including new “operating locations,” more frequent troop rotations, more frequent B-52 nuclear armed bomber rotations, and the formalisation of plans to coproduce two key, long-range missile systems.

Canberra has agreed to “new and longer-term operating locations” for “force posture cooperation,” a senior US Defense official said.

“We’re also expanding our logistics cooperation by assessing places where we could locate an enduring logistics support area in Queensland, Australia,” the official said.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said there would be an increase in rotational forces, to include more maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft and more frequent rotational bomber deployments.

Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said that put together, those kinds of moves are “greatly going to enhance the United States’s ability to operate in Australia.”

Not one of these increases of US military activity in Australia have been discussed with the Australian people.

This betrayal of sovereignty runs through the decision by Menzies to sell pig iron to Japan before WW 2, to his approval for the British to test atomic weapons in Australia, to the CIA setting up its spy base at Pine Gap, to our lap dog obedience to every call by our US masters to follow them into unjust and unwinnable wars, to Gillard’s approval of a “rotational” US marines base outside Darwin.

This betrayal of our sovereignty has only hastened under the AUKUS arrangements.

What sort of thinking is behind the betrayal?

US marine, B-52 bombers and nuclear submarine bases in Australia are the realisation of a proposal by US armaments industry-funded think-tank ASPI. It is an organisation of Australians Serving Predatory Imperialism.

In its analysis of the 2014 “defence” budget, ASPI raised the unlikely prospect of US “disengagement” from the Asia-Pacific and put forward a treacherous and bizarre proposal for turning the whole of our continent into a US base against the peoples of the region.

“Leaders need followers,” argued the paper.

“But there’s also something that Australia can offer the United States which goes to the heart of its economic and security interests - access to 7.7 million square kilometres of terrain stretching from the Pacific to Indian Ocean and from the Great Southern Ocean to the base of the Asian archipelago.

“As the Western pacific becomes more contested, the value of access to Australian ports, airfields and training grounds will surely grow. It’s arguably the most valuable thing we can offer our ally…a solid strategic base straddling the sea lanes passing from the Indian to Pacific Oceans.”

ASPI, which has an incredibly powerful voice in the media and in government circles, was advocating allowing US imperialism to use Australia as a giant aircraft carrier, all the better with which to project force into Asia, and at China in particular.

That treacherous thinking has been totally embraced by the US loyalist Marles who boasted today that “American force posture now in Australia involves every domain: land, sea, air, cyber and space.”

These are all areas in which Australia has surrendered any capacity for independent judgement and action.

We need an armed people to defend this country, to defend it from the forces of US occupation.

For anti-imperialist independence and socialism!

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Imperialist hypocrisy on display

Written by: Nick G. on 6 August 2024

We have known all along that imperialism practices rampant hypocrisy. It tramples on people’s rights under the guise of “defending democracy”, and oppresses peoples and nations under the guise of “fighting for freedom”.

These are general manifestations of its hypocrisy.

A particular example of it was revealed on August 5 in the online US magazine Breaking Defense.

Under the heading Outsourcing the US shipyard industrial base will outsource American sovereignty, the American Council of Shipbuilders warned that the US was falling far behind its social-imperialist rival China in both naval and mercantile ships, but that proposals to close this gap by outsourcing naval shipbuilding to allied countries would be a mistake.

The Council said:

Some of our allies took the outsourcing path, and now are desperately trying to rebuild the industrial base back to what it once was — but they have lost the technical expertise, the infrastructure, and most importantly, the craftsmen to make it a reality. As a nation, why would we ever entertain this idea when we can see what it has done to our allies?

The building of the US Navy’s ships, it says, “must be done in our homeland, not by sending hard earned tax dollars and jobs overseas to bolster another country’s industrial base.”

These are the words of big corporations set to profit from the non-refundable gift of $A4.7 billion of Australian “hard earned tax dollars” sent directly to US shipbuilders, with a further slice of the estimated cost of $368 billion allocated for eight nuclear-powered submarines.

Among the corporate heavies running the American Council of Shipbuilders are:

• Chairman, Brad Moyer, Vice President of BAE Systems Ship Repair

• Vice-Chairman, Dave Carver, President of General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO)

• Board of Directors member, Jennifer Boykin, President, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) Newport News Shipbuilding

BAE Systems is a British multinational whose US operations are one of the six largest suppliers to the US Department of Defense. The design and building of the SSN-AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines has been outsourced to BAE Systems, together with the Australian Submarine Corporation.

Before the SSN-AUKUS submarines are built, Australia will buy between three and five Virginia-class SSNs from the US. They are built by General Dynamics and HII.

The only reason we had to drop earlier plans for 12 redesigned and locally built Collins-class conventionally-powered submarines, perfect for Australian coastal defence at $A40 billion, was the plan for Australia to have long-range subs, interoperable and interchangeable with those of the US Navy, and sitting off the coast of China ready to support whatever provocation US imperialism decides to throw at China.

Former Prime Ministers Paul Keating (Labor) and Malcolm Turnbull (Liberal), and former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr have criticised the AUKUS arrangements for outsourcing Australian sovereignty. An earlier US proposal for us to lease US SSNs was criticised on the same basis (as “a derogation of sovereignty”) by former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.

Our current “leaders”, Albanese and Dutton, are enablers of US imperialist hypocrisy on the question of naval shipbuilding.

Essentially, they are compradors and traitors.

They will have no place in an independent, sovereign and socialist Australia.

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Makarrata: Bipartisan approach to stop truth-telling commission

Written by: Nick G. on 5 August 2024

(Above: from ANTAR Victoria)

Labor’s eternal fear of being wedged on matters of principle by the Opposition was revealed at this weekend’s Garma Festival.

It surprised no-one when the ex-Queensland copper who runs the Opposition came out and said that if elected, there would be no telling the truth, or Makarrata, under his government.

Dutton thinks he is on a winner by pledging to keep Australians comfortable in the cotton wool wrapping of willful ignorance, allowing them to slumber on under the blanket of denial.

Well, as soon as the dog barks, Albo runs inside.

He disavows a central objective of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, telling ABC interviewer David Speirs that Makarrata simply means “the coming together after a struggle”.

Yes, that is how the word is defined in the Statement, but the action that followed from adoption of the word was: “We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.”

These were the words, and that was the action, promised by Albanese on the last election night.

He has now broken that promise and has chosen to stand with Dutton against the aspirations of Australian First Peoples, against opening an opportunity for a formal truth-telling about the violence, and threats of violence, by which Australia was seized from its owners.

Albanese says that he will now concentrate on closing the gap between outcomes experienced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, gaps that have kept widening under his government.

The only gap that he has closed is that between himself and the racist Right at the top of the Opposition.

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Indo-Pacific: New US Joint Force Command

Written by: (Contributed) on 5 August 2024

(Source: US Joint Forces Command powerpoint)

Two seemingly unrelated and carefully worded official Pentagon media releases in Australia have revealed their regional military planning for war with China. The planning has included upgrading the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and using the Philippines as a central consideration as a potential 'theatre of war'. The role of Australia was downplayed.

In late July the Pentagon announced it had established a new Joint Force Command with Japan led by a three-star general with the specific plan to 'co-ordinate military operations with the Japanese, plan joint exercises and participate in the defence of the country if hostilities erupt'. (1) The command system has been placed at the forefront of US-led regional defence and security provision and has a special status with the Indo-Pacific Command based in Hawaii. (2)

Other publications with compliant pro-US journalists elsewhere also covered the upgraded US-Japan alliance. It was noted that 'Tokyo pledge to act as America's global partner … and that … Japan was to have a direct leadership role over American forces … with deeper interoperability … although … US forces in Japan would be reconstituted as a joint force headquarters reporting to the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command'. (3)

The upgrade to the already existing IPS has revealed how far diplomatic tensions have been continually escalating. The IPS consisted of the US-Japan alliance being central to global considerations; resting upon the 'Quad', China was effectively hemmed in from all sides. (4)
Other regional allies including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam and others, were included in the IPS as lower-level partners. (5)

The US is clearly concerned at the changing balance of forces across the Indo-Pacific and the ability of China as a major competitor, backed by strong diplomatic links between Beijing and Moscow. The announcement about the new command, for example, stated that ''the US and Japan also have to contend with increased military co-operation between Russia and China'. (6) It coincided with a major diplomatic statement issued from Vientiane, Laos, that 'Russia and China should join efforts to counter interference from external forces in South-east Asia … as … the strategic partners push for strong co-ordination in the region as a counterweight to the US'. (7) It was also noted that 'the two also discussed implementing a new security architecture in Euro-Asia … and … Beijing was ready to work with Russia to uphold the ASEAN-centred, open and inclusive regional co-operation architecture in the face of external disturbances and obstacles'. (8)

A few days earlier another Pentagon-issued regional diplomatic statement drew attention to the Philippines signing a new defence security agreement with Singapore, a 'fortnight after finalising a landmark pact with Japan'. (9) The IPS was not referred to, although remains the central framework through which the US conduct their regional planning. The new Philippine-Singapore security agreement was also categorised as going 'beyond broadening military-to-military engagement, the deal adds heft to Manila's strategy of building a defensive web of partners and allies as it contends with growing Chinese hostility in its maritime waters'. (10)

In recent times the Marcos presidential administration has been moved by the US to a central regional consideration; the Marcos grouping are little other than compliant puppets with every US-led move. Almost daily diplomatic hostilities between the Philippines and China are openly applauded by the US, who pull the strings of their puppets.

The fact the Philippines rests upon an arc with Singapore which also swings through the South China Seas, the Straits of Malacca, military facilities in Japan, Guam and sensitive areas of the South Pacific, shows clearly why the US regard a compliant government in the Philippines so highly, and necessary for their regional operations with allies. (11) Australia, for example, has also recently upgraded its military links with Singapore; in June Australian-based facilities were used by the Singapore Air Force for joint training accompanied by an official media release stating it 'represented the close and enduring defence ties between the two countries'. (12)

Singapore has also hosted the sensitive Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) for intelligence-gathering which have AI facilities for using 'data from these different sources … fused … to then be … analysed to produce operations intelligence as the basis for decision-making on response', linked to the Quad. (13)

No reference, however, was made in the media release to the role of the Australian-based regional Jindalee (JORN) radar facilities, which include Singapore; they are, at present, subject to a $1.2 billion upgrade to ensure 'Australia remains a world leader in maritime and air defence'. (14) The Philippines, through Singapore, would now appear part of the JORN facilities.

It is interesting to note a significant part of the two Pentagon media releases contained reference to the military-industrial complex: the new US joint force command was diplomatically noted as including 'Japanese efforts to shore up the West's industrial base ... while … Tokyo has agreed to help Manila acquire more coastal ships and radar capacity'. (15) No doubt the shareholders in the Australian defence industries, including Australian universities which provide much of the necessary expertise, are quite content to uphold such developments so long as they are supported by generous state and federal government grants:
We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Pentagon to set up joint HQ in Japan, Australian, 29 July 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. See: In historic move, US to upgrade, The Japan Times, 28 July 2024; and, US to revamp military forces in Japan, CNN., 28 July 2024.
4. The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
5. Ibid.
6. Australian, op.cit., 29 July 2024.
7. Moscow, Beijing's joint bid to keep US out of Asia, The Weekend Australian, 27/28 July 2024.
8. Ibid.
9. Manila adds to its security network, Australian, 26 July 2024.
10. Ibid.
11. See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
12. Singapore deploys combat jets to WA., The Indian Ocean Defence and Security Supplement, Australian, 24 July 2024.
13. AI revolutionises maritime intelligence, The Indian Ocean Defence and Security Supplement, Australian, 24 July 2024.
14. See: Wikipedia – Jindalee Operational Radar Network, Footnote reference to 'Rough Seas', ABC World Today, 16 December 2010; and, JORN., BAE Systems.
15. Ibid., and, Australian, op.cit., 29 July 2024.

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Anti-Poverty Activists Rally at Social Services Minister’s office

Written by: Nick G. on 5 August 2024

Last Friday, SA Anti-Poverty Network activists living in or near the southern Adelaide electorate of Federal Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth held a short rally outside her electorate office.

They were there to remind the community, and her, that no one deserves poverty.

But after 2 years in power, Federal Labor, clearly, have left behind people on JobSeeker, the lowest unemployment payment in the developed world, as well as other people living below the poverty-line.

After several speakers, a bundle of hand-written letters from job-seekers, students, and other people on Centrelink payments were taken inside the office and presented to her staff.

They were politely received, and office staff spent several minutes discussing the issues with those present. While a polite reception is better than rejection, it left the group wondering what needed to be done next so that the Minister and her staff were placed under pressure, rather than being able to politely absorb the issue.

Today, August 5 begins Homelessness Week. The APN SA is planning to rally outside the electorate office of Premier Malinauskas this coming Friday.

In a media statement released today, the group says that SA government claims to have built 500 affordable homes are a “drop in the ocean” when there are 15,000 people on the public housing waiting list, and over 6000 homeless.

Spokesperson Samantha Skinner said that while the State government could not build thousands of homes overnight, they must raise their level of ambition to meet the unprecedented levels of need.

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The Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla (Bangladesh) -statement on current crisis

Written by: Proletarian Party of Bangladesh on 4 August 2024

(Above: Protests continue in Bangladesh on August 3. Photo by Shaharik Istik Raz on Flickr.)

Intro: We are reprinting this statement from the Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla (PBSP)/Bangladesh. In the two weeks since this statement was released, more killings have occurred as protests continue against the government. We offer the following notes of explanation.

Sheikh Hasina is described by the Economist magazine as “Asia’s Iron Lady”. She was prime minister of Bangladesh from June 1996 to July 2001 and again since January 2009. She heads the Awami League, the oldest existing political party in the country. It played a large role in achieving Bangladeshi independence and relations with India through Awami League. The Awami League has close ties to India’s Modi government.

The quota system of the Bangladesh Civil Service reserves 30% of positions for descendants of the freedom fighters of Bangladesh’s war for independence from Pakistan. They are mainly loyal to the Awami League and students object to the system for denying their opportunity to win jobs on merit.

The Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) is the Awami League’s main rival for office on behalf of the Bangladesh ruling class. To try and discredit the student movement, the government has declared the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and all its affiliates banned for their alleged involvement in this and earlier anti-government movements.

The Chhatra League is the student wing of the Awami League. It is a violent, fascist supporter of the government.

The 9-point demands are reformist demands advanced by sections of the current anti-government movement – eds.

A Call to Struggling Students-Mass People - Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla(PBSP)/Bangladesh

The Quota Reform Movement may have been triumphant, but the blood debt has not been paid.
Fight to overthrow genocidal, murderous Hasina-fascism!

Over the span of five days from July 16 to 20, Hasina-Awami-Indian fascists drowned the student movement, which gradually turned into a mass people's uprising, in an ocean of blood to suppress it. However, they have also been forced to surrender to the fair demands of the students. As a result, a significant triumph has been achieved in this bloody struggle. At the same time, Hasina-fascism has survived, for the time being, due to the limitations of the movement. Thus, the movement failed to achieve real political success.

These fascists have taken nearly two hundred lives in this brief period. More than a thousand students and young people were wounded by bullets fired by the police, BGB, army, and League terrorists. Many of them are dying in hospitals. The killing frenzy is still going strong, involving the Chhatra League, terrorists of the Awami camp, the Police-RAB, and finally the army. The state apparatus has brutally suppressed this movement. The army deployed sound grenades, tear gas, and fired shots from helicopters to put an end to the student protests in the streets for the first time in the history of the country. They opened fire on the processions. Martyr Abu Saeed, who bravely bared his chest in front of the police's raised guns, was fatally shot by direct gunfire in Rangpur.

Fearing the loss of power, Hasina-Awami fascists have confined the movement with a curfew. They have continued their fascist, one-sided propaganda by blocking access to the internet and censoring the news that the media reports. They have tried to disunite the leaders of the movement. They have arrested and abducted the movement’s leaders and tried to repress them through intimidation. They have spoken of the bogeyman of BNP-Jamaat since the beginning. This is how they want to hide their defeat by the bravery and struggle of the students. They are trying to protect their fascist power by any means. Cases and attacks against the protesters have already been initiated. They are arresting any opposition. All these will increase in the future. Large-scale terrorist operations against the protesters have already begun as they attempt to bring the situation under their control.

However, this government is still trembling with the fear of its fall. The babbling of their leaders has decreased. Their mouths are dry. Many of them are keeping the way to escape abroad. Until now, they have maintained their power only with the support of India and the force from the weapons of the army and bureaucrats. But even they might reject Hasina and bring a "Third Power" to the throne if they see too much danger. On the other hand, all opposition political forces and individuals, except the Awami League and their few sycophants, are seeking the downfall of this government. It is evident to all that the hands and feet of this regime are red with the blood of the students and the masses. They are deceivers, hypocrites, and liars. They are enemies of all students and all people.

Why is this fascist government able to survive despite being so hated and excluded? One reason is that they control the state apparatus (the army, BGB, and police) and are directly supported by India's expansionist, Hindutva fascist Modi government, as well as foreign imperialists. Another reason is that the anti-quota movement so far has shown immense valor in the student movement, but it was devoid of any political aims. They themselves called it an “apolitical” movement. A fascist administration such as Hasina's cannot be overthrown by an apolitical movement. As a result, it was largely deprived of the participation of all the struggling classes of society, especially the large urban working class. If the working class of the city had joined the student movement, this government would have been thrown into the dustbin by now. The people would have crushed the barbarous fascist Awami leaders, including Hasina, beneath their feet.

However, the extremely angry students have added a new dimension to this movement. They have ousted the terrorist Chhatra League from many universities, even if temporarily. They have resisted armed attacks by these government-backed thugs and retaliated heavily against them. The Leaguers who carried out armed attacks on the street movement were driven away like dogs by the students. Much-hated leaders were beaten up; the PS of Gazipur's ex-mayor Jahangir, who fired at protestors' marches, was killed and hanged from a tree, and a policeman or two faced the same fate in some places. They attacked a number of police posts and stations and set them on fire. They even broke into the Narsingdi jail, freed all the prisoners, and looted hundreds of weapons from there. Even though there was no organized, centralized leadership behind these events, the entire ruling class was stunned by this spontaneous outburst of public outrage. They were rendered helpless in the face of mob power, albeit very temporarily.

This uprising temporarily immobilized the fascist regime in almost the entire country. This movement has demonstrated how brutally oppressive fascists can be. It was just a very rational, demand-oriented movement of the students. So it is easy to imagine how brutally they can deal with the struggle to overthrow the fascist regime.

The people's power has never been established in this nation's history through a mass movement or mass coup. Sometimes the government is forced to resign, and some of the demands of the people are forced to be accepted, but in the end, others of the ruling class take over, as happened in '69 or '90. The reason for this was that these movements were not equipped with a political program to capture state power by the people. The ruling class has weapons; they have various forces, which these political forces of the people did not have. That is why we from our proletarian party say with the utmost importance that the people must take up arms and build their own forces. This barbarous fascist power and their state apparatus must be defeated by violent means. It is not a crime to bear arms against the arms of the enemies of the people. Destroying the enemy's lair or killing the barbarous scoundrels among them is not something to be frowned upon. But it has to be planned and part of a political agenda. The people have every right to counter the barbaric terror of the ruling fascists with revolutionary terror.

The true freedom of the people lies in the growth of the people's war through rural-based guerilla warfare and the creation of a new democratic state composed of workers, peasants, and middle-class citizens. Mass movement and mass upheaval must be linked with rural-centric mass warfare. Only the urban-centric mass movement and mass upheaval, which will be built based on this people's war, will be able to establish people's power.

But it is a protracted struggle. Therefore, it is not possible to stop various types of mass movements, and neither will they stop. Besides, not only the workers and peasants but also the people of all levels of society and even the bourgeoisie are struggling against fascism. This is seen in this ongoing movement.
As a result, the mass movement that is currently underway needs to continue and be focused on the political goal of toppling fascism. The workers and peasants, especially the working class, must join the urban movement. Programs should be brought forward with the aim of building a real democratic society and state by eliminating fascism. All revolutionary, democratic, leftist, and progressive forces and political parties must unite in that cause today.

We call on the struggling students, the combatants on the front lines, to shake off the confusion of so-called “apolitical” gibberish. Awami fascism will not accept your 9-point demands yet. They have only taken a strategy to secure their throne by retreating a bit through quota reform. They will not spare the vanguard of the movement. They and their terror gang 'Chhatra League' are preparing weapons for revenge. You must also prepare your weapons. That weapon is the political agenda, the target of which now is to oust Hasina-Awami fascism. This is the way to fulfill the 9-point demands. To fulfill the dreams of martyrs. To fulfill your duty to the families of the martyrs.

- Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
- Establish a truly independent and democratic society free from imperialism, India, and foreign exploitation and control!
- Long live the agrarian revolution!
- Long live the People's War!

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Israeli murder of Australian aid worker whitewashed

Written by: Nick G. on 2 August 2024

The murder of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, including Australian citizen Zomi Frankcom, has been whitewashed in a report by Special Adviser Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin.

At the time of the federal government’s announcement of Binskin to investigate the crime, we warned that his appointment came with a major conflict of interest.

We pointed out that “Binskin is a non-executive director for Defence and National Security Policy of BAE Systems Australia. Its UK parent company is literally making a killing out of Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.”

We added:

It is not good enough that someone working for genocide profiteer BAE Systems will investigate the World Central Kitchen murders.

If it was thought that someone of his military seniority was required to get past Israeli obstructions, then he should have been appointed as part of a team that included war crimes legal specialists and human rights lawyers. The World Kitchen killings are not an isolated incident and should be investigated as part of the murders of nearly 200 aid workers by the Zionists, of their deliberate starvation of the people of Gaza, attacks on food convoys including the so-called “flour massacre” on 29 February 2024 when at least 118 people were killed and 760 injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks.

Anything less than an investigation on this scale will miss the whole point of the Zionist genocide.

If Binskins returns a report that is in anyway inconclusive, that in anyway refuses to see what even Blind Freddy can plainly see, then it will have no credibility given his conflict of interest.

As it turns out, BAE Systems non-executive director Binskin’s report is worse than “inconclusive”: it actually backs Israel’s account of the killing of the aid workers. The UN now says that over 250 aid workers have been killed by the Israelis in Gaza.

In his report, Binskin said it was his assessment that the Israeli strike on the WCK aid workers was not knowingly or deliberately directed against the WCK.

"It is my assessment that Israel’s acceptance of accountability for the 1 April WCK incident, and investigation, reporting and responding has, to this point, been timely, appropriate and, with some exceptions, sufficient," Binskin's report said.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has accepted Binskin’s report.

Openly fascist Opposition leader Peter Dutton who has all along backed Israeli genocide, said the report should never have been commissioned, saying that the decision was “frankly a disgrace”.

The real disgrace is that a top official of the Australian Defence Force has stood with BAE Systems and their good customer Israel, to whitewash the murder of an Australian that took place in plain view.

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Condemn the murder of Ismail Haniya

Written by: Nick G. on 1 August 2024

(Above: Ismail Haniya together with anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews. Source: Torah Jews on X)

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) unequivocally condemns the murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya on July 31 by the Israeli Zionists.

The assassination, by an Israel air strike in Teheran, Iran, is designed to frustrate moves towards a ceasefire in Gaza.

Ismail Haniya was instrumental in negotiating the terms of a ceasefire, which the Zionists have opposed. Israel has been increasingly isolated in its opposition to an internationally backed ceasefire proposal for which Hamas had expressed support.

Haniya also encouraged the overcoming of divisions within the Palestinian resistance, and particularly those between Hamas and the West Bank Palestinian Authority led by Fatah.

Just over a week before his assassination, Haniya had encouraged the meeting of representatives of 14 Palestinian organisations in Beijing.

This reconciliation dialogue resulted in a recognition by all participants of the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

The declaration also stated that a temporary national reconciliation government will be formed according to the consensus of Palestinian factions and the current Basic Law of the Palestine, to undertake Gaza reconstruction and prepare for general elections as soon as possible in accordance with the adopted electoral law. It endorsed the principle of “Palestinians governing Palestinians”.

For the sake of unity, all representatives endorsed the “two state solution”, also favoured by “honest broker” Beijing. China favours Israel’s continued existence. China has been Israel's third largest trading partner globally; bilateral trade volume increased from $50 million in 1992 to over $10 billion in 2013. Technology and armaments are major components of this trade relationship.

Israel immediately denounced the agreement within the Palestinian resistance, and imperialists led by the US reaffirmed their rejection of any governing body for Gaza which included Hamas. In this way do the great “defenders of democracy” show their contempt for the will of the people.

Israel’s “right to defend itself” has always meant its right to commit aggression against its neighbours, and to conduct targeted assassinations and bombings within their borders.

Within hours of murdering Haniya, Israel launched an airstrike on a southern residential suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut, claiming to have killed a top Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, in retaliation for Hezbollah’s alleged bombing in the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Days War.

Israeli genocide is not limited to the targeted assassination of the leaders of resistance organisations. Whole families are murdered in an attempt to intimidate the leaders and break their will.

In Haniya’s case, fourteen members of his family were killed in an Israeli airstrike on his family home in Gaza City, among them a brother and nephew in retaliation for October 7. In November 2023, a granddaughter of his was reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. Later that month his eldest grandson was killed in an Israeli strike. Three of his sons and three grandchildren were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip on 10 April 2024. On 25 June 2024, ten members of his family, including his 80-year-old sister, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in al-Shati refugee camp.

This terrible price had not intimidated Ismail Haniya, nor broken his will.

And neither will Haniya’s assassination stop the Palestinian people from continuing their fight for freedom.

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We will resist the occupation. We will defend the soil of Kurdistan!

Written by: MLKP on 29 July 2024

(Above: MLKP rally Source:MLKP International Bulletin)

We are making avalable to Australian readers this statement from the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Turkey/Northen Kurdistan (MLKP). We support the right of the Kurdish nation to exist within its own borders and condemn the efforts of Erdogan's Turkey to destroy the Kurdish people. We have added several footnotes for clarity - eds.

The fascist Turkish bourgeois colonial state, with the support of the KDP (1) and the Iraqi government, is expanding its occupation attack on the territory of Bashurê Kurdistan (Southern Kurdistan) (2). Our mountains are being bombed, our villages are being evacuated, our people are being forcibly relocated. A genocidal attack is being carried out with chemical weapons and tactical nuclear bombs.

The Turkish colonial state sees the centuries-old Ottoman dream as the basis for its invasion attacks. It is on its way to annexing the territory from Bashurê Kurdistan to Mosul and Kirkuk. The NATO countries, which recently came together and openly announced their intention to bring the world to the brink of World War III, support the genocidal policy and occupation of the Turkish state. The USA and the Western imperialists assign a special role in its Middle East axis to the Turkish bourgeois state, which is their financial-economic colony.

Together with Israel, which continues its massacres in Palestine, the Turkish state is plunging the Middle East into a great chaos. While sowing the seeds of discord among the peoples, the ground is being prepared for the military base of the imperialist USA in the region.

The Turkish bourgeois state sees war and political chaos in the Middle East and North Africa as support for its goal of becoming a regional power. It is trying to exploit the contradictions between the imperialist USA and Russia. It is pursuing an expansionist strategy with the aim of becoming a regional political player. With a future vision of expanding its territory, it is trying to shift borders. Military bases are being established in the occupied territories from Afrin to Bradost. It stations the fascist political Islamist gangs it feeds and strengthens in the region and establishes a rule of colonial masters.

Fascist leader Tayyip Erdogan, who is planning a new Ottoman Empire, wants to push the borders of Misak-ı Milli. The oil reserves in the region are whetting his appetite. From Aleppo to Mosul and Kirkuk, he wants to realize his annexation scenario, which he could not realize with the ISIS gang, by deploying his own army forces. He is positioning the political Islamist ISIS gangs in Syria and the KDP Barzani family in Bashûrê Kurdistan as collaborators in his colonial plans.

The KDP-Barzani family has deepened the line of collaborationist betrayal. It has sold out the national liberation struggle and the freedom of the people of Bashurê Kurdistan for narrow family interests. It is jeopardizing the federal status of the region. It fills its coffers with the black money it collects from the oil of Bashurê Kurdistan and opens the gates of the Kurdish land to the occupiers. It turns a deaf ear to the calls of our patriotic people to stop cooperating with the colonialists. The KDP line, which reached out to the Turkish state, could not save its arm. Now the Barzanis degenerated into wanting to become a governor of colonialism. If the Turkish state gains full rule over Bashurê Kurdistan, they will not even have as much authority as the trustee of the Hakkari municipality, much less will they be able to maintain their bourgeois rule.

The only force resisting the occupation of Bashurê Kurdistan is the Kurdish freedom guerrilla. In Zap, Garê, Metîna, in the mountains of free Kurdistan, the patriotic and communist guerrilla forces have stopped the invaders with the line of self-sacrificing resistance. They prevented the occupying forces from advancing. The Turkish army, which suffered heavy losses every day, was unable to move without the support of the KDP and the Iraqi government. It therefore began to target the population of Bashurê Kurdistan. By bombing villages and besieging districts, the aim is to force the population to leave and to depopulate the region by setting up checkpoints on the roads.

The Turkish occupying state is trying to turn the Syrian and Iraqi states, which have been colonizing Kurdistan for years, into being complicit in this plan. The weaknesses of the governments in Baghdad and Damascus, which want to regain their power as sovereign states, are to be united in the Turkish state’s policy of hostility towards the Kurds and turned into its reserve. The Assad regime, which is trying to survive in Syria, is offered cooperation for the liquidation attacks against the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The fascist Turkish state wants to form a colonialist alliance against our women‘s revolution in Rojava.(3) To this end, it invites the regime in Damascus, with which it has established military and intelligence cooperation, to the negotiating table in order to force it to divide the East and West of the Euphrates. The main goal of the colonialist Turkish state is to liquidate the Autonomous Administration and occupy the areas of the revolution in Rojava. The fascist chief regime is taking its steps in line with the plan of annihilation and genocide.

On July 19, the 12th anniversary of the revolution in Rojava, the seeds of greater resistance and glorious victories will be planted. We defeated the colonialists and their gangs in Kobanê in a historic resistance at the cost of the lives of thousands of our people. We defeated them in Sinjar. We defeated them in Garê. Now another legend of resistance is being written in the mountains of Kurdistan.

With the epic resistance power of our people, we will expel the fascist Turkish colonial state from the revolutionary areas of Bashurê Kurdistan and Rojava. Our people in the four parts of Kurdistan must not remain silent in the face of the betrayal and collaborationist line of the KDP. They must put a stop to this insidious occupation complicit. The guerrilla resistance must be strengthened through popular uprisings throughout Kurdistan. With the determined stance of our people and our guerrilla resistance, we will finally put an end to this colonialist war, which the fascist chief regime sees as a struggle for being or not being for itself. Our freedom guerrillas will draw strength from the strong popular actions against occupation and colonialism in Bakurê Kurdistan (4), Rojava, Turkey and the European metropolises and further strengthen their resistance.

The strength lies in our resistant patriotic people. The mountains of free Kurdistan, protected by the blood of thousands of martyrs, and our revolution in Rojava draw their strength from our patriotic people. The history of the liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples has shown that not everything depends on the will of the colonialists.

Now is the time again to start the Serhildan (Kurdish Intifada) (5) for the freedom of Kurdistan and our people. Our people, who never shy away from paying the price, will play this historic role and bury the colonialists in the mountains of Kurdistan. The will of the resistance for honor and freedom will prevail.

We call on all our peoples in Turkey, Iraq and Syria, especially our laboring peoples of the ruling Turkish and Arab nations, to raise the struggle against these genocidal, occupying and colonialist attacks. As long as colonized Kurdistan is not free, no people will be free.

We call on all progressive, revolutionary parties and organizations, democratic mass organizations and dignified intellectuals in the four parts of Kurdistan and the region to stand up against this war and occupation.

This resistance, which draws its strength from its righteousness and its people, will absolutely, absolutely win. Either victory or victory!

Long live the women‘s revolution of Rojava!

Long live our guerrilla resistance!

Long live the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist united struggle of the peoples of the Middle East!

Long live the united free socialist Kurdistan!

July 18, 2024

MLKP Kurdistan Organization

(International Bulletin of the MLKP, July 2024)

(1) The Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) was established in 1946 under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani. Originally located in Iranian Kurdistan, it is now he ruling party in Iraqi Kurdistan, and is regarded as a populist, conservative organisation – eds.

(2) Bashurê Kurdistan is an internationally recognised autonomous region of northern Iraq, home to 6 million Kurds. Kurdistan spans four countries: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria -eds.

(3) Rojava is liberated and self-governing Kurdish territory in North-east Syria. It is regularly bombed by Turkish forces -eds.

(4) Northern Kurdistan, or the southeastern part of Turkey, home to nearly 20 million Kurds-eds.

(5) Literally “raise your head”, Serhildan activities are carried out particularly on the anniversary of the jailing of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, and at the Kurdish New Year Newroz festival - eds.

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Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference 2024, and AUKUS in Perth

Written by: Allan M. on 29 July 2024

Between 24-26 July 2024, Perth was host to the Indian Ocean Defence and Security (IODS) Conference. Promoted as the place "where AUKUS meets the Quad", IODS 2024 was a who's who in industrial murder.

Representatives from the governments, militaries, and arms industries of the United States, United Kingdom, India, Japan, and of course Australia, were rushing to applaud the escalating arms race. The focus of IODS 2024 was clearly the AUKUS arrangement and Australia's involvement in the US led 'Quad' military partnership. However, a significant amount of time was made available to speakers from weapons manufacturing companies in order to promote their lethal products.

Perth workers and students rallied in protest against this celebration of killing for profit and were disgusted by the attendance of arms manufacturers, particularly RAFAEL Systems, who produce and sell weapons currently being used to perpetrate the genocide in Gaza. Protests organised by a coalition of unionists, activists, and students were held over the course of the IODS conference to demonstrate Perth's anger at hosting facilitators of crimes against humanity.

On 24 July, Perth workers and students opened their week of action against IODS 24. Standing in the cold and surrounded by police, activists were there to disrupt the arrival of IODS attendees, letting them know their efforts to militarise Australia and continue the murder in Gaza were not welcome. Many IODS attendees scuttled to the conference centre door with their heads down, some sneered and laughed between themselves, and others pretended to not to notice. However, none were able to walk past without hearing from the powerful speakers and the shouts from the angered Perth community. Speakers included Palestinian activists from Friends of Palestine WA, who spoke to the clear connection between Australia's integration in the imperialist military industrial complex and the bombing of civilians in Gaza. Other speakers included WA Greens Senator Dorinda Cox, and union activists who spoke to the building of worker power to end systematised violence for profit and building a more peaceful society.

Protests continued on 25 July to disrupt speakers from RAFAEL Systems, culminating in a march through the city to make it clear that war criminals, and their enablers, are not welcome here. Weekly protests against Australia's complicity in the war in Gaza continue.

AUKUS in Perth

As IODS 2024 was being prepared, the Australian Government announced its plans to house a radioactive waste facility on Garden Island, off the coast of Perth, to store waste from America, British, and eventually Australian nuclear powered submarines. These plans, and its announcement, come in spite of vocal opposition from community members closest to the facility, with Rockingham residents consistently expressing their disapproval of the project.

Defence Industry Minister, Pat Conroy, was quick to dismiss large-scale community concern over this announcement by downplaying the purpose and extent of this facility, and making a deceptive comparison to radioactive waste handled by hospitals. This is a blatant and disrespectful lie from the Defence Industry Minister. Australian hospitals are not powered by nuclear reactors, unlike the American and British submarines that require highly enriched uranium for fuel. The vice-president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War has pointed out that nuclear waste from hospitals, usually generated from medical imagery, are short-lived and usually only need to be stored for 2-3 months, while nuclear waste from submarines will need to be stored for 300 years. The hospital comparison is all the more egregious as these medical facilities are intended to save lives, and are entirely necessary to support the health of our population, while the AUKUS endeavour has been made through the choices of a tiny minority of political elites that are focussed on ending lives in the Pacific.

Rockingham Mayor, Deb Hamblin, was also quick to dismiss her constituents, noting that the safety assessments indicated that in a 'worst case scenario' any radioactive hazards off-site were "negligible". Worst case scenarios were noted as being, among others, bushfires. Mayor Hamblin may have forgotten that we are in a climate crisis, and WA's bushfire season now extends to 8 out of 12 months in a year. She may have also forgotten the recent bushfires in the south of Perth that threatened the homes of thousands of people, or that Garden Island has significant areas of bushland. The residents of Rockingham certainly have a right to feel concerned about the "negligible" radioactive hazards and the presence of nuclear reactors on their doorstep. Unfortunately, their concerns have fallen on deaf ears, with submissions to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) being kept from the public eye. Mayor Hamblin commented on the secretive and limited consultation process, saying she was satisfied with the level of consultation.

Instead of advocating and elevating the concerns of Rockingham residents, the Mayor commented on the numerous benefits that the AUKUS project would bring, including housing (for American and British military personnel), advanced manufacturing, and most bizarrely, tourism. Many Australians may struggle to see how AUKUS would deliver any of those benefits to the residents of Perth, except for the select few who live on Garden Island and work for the AUKUS alliance. Most Australians would probably also struggle to see how those benefits would be realised in the event of a nuclear conflict. Mayor Hamblin has not commented on that point.

Finally, the Mayor commented that Rockingham residents will support the AUKUS announcement as Rockingham has always been a "defence city". This author has been a Western Australian all their life, and has never once known Rockingham as a "defence city". To most Western Australians, Rockingham is known for its beautiful coast, marine environment, and quiet lifestyle. It is also well known for its wealth inequality and socioeconomic disadvantage. The billions of dollars wasted on the AUKUS project would certainly be better spent on fighting against poverty and disadvantage. The residents of Rockingham are continuing to fight for just that, and despite the repeated dismissals and lack of consultation, are still advocating against militarisation on their doorstep.

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People's Struggle in Australia for Palestinians Continues

Written by: Ned K. on 28 July 2024

(Above: Adelaide rally 280724 Source: AFOPA on X)

On this latest weekend of 27-28 July 2024, demonstrations in support of Palestinians in Australians were again held, as they have been since Israel's bombardment of Gaza intensified last October.

Numbers of people attending such demonstrations and those able to attend varies from week to week and fortnight to fortnight but their cumulative impact should not be underestimated.

The latest weekend's demonstrations were supplemented by demonstrations outside the NSW state ALP conference and also inside the conference itself.

In smaller cities like Adelaide and Canberra, the organizers of the demonstrations have been able to provide many different speakers, some with recent first-hand experience of the current situation in Gaza and some Palestinians who lived in Gaza before having to flee for their lives.

In Adelaide this last weekend, the 1500 people at the demonstration listened to a young Palestinian person who fled Palestine with his parents when he was just nine years old. He calmly recalled his memories of what it was like living in the apartheid-like conditions in the West Bank, with endless checkpoints, scarcity of food, electricity, fresh drinking water, destruction of Palestinian homes one by one by Israeli settlers and resulting homelessness. He finished speaking by saying that the Western Governments, not Hamas, were responsible for what happened on 7 October last year, as these governments had supported for decades the colonial invasion of Palestine by Zionist Israeli regimes.

It is the voices of thousands of people in Australia that the Australian Government has been unable to stop.

Now the Government is fearful of losing Seats in western Sydney due to its pro-Israel position. So, we see Foreign Minister Wong announce last Thursday, three days before the NSW state ALP conference, that the Australian Government was following the USA in placing sanctions against seven Israeli individuals and a youth group, Hilltop Youth, for assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank,

Wong said the sanctions included revoking of visas, travel bans into Australia and seizure of any property or assets held by the individuals or youth group in Australia.

These measures are like hitting the Israeli Government with a feather duster with three feathers in it!

Wong said the assaults by these Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank "increased tensions and further undermines stability for a two-state solution".

However, she and her Prime Minister Albanese do not support Palestinian statehood and still parrot the USA's line of "Israel has the right to defend itself"!

However, she and the Albanese Government do not support the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against an imperialist backed Zionist invading regime.

This is coming back to bite them, especially as it may contribute to the end of their existence as the executive committee of the imperialists in Australia at the next federal election in 2025!

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“We’re fighting for something that’s so much bigger, so much bigger than any one person.”; Nine workers on five-day strike.

Written by: Ashley C. on 27 July 2024

On Friday 26 July, unionised journalists and media workers at Nine newspapers (The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, WAtoday and Brisbane Times) walked off the job and marked the beginning of a five-day strike.

The strike comes after protected action was voted up by 90% of union members following a breakdown in negotiations with management for their next enterprise agreement. Under the banner of their union, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), workers are fighting for salary increases that keep up with inflation and job protections as Nine seeks to cut production costs following the recent termination of an advertising revenue agreement with parasitic US behemoth Meta (Facebook).

While internal strife has been building for months at Nine, the workers have taken advantage of their legal right to strike during the enterprise agreement bargaining period (at any other time, workers and their unions would be immediately crushed by fines and injunctions as employers are legally protected from industrial action).

In June, union members were prepared to take action following Nine’s June announcement that 200 redundancies would occur due to the expiry of a commercial agreement with Meta. Australian news outlets bargain for deals with foreign companies like Meta for an agreed share of profits generated through advertising revenue in accordance with the News Media Bargaining Code that the Australian government introduced in 2021.

In response to the June redundancies, the house committee of union members at Nine passed a motion of no confidence in Nine chief executive Mike Sneesby and the Nine Entertainment Company board, “due to a lack of progress in the current enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations and because of the job cuts that have been announced.” Union members stated that that “We consider the announcement of the job cuts during negotiations particularly poor and question whether the unionised part of the workforce at Nine has particularly been targeted.”

These journalists are generally tasked with producing Nine’s shameless propaganda for the Australian capitalist class, such as the disgraceful and treacherous ‘Building Bad’ series of articles against the CFMEU and union militancy. On any day of the week, Australians can open the Age or the AFR and read about how increases to wages are supposedly the cause of the ‘cost of living’ crisis, or about the apparent benefits of US imperialism for Australia and the world.

Capital at work, workers out of work

It is ironic that these workers who work for the mouthpieces of capital are now taking industrial action as a result of Nine’s attack on their wages, jobs and conditions. Along with its function to strengthen the bourgeoisie’s ideological superstructure, the media is economically fused with the advertising industry and Nine’s business model is to produce and publish as cheaply as possible whatever brings in the most advertising revenue. To increase profit from advertising, Nine enters into deals with US companies like Meta. US capital is running the show, and workers are left to pay the price when the deals made by their comprador employers are no longer profitable. When Mike Sneesby announced the job cuts to Nine staff in June, he didn’t mince his words: “Today we will announce measures in our Publishing business to offset the loss of revenue from the Meta deal and challenges in the advertising market”.

When journalists walked off the job on Friday, they marched together in fury against their bosses. In Melbourne, the workers formed a picket at the entrance of their office at Docklands, supported by officials from their union, the MEAA, along with representatives of the RTBU and United Workers Union. Walking off the job together is the bravest action that workers can do, and they were met with cheers by their union as they left the glass doors of Nine’s office. Management had locked the workers out of their computer access immediately as the 11am strike began.

A union member was interviewed on ABC radio earlier in the morning and expressed how significant the action of striking felt to Nine workers, declaring that “We’re fighting for something that’s so much bigger, so much bigger than any one person.”

The MEAA presented the workers’ struggle as part of a noble cause for quality journalism. The slogan “Don’t Torch Journalism” was printed on placards and T-shirts as a reference to Mike Sneesby running with the Olympic torch in Paris and the strategic timing of the strike at the beginning of the Olympics. On the picket line at the Nine office in Melbourne, MEAA Deputy Chief Executive Adam Portelli presented the issue as a matter of Nine’s lack of respect for its hard-working journalists.

The Australian media industry is tethered to US imperialism as local monopolists cut deals for advertising revenue with foreign companies. When foreign capital pulls out, local employers cut costs and offset the losses onto their workers. This is like any other industry in Australia. This is Australian capitalism. It is right for workers in all industries to rebel against those who sell them out and attack their conditions. Calls for respect will only go so far as the effects of Meta’s withdrawal are passed onto media workers.

Solidarity message

At the Nine Melbourne picket, a worker read out a message of solidarity received from union members at the ABC, demonstrating the shared struggle across the industry. In June, the house committee of unionised workers at ABC also passed a motion of solidarity to Nine and Seven workers immediately affected by the withdrawal of US capital from their employers:

The ABC MEAA House Committee expresses its solidarity with Nine and Seven members facing an uncertain future after both companies announced hundreds of staff cuts.

This comes in the wake of Meta pulling its funding of news in Australia and declines in advertising revenue.

News organisations right across Australia have already been cut to bone. These latest losses are not only devastating for the employees impacted, but to the principle of a healthy media scene.

We also acknowledge ABC staff in jobs funded by deals with Meta and Google, who themselves are concerned for their future when their contracts expire later this year. We call on ABC management to provide security and surety for those employees.

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Mirarr people have won their battle against Jabiluka

Written by: Nick G. on 28 July 2024

The NT government has refused to extend Energy Resources of Australia’s (ERA) Jabiluka uranium mining lease.

The lease is located within Kakadu on the lands of the Mirarr people.

Mirarr Traditional Owner Corben Mudjandi welcomed the news: “This day will go down in history as the day the Mirarr finally stopped Jabiluka. It is great day for the Mirarr people, for Kakadu, the Northern Territory and for Australia. This proves that people standing strong for Country can win. We look forward to welcoming all Australians to share our cultural heritage for decades to come.”

Kakadu traditional owners have long opposed uranium mining in Kakadu.

In 1969, uranium was discovered at a site that became the Ranger Uranium Mine in 1980.

Uranium was also discovered in 1971 at nearby Jabiluka 1, with a much larger Jabiluka 2 discovered in 1973. At both mines, capitalism’s destructive war on nature and the people was on display.

Kakadu was proclaimed a National Park in several stages between 1979 and 1991. However, the Ranger and Jabiluka mines were excised from the Park so that mining could occur.

Mining ceased at Ranger in 2012 although stockpile processing continued until 2021.

At Jabiluka, preparations for mining were made following the purchase of the mine by ERA, majority owned by the multinational Rio Tinto.

In 1998, Mirarr Senior Traditional Owners Yvonne Margarula and Jacqui Katona called on activists to help blockade the construction of the mine. An eight-month blockade followed as supporters from Australia and around the world came to lend their numbers to the blockade. The machinery of state, owned by the capitalists, was thrown at them and more than 500 were arrested.

When the current lease expires on August 11, the Mirarr will expect the mine sites to be incorporated by the federal government in the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park, keeping Jabiluka protected from mining.

Mirarr leader Yvonne Margarula said: “We have always said no to this mine. Government and mining companies told us they would mine it but we stayed strong and said no. Today I feel very happy that Jabiluka will be safe forever. Protecting country is very important for my family and for me.”

We understand the politics of traditional owners and conservationists expressing thanks to the NT and federal governments for these decisions, but without the decades-long struggles led by the Mirarr, and supported by Australia and international friends, it is doubtful that the new protections would have emerged.

Labor has had decades to deliver on Ranger and Jabiluka, and sat on its hands until finally forced to act.

Rio Tinto’s ERA must fully rehabilitate the mess that their activities have created on Mirarr Country.

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“It’s an attack on us, our wages, our conditions, our right to organise.”

Written by: Louisa L. on 24 July 2024

State and federal governments, courts, cops, media, the ALP and ACTU are backing some of the world’s biggest developers, banks and finance corporations against the CFMEU and its members.

Right now, building workers say, “It’s an attack on us, our wages, our conditions, our right to organise.”

It’s an attack on the whole working class.

It comes after multiple deregistrations and royal commissions against the old Builders Labourers Federation and its CFMEU offspring first led in Victoria by the CPA(ML)’s incorruptible comrade John Cummins. Next, workers crushed the 14-year Australian Building and Construction Commission’s attempt to destroy the union by outlawing basic democratic rights for construction workers and their representatives.

Eyewatering profits

At stake are eyewatering profits to be made from the surplus value created by construction workers. While developers take the least risk and the most money, building companies and subcontractors are squeezed.

net worth of Meriton’s owner Highrise Harry Triguboff is $23.8 billion. Goodman Group, worth $59.24 billion, is number one of the top ten multi-billion dollar developers on Australia’s stock exchange.

BlackRock, the biggest US investment firm is one of the biggest security holders in eight of these top developers. Its CEO and founder Harry Finke has $US8.7 TRILLION in assets. The second biggest US investment firm, The Vanguard Group with $US8.6 trillion assets under management, is one of the top five investors in every single one of the Australian Top 10 listed developers.

Where does such obscene wealth come from? Plundering nature and exploiting workers’ labour power.

One rule for bosses, another for workers

In the huge MUA-led 1998 waterfront dispute, images of guard dogs and shipyard owner enforcers in balaclavas outraged journalists and public alike.

Hundreds of thousands joined solidarity actions.

This time, journalists join the corporate attack, labelling industrial tactics protecting safety in a notoriously dangerous industry ‘criminal’. The best wages and conditions in the country? Also ‘criminal’.

These journalists have been key in exposing big end and government corruption, like Scott Morrison’s Robodebt that illegally sent debt notices to 443,000 of Australians most vulnerable people, stealing $1.8 billion! No-one charged!

Or investigating PwC, which designed the Federal Government’s response to minimise tax avoidance and then told corporate clients how to get round them. No one charged! Or KPMG that sent fake invoices to the Defence Department, and was then awarded $70 million contracts in one week! Government contracts despite insider information. No one charged!

They never mention the good

For decades governments have allowed construction companies to shift money to new companies, and declare the old ones broke – without paying workers entitlements or subcontractors’ bills, then start again with a new company. Zero action for decades!

CFMEU EBAs ensure leave entitlements are paid monthly into industry redundancy trusts and superannuation into industry fund CBUS and, so workers aren’t robbed. Where’s the praise?

As a worker told us, “They never mention all the good the union does.” That good is beyond the seven percent yearly pay rise, double time for all overtime, site, travel and other allowances. It’s beyond the battles that forced governments to outlaw deadly engineered stone, or the NSW mass stopworks after 18-year-old Christopher Cassaniti was crushed to death.

What about the union’s extensive mental health and suicide prevention work in an industry where excessive hours undermine health? What about its drug and alcohol programs, including residential ones for members and families at Sydney’s Foundation House, and places like it, interstate?

In the 1950s and early 60s, the Builders Labourers Federation activists overthrew gangster control of the union and industry.

Living with dignity

Governments, and giant corporations, have been giving contracts to gangsters for decade. Bribes could be paid and received, but it’s impossible for any CFMEU money to be syphoned to them.

Nationally difficulties arose when the CFMEU made systematic moves into the government run infrastructure sector. An experienced NSW delegate told us, “You can’t pick up a brick or shovel in the civil sector without confronting gangsters and bikies.” Where was the fury while the right-wing ALP Australian Workers Union was covering it all for lousy conditions and pay?

Today construction is the only industry where former prisoners can work and create a new path to controlling their own lives with dignity.

Meanwhile First Peoples, the mentally ill, homeless, those whom an education system divided by wealth has failed, the poor and those who were physically or sexually abused as children are jailed at alarming and escalating rates. In every state, children can be sent to youth prison at 10 years old. But the cabal of super rich and privileged targets an industry and union that might give them a second chance. What’s the real crime here?

The CFMEU works in this whole corrupt system, but unlike the old BLF, never challenged its right to exist. It’s time to build organisation to challenge that system.

Workers should be able to run their own organisations, democratically and fairly.

The CFMEU is one of Australia’s last unions prepared to take unprotected industrial action. If it goes under, it will undermine rising struggles among workers, when membership is at rock bottom and most workers have their backs to the wall. We call for solidarity.

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The ABC and Indo-Pacific psychological warfare

Written by: (Contributed) on 23 July 2024

(Source: pacificausttv.com )

A major funding boost for the ABC has coincided with Canberra announcing the Pacific AUS TV Initiative designed to provide extensive media coverage across the Pacific, in line with traditional psychological warfare techniques.

Fears have arisen about China having upgraded their regional media coverage in recent years, enabling Beijing to enhance its diplomatic position in a more favourable light.

The Australian initiative, however, is not original and remains remarkably similar to previous initiatives designed to protect the UK Commonwealth and US hegemonic diplomatic positions and 'interests' through compliant Australian involvement.

In mid-July Canberra announced a $40.5 million upgrade with the ABC, Australia's national broadcaster; a total of $28.4 million has already been allocated over the next five years for the Pacific-Aus TV Initiative marked by enhancing ties between Australian and Pacific Islands media outlets to enable 'Pacific Islands people to access Australian content … and … creating additional news content for Pacific audiences'. (1)

The initiative has placed the Pacific region into the larger Indo-Pacific area 'with efforts to bolster Indo-Pacific media capacity and its ties to Australian-based media … the ABC will also provide support for media partners in the Pacific, South-east Asia and South Asia, and boost its radio transmission across the region'. (2)

The initiative has been established following fears arising about China's 'media foot-print in the Indo-Pacific region … and … to fend off growing Chinese cultural influence across the region'. (3) The initiative forms part of a classic psychological warfare technique, designed to shape favourable opinion toward the US and its allies, to the detriment of adversaries. (4)

The initiative, furthermore, fits comfortably and is best assessed in the context of the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) where 'the US, Japan, India, and Australia form the Quad hemming China in from all sides' while other countries allied with US-led diplomacy are included as lower-level partners. (5) Australia, historically, has been a close US ally with strong involvement in surrounding Asia and Pacific countries. As US diplomatic hostilities with China have increased in recent years, Australia's importance has been elevated.

The Australian initiative, however, is not new; in fact, it is merely a continuation of similar moves by both the US and UK to use Australia as a regional conduit through which hegemonic diplomacy has been conducted. Australia, it should be noted, has historically maintained the diplomatic position of being a sub-imperial power. (6) The AUKUS relationship is best viewed in that light.

Recent research following the declassification of various government documents about the highly secretive Information Research Department (IRD) has revealed how Australia was quietly drawn into the organisation; initially established as Britain's 'covert Cold War propaganda arm between 1948 and 1977 … the IRD covertly collected and disseminated material to the media to discredit human rights figures, undermine political opponents overseas, help overthrow governments, and promote UK influence and commercial interests around the world'. (7)

The IRD also 'maintained a strong relationship with the BBC. It supplied material, 'provided it was neither quoted directly, nor attributed to the government as being official policy. The BBC was an ideal conduit for IRD material because it was … in a class by itself'. (8) The stifling nature of British society with class privilege merging with state power, was also an ideal recruiting ground for spooks whose designated role was to use Commonwealth positions for ulterior motives and spurious agendas; the past Cold War and merged with the present one, as seen with the recent 'Australian' initiative.

Australia was initially drawn into the IRD network following a visit by Norman Reddaway to Canberra in late 1970 for a Four Power Information Meeting 'on defence and security strategy in the SE Asia, involving Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the US'. (9) Reddaway was an influential British spook: having served in the Second World War he was recruited to the Foreign Office and was influential in the creation of the IRD. (10) During the 1960s he was assigned to Indonesia as 'the co-ordinator of political warfare', designed to overthrow the progressive and pro-Chinese Sukarno presidential administration. (11)

By 1970, Reddaway was increasingly concerned about threats to traditional hegemonic positions in Asia, which had become a theatre of war and Cold War diplomatic tensions. The Vietnam War was, at that time, well under-way and regarded as a component part of the far-right domino theory of spreading influences across the region; Australian military involvement has been well recorded. The political position of the Labor administrations of Gough Whitlam and their troubled diplomatic relationship with their US counterparts has been well recorded elsewhere.

Following further high-level diplomatic meetings between Australia, the UK and US, a Department of Foreign Affairs official, Ross Smith, was selected as Principal Research officer for the newly established 'secret propaganda unit', in October 1971. (12) Smith, not surprisingly, had been previously employed as the Information Attache in the Australian embassy in Jakarta during 1962-65, 'providing contacts and information to Australian reporters and media outlets. His time there had coincided with the period when the IRD was very active in Indonesia producing propaganda designed to undermine left-leaning President Sukarno'. (13) Gross human rights abuses following the 1965 Suharto military coup did not appear to have caused either Smith, or his Australian employers, any concern whatsoever.

Declassified documents from the Australian national archive have revealed that involvement from Canberra was largely concentrated on the South-west Pacific area where the main IRD lacked contacts. It was noted, however, 'the Australians are working up distribution of their material in South-east Asia, and beginning to cultivate potential recipients in the UK through Australia House, who have sought our advice'. (14)

Once operational the Australian IRD 'distributed … unattributed research briefs and articles written for newspapers and journals, and the potential recipients would have been co-operative journalists writing on the region'. (15) A declassified document from the period has shown how Australia was supposed to organise 'information operations', spoon-feeding
journalists with material designed to influence events in the Western Pacific and South-east Asia region. (16)

Following the elevation of Smith to the position of Consul-General in Lae, PNG, in October, 1974, shortly before independence, control of the IRD passed through the hands of two further spooks who were both well versed in Indonesian affairs. Richard Butler took immediate control of the unit, having been appointed by Richard Woolcott, who later served as Australian ambassador to Indonesia during the period of the brutal invasion of East Timor. Australian support for the military invasion was well known, and despite over 180,000 East Timorese losing their lives in massacres and genocide, the 'problem' was glossed over and subject to diplomatic silence for decades. Canberra, subsequently, only declassified intelligence documents from the period very reluctantly and has proved hesitant about openly discussing any of the revelations, including those surrounding the deaths of the Balibo Five.

It is interesting to note the main IRD organisation was subsequently closed by then British Foreign Secretary Dr. David Owen, in 1977, due to its 'contacts with right-wing journalists and propagandists who were actively anti-Labour'; those involved in the shadowy, spooky world in which they operated, merely took further, and similar, appointments and moved elsewhere. (17)

Its Australian IRD partner also appears to have ceased operations at the same time. It is important to note the whole period of its existence coincided with the rise and fall of Gough Whitlam and his Labor administrations, together with the unification of Vietnam.

It has now, however, been resurrected; to serve similar objectives. But then, that is what they do.

It is also interesting to note official media releases from Canberra about the Pacific Aus TV Initiative have drawn specific attention to the assessed problem of the Solomon Islands, one of Canberra's favourite countries of interest and obsession. They allege the Solomon Star has been accepting funding from China for favourable coverage. No doubt Solomon Islanders, together with their Pacific Island counterparts, are now eagerly awaiting endless streams of dubious Australian media commentary ...

1. TV push to combat China play for power, The Weekend Australian, 13-14 July 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. See: The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John D, Marks, (London, 1976), with specific reference to Sub-section Part 2, Number 6, Propaganda and Disinformation, pp. 183-209.
5. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
6. See: Sub-imperial power, Clinton Fernandez, (Victoria, 2022); and, Island off the coast of Asia, Clinton Fernandez, (Victoria, 2018).
7. Revealed: Australia's Secret Propaganda Unit, John Mcevoy and Peter Cronau, 16 June 2022, website: https://declassifiedaus.org/2022/06/16/revealed-australias-secret-propaganda-unit/
8. MI6, Stephen Dorril, (London, 2002), page 78.
9. Revealed, op.cit.
10. MI6, Dorril, op.cit., which contains numerous references to both Reddaway and the
IRD.
11. Revealed, op.cit.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Copy: Australian IRD, Mr Reddaway, Secret, Declassified, ibid., page 7.
15. Ibid.
16. See: Secret IRD, 1971, File – FCO168/4481, Reference – 36/11/1 1972, Declassified.
17. MI6, Dorril, op.cit., page 80.

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New Delegate Rights Clause in Awards - A Small but Significant Win By Workers

Written by: Ned K. on 22 July 2024

From 1 July 2024 a standard Delegates Rights clause was included in Awards which provide the minimum wages and conditions for workers in most industries and sectors.

The new clause was one of the changes to the Fair Work Act that workers in unions had demanded the Albanese Government support through legislation prior to its election in 2022.

When the Fair Work Act 2009 replaced the Howard Government's industrial laws, it was called by many workers "Work Choices Lite" as it unsurprisingly still favored the capitalists, not the workers, reflecting the reality of capitalism.

One example of this was that the Gillard and Rudd Government's Fair Work Act did not even mention the word "Delegate" in the whole Act! Yet Gillard said the new Act had "got the balance right" regarding the competing interests of capitalists and workers!

The new clauses in Awards from 1 July 2024 about Delegate Rights provide workers in any workplace or employed by any employer with the entitlement to elect Union Delegates to represent their interests regarding any issues that need to be taken up with the boss.

The wording of the new clause in Awards is such that it enables workers who are members of a Union to elect Delegates provided the Delegate works for the same employer as the Union members. In practice this means that workers who work for one employer but in different locations such as Road Traffic workers or contract cleaners who work in several workplaces in the same day, are still entitled to elect their own Union Delegate. This is important for workers in industries where mobility is par for the course.

In the early to mid-2000s a progressive researcher David Peetz did a study of the impact of the employer and Howard Government attack on workers’ capacity to act collectively in their own interests. He found that where there were active elected Union Delegates representing and uniting workers around issues, the impact of the hostile employer and Government attacks on workers was much less effective.

Peetz found this was even more the case when the Delegates were elected rather than appointed by the (sometimes) more remote Union Organizer or Union Executive or Secretary.

Interestingly, the new Delegate clause in Awards says that a Delegate can be "elected" or "appointed" by higher levels of the Union!

Progressive union leaderships will surely ensure that ALL Delegates are elected by members and endorsed by relevant Councils or Executive Committees of their Union.

The only reason a Delegate elected by members they work with is NOT endorsed by higher bodies of their Union would be that the elected Delegate had a history of behaviour and values unacceptable to members of the Union as a whole. For example, proof of criminal activities, racist towards certain workers, evidence of being a boss's stooge!

Now that the Delegate clauses are law, it raises the question of whether an appointed administrator of a Union by a Government or Fair Work Commission had the capitalist legal system power to declare any Delegate elected by members to no longer be a Delegate!

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Labor Minister Confirms “No refund” at NATO Summit

Written by: Nick G. on 19 July 2024

Labor’s Assistant Minister for Defence Matt Thistlethwaite has embarrassingly confirmed that the two amounts of $A4.7billion gifted to the US and UK miliary machines in an effort to pump prime the AUKUS arrangements will not be refunded if the arrangements fall apart.

Australia is a partner, not a member of NATO, but the government deemed it important that it strut its stuff at last week’s Washington summit.

While there, Thistlewaite was interviewed by US online Breaking Defence magazine.

Their first question raised the issue that that under a new administration and Congress AUKUS might “lose some steam.”

Thistlewaite referred to” conversations that I’ve had with congressmen and -women yesterday from both sides of the aisle” and believed that regardless of who won the US election, AUKUS’s future was assured.

“They see the strategic importance of it for security and peace in the Indo-Pacific” he said, “but they also see the industrial uplift that will come from Pillar II, and that means jobs in their districts.”

A few questions later, Breaking Defence asked: “There was some question in Parliament recently about the $5 billion payment to the US to bolster the sub industrial base, and what would happen if the AUKUS deal for Virginia-class subs falls apart. What would happen to that money? Is that actually a concern at all?”

Now that matter arose from a Senate Estimates hearing on May 6 when Greens Senator David Shoebridge questioned the Head of the Australian Submarine Agency, Vice-Admiral Jonathan Mead, who refused to answer a series of questions about whether Australia will get its money back if the US fails to transfer Virginia class submarines in the 2030s.

The government has had nearly 3 months to work out how to spin this matter, or if it wanted to, how to reply honestly to the question.

But Thistlewaite seemed clueless in his response, adding nothing to Mead’s earlier unsatisfactory answer.

“There’s been no indication at all to us that the Virginia classes aren’t going to be delivered,” mumbled Thistlewaite. “So we’re working on the assumption that we will acquire that capability from 2027. The planning is in place, including, importantly, the people transfer. So the deployments of US submariners, all that planning is starting to take place already. So there’s been no indication at all that that commitment won’t be met.”

Yes, you idiot, you can assume there are fairies at the bottom of the garden too, but the question was, will we get our money back if the submarines are not delivered.

The government will still not say either “Yes” or “No”. Just one of two words, Matt Thistlewaite. We don’t need any more than that.

Comforting for the US submariners who will be rotated through Fleet Base West, WA’s HMAS Stirling, Thistlewaite reported that “We’ve got a body called Defense Housing Australia. They’ve just gone out to the market for a tender to build 550 homes around the base for submariners and their families, and the response to the tender has been great.”

The government was “working at speed” on this and other infrastructure, he said.

It’s a pity the government is not “working at speed” to address the acute housing shortage facing its own people.

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Salute the heroic comrades of the Rojava revolution.

Written by: Nick G. on 19 July 2024

On July 19, 2012, armed fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) captured the city of Kobane from government forces in north-east Syria.

Further victories against Syrian government forces and those of ISIS saw the creation of Rojava as an autonomous region in which the cultural, religious and political freedom of all people has been established. Significantly for the region, its Constitution also explicitly states the equal rights and freedom of women and also "mandates public institutions to work towards the elimination of gender discrimination".

In celebration of the 12th anniversary of the Rojava revolution, we encourage our readers to download the book Rojava: People in Arms to gain an understanding of the Kurdish people’s struggle. It can be downloaded at the bottom of this page: Rojava: Peoples in Arms – #RiseUp4Rojava

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The Bezosmoth

Written by: Humphrey McQueen on 17 July 2024

(Above: A 10ft tall Bezos is he target of workers engaged in a March 20, 2021 international day of solidarity with Alabama Amazon workers. Photo by Joe Piette Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0)

This article is republished with the kind permission of the author, Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen. It first appeared on the Pearls and Irritations website on July 13, 2024-eds.

Behold, now behemoth … Behold, he drinketh up a river …
The Book of Job, 40: 15 and 23.

‘Most of us don’t know 95 percent of what Amazon is doing,’ Amy Webb warns in her The Big Nine (2019). While Amazon Prime is diverting audiences with its rom-com, The Idea of You, the Australian Signals Directorate is paying Amazon Web Services two billion dollars to store secrets in three locations on the Cloud with a golden lining for Amazon which holds the largest slice globally, at around a third.

(Will the ASD sites need Dutton’s nuclear plants to power them?)

Jeff Bezos began by distributing books in July 1994 to customers with discretionary incomes to build into ‘The Everything Store,’ helping to put 2,500 bookshops out of business. (Brad Stone, The Everything Store, 2013) First called Cadabra, as in the slight-of-hand magic spell ‘abracadabra,’ then rebranded Amazon within a few months to match the mightiest river with its expansive delta.

The tributaries to Amazon’s reported income of $6.7 billion for 2023 have a common spring in the labours of 1.46 million ‘Amazonians’ employed as wage-slaves in warehouses, on piece-rates for the Mechanical Turk, or as ‘in/dependent’ delivery drivers for Amazon Flex.

In Management-Speak, Amazon warehouses are ‘fulfillment centers,’ which is true for packages but not for the pickers and packers who endure them as ‘hellscapes.’ Unlike chattel-slaves who could run off into the Amazon delta, wage-slaves have nowhere to hide from the all-seeing-eye of devices which have patrolled ‘Scamazon’ for twenty years.

The Wall Street Journal parades ‘Besozism’ as an advance on Taylorism and Fordism for its ‘mix of surveillance, measurement, psychological tricks, targets, incentives, sloganeering … and an ever-growing array of clever and often proprietary technologies.’

On the frontier of Telematics, Amazon patented a wrist-band which reports hand-movements, before sending vibrations back to nudge the workers into being more productive.

Along with other distributors, Bezos had rented the first-generation KIVA robots ‘to increase the output capacity of their warehouses; store and ship a wider range of product; shorten the amount of time required to fill an order; and ultimately either lower the cost of their services, increase their profits, or both.’ In 2012, Bezos bought KIVA’s manufacturer for $775m., rebranding it Amazon Robotics. He did not renew its contracts with competitors such as the now bankrupt Toys’R’US, which had to set up its own. One product-line which his ‘Everything Store’ does not sell is its labour-slaving technologies.

An Amazon recruit takes a couple of days to learn to pull sticky tape at the maximum speed from its dispenser without twisting it. The dispenser is programmed to extrude the exact length but workers out-performed the device at fastening the tape around cartons of multiple shapes and sizes. A novice who does not pick up that knack by the third day is ‘set free.’ The Bezosmoth did not rack up his cool trillion by dispensing with fixed-capital at that rate. Like every agent of capital, he juggles outlays between equipment and wages in pursuit of more than the average rate of profit.

Workplace-wide sensors track every move of every Amazonian down to the milli-second to determine the floating average ‘rate’ at each warehouse, helping to lift the pick-rate from 100 to 300 per hour per worker. AI devices report in real time the pick-rates around the planet, globalising labour-times. Saving one milli-second is nothing. To do so 1,000 times per second on a 10-hour shift piles up on the bottom line.

What the Bezosmoth insists on as ‘the rate’ confirms Marx’s recognition that ‘everything that shortens the necessary labour-time required for the reproduction of labour-power, extends the domain of surplus labour’ to realise as profit

Cardinal automatic scanners replaced scanning by hand in 2021. Loaded with Augmented Reality ID vision and AI, they pluck items of up to 22kg., read the labels, place them in the correct bin before they are moved further along the shipping process. Promoted by Amazon as a boon to the ‘pickers’ by reducing repetitive strain, Cardinal is a blessing for a boss suffering workforce churn because of those injuries, or who are burnt out after two weeks of 10-hour days. Gift vouchers cannot retain recruits.

Amazon’s conglomerations of labour rival those at Detroit auto-makers before the 1980s. Once brought together, workers can become ‘dangerous classes’. Bezos’s determination to block unions is more than his ‘trademark hard-charging attitude towards work.’ Even a tame-cat union might negotiate legally-enforceable agreements which hamper Amazon’s redirecting of labour to increase the ‘rate.’

Amazon’s acceleration machine does not clock-off at the warehouse gate. Its monopsony clout compels suppliers to drive down the labour-times required for the units that their workers produce. Amazon’s abuse of its labour-force points to how effects from its practices spread back down its supply chains and across to competitors.

Amazon runs flexibility-scheduling platforms which let its full-time workers choose their shifts. Should they fail to put in thirty hours during the week, they lose one point. Chalk up eight points for a range of faults, and you’re fired: ‘expectation of the sack is pervasive.’ Nothing is ‘flexible’ in that power relationship, any more than there is in ‘the rate’ set in Amazon hellscapes. Nonetheless, ‘the rate’ remains ‘flexible’ in that its victims are pushed to go ever faster.

These congeries subject ever more full-time permanents to the conditions of a gig economy. Bezosism will not mean that all jobs will become gigs but that they all will be managed as if they were, as David Weil explores in The Fissured Workplace (2014).

For the 2023 mid-year sales in Australia, Amazon recruited 1,000 drivers with their own vehicles, thereby externalizing fixed-capital costs, as does UBER. Cost-of-living pressures boosted the number of applicants willing to accept low rates of pay since an Amazon gig was not their principal source of earnings but what their recruiters called ‘extra cash,’ and the applicants experienced as desperate measures.

Low wages at Amazon help to keep them down at DoorDash and Uber, while all three benefit from their employees’ being driven to chase two or three jobs to cobble together a living income.

Next year, will open a four-storey fulfillment centre, the size of the eleven Melbourne Cricket Grounds, on Macaulay Rd, North Melbourne, while installing robots at both north Melbourne and the Craigieburn site, close by Tullamarine, the better to despatch to regional centers adding a threat to their street-front outlets.

The Bezomoth makes local governments in the U.S. of A. compete with offers of tax concessions and the like for the privilege of having a warehouse built in their district to the detriment of existing distributors and retailers.

Amazon drops suppliers for ‘no reason’ other than a encourage les autres – thereby reminding all of them that no one of them is indispensable and so they had better cop whatever terms Amazon dishes out. It shifts the costs of holding inventory back to suppliers by making them wait for payment. Amazon’s behaviour is worse than that from Supermarkets here.

Amazon employs 7,000 Australians, 4,000 in the Cloud and 2,000 ‘permanents’ in its six fulfilment centers; 1,300 are body-hire, and 3,000 more in/dependent delivery contractors. To protect their rights at work, how much due diligence did AustralianSuper exercise before its ‘ethical’ investment in Amazon’s robotic fulfillment center at Craigieburn?

In like vein, under which kind of labour relations will the Australian Cloud staff be employed: Bezosism or FairWork? Will the ‘Labor values’ of Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Burke, ensure workers’ rights to unionise and to disconnect?

Gender equity should also be a concern given Kristi Coulter’s 2023 memoir, Exit Interview, that throughout twelve years as an Amazon executive she had been bullied and never given a top job.

Given how easy it was for PriceWaterhouseCooper to bamboozle Tax Office sleuths, what chance will Defense boffins have in a showdown with the Bezomoth? Hard bargaining assumes that the prospect of post-retirement consultancies for politicians, bureaucrats and top brass does not make them a soft touch. After all, they are safe from another whistle-blower after the jailing of David McBride.

One certainty is the contract will be another commercial-in-confidence trick.

He who sups with The Bezosmoth, should have a long spoon.

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The Imminent Catastrophes behind Elon Musk’s “Starship”

Written by: Leo A. on 17 July 2024

(Above: Elon Musk at the Kennedy Space Centre in 2020 with then President Trump in preparation for the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ Public Domain)

An often-overlooked way in which Australia is kept dependent on foreign powers is through access to space. Since this country currently has no orbital launch ability of its own (this could change later this year with Gilmour Space’s Bowen Orbital Spaceport granted Australia’s first orbital launch facility licence), Australian satellites must be launched on foreign soil by foreign, typically American or French, space programs.

One of these programs, Elon Musk’s American corporation SpaceX, has been regularly making their way into the news headlines. The most recent topic of discussion concerns test flights of the “Starship” launch system, the most recent of which took place on June 6. There are two key causes of concern that should be considered in light of these recent developments.

A New Greenhouse Gas Catastrophe

First, the environmental impact of this new rocket has been mostly overlooked – perhaps due to the assumption that Starship is no more environmentally harmful than similar rocket systems, or perhaps due to the assumption that anything sufficiently “futuristic-looking” can’t possibly have a catastrophic environmental impact. Both of these assumptions are false.

What sets SpaceX’s Starship apart from previous heavy-lift launch vehicles is the chemical reaction used for its propulsion system. All large rockets are powered by a combination of an oxidiser and a fuel. Like similar systems, Starship uses liquid oxygen as its oxidiser, no problem there, but unlike similar systems it uses liquid methane as its fuel (this combination is sometimes referred to as “methalox”).

Methane is an extremely strong greenhouse gas, dozens of times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. While the methane is intended to be burned in the ignition chamber during launch without leaking into the air, there are many steps in the process in which this could happen. Consider all the moments during the production, storage, transportation etc of the methane in which some of it can escape containment. Not to mention how much of it might not even ignite when it’s injected into the chamber and could simply exit the nozzle into the air, or how much of it may be released into the air during an explosive launch or re-entry failure (of which there have already been several). Even for the methane that does ignite as intended, the combustion reaction produces carbon dioxide as an exhaust product, so either way thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases are being released with every launch. Now multiply that by the thousands of launches that are being planned, and a very serious problem begins to emerge.

And why was such a devastating fuel chosen for the Starship programme? This question was answered in detail in a 2016 presentation when the programme was pitched in detail for the first time. Three fuel options were originally considered – kerosene, hydrogen and methane. Kerosene cannot be manufactured using the available resources of any worlds besides Earth, so the choice was primarily between hydrogen and methane. Reasons given in the presentation for choosing methane over hydrogen included several “disadvantages” of hydrogen that have already been resolved across decades of aerospace experience in using hydrogen in rocket propulsion. But one line in the comparison chart sticks out like a sore thumb: “Cost of propellant”.

That’s what it’s really about. Methane was the cheapest of the three rocket fuels to mass-produce. As fancy and “shiny” as Elon Musk’s projects depict themselves, in the end they’re driven by the same motivations as any other bourgeois entity.

The rejected fuel option, hydrogen, may deserve a closer look. At the present time, nearly all of the world's current supply of hydrogen is unsustainably created from fossil fuels, however there are methods of producing it in a clean, renewable manner, and these methods could theoretically be scaled up during a transition away from fossil fuels. It appears doubtful that clean hydrogen could itself become a major energy source, as some capitalists such as Twiggy Forrest claim, however it does not have to be in order to be used for space travel. Unlike methane, hydrogen itself isn’t a greenhouse gas, and in any case doesn’t remain in Earth’s atmosphere for long. And the combustion product of hydrogen and oxygen is water. In other words, the exhaust forms a tiny, temporary artificial cloud during launch. There are other environmentally-friendly methods of reaching space as well, some of which do not involve traditional rockets at all.

American Tools of War

Musk’s venture, like other parts of the space program, is intimately tied to Imperialist warfare - both supporting current wars and preparing for future ones. This has always been true, in fact the American space program began as little more than a military project for developing ICBMs aimed at the Soviet Union, China, and their allies. In the present day, military satellites serve numerous functions in support of the war machine, ranging from long-distance communications to spying on an opponent’s actions. SpaceX already regularly launches military satellites, and isn’t even against repurposing non-military satellites into tools of war. For example, the “Starlink” satellite network, supposedly designed to assist in giving internet access to remote communities, has been used by Ukrainian forces in the ongoing inter-imperialist proxy war so regularly that the one time Musk didn’t allow it’s use became newsworthy.

Unlike any orbital launch vehicle currently in use, Starship has the capability to launch over a hundred tonnes of payload into low earth orbit at once. Such a capability in American hands can, and will, be used for malicious purposes. In the immediate, short-term future, this will play a role in the ongoing campaigns of imperialist aggression around the world. In the more distant, long-term future, the roles of military satellites may expand to encompass, for example, the ability to directly strike targets on the ground from orbit, and this may be seen in the larger conflicts that Australia will likely be dragged into.

Looking deeper into the future

We shouldn’t lose sight of another risk that could emerge if the Starship programme is successful at establishing regular interplanetary travel for profit-oriented purposes. Environmental destruction will follow wherever the interests of capital are given priority, and there’s no reason this trend would not continue offworld. By now lead, microplastics, and other pollutants have been found in every rainforest, glacier and deep-sea trench on Earth. Even Low Earth Orbit has been polluted by the Kessler Effect over the past few decades (and the Starlink project has made this far worse in recent years). Deep Space remains the one place that has yet to be corrupted by capitalism, and it should remain that way. One world has already been devastated by careless exploitation, we should hope that number does not increase.

This does not mean that space travel itself is inherently reactionary or counterrevolutionary. If anything, history shows us the opposite. While many of the Soviet Space Program’s most infamous accomplishments took place during the 1960s, Soviet superiority in space already began before this. For example, in July of 1951, the Soviet Union launched the first mammals to survive a flight into space. Three years later in 1954, a developmental plan was proposed for the world’s first artificial satellite – what we now know as Sputnik 1. The foundations of a powerful space program had already been laid by the time of the revisionist takeover.

We should also remember the PRC’s “two bombs one satellite” programme. As early as 1958 Mao Zedong formally announced the development of a Chinese orbital space program. In April of 1970, China’s first satellite was successfully launched into space, making China the fifth nation to put a spacecraft into orbit using its own rocket. So no, the corruption of space travel by bourgeois interests does not make space travel itself inherently negative.

Nor is the often-discussed ambition of populating other worlds (the term “colonization” is often used but appears unsuitable as this has little in common with the deadly colonialism of the past and present) counterrevolutionary either. In fact, this concept was first seriously promoted by a Soviet rocket scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. A few short years after the establishment of the USSR, he published a plan for the long-term expansion of the human species into space.

And this will likely happen in the future. Other worlds will likely be populated, not as a result of some billionaire’s side-project, but as the result of a socialist endeavour – likely of an international collaboration of socialist states. If the struggles of the present day are eventually won, this will be just one part of the bright future our children and grandchildren can look forward to.

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Israel’s Apartheid Practice

Written by: (Contributed) on 17 July 2024

Discussions taking place at the highest levels of the Israeli state have revealed planning for prolonged control of Gaza and the West Bank along neo-colonial lines. While various policy options are being considered, none have included any reference to granting recognition of a Palestinian state in accordance with United Nations recommendations decades ago.

In fact, those closely associated with the Netanyahu grouping in the Knesset have already opted for a bantustan-type model for Gaza, based on the former homelands of Apartheid South Africa.

Serious political differences, nevertheless, are emerging inside Israel; some of those which have been not as conspicuous as the mass demonstrations in opposition against Netanyahu, have far-reaching implications for political stability.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected in the US in late July where he is expected to address Congress on 24th about his government plans for the Gaza Strip. Discussions have already started taking place inside the Israeli corridors of power, with various submissions from senior figures. Some of their proposed policy options have already been openly stated: they follow closely the models drawn up by white supremacists in South Africa for containing the black population. (1) With little ambiguity.

The South African homelands, which evolved from the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, became a government priority following the imposition of Apartheid policies in 1950. The white elite sought to permanently remove non-whites from what they regarded as their country. The Bantustans, as they were called, were central to Apartheid policies; they were, furthermore, never intended to be economically sustainable, but dependent upon the white economy with a source of cheap labour for use along lines of a colonial-settler type model.

While differences exist between the Israeli policy options, a common strand running through many of them is a similar preoccupation with 'geographical islands … and … bubbles', designed specifically to atomise the Palestinian community and control the population. (2) Not one proposed policy option has recommended the recognition of a Palestinian state, in line with United Nations recommendations in the late 1980s.

While the Bantustan policies never worked effectively in South Africa, there were, nevertheless, forced re-locations of non-whites from numerous areas. Many non-whites, however, managed to stay in predominantly white areas while subject to government classification as 'non-people'. Needless to state, the Apartheid policies were considered by most reasonable people around the world as odious, and led to opposition and a massive reaction and, eventually, the toppling of the whole segregationalist regime in 1994.

The whole issue of Apartheid has remained highly controversial inside the Israeli state, although there were and remain marked similarities; Israel, for example, retained strong diplomatic links with Apartheid South Africa throughout the duration. (3) Trade links were accompanied by defence and security provision. (4) It was noted that 'much of the efficiency of the South African security services must be placed at the door of Israel, for both army experts and specialists in counter-intelligence operations and interrogation from the MOSSAD have been placed in South Africa in a permanent advisory capacity since 1976 … in that year they … agreed on a pooling of intelligence information'. (5)

In fact, studies of the diplomacy have concluded 'the blatant similarities of these two birds of a feather were vividly illustrated by the worlds of Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd – former South African prime minister and architect of 'Grand Apartheid. In 1961, when expressing his deep admiration for Israel's foundation and socio-political architecture – and, more especially for its character as an exclusivist, ethnic state, with special privileges in law for Jews, and the displacement of native Palestinians by foreigners – stated that: The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel like South Africa is an Apartheid State'. (6)

Similar studies, likewise, have also drawn attention to the colonial-settler basis of the Israeli state. (7) The continual expansion of the Israeli settlements across the West Bank is evidence, in itself, of the problem. While the settlements are regarded as illegal by 'much of the international community … Israel has declared control over its single-largest swath of land in the West Bank this year'. (8)

It has also included acts of extreme violence by Israelis toward Palestinian people before the events of 7 October 2023. In April it was officially recorded that 'five Israeli security units committed gross violations of human rights prior to the outbreak of war with Hamas in Gaza … they included … extra-judicial killings, torture and physical abuse'. (9)

One continual problem confronting the Palestinians has been accurately establishing their longer-term planning for their relationship with Israeli motives and designs. Political spin from the Knesset is an everyday occurrence; assessing the Israeli designs, however, would appear a rather different matter. It is not a politically open system, particularly for Palestinian people who are systematically excluded from decision-making processes.

One policy making group, composed of those close to Netanyahu, for example, 'are backing another, security-focussed plan that seeks to slice up Gaza with two corridors running across its width and a fortified perimeter that would allow Israeli's military to mount raids when it deems them necessary'. (10) No reference, however, has been openly given about the massive oil and natural gas reserves off the Gaza Strip and their viability and the geographical significance of the two proposed corridors. The fact that some of the Israeli think tanks are pressing for 'an outright Israeli occupation' of Gaza might best be assessed in that light. (11)

Meanwhile, massive demonstrations and protests have taken place across Israel, backed by political opposition to the Netanyahu administration.

Some of those not so conspicuous opposition figures are, however, in pivotal and powerful positions.

Differences of opinion amongst those who have provided assessments for how Israel should deal with Hamas are important to note; Israel's military leadership, apparently, 'wants a ceasefire in Gaza, even if it means leaving Hamas in charge'. (12) The development has shown a widening difference of opinion between those supporting Netanyahu and those siding with the armed forces. Israel's former national security advisor, Eyal Hulatu, has openly supported a hostage deal which has included a ceasefire. (13)

It has been noted, furthermore, that top Israeli military officials and generals 'see a truce as the best way to secure the release of the hostages, even if Israel's war goals are not all met'. (14) While the position has not been accepted by the Netanyahu administration, it has set the military and its reservists and their associates against a political leadership which is far from secure. In fact, the Netanyahu government is increasingly vulnerable and resides in daily fear of collapsing outright, leaving the military poised near the levers of power.

Other regional figures, including King Abdullah II of Jordan have commented that the exclusion of Palestinians by the Israelis 'will not lead to a real peace'. (15) Jordan clearly has a vested interest in pursuing policies of a peaceful settlement with the Palestinian issue; the country hosts an estimated three million Palestinian refugees in various camps across the country, and is virtually dependent upon the US for defence and security provision. Major developments on the West Bank and Gaza Strip inevitably spill over into neighbouring Jordan; it is not politically secure and in a precarious position.

While the killing of innocent Palestinians continues in Gaza, the Israeli leadership have shown little concern about International Court of Justice recommendations about their war crimes and genocide. (16) The US and their allies continue to support Israel and a culture of impunity. (17)

With world opinion polarised over the issue, however, it remains to be seen what reception Netanyahu and his entourage receive in Washington later this month and whether the Pentagon continues to provide sophisticated armaments for use without conditions, against an unarmed civilian population.

1. See: Israel plans for Gaza 'Day After', Australian, 1 July 2024; and, The Homelands, South African History On-line.
2. Ibid.
3. See: The Unnatural Alliance, James Adams, (London, 1884), page 23, pp. 79-80, page 85.
4. Ibid., page 19, page 23.
5. Ibid., pp. 86-87.
6. Israel and South Africa, The Many Faces of Apartheid, (London, 2015); Birds of a Feather: Israel and Apartheid South Africa – Colonialism of a Special Type, Ronnie Kasrils, pp. 23-41.
7. Ibid., Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
8. Record West Bank 'seizure' for settlers, Australian, 5 July 2024.
9. See: US determines five Israeli security units, CNN., 29 April 2024, and, Reuters, 30 April 2024; and, US backs Israel over claims of war crimes, Australian, 1 May 2024.
10. Australian, op.cit.
11. Ibid.
12. Israeli military calls for ceasefire in Gaza, Australian, 4 July 2024.
13. Ibid.
14. Israel evaluating new Hamas 'ideas' on truce, Australian, 5 July 2024.
15. See: Jordan, MEM., 23 September 2024.
16. See: Deadly Israeli strikes hit Gaza, Australian, 8 July 2024.
17. See: Western moral credibility fractured, Pearls and Irritations, 24 May 2024; and, Adelaide Voices, May-July 2024.

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Australian Dairy Industry News

Written by: Duncan B. on 9 July 2024

Twenty Australian Manufacturing Workers Union maintenance workers employed at the Burnie (Tasmania) plant of Canadian-owned dairy processor Saputo have been on strike for a month.

They are seeking to be paid the same as Saputo employees doing the same job on the mainland, claiming they are receiving 21% less than their mainland colleagues. They have called for a boycott of Saputo products, which include the Cheer, Devondale, Cracker Barrel, Mersey Valley and several other brands of cheese.

The majority of the Australian dairy processing industry is foreign-owned, with Saputo (Canada), Fonterra (NZ) and Lactalis (France) the main players. Bega is the only major Australian-owned dairy company, along with some smaller companies such as Norco.

The same dairy companies that exploit Australian dairy factory workers also exploit Australian dairy farmers. Recently the processors announced this year’s farm gate price offers to dairy farmers for their milk. The prices offered are actually less than last year’s, being around $7.80 to $8.30 per kilogram of milk solids.

These prices are around the farmers’ cost of production or even less. It is estimated that dairy farmers will be $200,000 to $300,000 worse off, as they are also being hit by rising costs for water, electricity and all their other inputs. More dairy farmers are expected to leave the industry.

Dairy farm numbers last year were 4163, down from 4420 in 2022, and 6308 in 2014. Australia’s milk pool has shrunk to around eight million litres. It is not surprising that we are seeing a massive increase in the import of dairy products into Australia from Europe, the US and New Zealand. In 2022-23, dairy imports rose from around 293,000 tonnes to around 344,000 tonnes over the previous year. This was an increase in value from $2.1 billion to $2.7 billion.

Farm gate prices paid by processors to dairy farmers in New Zealand are about 30% lower than in Australia, giving New Zealand companies a considerable price advantage over Australian processors, allowing them profit from exports to Australia. Last year Australia imported 47,500 tonnes of butter, mainly from New Zealand. Much of the imported butter and cheese is being sold by supermarkets under their own house brands.

In a move which will shake up the dairy industry in Australia, New Zealand-based Fonterra has announced that it will put its Australian operations up for sale. Fonterra employs 1600 people at eight sites in Victoria and Tasmania and processes 1.4 billion litres of milk each year.

The Canadian-owned superannuation fund PSP is deeply involved in Australian dairy farming through its company Aurora Dairies. This company has 450 employees and has 48,000 cows producing 280 million litres of milk on 54 farms in Australia. Aurora’s economies of scale will allow them to make a profit from dairying while small farmers struggle to make a living. It will be interesting to see if PSP makes a bid for Fonterra’s factories. This would give them control over the whole dairy business from cow to consumer.

Australia’s small farmers and workers have the same enemy. Only unity in struggle will end the exploitation.

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Why is it so hard to get by?

Written by: John Gerard on 11 July 2024

(Cartoons from TNC Workers Research Brief 13 1986)

Why in one of the richest countries in the world do we have to scramble to get by?

People have trouble paying for the roof over their heads, stressed by the costs of putting food on the table, fuel in the car and paying power bills.
Why?

Why, when Australia is a resource powerhouse, first or second in the world in gas exports, first in coal, huge in iron ore, one of the biggest suppliers of rare earths for the electronic digital world and important in so many others resources?

Why when farmers, working with nature’s bounty, produce more than enough to feed everyone in the country a few times over.

Who isn’t sick to death of the scramble people are forced into just to get a decent living.

Discovering that profits come before people won’t win you the Nobel Prize. Its slapping us in the face all the time.

An old maxim goes: It’s the rich that get the pleasure, and the poor that get the pain. In this system of producing and selling for profit, the super-rich getting richer and richer. The people doing the work struggle. That’s capitalism, the capitalist economic and political system.

But there’s more to it than a ‘system’. More than some elusive, invisible, shadowy thing we can’t get our hands on.

There’s capitalists. Real people. Visible, flesh and blood, that run this system, that own it, that prosper from it, that unleash forces to defend it and expand their reach. We don’t often see them because they don’t do much and most of them don’t want us to know them.

It’s important to be clear about capitalism and capitalists. It’s not just an abstract haze of a system.

Capitalists are behind this disastrous system

This is the CAPITALISTS’ SYSTEM. A system of capitalists. There’s people who run the system and that it runs for.

Be clear about the capitalist system producing our problems, but don’t stop there. Get down to the people behind the system, CAPITALISTS.

Capitalists are more than local people like Gina Rhinehart and Andrew Forrest. We need to look past appearances. Australia Institute research in 2022 found Forrest’s Fortescue Metals was 94% foreign-owned. They also identified the mining industry was 85% foreign-owned.

Identifying the actual people who are behind the system in Australia needs to be checked out in depth or we’ll be pointing at the wrong people and wasting a lot of effort.

But let’s get the basics clear about who we’re dealing with.

Blame the capitalists and call them out. That crew of people are what stands between us and decent lives.

They have quite a few people they employ to look after them and their interests. They have governing administrations, the legal systems, CEO’s, police, armies and other institutions lined up looking after their system of capitalism and the pipeline of riches into their hands.

Those people are agents of the capitalists, not the people owning and driving the system.

The set up is a lot like in the ‘noble sport’ of horse racing.

The ‘sport’ involves owners, trainers, strappers, jockeys, breeders, and institutions including racing clubs, and has governing bodies and government regulations. Feeding off and sponsoring races are bookmakers and betting corporates, along with media empires. We’ll leave the wider industry aside for this illustration.

The horse side of the ‘industry’ has lots of people with lots of roles. The hierarchy operating between them mirrors capitalism in some ways.

At the top of the ‘industry’ are horse owners, and not just any old owners in a syndicate who bought a nag hoping they would get lucky. The industry’s dominated by the super-rich, the business tycoons, emirs, sheiks, kings and the like. Just look at the position of Godolphin Racing owned by Sheik Maktoum .

The horse side of the industry is run for the horse owners.

They employ or contract trainers, who are their top managers as in a corporate structure. The trainers manage the horses, their feed, exercise, health, well-being and other activity. The big owners employ managers of their racing interests, often across the globe. The managers advise and ensure owners’ decisions and interests are carried out and the trainers and their systems are performing. The big owners also employ or contract horse buyers and breeders, sometimes owning their own breeding studs.

Trainers employ a lot of people, pre-trainer/horse educators, stable hands and strappers, trackwork riders, stud grooms, office managers, book-keepers, clerks, assistants, farm managers, transport drivers and contract others like vets, construction/maintenance workers, jockeys. Significant numbers of people work in a big stable like those of Chris Waller, the Hayes, Cummings, Waterhouse, or Freedman families.

Chris Waller directly employs just over 100 people in 4 big stables across the eastern States. All those people are employees or paid one way or another to work for the trainer or trainer’s business to keep the horses healthy and prepare them to race.

Jockeys ride horses to trainers’ instructions and their own racing skills to try get the best result out of the horse, when they’re operating honestly (for the owner who gets the prizemoney and some kudos).

The trainers’ job is to get the best out of the horse for the owner, just like the manager of any business. So do all the people employed by the trainer.

The owners do nothing or next to nothing in handling the horse.

But they are the ones calling the shots, picking up the winnings, and who the whole industry rotates around. The talk in the form guides is about the trainers and jockeys, with the owners getting mentioned in passing.

On race day, sometimes, owners jump into the limelight. Owners of Australia’s major corporate empires hide from the limelight but they call the shots just the same. Their interests drive capitalism in this country.

Capitalism is not just some system, it’s capitalists exploiting workers

It’s capitalists who prosper while we struggle. And not just some general amorphous rich faceless mob. They have names. They have businesses. They are actual people whose wealth is gained from our work.

It’s capitalists behind the laws crushing unions. It’s capitalists getting rich from the minerals dug out of the ground and sold overseas while we do the work. It’s capitalists grabbing the money that could provide housing, healthcare, good education, roads, etc.

A reduction in the standard of living while production ploughs on increases this or that capitalist’s riches even more. More of what workers produce goes to bloating

capitalist riches, leaving us struggling to get by.

Think of some tanned tycoon basking on a super yacht in the Bahamas or Monaco while miners dig coal, train drivers haul it to ports, operators scoop it out of piles and others load ships full of coal, one after the other. That’s capitalism in Australia, or one major part of it.

If we’re going to get rid of capitalism from Australia, we need to be much more aware of the capitalists who are prospering from the value workers produce.

If we’re going to overthrow capitalism, it means overthrowing the people who rule over us.

In their 18th century revolts, French peasants got rid of feudalism, and they knew they had to get aristocrats’ necks under the guillotine to do it.

We also need to know who. Otherwise, we’ll just be striking out blindly, often at the management monkey or the political hack, not the organ-grinding capitalist.

It would be a great use of an academic’s time, to delve deeper into who these capitalists are. Where they come from is covered to an extent in the booklet “Who Owns Australia” . There’s work to be done on who they are.

What is clear is that 85% of the mining, oil and gas industries in Australia are foreign-owned, with the biggest portion American. There’s similar levels of foreign-ownership in many major sectors of the economy, banking and finance, chemicals and others. Foreign capitalists are at the heart of capitalist ranks in Australia.

The US stranglehold over the country is apparent in how little tax they pay, in billions devoted to preparations for another war to defend and extend the American empire while people are struggling with bills. It points the way towards hitting foreign capitalists as the first step in giving the system a whack.

Moaning about an abstract system doesn’t cut it.

It’s not just capitalism, its capitalists. We have to target the actual people and the forces that keep them safe from us.

Appendix:

Godolphin Racing and its super-rich owner, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

One of the biggest and richest race horse owners here and across the world is Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister ruling over Dubai, with horses racing in the royal blue silks of Godolphin Racing.

He’s the Chief Executive of Emirates Airlines, Chair of Dubai Real Estate Corporation, with his family owning various tremendously lucrative enterprises.

Godolphin Racing was set up in 1992. By 2018 they’d won over 5,000 races in 14 countries including Australia, the US, UK, France Germany Japan among others.

The Sheik has two racing stables in Sydney, one in Melbourne, two in Newmarket, UK, and two in Dubai, as well as horses in training with contracted trainers in the UK, Australia, France, Japan, the United States, and Ireland. James Cummings of the famous family of trainers is Godolphin’s head of operations in Australia.

The Sheik got into racing through owning horses in the UK in 1977. He set up Darley breeding studs in the UK in 1981, subsequently expanding them to Australia, France, Ireland, Japan, and the United States. He owns Channel 4 racing media in the UK.

Sheik Al Maktoum’s position at the top of the racing tree involved in setting the rules, is apparent in Maktoum’s Godolphin having representatives on the boards of governing bodies on three continents.

One sits on the board of the Melbourne Cup organisers, the Victoria Racing Club, alongside bankers, media execs, corporate accountants and lawyers. Not a stable hand or trackwork rider in sight.

A former Godolphin CE sits on the board of the British Horseracing Authority as an owners’ representative. An appointee of Sheik Maktoum’s as General Manager of Emirates Racing Authority, Mohammad Saeed Al Shehhi, has been elevated to vice-chairman of Asian Racing Federation’s Board. The Sheik’s sons serve as Chairs of Dubai’s two horse racing clubs.

Through all the studs and stables, as one racing journalist put it: ‘Each horse has a race path to follow and a commercial purpose to fulfil, from winning prize money to earning a lucrative post-career at stud.’ It’s all about Maktoum’s ‘commercial purpose’ to create value for the Sheik.

Along the way there’s a dash of horses being this tycoon’s playthings in operation, a display of his wealth delivering prestige among the super-rich while it delivers the money as winners of top races and value as breeding bloodstock.

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Important webinars build the movements against imperialism.

Written by: Nick G. on 9 July 2024

Two important webinars, one recently held and the other still to come, are building the people’s movements against imperialism.

On July 4, the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition (AAAC) presented a webinar titled “Independence – Breaking the US Stranglehold in Australia.”

In publicity for the event, the AAAC stated:

The U.S. is the dominant global power with extensive political, economic, military influence and power over many countries, including Australia.

In Australia this U.S. dominance also extends to Australia’s foreign policies, and impacts on our democratic rights.

AUKUS is locking Australia more deeply into US global militarisation and US led wars, in particular the Asia-Pacific Region.

The webinar was opened by AAAC member Shirley Winton, and chaired by lawyer and activist Kellie Tranter.

More than 300 people registered for the event, with over 200 actually participating.

Our Party was one of 30 organisations endorsing the webinar.

There were four speakers:

• Alison Broinowski, President, Australians for War Powers Reform, and former Australian diplomat, provided a political perspective;

• Brian Toohey, Journalist and author specialising in the economy and politics covered the economic aspects of the US stranglehold;

• Prof. Richard Tanter, Researcher at the Nautilus Institute, author, spoke on Pine Gap, nuclear weapons, AUKUS and militarization;

• Greg Barns SC, democratic rights lawyer and Barrister, commented on the erosion of democratic rights under the Stranglehold.

The speakers and some in the audience provided links to a number of important resources.

The forthcoming webinar “Why is the Pacific being prepared for war?”, looks at the US-led RIMPAC military exercise in Hawaii, Exercise Pitch Black and AUKUS. It will be held on Saturday July 13 at 1030am AEST.

Exercise Pitch Black is an air force exercise that has been held roughly every two years since 1981 and under US leadership since 1983. The 2024 event will occur between 15 Jul – 01 Aug 2024 and be based around Darwin and the Tindale base outside of Katherine. The previous exercise involved air forces from 17 participating countries. The exercise involves mock battles and explosive ordinance. Public safety will require the designation of large areas of the NT as “military restricted” and “danger” areas.

This webinar is hosted by the Independent and Peaceful Australian Network (IPAN) and includes voices of resistance from throughout the Pacific region.

Registration for the event can be arranged here:

Such events are crucial in building opposition to the war plans of US imperialism, and to preventing the heightening of tensions in our region.

They contribute significantly to the winning of anti-imperialist Australian independence and socialism.

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Young ALP Female Senator Stands Strong For Palestinian People and Palestinian State

Written by: Ned K. on 8 July 2024

ALP Senator Fatima Payman resigned from the ALP last week after courageously "crossing the floor" of the Senate to support a Greens motion that Australia recognize a state of Palestine.

Over 100 other countries have already taken this position. The ALP leadership could not bring itself to do so. The Albanese Government was more concerned about not getting out of step with the USA and Zionist Netanyahu Israeli Government.

Senator Payman, only 29 years young, went into the Senate on an ALP ticket with the genuine belief that she could make a difference by being a member of a political party that stood for social justice, for solidarity with oppressed peoples both within Australia and internationally.

She came into the Senate supported by United Workers Union where she was an Organizer and where union members learned through their own experience that there is real strength in diversity.

She must have been bitterly disappointed when she found that the same values were not practiced by the ALP leadership when it came to the issue of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli Government backed by western powers led by the USA.

We do not know exactly what was said to her by Albanese and key Ministers to try and "persuade" her to toe the Party line.

However, they met their match in Senator Payman when she announced her resignation from the ALP, but her continuation in the Senate as an Independent Senator.

When she made this decision, it was easy for her to see who her enemies are and who are her friends.

The ALP leaders joined the Murdoch Press with the idea that she may be ineligible to be a Senator due to dual citizenship with Afghanistan and Australia.

Of course, the ALP never thought this when Fatima Payman was put on the ALP Senate ticket.

At that time, the leaders probably thought it would add to their appearance as supporting diversity in representation in parliament to have a young, female, Muslim woman in ALP Seante ranks "under the wing" of Senators Wong and Farrell.

What a contrast between this barrage of hate against a Senator standing her ground and the hundreds of cheering unionists and diverse communities that greeted Senator Payman when she arrived at Perth airport from Canberra!

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Report on Russia by Russian Maoists

Written by: Union of Maoists of the Urals on 7 July 2024

Last May we published an analysis of conditions In Russia by our comrades in the Union of Maoists of the Urals. Today, they have sent us the following update which will be of interest to Australian anti-imperialists. Long live the proletarian friendship between the workers of Russia and Australia-eds.

Hello, dear Australian comrades!

Dear comrades, we would like to inform you about the situation in the economy of our country in order to better show the prospects for the imperialist war waged by Russia and the likelihood of revolutionary changes.

Until relatively recently, sanctions worked extremely poorly. Everything was on the shelves and regularly arrived at industrial enterprises for various purposes: both civilian and military. In fact, Western products prohibited by sanctions are imported into Russia from Turkey and Kazakhstan. This happens extremely freely and without serious problems. This primarily concerns industrial electronics and a number of food products. What cannot be imported through them is imported from China (cheap industrial goods) or has been replaced by Russian production. However, in recent months, due to the threat of sanctions against Chinese banks, it has become much more difficult for Russian enterprises to purchase products from China. Deliveries of many types of goods from China are severely delayed. However, we cannot yet say that this is somehow affecting Russian industry or consumers, and therefore we cannot assume that this is what will revolutionize Russian society or create a strong crisis in industrial production.

The 2022 mobilization and continuous Nazi pogroms against migrant workers have led to a huge labor shortage in Russia. Highly skilled workers are constantly leaving Russia after the start of the war - we are talking about hundreds of thousands of anti-war Russians. Capitalists don't like this very much. Bourgeois politicians talk about a shortage of 5-10 million workers. Officials regularly discuss programs for the return of specialists with anti-war views, and anti-abortion initiatives are also promoted with the emphasis that there is no one to work in Russia.

The massive involvement of prisoners in military service also plays a role in the labor shortage. Russian prisons are engaged in industrial production and now there is no one to produce prison products either - mass repressions in Russia do not keep pace with the physical extermination of criminals.

The labor shortage is leading to rapidly rising wages for Russian workers. We are talking about a doubling of wages over the past year. The growth of the military industry due to the war plays a role. As a result of this, Russian workers are now happy with their situation, they enjoy the fruits of imperialist policies and prosperity from the blood of their more unfortunate dead fellow citizens. They change jobs as soon as necessary, it is common for capitalists to lure workers away from each other, and bonuses for workers bringing new workers to fill vacancies are extremely common. There is no unemployment.

The Russian army is holding on because of the forced involvement of migrant workers in it and because it pays wages 10-15 times higher than in other areas of employment. Huge military spending, a social sector for the military, the growth of the military industry - all this is paid for from a deficit state budget. There are expert estimates that there will be enough money in the budget for a year and a half (including the state reserve accumulated before the war is now being wasted; Russia did not spend it during the Covid epidemic), after which the country, if the war continues, will begin an economic crisis and today’s prosperity will end a very rapid decline in living standards, indignation of the popular masses and the rapid growth of revolutionary sentiments. However, forecasts for the duration of the economic crisis may not take into account Russia's ability to inflate public debt.

In any case, it is extremely dangerous for the Russian imperialists to prolong the war; they need peace on their terms, and therefore they are trying in various ways to push through an agreement to suspend the war until Russia again accumulates reserves. Or they immediately propose recognition of Russia’s military claims in Ukraine and the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from a number of Ukrainian regions, the population of which will then be assimilated by the Russians.
Under these conditions, we are trying to analyze the situation, carry out organizational work among the masses and promote Marxism-Leninism.

With revolutionary proletarian greetings from Russia,

International Department of the Union of Maoists of the Urals

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Kenya - Too Little, Too Late: Ruto Must Resign

Written by: Communist Party of Kenya on 29 June 2024

Too Little, Too Late: Ruto Must Resign

Statement by the Central Organizing Committee of the Communist Party of Kenya
27 June 2924

In the wake of intense demonstrations against the Finance Bill 2024 and the consistent, resolute demand for the resignation of President William Ruto, the President has made a belated and insincere about-face, declaring that he shall not consent to the bill and ostensibly acceding to the people's demands. This disingenuous capitulation comes only after Ruto ordered the brutal murder of more than 10 confirmed protesters and unleashed death squads to massacre more innocent lives in Githurai.

We must not allow Ruto to escape accountability for the innocent blood he has shed in the streets. These demonstrations have clear and simple demands that we insist the President comply with. During the post-election protests, Ruto was responsible for the murder of l many innocent souls. It is imperative that the police bosses, all of Ruto’s henchmen, and Ruto himself be held legally accountable for these crimes.

We also demand restorative justice for the survivors of the avoidable massacres orchestrated by the corrupt Ruto regime.

Let’s tell Ruto we are aware that the President is legally unable to withdraw a bill that has already matured for assent. His options are limited to returning it to Parliament with a memorandum for the inclusion of his proposed amendments, which, if rejected by a two-thirds majority, would become law.

Why dupe Kenyans into imagining he can withdraw it in totality? This is a legal conundrum, a deceitful ploy to buy time and distract Kenyans from their urgent demands.

Moreover, this morning Parliament went on recess until June, so how will the bill that has been referred to a Parliament on recess be amended?

We, today, put forth the following ten collective demands to sum up the temporary pause of protests:

1. A total cessation of taxation on basic commodities such as food, healthcare, and education, and the complete rejection of the Finance Bill 2024. We totally reject window dressing paltry amendments that may happen with the bought crowd in parliament

2. An immediate end to the interference with our national sovereignty by foreign institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, NATO, and their financiers.

3. The provision of decent jobs, sustainable livelihoods, and the implementation of Article 43 within six months.

4. Quality housing and compensation for all those illegally evicted.

5. Free and quality education for all.

6. Free and quality healthcare for all.

7. An immediate end to state violence in the form of abductions, excessive use of force by police during demonstrations, and extrajudicial killings.

8. The return of all stolen public land and a clear plan for food sovereignty.

9. Fair compensation for all workers providing essential services to the country.

10. An immediate end to the privatization of public institutions and state-owned enterprises.

President Ruto, your time is up! The people of Kenya reject your bloodstained hands and your corrupt administration.

#RutoMustGo!

No IMF ! No World Bank!

Signed,

The Central Organizing Committee of the Communist Party of Kenya

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Thailand: Looming political crisis

Written by: (Contributed) on 29 June 2024

(Above: The Royal Thai Army suppreesed 2010 "Red Shirt" rallies. Photo: Flickr Commons)

A brief political assessment about Thailand in the Australian business press has revealed widespread concern about a likely resurgence of opposition forces in one of the most important US-led centres for regional defence and security and trade. Thailand, historically, was and remains a major diplomatic player in South-east Asian affairs, including the ASEAN trade bloc. Any return to previous widespread opposition to the traditional centres of Thai power are likely to cause serious issues for the US and their allies across the wider region.

In mid-June, limited media coverage about Thailand carried an unambiguous warning that 'in reality, the South-east Asian constitutional monarchy is on the brink of another round of convulsive protests by young Thais who have had enough of the cheating and distorting of an ageing establishment that refuses to acknowledge its time may be coming to an end'. (1)

Thailand has maintained a shaky democratic facade for decades under the nominal control of a monarchy although it has also experienced thirteen military coups in the past ninety years.

Previous widespread opposition to the monarchy and political establishment took the form of supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra who wore red-shirts and demonstrated in their millions against perceived corruption and political chicanery. The supporters of the status quo wore yellow-shirts to identify their allegiance to the monarchy. There were violent clashes.

While the political divisions between the red and yellow shirts have officially been regarded as a problem of yesteryear, bitter divisions still exist beneath the surface of Thai political culture. Following the coup of 19 September 2006, which deposed Thaksin Shinawatra, he fled into exile, his political party was outlawed and he was banned from political activity in the country. Remnants of his supporters, nevertheless, re-grouped and continued to operate behind numerous front organisations.

Returning to Thailand on 22 August last year, Thaksin Shinawatra was able to prove he still retained huge popularity with ordinary Thai people. (2) He is now set on a collision course with the Monarchy and political establishment after being 'formally indicted for defaming the Monarchy while the failure of the current Prime Minister and main opposition hang in the balance'. (3)

While the legal status of Thailand's political opposition forces remains under legal consideration following months of court hearings, fears have been raised that a further round of banning opposition 'will not only mark the end of the country's shaky democracy, but trigger more political uncertainty'. (4) The centres of traditional Thai class and state power now appear increasingly vulnerable, being out-manoeuvred by opposition forces.

It has already raised serious concerns for Washington and the Pentagon's Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) whereby Japan has been elevated to the US-led diplomatic position of a global alliance, while other countries including Thailand, are linked as lower-level partners for 'US interests'. (5) Political upheaval in Thailand is, therefore, likely to have far-reaching implications for the IPS; effective intelligence-gathering rests upon political stability.

The US intelligence services regarded Thailand as an asset during the previous Cold War, and there is every reason to believe it continues to be so during the present Cold War; its close proximity with Cambodia and their close diplomatic relations with China is considered by the US as problematic. (6) Thailand also has a large Russian diaspora, most of whom settled in the country after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

The political crisis in Thailand has also come at an unfortunate time for the US and their allies; moves by the US to attract support for their trade war with China have been seen to not be particularly well supported. In fact, while the US seeks to 'isolate Beijing on the global stage', numerous allies have been noticeably reluctant to follow suit. (7)

Meanwhile, China's foreign trade has increasingly focussed upon South-east Asia and elsewhere in the emerging economies, as exports to the US have dropped. (8)

Thailand, historically, has been a major player in traditional US-led hegemonic positions in South-east Asia. A founder member of the ASEAN trade bloc during the previous Cold War,
Thailand hosted one of the largest US diplomatic missions of anywhere in the world in Bangkok. As with other countries in the near region, however, its rapid economic expansion followed the emergence of China as a major diplomatic player. China's GDP, likewise, rose from $397 billion in 1990, to an estimated near $15 trillion by 2020. (9)

During the 2007 to 2014 period, for example, ASEAN nearly doubled its GDP ratings, as a result of closer links with China. (10)

Thailand, however, has entered into a period of economic uncertainty and decline in recent years; in 1960 it had a GDP rate of a little over five per cent, falling to slightly above two per cent during the early 2020's. (11) While its high-spot was the late 1980s, when Thai growth rates rose to over thirteen per cent, massive fluctuations followed together with a general decline to only 1.9 per cent last year, possibly rising to an optimistic projection of 2.2/3.2 for this year. (12) The optimism may sour with a political crisis.

Thailand, nevertheless, has remained a central player inside ASEAN, which collectively has continued to regard little benefit from siding totally with either the US or China. They gain benefits from both, using skilful diplomacy.

The Thai big bourgeoise has also positioned itself to make a killing from neighbouring Burma/Myanmar’s bloody suppression of anti-regime and ethnic liberation struggles. Thai banks have become the main supplier of cross-border financial services for Myanmar’s military government, enabling its purchases of arms and equipment despite sanctions against the regime. (13)

ASEAN, in which Thailand has a major influence also presents the US with a major problem: its status has grown to be a central player in regional diplomacy. Studies have noted the 'ASEAN and Chinese economies are becoming inseparably inter-twined'. (14) And, while ASEAN is navigating an increasingly challenging regional environment … China's surging influence raises concerns, as do US responses, which increase strategic tension and gives short shrift to economics and regional prosperity'. (15)

The extremely limited nature of coverage in pro-US media outlets would tend to indicate the sensitive nature of recent developments in Thailand! More, nevertheless, may follow in due course if the political tensions beneath the surface rise to the fore.

1. Thailand bonfire waiting for match, Australian, 13 June 2024.
2. See: Thaksin Shinawatra, BBC News, 22 August 2023.
3. Political crisis grips Thailand, BBC News, 19 June 2024.
4. Australian, op.cit., 13 June 2024.
5. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
6. See: From the Shadows – The ultimate insider's story, Robert M. Gates, (New York, 1996), page 312.
7. US seeks EU's support in trade war, Australian, 22 May 2024; and, Europe takes new strategy to China Shock 2.0, Australian, 25 June 2024.
8. China's export machine moves on, Australian, 14 June 2024.
9. AUKUS a strong hand in a region under threat, Australian, 26 June 2024.
10. What is ASEAN? The World Economic Forum, 9 May 2017.
11. GDP Growth (annual percentage) Thailand, World Bank Group.
12. Ibid., and, Executive Summary, Perspectives, Global Inflation Cools, Deloitte.
13. Thai banks are the top suppliers of financial services to Myanmar’s military, UN expert says, Washington Times, 26 June 2024
14. Towards an equal partnership, East Asia Forum, Volume 15, Number 3, September 2023, pp. 3.5.
15. Japan as a diplomatic asset to ASEAN, East Asia Forum, Volume 15, Number 3, September 2023, pp. 6-8.

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Kanak independence struggle cannot be defeated

Written by: Nick G. on 29 June 2024

(Above: "We are allTein Bichou" Source; Suport Internacional Kanay on X)

Following French President Macron’s decision to withdraw the “thawing” of citizenship in New Caledonia, the vindictiveness of the French bourgeoisie has only heightened.

The French proposal was to include all French citizens with more than ten year’s residence in New Caledonia as citizens of the French territory, effectively bolstering the votes for opposition to independence.

It was a clumsy manoeuvre to restrict the growing influence of Chinese and Russian imperialists within New Caledonia.

The Kanaks erupted in defiance and lives were lost.

But French imperialism was not reconciled to its defeat.

On the morning of June 19 in Nouméa, a raid by the police took place on the premises of the Caledonian Union (UC) in Magenta and the main leaders of the CCAT (Coordination Cell for Field Actions) were arrested on their way to a press conference. A search took place and eleven members of the CCAT, most of whom are also political and trade union leaders, were placed in police custody on several very serious charges, relating to organized crime, for a period of 96 hours (4 days).

On Friday 21 June, Kanaks rallied throughout New Caledonia in support of arrested CCAT leaders, including General Commissioner Bichou Tein. The arrested leaders have been deported to France to stand trial depriving them of the right to defend themselves before a jury of their peers.

This is kidnapping, pure and simple.

Far from taking advantage of Macron’s withdrawal of the citizenship changes to de-escalate tensions in New Caledonia, the French imperialists have only lifted a heavy rock to drop on their own feet.

Already meetings in support of the deported Kanaks have been held in large towns in France.

(Above: Support arrested CCAT leaders, June 21, 2024)

And in New Caledonia Kanak activists have continued to rally and demand the return of their kidnapped comrades.

They will not be intimidated by French colonial troops or pro-French armed militias.

They want all charges dropped against the leaders of the CCAT, and the entire Kanak independence movement.

Solidarity with the entire Kanak independence movement!

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Class struggle at nuclear submarine site

Written by: Ned K. on 26 June 2024

(Stopwork at Osborne, June 3, 2024. Source: CEPU SA Facebook)

For the last few months union members of the AMWU and CEPU have been taking industrial action against the federal government owned Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) at Osborne Naval Base in South Australia.

Members of both unions have been taking short stoppages and work bans. Members are demanding wage parity with ASC workers in WA who are paid 17% higher rates than SA workers for performing same and similar work.

The workers actions are having an impact with ASC forced to make higher wage offers but so far, still short of wage parity.

Now the ASC reactionary management are in a bit of a bind. They need to dry dock a Collins Class submarine which is tied up at the Osborne wharf.

ASC want to proceed with dry dock maintenance of the submarine but the likelihood of work stoppages in the process of moving the submarine to dry dock is a thorn in their side.

AMWU and CEPU workers have a long, proud history of class struggle at the ASC and are sure to win a significant victory in their current struggle for wage parity with WA ASC workers.

How a Labor Government can justify such inequity in wages between workers performing the same work will not come as too much of a surprise to the thousands of privatised workers in both federal and state government services where contractors pay minimum Award rates and sometimes not even the Award minimums.

A win for ASC workers at Osborne will be a win for all workers providing government services

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The wars the US are not winning with China: trade and diplomacy

Written by: (Contributed) on 25 June 2024

(Above: Ahmoot Iranian Flickr.com)

The recent state visit by China's Prime Minister Li Qiang to Australia took place under intense media scrutiny. The media coverage, nevertheless, was highly misleading, as was intended. The US-led trade war with China, for example, was not openly discussed yet remained the main factor behind the high-level Australia-China diplomacy.

Australia is a sub-imperial power with regional responsibilities thrust upon it by Washington and the Pentagon. The diplomatic relationship has proved problematic: and the US is clearly losing the trade war with China; their aggressive imperial foreign policy has seriously backfired.

In mid-June China's PM, Li Qiang, arrived in Australia, greeted by a nineteen-gun salute and full honour guard. The greeted was not out of place, taking into account the agendas of the high-level diplomacy scheduled to take place. While the contents of the agendas have remained confidential, it is not particularly difficult to establish what was going on behind the pomp and ceremony.

The legacy of the previous Trump presidential administration and its US-led Cold War trade war with China hangs like a millstone around the necks of western political leaders. Like most of the foreign policy of the Trump administration, it was established with an air of buffoonery and difficult to take seriously. And it has not worked; in fact, China's economy has continued to surge ahead, leaving the US and its allies behind and in a quandary.

Longer-term the US GDP growth rates, measured from 1960 to 2022 reveal a general decline, largely as a result of Washington and the Pentagon pursuing endless foreign policy adventures without costing the debacles accurately. Studies of US diplomatic involvement and their general intrusion into the sovereignty of numerous other areas of the world, reveal a general trend:

US GDP GROWTH RATES, 1960-2022

1962 - 6.10 %
2019 - 2.29 %
2020 - -2.77 %
2021 - 5.95 %
2022 - 1.94 % (1)

Studies of US allies, including Australia, reveal similar trends due to accompanying US foreign and diplomatic policies elsewhere, across the globe:

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY, GDP

1963 - 6.22 %
2020 - -.0.33%

2021 - 2.11 %

2022 - 4.2 % (2)

2023 - 1.9 %
2024 - 1.8 % (projection) (3)

China's economy, however, has continued to surge ahead; in 2023 China had about 14 per cent of global exports, up 1.3 per cent from 2017, when the US-led trade war began. (4) China's trade surplus, likewise, is estimated at about $823 billion, nearly double the 2017 estimates; trade surplus is defined when exports exceed imports. (5)

In May, as an act of desperation, US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, requested the EU to follow the US-led line of imposing tariffs upon Chinese trade and goods. (6) It was accompanied by an official diplomatic statement from the Biden presidential administration noting, 'Washington … sees European support as a critical way to isolate Beijing on the global stage'. (7) And they have tried very hard to implement the policy.

China, however, in recent years has shifted attention away from advanced, industrial countries toward the Global South. It has become the 'crucial economic partner for many emerging economies' and has been accompanied by numerous diplomatic initiatives. (8)

China's trade with ASEAN, for example, grew 8.1 per cent in the first two months of 2024. (9)

The China-ASEAN economic data also rests upon earlier dynamic trade: using World Bank economic data it can be established that ASEAN member countries have a combined GDP of $3.6 trillion, and that their economies are 'inseparably intertwined' with China. (10) It has also been noted that 'China's surging influence raises concerns, as do US responses, which increase strategic tension and give short shrift to economics and regional prosperity'. (11)

Similar studies have revealed 'China has been selling less to the west and more to South-east Asia and Latin America'. (12) In fact, during the first five months of this year 'China exported seventeen per cent less to the US. In 2023 alone, China's exports to the US dropped fourteen per cent'. (13)

China has also developed trade hubs in recent times, by using countries including Vietnam and Mexico, to reroute trade to include third parties into regions of economic interest. (14)

While US coverage of these developments has been subject to diplomatic silence, due to the sensitivity of the whole matter, forthcoming policies will be interesting to monitor. Under the existing balance of forces, China has successfully challenged the neo-colonial relations between the US and its allies and the emerging economies. The diplomatic implications are far-reaching both in the short and longer-term.

As the US and its allies fail to win the present trade war, military options and real-war scenarios would appear to have become ever more likely.

The high-level diplomacy between Australia and China in June has to be assessed along these lines; the former is a major diplomatic player with the ASEAN and South pacific countries and has therefore been used by Washington to further 'US interests'. There is no reason to think the position allocated to Canberra by the US has changed in any way whatsoever in recent times; the present diplomatic line remains based in damage limitation, with business continuing to be conducted as 'normal'.

It has not been difficult to find examples to support the position: within hours of Li Quiang and his entourage leaving Australia, a Canberra initiative saw an official government delegation including seven senior cabinet ministers conduct high-level diplomatic relations with PNG in Port Moresby. (15) The size and composition of the delegation has shown quite clearly how the US expects Australia to use diplomatic initiatives to serve 'US interests'.

It was accompanied by incoming Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele being invited to Canberra for high-level diplomatic talks following a rushed meeting in Honiara two weeks after their change of government with Australian deputy PM Richard Marles. (16) Manele, however, is already on record publicising his government's 'Look North' policies whereby the economic future of the country 'depends on China, rather than its traditional partners like Australia'. (17) The policy is not ambiguous.

Coverage of recent regional developments have concluded that 'Australia is at the cross-hairs of this big shift. It is frozen out by Beijing which is also making a power play in Australia's own backyard in the Pacific Islands – that's why the Solomon Islands matters … China has surpassed Australia in terms of two-way trade with Pacific Islands nations'. (18)

In fact, while the recent 'soft diplomacy' between Australia and China has been noted as standing in 'contrast to the deep suspicion in government, and the national security establishment … about China and its long-term threat to Australian interests', it was, in reality, little other than a theatre production designed specifically to serve other earlier agendas in line with 'US interests' in Australia's designated areas of the wider Indo-Pacific region. (19)

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. US GDP Growth Rates, 1960-2022, Macrotrends.
2. Australian GDP Growth Rates, 1960-2024, Macrotrends.
3. Wikipedia: Economy of Australia.
4. Why the US can't win the trade war with China, The Japan Times, 5 June 2024.
5. Ibid.
6. US seeks EU's support in trade war, Australian, 23 May 2024.
7. Ibid.
8. Four key Take-ways emerging from China's trade data, The Diplomat, 26 March 2024.
9. Ibid.
10. Towards and equal partnership, The East Asia Forum, Volume 15, Number 3, September 2023, pp. 3-5.
11. Japan as a diplomatic asset to ASEAN, ibid., pp. 6-8.
12. China's export machine moves on, Australian, 14 June 2024.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Wong takes China fight to PNG, Australian, 20 June 2024.
16. Solomons PM poised for first visit overseas, Australian, 21 June 2024; and, Marles' diplomatic dash to Solomons, Australian, 21 May 2024.
17. PM hails new Solomon Islands leader, Australian, 3 May 2024.
18. As the Solomon Islands heats up, SBS News, 28 November 2021.
19. Beware the Beijing wolf in panda clothing, PM., Australian, 17 June 2024.

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Assange: Free at last!

Written by: Nick G. on 25 June 2024

(Above: Rally in London in February 2024 demands Assange's release)

Imprisoned Australian journalist Julian Assange is free - bar the formality of an appearance before a US court in the US Marianas Islands tomorrow.

In a plea deal struck with the US authorities, Assange has agreed to plead guilty to one charge under the US Espionage Act. His sentencing is likely to include a jail term which will be subsumed within the time he has already spent in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison.

Assange’s release is a victory for the many people here and abroad who have campaigned for his release and for the dropping of US charges against him.

Though some might see his release as a victory for Albanese and Wong’s “quiet diplomacy”, it rather reflects their abject failure to stand up to the US and secure Assange’s unconditional release.

Worse, by making it a condition of his release by pleading guilty to a crime of which he is innocent, the US imperialists have created a precedent for the citizen of any foreign country to be charged, tried and convicted under US laws.

This is a threat to political activists and journalists of all countries who use US sources to expose US crimes.

This is not to criticise Assange. He has been held hostage by the British inside a jail designed to house murderers and terrorists, and subjected to inhuman conditions, pending a threatened extradition to the US.

Our Party has supported Assange since he first faced charges. In 2012, we wrote:

HANDS OFF ASSANGE!

Julian Assange and Wikileaks have performed a huge service to the people of the world by providing a platform for the publication of information that our rulers want kept from us.

Information released to date substantiates US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the existence of death squads and corruption in Kenya, of crony capitalism and speculative manipulation behind the financial collapse of Iceland and of unethical behaviour on the part of Sarah Palin.

Closer to home, Kevin Rudd has been outed as a cheerleader for the use of force by the US against China. In his March 24, 2009 advice to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the then Prime Minister called for a readiness to “deploy force” unless China “integrated itself effectively into the international community”. This is tantamount to declaring that China’s diplomatic pursuit of its own national interests, particularly if they challenge US global leadership, is the action of a rogue state that must be dealt with militarily.

Agents of imperialism

Wikileaks has revealed the existence of senior Labor politicians who report to the US embassy on matters that they are not even prepared to share with the Australian public. It is a master-servant relationship that stinks to high Heaven.

Julia Gillard’s condemnation of Assange represents the sacrificing of yet another Australian civilian to the interests of the US imperialists.

We remain of the view that Assange has performed a huge service to the people of the world, and that if anyone should be in the dock, then it should be the US imperialist warmongers and assassins and those who collaborate with them.

It now remains for Albanese and Attorney-General Dreyfus to turn their attention to Dan Duggan, the US-born Australian citizen who has been locked in solitary confinement for 20 months in Australian jails despite facing no charges in Australia while the US attempts to have him extradited to face charges in the US.

Assange is out, now let us get Duggan out.

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India: Hands off Arundhati Roy!

Written by: Nick G. on 19 June 2024

Arundhati Roy was the youngest winner of the prestigious Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 for The God of Small Things. Then aged 36, she emerged as an activist campaigning on behalf of India’s poor and marginalised, the same people whose lives she had written about in her novel.

They are also the same people largely responsible for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s humiliating failure to win outright victory in a promised electoral landslide.

The Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha has 543 seats. Modi, whose BJP party held 303 seats prior to the 2024 general election, boasted that the BJP would break through the 400-seat ceiling and sweep to victory. However, the BJP lost seats, winning only 240 and losing its ability to govern in its own right. It has entered a coalition, but lost face at home and abroad.

The main areas where the BJP lost votes were those populated by the Dalits (Untouchables) and adivasis (tribal peoples who have been the main support base for the people’s war led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist)).

How better to punish these people than to criminalise their fiercest champion, Arundhati Roy.

So, last week, 14 years after complaints about her references to Kashmir, Delhi's most senior official granted permission for Roy to be prosecuted under India’s stringent anti-terror laws. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) is notorious for making it exceptionally challenging to get bail, often resulting in years of detention until the completion of trial.

Roy was hated by the far-right Hindu nationalists for whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks. She also made an enemy of the revisionist Communist Party of India (Marxist), whose hold on state power in West Bengal and Kerala saw it serving the bourgeoisie and landlords, when she criticised their behaviours and lifestyles in her novel.

She has written one other novel, but mainly she has published collections of political essays and an account of her travels in 2010 through Communist Party of India (Maoist) liberated zones in the forests of Chhattisgarh with fighters of the Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army.

In October, 2010, at a conference in Delhi, organised by the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners, she enraged the far right by declaring that Kashmir “has never been an integral part of India.” Her opponents demanded that she be tried for treason. But she remained defiant.

In 2019 she delivered a lecture to an audience in New York just months after Modi suspended Kashmir’s autonomy and imposed a lockdown on Kashmir that included the withdrawal of mobile phone and internet services, and a curfew that saw thousands imprisoned. She said:

The horror that Kashmiris have endured over the last few months comes on top of the trauma of a thirty-year old armed conflict that has already taken seventy thousand lives and covered their valley with graves. They have held out while everything was thrown at them – war, money, torture, mass disappearance, an army of more than half a million soldiers, and a smear campaign in which an entire population has been portrayed as murderous fundamentalists.

India is not the model democracy so beloved of people like Albanese and Wong.

Assassinations of Sikh supporters of an independent Khalistan have reached as far as Canada and the United States. Pogroms by right-wing Hindu mobs have seen hundreds of Muslims beaten to death and lynched in the streets. The disgusting caste system remains firmly entrenched.

Indian novelist and journalist Siddhartha Deb, who has also championed India’s poor, place the prosecution of Roy in context. Interviewed on Democracy Now on June 17, he said:

But the point isn’t really about Kashmir. The point is really about the fact that the Hindu right don’t want anyone like Arundhati critiquing the government, critiquing its policies, not just on Kashmir, but that it is completely — it’s a fascist political party. It is against all minorities. It is against women. It is against the poor. And that is what Roy has been speaking up and writing about for over 30 years. And that’s what they’re against. And they want to shut down not just speech. They want to shut down thought. And that’s what this is about.

The CPA (M-L) calls on the Indian government to cease the prosecution of Arundhati Roy.

The CPA (M-L) calls on Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Wong to convey to the Indian Government their support for the human rights of Arundhati Roy.

We encourage people to write to the Indian Embassy and to Albanese and Wong, in support of Arundhati Roy.

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Save the nation’s natural resources for the people

Written by: John Gerard on 18 June 2024

The national anthem lies about our country. There’s golden soil in Australia but the natural wealth is not for toil.

It’s like there’s two Australias: a corporate wonderland for foreign investors and a labour camp of battling to make ends meet for hard working people in the one nation.

Exports of coal, iron ore, natural gas, and some other resources from Australia are the largest in the world.

The mining, oil and gas industries produce more than half Australia’s goods exports. The industries’ exports of $455 bn are equivalent to 24% of the country’s economic output. Corporate monopolies plunder the country’s resources.

The mining, oil and gas corporations are making a bundle. Those corporations alone picked up a cool $241.9 bn operating profit before tax in 2022-23.

Corporate thrive while people struggle

Citizens are told the country is on its knees, in debt and struggling. More and more people are battling with bills, rent or mortgages. The cost of living has gotten away from people.

In 2022, over three million (3,319,000), of the nation’s 26 million people lived in poverty, including 761,000 children. That’s based on a measure of 50% of median household income, $489 per week for a single person, $1,027 per week for a couple with two children.

More than one in eight people (13.4%) and one in six children (16.6%) lived below the poverty line after taking account of their housing costs.

That was before the inflation/ interest rate crisis took hold. Things got far worse in the first half of 2024.

That’s built on top of the situation of the workforce being on the slide since the mid-1970s. Then the labour share of national income was just over 60%. Now its down near 50%. Capital income, the corporations, picked up what people lost and some more, jumping from 23% to 38% of national income. .

We’re told the government is doing what it can. There’s not great comfort in that sales pitch but it’s doing more than the miserable Libs would do. Still its paltry compared to what could be done if our natural resources were used to look after people, not load profits into billionaire corporates.

There are two Australias. Our country is on its knees but the rich mining, oil and gas corporate monopolies’ country is rolling in billions.

Aladdin’s Cave of Treasures for the Foreign Corporates

Our nation is the world’s sixth largest in area after Canada, Russia, China, the USA, and Brazil. The economy, at $1,702 billion, is the 13th largest in the world according to the IMF with just 0.33% of the world’s population. Australia ranks around 55th on national population counts internationally. The country is full of natural riches, a capable workforce and lots of modern infrastructure.

Exports of coal, iron ore, other fossil fuels, gold, copper, aluminium and other minerals amounted to $406 billion in 2023. [Australia’s Top 25 Exports, Goods and Services, DFAT;]

Australia has been the world's largest exporter of iron ore, coal, unwrought lead, 2nd largest exporter of aluminium ores, beef, lentils and cotton, the 4th largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (2017) and 5th largest exporter of wine .

Since then, Australia overtook Qatar to become the world’s largest exporter of LNG for the first time in November 2018 . Australia now vies with Qatar and the United States as the world's biggest LNG exporter, having boosted export capacity over the past decade, mainly by building three export terminals on the east coast, which use coal-seam gas as a feedstock.

Foreign owners are at the core of the plundering

Contrary to perceptions encouraged by big mining monopolies, major ‘Australian’ mining companies are not Australian owned. They don’t even have large minority Australian-owned shareholdings. An Australia Institute study in 2022 drew the curtain on that nonsense.

The ‘Big Australian’ BHP Group Ltd with a market capitalisation of $252.81bn is 94.41% foreign-owned. Rio Tinto Ltd’s shares, valued at $182.08 bn, were 95.16% foreign-owned. That mightn’t surprise but even a corporation with a prominent local face, Fortescue Metals Group, much touted as owned by ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, was 89.16% foreign-owned in March 2022 [Foreign Investment in Australia, Australia Institute, revised 10/2023; ]

Across corporations generally, that study found an overall figure of around 30% identifiable Australian ownership of Australian companies, and in turn, around 70% foreign ownership of listed companies in Australia. Even often-touted household shareholdings amount to less than 10% of ownership and have little or no real say. Superfunds investments are only a smidgen more, according to the Australia Institute. And despite making huge profits, 1 in 3 big corporations still pays no tax.

The mining, oil and gas industries including exploration and support services, employed 220,000 people in June 2023 of the total national workforce of 14,355,100 employed. That’s just 1 employee in each 67 who are employed by the resource plunderers. [Australian Industry, ABS, 31/5/2024; and Labour Force, Australia, ABS 13/6/2024]

There’s more people involved in the supply chains for the mining, oil and gas industries needed to build mines, etc, and get the resources out of the country. The Minerals Council reckons that all adds up to 1.1 million people. But those numbers are a fair bit of smoke and mirrors. [Mining sustains Australia in uncertain times, Mineral Council of Australia Media release, 9/1/2023]

Mining, Oil and Gas corporates' best interests are to let most people starve

The resource corporates are 85% foreign-owned, and they need just 1 in 67 of us to get the stuff out of the ground and to ports. They make billions from the business.

Mining, oil and gas corporates don’t have to give a damn about how hard the other 66 workers here are doing in a cost-of-living crisis. And they don’t.

Look at what they paid in taxes and royalties last year. “The mining and minerals industries paid a record (sic) $74.0 billion to federal, state, and territory governments in taxes and royalties.” Talk about a pathetic record when compared to their exports of $406bn and profits before tax of $242 bn. [Australian Minerals Sector Achieves Record Tax and Royalty Payments, Mineral Council of Australia Media release, 26/5/2024]. The figure paid leaves out the $14 bn of government subsidies paid to the oil and gas monopoly corporates.

In fact, the resources corporates have interests in making sure nothing is done to make things better for people across the country. That would eat into profits the corporate monopolies make from their mining operations here.

They can keep plundering Australia’s natural resources with the fraction of the local workforce they employ whatever is happening to the rest of us. It makes the mining monopolies among the most reactionary enemies of the working class in this country alongside their finance sector corporate connections.

Make the rich mining, oil and gas corporates pay for our natural resources.

For now, the foreign-owned corporate monopolies rule over the people, workers included. They made $242 bn before tax last year.

Hit them up for half that, $120 bn. They pay out $60bn now. That would add an extra $60 bn to the Federal budget, a big addition to the $698 bn budget this year. It’s a lot of extra government services.

If workers were in charge, just think about what those billions the corporate mining monopolies would be paying over to help out people in trouble could do; fix up Medicare and the NDIS, free public education, childcare and universities, open up free health clinics all over the country, free up public transport. With the workers supported and freed up from cost of living squeeze to an extent, small and medium consumer businesses could thrive, allying their interests with the workers.

First Nations communities should have first call on funds for their communities, given their country being exploited was seized from them and never ceded. The harms are graphically revealed in numerous incidents like the Rio Tinto destruction of Juukan Gorge, let alone First Nations people’s conditions of life.

The Queensland government recently increased coal royalties to 20% to 40% depending on the level of international prices. They promised to invest in hospitals and housing. We’ll see what comes of that but the increase is a first and an overdue change from the Liberal National Party 10-year freeze on coal royalties at piddling 7% to 15% rates.

The taxes and royalty being paid by mining, oil and gas monopolies are pathetic next to countries like Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and even the UK.
Saudi Arabia charges royalties on production values at international pricing of 20% of the value of production up to a base level ($70 per barrel for oil), stepped up to 40% for the next portion of higher prices ($30), stepped up to 50% for prices at the next level ($100/barrel). At a 20% rate, the mining, oil and gas exporters in Australia would pay $93 bn in royalties alone.

The UK charges a windfall oil and gas profits tax when prices spike above historic standard rates. The UK Energy Profits Levy is charged at an extra 25 percent on top of the UK headline tax rate of 40% Corporation Tax. The rate of corporate tax on oil and gas enterprises in the UK is 65%. Here its nominally 30% but the tax paid is a small fraction of that.

Make the rich mining, oil and gas corporate monopolies pay up.

These monopolies plunder the nation’s natural riches.

Their interests are currently decisive in the running of the country. They have no interest aligned with the welfare of the country, let alone the people, working people, First Nations, professionals and many small and medium businesses.

Foreign-owned corporate monopolies have no right of ownership over the natural resources of the nation.

The call to make them pay and use the funds to benefit the people is the least we can raise.

It has very widespread support, and greater support at a time when many people are doing it so tough. People need these changes.

The working class can stand together to build working class power here against foreign-corporate monopolies, and bring forward others to join the front against foreign corporates.

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Communist Party of the Philippines: Expose and reject US-manufactured anti-Chinese hysteria

Written by: Communist Party of the Philippines on 17 June 2024

(Above: image courtesy of CPP website)

We are reproducing a June 15 statement by the Communist Party of the Philippines. The parallels with anti-Chinese hysteria manufactured by US sycophants in Australia are plain to see. Here, a so-called “former spy for China’s secret police network” alleged on ABC’s Four Corners that there were 1200 Chinese spies targeting Chinese dissidents in Australia. In 2021, Australia's intelligence chief Mike Burgess, without naming India, said his agency had investigated a "nest of spies". Media speculation was allowed to run rampant with China and Russia thought to be responsible. When it turned out to be the Modi government, a key ally of the Australian ruling class, outrage was muted and media comment diluted.

Like the Communist Party of the Philippines, we oppose Chinese social-imperialism, the imperialism it has projected after restoring capitalism but still claiming to be socialist. We hold both China and the US responsible for ramping up tensions in our region. But the man obstacle to a genuinely Australian independence is US imperialism. The US, not China, is the main source of the danger of war. The US, not China, is trying to drag us into another of its unjust and unwinnable wars.

Let there be no place for attacks on the Australian Chinese community.

No US bases in Australia!

Smash the AUKUS arrangements!

...................

Communist Party of the Philippines: Expose and reject US-manufactured anti-Chinese hysteria

Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines
June 15, 2024

Synchronized and bank-rolled by the US State Department and Pentagon, officials and agents of the Marcos government, officers of the military, police and coast guard, senators and congressmen, corporate media, “think tanks,” some “civil society” groups, and social media mercenaries have recently ramped up their campaign to foment anti-Chinese hysteria and Sinophobia among Filipinos.

They fuel speculations and conjure stories of Chinese spies, sleeper cells, infiltration, hacking, and penetration, as part of the so-called Chinese “invasion playbook.” Marcos tops off the hysteria campaign with his “growing external threat” that clearly consider China as a hostile force.

This campaign hypes up valid concerns over overbearing tactics of China with regard Filipino fishermen, as well as criminal operations behind the POGOs (long supported by corrupt government officials of the Duterte and Marcos regimes). But this anti-Chinese hype has also come up with a slew of made up stories.

This campaign to stoke hate against China and the Chinese people is part of the US strategy to use the Philippines to heighten tensions and provoke armed confrontations in the West Philippine Sea. The US imperialists wants the Filipino people to consider China as their enemy, and obscure the fact that US imperialism is the primary national oppressor of the Philippines.

As in all its wars, from the colonial conquest of the Philippines, to its wars of aggression in Korea and Vietnam, to Afghanistan and Ukraine, the US imperialists manipulate public psyche to favor US military intervention and wars. This is pure and simple mass brainwashing.

This campaign to whip-up anti-Chinese hysteria in the Philippines is not new. A recent Reuters investigation exposed how the Filipino public became victims of a US Pentagon-funded campaign on social media to spread misinformation and cast doubts on the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine Sinovac. Hundreds of social media accounts were used by the US to influence Filipinos to favor vaccines made by US companies such as Pfizer and Moderna. This willful campaign of misinformation endangered public health and the lives of Filipinos amid the pandemic.

In the same way, the present campaign to whip up anti-Chinese hysteria is putting at risk the lives of the Filipino people and the country’s security. It is aimed at inflaming disputes between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea and West Philippine Sea, which, in fact, have long existed and managed in a diplomatic way. This information war is being carried out by the US while heightening its military presence in the South China Sea and adjacent regions around China, with the aim of creating conditions for armed hostilities with its imperialist rival.

The Filipino people must repudiate this US-orchestrated anti-Chinese hysteria and reject the scheme to stoke war. They must vigorously demand that diplomacy, legal action and negotiations be carried out more robustly in line with the 2016 arbitral ruling along the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS). They must urgently call for dismantling Chinese military facilities in the West Philippine Sea, the withdrawal of all US naval forces, as well as all US military bases in the Philippines.

The Filipino people’s progressive and patriotic forces must consciously expose and fight the spread of anti-Chinese hysteria and Sinophobia. They need to persevere and be indefatigable as they are up against the disinformation machinery of the biggest imperialist power in the world. They must expose and fight the US-Marcos regime’s war-mongering and its rush to instigate armed hostilities with China, as part of the US imperialist plan to drag the Philippines to its conflict with China.

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Chinese presence remans in Solomon Islands despite Marles’ visit

Written by: (Contributed) on 17 June 2024

(Above; Marles in Honiara at Australian ad project. Photo: Richard Marles MP Facebook)

Diplomatic statements invariably reveal far more than they contain; the recent high-level visit by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles to Honiara proved no exception to the general rule. Timed to coincide with the establishment of a new Solomon Island's government, the diplomacy highlighted the strategic significance of the small South Pacific country for Australia's specific Cold War military and security considerations and general 'US interests'.

Another important factor, however, was not an open agenda item, although it can be regarded as a serious consideration for Australian diplomacy following a recent US global directive to allies when dealing with relations with China.

In late May, Australian deputy-prime minister Richard Marles made a high-level diplomatic visit to the Solomon Islands to meet the incoming prime minister in Honiara, Jeremiah Manele. It was explained in an official media release as 'Australia seizes the opportunity for a relationship reset with the South Pacific's most pro-China nation'. (1) Diplomatic relations between the two countries have proven problematic following a decision by then Solomons' prime minister Manasseh Sogavare to switch from diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to China in 2019.

Subsequent high-level diplomacy between Honiara and Beijing included fears being raised in Canberra of China being able to move at random in the South Pacific country, which has long been used by Australian military planners as a base for projecting influence in the region. Traditional Australia-Solomon Islands diplomacy has been conducted along neo-colonial lines. The challenge presented by China has, therefore, been assessed as a serious problem for Canberra.

A diplomatic statement issued by Canberra noted 'it is a new government that has been formed there. We want to be there very much at the start to talk about how we can take our bilateral relationship to the next step'. (2)

While Canberra openly greeted the demise of the Sogavare administration, little, however, has changed, or will do so. The new Manele government is unlikely to change political course; Sogavare is also the new Finance Minister. A prompt media release from Honiara accompanying the high-level Australian diplomacy noted 'Australia and China as equally important partners for Solomon Islands … its security agreement with Beijing will remain'. (3)

Elsewhere, however, another statement issued earlier noted the new government and 'its Look North policy, embraced by Manele, says the Solomon Islands' economic future depends upon China, rather than its traditional partners like Australia'. (4) It followed recognition that 'Manele is committed to maintaining his country's China-friendly policies … China is already deeply enmeshed in the country's political fabric'. (5)

The Solomon Islands is a desperately poor country; its 800,000 population live on six major islands, with over nine hundred smaller landmasses. Since achieving independence from the Australian colonial administration in 1976, little meaningful economic development has taken place since that time. Per capita GDP remains at about $600 pa, with more than 75 per cent of the population employed in subsistence agriculture.

The Solomon Islands is dependent upon foreign aid which, invariably, arrives with strings. Some of this is not considered particularly problematic by the Solomon Islands.

Serious studies have concluded 'the neo-liberal framework within which Australia has engaged with the region has not delivered optimal social outcomes. Why would it, given its track records? … Chinese aid is attractive to the Solomon Islands because it largely stays in the Solomon Islands; Australian aid does not … it … is a form of boomerang aid that simply returns to Australia … Australia was the largest direct recipient of its own aid funding'. (6)

Australia, therefore, has difficult diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands. In fact, it has been noted that 'Australia is at the cross-hairs of this big shift. It is frozen out by Beijing which is also making a power play in the Pacific islands … that's why the Solomon Islands matters … China has surpassed Australia in terms of two-way trade with Pacific islands nations'. (7)

Accompanying the recent high-level diplomatic visit from Canberra to Honiara, a brief media release was issued from Washington, about US foreign policy initiatives to deal with China. It contained information about the Biden administration raising tariffs on Chinese exports and a request that allies should do likewise to ensure the success of the US-led trade war diplomatic position. (8) Washington has embarked upon classic Cold War diplomatic initiatives 'as a critical way to isolate Beijing on the global stage'. (9)

Due to Australia's close diplomatic links with Washington, it would be almost unthinkable that Canberra would not also follow suit. It is obliged to do so with usual diplomatic protocol.

The US agenda item did not, however, form part of the stated reason why Australia's diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands were seemingly being re-booted afresh, although would appear the main factor explaining why such a senior government figure travelled to Honiara: Marles, is also Minister for Defence, diplomacy is usually conducted through Foreign Affairs;

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Marles' diplomatic dash to Solomons, Australian, 21 May 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. PM hails new Solomon Islands leader, Australian, 3 May 2024.
5. Ibid.
6. Sub-Imperial Power – Australia in the International Arena, Clinton Fernandes, (Victoria, 2022), pp. 94-97.
7. As the Solomon Islands heats up, SBS News, 28 November 2021.
8. US seeks EU support in trade war, Australian, 23 May 2024.
9. Ibid.

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Why we have a beef with capitalism…

Written by: Alan Jackson on 12 June 2024

(Above: Meat Industry Employees Union, 2007 Queensland Labour Day March. Photo by David Jackmanson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

Do you remember the last time you saw the iridescent wings of a Christmas beetle bring in the summer? As much as I try to conjure the image or even the thought of the last time, I fall flat. In the younger years of my life, I remember them flying into my house in abundance. There were so many it was a normalised but appreciated event.

Now their abundance has turned into its opposite, now I no longer see these harbingers of the summertime. What is the cause of this? Why is it that these beautiful, fluorescent scarabs have stopped showing?

There’s a multitude of reasons with one root cause being the catalyst. What is this mysterious big bad? Capitalism! More particularly Capitalism and its destructive effects on nature and the exploitative agriculture practises it promotes in its procurement of profit.

What other social, political and environmental effects does this haemorrhaging cause?

What is one of the main drivers of deforestation in Australia?

Looking through a report by Greenpeace, we will see that one of the worst contributors is cattle. Is this to say that cows are prancing on their cloven hooves holding our country at gunpoint? Absolutely not, that would be ridiculous. Although they are ‘cows’, the forces responsible are the multibillionaires and monopolies running this country to ruin for profit.

Whether this is a conscious decision is irrelevant. The mere fact that they operate and exist in a Capitalist system forces them to exploit both land and people alike.

Look at the main finds from the Greenpeace report. Some key findings from the get-go are “Australia… is the second largest beef exporter in the world behind Brazil. Beef cattle farming covers about 50% of Australia’s landmass, which explains the disproportionate impact of the industry on Australia’s forests and natural ecosystems.” (1.)

In addition, “Approximately 30% of Australian beef is consumed domestically”. (2.)

The report also tells us what companies are the main contributors. Those companies being Retailers – Aldi, Coles, Hungry Jacks, McDonalds, Metcash, Woolworths and Processors - JBS, Teys, Tyson and ComGroup Supplies.

Those that are foreign multinationals, or tied to foreign capital, include:
Aldi -German
McDonalds – US
JBS – Brazilian (3.)
Tyson- US (4.)
Hungry Jacks – Australian/US (5.)
Teys – Australian/US (6.)

Startlingly put, Australia is undergoing a sustained, mostly hidden deforestation crisis of a globally concerning scale. WWF names eastern Australia among 24 global deforestation fronts, alongside places like the Amazon, the Congo and Borneo. This is because currently an MCG-sized area of forest and bushland is bulldozed every two minutes. This is killing tens of millions of native animals each year, while harming the land, polluting rivers and damaging the Great Barrier Reef. Australian deforestation also contributes considerably to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.” (7.)

Many operations are centred in Queensland, the state I am from, that faces terrible bushfires yearly with one of the recent most devastating being the fires earlier this year and the bushfires of the 2019-20 black summer. For more see Vanguard Article – ‘For a United Front Against Fossil Fuels and Feral Species.’ (November 2023).

The last devastating finding I’ll add is “This deforestation is occurring without state or Federal Government controls. In Queensland this is largely, but not exclusively, due to a loophole in the Vegetation Management Act 1999 that makes large areas of land previously cleared as exempt “Category X” land, even if the forest has regenerated to a healthy state and is home to threatened species. Meanwhile researchers have demonstrated that over the course of nearly 20 years the Federal Government has only assessed less than 10% of all deforestation under the national environment law.” (8.)

Our reliance on the cattle industry results in us producing far more beef than needed for self-sustainability and leads to an overconsumption of beef socially pushed as a result. This puts us into the upper echelons of worldwide heart diseases, cardiac arrests and obesity worldwide.

With our reliance on the cattle industry the myth of the Australian small farmer is invoked, the masses are appealed to in order to create a fake caricature of a true-blue Aussie farmer struggling on their farm instead of the reality of Corporations paying Migrants peanuts for labour due to their easily exploitable circumstance.

A recent case was the horrible mistreatment of Chinese meatworkers in Australia’s Visa factories with one specific worker in mind bearing the scars, Wang. “The abattoir clock had ticked into overtime when Chinese meatworker Wang pressed his foot on a button to lower a platform to better cut into a cow carcass. Instead of gliding down, the platform shuddered to a stop and caused a tank of near-boiling water to spill over him. The next day, Wang turned up for work as usual: he did not want to disappoint his employer because soon he would become eligible for permanent residency in Australia. Months later, though, his body still in pain from the workplace accident, Wang found himself without a job anyway, his hope of a better life in Australia in ruins.” (9.)

If you’re hoping for a happy ending there is none. “Wang is now back in China but is keen to speak out about his experience at Teys Australia’s Biloela abattoir in Queensland. He wants to tell Australians how vulnerable the migrant workers are who come to Australia to do jobs the rest of us shun.” (6.) Wang goes on to say “If you are Australian local people, you don’t have to worry about this. You have equal position with the factory like anyone else. We are poor people. We have no power when we talk with factory.” (10.) Links for more stories on the Migrant Workers plight for the right to work safely in Australia can be found below. (11.)

What stopped the Christmas Beetles? Insecticides, more particularly Imidacloprid and other terrible toxins known to cause ‘Insect Armageddon’ used to protect cotton. Who would’ve thought, inextricably linked to our terrible cattle practices are our cotton practices and with that our agricultural and industrial practices as well.

This all comes down to Capitalism and its need for profit. With this need for profit, it will put all else before profit even the very thing that is making them profit whether they know it or not.

Cattle can’t graze a land that is destroyed. The capitalists don’t care. Capitalists only think of profit in the quickest way possible. There is no time to grow trees that our children will see prosper under capitalism. We fell those trees so we can be comfortable, and our children can figure it out for themselves. This is not right. What is needed in Australia is the defeat of Capitalism and Imperialist domination. Economic freedom, self-sustainability, independence and Socialism is the only way we can be free of this turmoil.

Sources –

(1.) Greenpeace Australia – Deforestation Crises on Their Watch 2024 (Page 8)

(2.) ibid

(3.) JBS is the Australian subsidiary of JBS S.A., a Brazilian company that is the largest meat processing enterprise in the world. The company has been regularly criticised for sourcing meat from farms that contribute to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. JBS was initially established as a slaughtering business by José Batista Sobrinho, a rancher in Anápolis, Brazil, in 1953. His sons Joesley Batista and Wesley Batista share a controlling 42% stake in JBS through J&F Investimentos which, in 2017, agreed to pay US$3.2 billion in fines, for leniency from the Brazilian government "over 25 years after admitting to giving roughly $150 million—mostly in bribes—to Brazilian politicians. The Batista brothers escaped jail as part of the deal. In May 2021, it temporarily stood down 7000 Australian workers and up to 3,000 workers in Canada and the United States while it dealt with a cyber attack, eventually paying a ransom of $US11 million in Bitcoin.

In 2022, the ABC revealed how financial support from the Brazilian government, obtained as a result of bribery and corruption, had enabled JBS to purchase Australian Meat Holdings, the country's biggest beef processor, in 2007, and the following year to purchase Tasman Group, which owned abattoirs in Tasmania and Victoria plus a feedlot in NSW. The ABC said “if you buy Primo ham, Huon salmon, McDonald's burgers or meat from Coles, Woolworths or Aldi, you're likely eating JBS products.”

JBS Australia poor record on workers’ safety: Australia: Meat company JBS repeatedly fails to protect workers from injuries; convicted at least six times over serious safety breaches - Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (business-humanrights.org)

(4.) Tyson Foods, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Springdale, Arkansas that operates in the food industry. The company is the world's second-largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork after JBS S.A. Tyson Foods has been involved in a number of controversies related to the environment, animal welfare, and the welfare of their own employees. It has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to US competitors to settle price-fixing claims against it.

(5.) Hungry Jack’s is an Australian fast food franchise of the US Burger King Corporation. When Burger King tried to open up in Australia, it found that its name was already registered to a takeaway outlet in Adelaide, so Canadian-Australian businessman Jack Cowan, who had introduced KFC to Australia, entered a franchising arrangement with Burger King to operate their business under his name.

(6.) Originally established by four Teys brothers – all butchers – in Brisbane, it has since 2011 been in a 50-50 partnership with Cargill, the largest privately held company in the United States in terms of revenue.

(7.) (Ibid Page 9)

(8.) Ibid. (Page 6)

(9.) Ibid (page 6)

(10.) Richard Baker – Chinese Meatworkers Bear the Scars of Mistreatment in Australia Visa Factories 2021

(11.) Lies, bribes and prostitutes: The recruitment of the Australian meat industry’s foreign workforce

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European elections and dissolution: the fire of crisis consumes French bourgeois democracy

Written by: La Cause Du Peuple on 12 June 2024

Much has been made in the Australian capitalist media of the “swing to the right” in the French elections to the European Parliament. They concentrate on the votes won by RN, the right wing National Rally, but not on the staggering rejection of the parliamentary charade as witnessed by the number of abstentions from voting. We reprint this translation from the website of La Cause Du Peuple in the interest of a better understanding of French and European sentiment -eds.

European elections and dissolution: the fire of crisis consumes French bourgeois democracy
June 10

The ‘European elections’ circus has played out its final act in France. The results are clear: like all the elections since Macron took over the presidency, the rejection of the electoral system (abstention, blank votes, invalid votes) is the big winner with 25 million votes. This is the historical tendency of the broadest and deepest masses in France: to reject the bourgeois state, its government, its system. That is the main lesson.

Bourgeois commentators dwell on the ‘historic turnout over the last 30 years’. They consciously forget that the European elections in France in 2019, 2014 and the 2000s had a ‘European’ character, i.e. the bourgeoisie incited the masses to go and vote in relation to the ‘European parliament’, this powerless instrument where 705 actors (MEPs) play tasteless parts for the benefit of the struggle and collusion between the imperialist powers of Europe and all the monopolies and their lobbies.

2024 was different: after the election of 2022 and the great year of revolt of 2023, in a situation of economic, social and political crisis, the European elections were used by the bourgeois parties, led by the RN and the presidential party, as a rehearsal for the confrontations to come at national level. That's why Prime Minister Attal debated with the RN. That's why Jordan Bardella, who received 7.7 million votes (15% of the electorate), i.e. 1 million less than Le Pen in 2022, immediately called for the dissolution of the National Assembly.

The results speak for themselves: the RN's victory means that its electoral base voted. It's not a meteoric rise. Bardella's popularity is only high because all the parties around him have collapsed. Macron's party has lost 1.5 million voters compared to 2019.

In 2017, Macron opened a period of political crisis in the French bourgeoisie by consolidating a new bourgeois party on the smoking ruins of the PS (Socialist Party - eds.). In his first five years, through his prime minister Édouard Philippe, he managed to bring LR (Les Republicaines-eds) to its knees. He took the king's share of the spoils and became the ideal standard-bearer for the French imperialist bourgeoisie. In 2022, alone against Le Pen, he was re-elected. Today, he is declaring the dissolution of the National Assembly.

The bourgeoisie as a class fights in parliamentary fractions: the interests of French imperialism are defended in common by the presidential party and the RN. These are two parties of the bourgeoisie. There isn't a fireman on one side and an arsonist on the other: they are both arsonists in the service of a reactionary state.

The bourgeois media and politicians are hungover today: how could Macron dissolve the government? What for? According to them, there is nothing logical about it. For the most Machiavellian, it would be a ‘political stunt’, a ‘risky gamble’. For the naive, Macron has simply ‘put the ball back in the people's court’ after the ‘shock’ of the European elections... which shocked nobody because the polls had said it all before the ballot box!

They ignore the reality of the class struggle in France and the process of reactionarisation of the bourgeois state. The bourgeoisie wants to stave off the crisis at all costs, and is prepared to accept any recomposition, any party in power, any regime, in order to maintain itself as the dominant class in the face of its inevitable decline and overthrow by the proletariat.

So to claim that Macron dissolved the National Assembly, one of the exceptional powers of the French president, ‘lightly’, is an outright lie. The only people who sincerely believe it are the outgoing MPs, from both left and right, who are slapping their legs and blinded by the loss of their privileges.

Le Monde revealed on 10 June that a cell had been working at the Élysée for several months on the dissolution. So it was a prepared plan. In France, the President, even with a minority in the Assembly, retains immense power. That's what the French bourgeoisie decided when it chose De Gaulle in the last century. Macron has thrown out the projects of the end of the five years (such as the thawing of the electorate in Kanaky (New Caledonia), which led to the great revolt of recent weeks, but also the end of life or the plans to reform unemployment) to get to the bottom of the crisis.

The early parliamentary elections he has called are not a campaign: with 20 days to prepare them, he is taking everyone by surprise, even the RN, which was calling for them in its speeches. It's a real electoral farce, pure and simple. After 2 years of circus in the Assembly, where the masses were able to understand what ‘parliamentary cretinism’ actually meant, dissolving it is no loss for Macron. If he wins the election with a coalition, he closes a period of recomposition and opposition and can prepare for 2027, which is the real next deadline. If he loses and the RN gets into government, it will move forward with the same reactionary plans, only more assertive, and it too will fail to avert the crisis: just as Meloni is failing at the moment in Italy. Reactionarisation will progress and the French imperialist bourgeoisie will contemplate, as it already does, its possibilities of stripping bourgeois democracy of its trappings during a crisis of regime.

As for the trumpets and bugles of the Left, they are miserable. They think that an opportunistic, unprincipled electoral alliance will bring the broad masses, the 25 million who have turned their backs on the bourgeois chambers and the polling booths, to vote for them. They want to make these ‘disappointed’ and ‘disinterested’ people feel guilty en masse. It's all a waste. In the decomposition of imperialism in which we live, the proletariat has only one policy: boycott the elections, prepare seriously for revolution.

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Can laws control cyber crime and disinformation?

Written by: (Contributed) on 10 June 2024

(Above: a screenshot from the home page of Israeli company STOIC,offering to create automated disinformation)

Draft legislation about fraudulent use of the internet and social media due to be introduced into the legislative process in Canberra over the next few weeks is long overdue. Australians have been targeted by on-line criminal elements and their associates for decades.

Other, related fraudulent use of on-line provision, such as Israeli firm STOIC’s work in spreading disinformation through fake social media accounts, has raised serious concerns about security-related matters and general interference inside political systems and espionage.

Draft legislation scheduled to be tabled in Canberra within weeks is set to bring the giants of the internet and social media to account and ensure they are legally liable for fraudulent and criminal activities, with compensation. The binding codes will impose strict obligations upon those who control provision. The draft legislation has followed revelations that Australians lost $2.74 billion last year in various criminal scams. (1) Social media giants including Meta, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will also be required to establish disputes resolution procedures for victims of scams to enable accountability. (2)

The rapid escalation of the problem remains evidence that criminal elements and their associates have been quick to seize upon opportunities opened with on-line provision. In 2020 it was officially reported that Australians had lost an estimated $851 million in scams, rising to $1.8 billion in 2021 and $3.1 billion in 2022. (3)

Australians appear to have been targeted by criminal elements and their associates based off-shore largely in Asia. (4) Recent revelations about sophisticated cyber-crime facilities on the Myanmar-Thai border where computer-based workers were 'being taught about Australian culture and social media uses of Facebook, WhatsApp and dating sites', leave little to the imagination. (5)

Recent disclosures from the German police, however, have shown how Australians have been targeted by other, European criminal groups. One criminal syndicate monitored by the German police found 34,000 Australians had been defrauded more than $200 million; a decision taken by Canberra-based Australian Securities and Investments Commission leaders continued to regard the information as 'for intelligence purposes only'. (6) Victims, therefore, were not officially notified by Australian government departments. Whether the failure to disclose information by ASIC was undertaken to not compromise those 'the regulator was looking at … individuals … based in Australia … who are believed to have assisted the scammers', or for other motives, has not been divulged. (7)

It is, however, the other, related problem of shadowy players accessing personal information for profiling which remains a serious concern.

Revelations the Andrews government in Victoria used vast amounts of personal data to run a secretive program for election purposes has raised a number of concerns with far-reaching implications. (8) The Melbourne-based administration appears to have been extensively involved in intelligence-gathering about voter opinions in the six weeks prior to the November, 2022, state elections. Questions appear to have arisen about the security of large amounts of data collected and whether it could be re-used for other, non-disclosed purposes.

Disclosures surrounding a shadowy, intelligence-type organisation based in Tel Aviv, STOIC, have, however, raised serious concerns about social media being programmed to mould public opinion about the present Israeli-Gaza war. Consisting of more than five hundred Facebook and 32 Instagram accounts in the US and Canada linked to more than two thousand further profiles, the social media facilities were praising 'Israel's military actions and criticism of radical Islam and campus anti-semitism'. (9)

The STOIC organisation appears to have actively targeted political parties, ministries and municipalities together with advocacy groups, public relations campaigns and lobbyists with the specific intention of moulding public opinion in favour of the Israeli government. (10)

While the official media release from Meta regarding their closing of the STOIC websites could find links with the Israeli government, the use of proprietary companies and business fronts is common throughout the so-called 'intelligence-community'. (11) The standard practice is used to distance governments and their intelligence organisations from controversy should embarrassing disclosures occur.

While the subject did receive some limited media coverage in western and Israeli media outlets, there was no official comment from either STOIC or the Netanyahu administration in Tel Aviv; diplomatic silence would appear the order of the day for those concerned.

It was noted, nevertheless, that STOIC was 'a political marketing and business intelligence firm … using their products nefariously to manipulate various political conversations on-line'. (12) It was also noted, furthermore, that the company provided 'models for tasks generating comments, articles, social media profiles, and debugging code for bots and websites … with fears about … covert social media campaigns'. (13)

STOIC is also believed to have contracted out its services to support the Hindutva fascist BJP party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (14) The US-Canada operation was ordered and financed by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. (15)

Covert operations, invariably, have a long history linked to intelligence agencies and diplomacy; studies of the US intelligence services conducted by former agents concluded, long ago, that, 'the CIA's primary task is not to co-ordinate the efforts of US intelligence or even to produce finished national intelligence for the policy-makers. Its job is, for better or worse, to conduct the government's covert foreign policy'. (16)

The use of on-line provision would appear to have broadened the scope of intelligence-gathering for covert foreign policy and provided spooks with the ability to pry into the daily lives of the mass of the world's population. Intelligence agents now how little use for opening and reading correspondence to and from those assessed as 'people of interest'. Technological developments have led to past practices being superseded and others revolutionised with on-line facilities. (17)

Information emerging from reliable sources has revealed the US National Security Agency (NSA) sought to use the internet from its earliest days of operation and that 'the NSA's attention shifted to finding ways to exploit the global reach of Google, Microsoft, Venizon and other US technical powers … including … monitoring cell-phones'. (18)

The tracking of mobile telephones and interception of calls has become standard practice with Australian government departments. A marathon fraud court-case in the NSW Supreme Court, for example, included 'some 130 hours of conversations between the six accused men, captured during tapped phone calls or by strategically placed listening devices … as part of their national investigation into the alleged payroll fraud'. (19)

Problems, however, arise with the shadowy links between on-line criminal activity and that of official government departments and their intelligence agencies. They would appear blurred, to state the very least. The genuine concern for defence and security considerations and downright political muck-raking, likewise, is also blurred in the eyes of some actors, whether with officially sanctioned state or non-legitimate non-state categories.

Whether forthcoming legislation to deal with the problem is effective, therefore, remains to be seen.

In light of Australia's alliance with the US and their allies, including Israel, and the Five Eyes, it would appear unlikely, however, that any moves will be taken to disturb or interfere with existing 'US interests' and their intelligence-gathering:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. See: Fines over social media scams, The Weekend Australian, 25-26 May 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. AI helping hackers to scam better, Australian, 3 June 2024.
4. Fighting Asian scammers, Australian, 30 May 2024; and, Billions stolen as Big Tech enables deepfake scams, Editorial, The Weekend Australian, 25-26 May 2024.
5. Editorial, Weekend Australian, ibid., 25-26 May 2024.
6. ASIC says hands were tied on scams, Australian, 5 June 2024.
7. Ibid.
8. Data security 'assured', Andrews team told, The Weekend Australian, 1-2 June 2024.
9. Fake accounts of Israel tech firm deleted, Australian, 31 May 2024.
10. Ibid.
11. The CIA and the cult of intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John D, Marks, (London, 1976), pp. 162-181.
12. Meta and AI say they disrupted influence operations linked to Israeli company, NBC News, 31 May 2024.
13. Open AI says it disrupted covert influence operation by Israeli firm STOIC, The Times of Israel, 4 June 2024.
14. Who’s behind the Israeli startup blacklisted by Meta and OpenAI?, Calcalist.com June 3, 2024
15. Israeli influence operation highlights global disinformation industry, Cyberscoop.com, June 5, 2004
16. The CIA and the cult of intelligence, op.cit., page 132.
17. Ibid., page 121.
18. The intelligence coup of the century, The Washington Post, 11 February 2020.
19. Juror in $13m fraud case arrested, Australian, 6 June 2024.

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PNG: Wealth for Foreign Exploiters – Sweet FA and Destruction for the People

Written by: J. Clarke on 9 Jue 2024

Above: Opposition to sea bed mining in PNG. Photo Civicus.org

While the eyes of the world are focussed on the devastating tragedy of the Enga Province landslide in Papua New Guinea (PNG), it is timely to reflect on the environmental and development issues that foreign investment has brought to the country.

PNG is a country abundantly rich in natural resources. The Indigenous people have utilised these resources for their essential needs sustainably since their arrival in ancient times (estimated to be some 50,000 years ago and agricultural practices commencing around 7000BC).

On the other hand, with the arrival of Europeans and the accompanying colonisation, the exploitation of resources for profit rather than needs intensified with little regard to sustainability. In modern times, exploitation has intensified even more dramatically, resulting in severe damage to the environment.

What caused the devastating Enga landslide in which so many lives were lost? There are multiple reasons. Firstly, PNG is located on an earthquake zone, which creates the conditions prerequisite for landslides. In a nutshell the ground is loosened and water penetrates, creating something akin to a massive sponge. A deluge of rain can make the “sponge” release its contents, with devastating consequences for those living nearby.

The other reasons are man-made. You guessed it! - Deforestation by foreign companies acting to extract as much timber as possible in the shortest time for maximal profits, with little or no subsequent remediation work. There is no substantial vegetation remaining to hold the soil in place, so when a landslide occurs, its damaging effects are amplified.

Add to this, the effects of climate change – more storms, more intense rainfall, therefore more frequent and severe landslides.

Not much can be done about the natural causes (earthquakes) however the last two causes are preventable if a sustainable approach is taken. This will never happen under capitalism, but the people of PNG are valiantly opposing the activities of the foreign plunderers.

The volume of logging has consistently exceeded the target limits. The government appears to be doing very little to curb this. The people, with the assistance of NGOs, are putting pressure on the government to act. In response, logging companies threaten activists with litigation. This is despite the activists exposing not only the over-logging, but money laundering practises by the industry as well1.

An appallingly unscrupulous practice used by foreign companies to obtain access to land for logging is to illegally con traditional holders of customary land into handing the land over to them. As a result, a significant percentage of customary land has become permanently inaccessible to the traditional landholders. This land-grabbing is facilitated by corrupt government officials and others in PNG for selfish gains. (Corruption is rife in PNG, and it is estimated that up to 50% of the government annual budget goes missing as a result. Consequently it is a walk in the park for foreign companies to get what they want.) Such lands are then rubber-stamped as “Special Agriculture and Business Leases” under the Land Act. The categorisation as “agriculture and business” is a con in itself. Essentially it means all out logging.

The government copped a lot of flak from traditional landholders about this illegal land-grabbing practice and in 2014 the government promised to return the lands stolen in this way to their original owners. However, there has been limited progress in this direction. Further, compensation to traditional landholders for being deprived of the use of their land and the destruction of forests on these lands is yet to be agreed to.

Here’s another example of ruthless business practices which are enabled by corrupt government officials. A Malaysian company (actually a logging company) applied to set up the “Wasu Cattle Farm Project” and got the nod. Local people report that they have not sighted any cattle but that there is an awful lot of logging going on!

It is not only the forests that are being intensely exploited by foreign companies. PNG is rich in mineral resources and oil and gas – both on land and sea.

A case in point is the proposed Frieda mine project for the extraction of gold and copper. If it goes ahead, it will be the largest mining project in the history of PNG. The project will operate along the mighty Sepik River. The river traverses some 1100km and is one of the few remaining untouched large rivers on the planet. It provides sustenance, both spiritual and material, to the tens of thousands of people who live in traditional communities along its length.

The mine threatens all this and the people know that it will end their traditional way of life. They have seen it in other communities in PNG. Promises of benefits are made (schools, hospitals etc) but they end up losing everything, including their independence, spiritual life, links to their ancestors and sense of belonging.

The people of the Sepik want to avoid another Bougainville, but the communities are not taking this lying down and are currently organising to oppose the mine. Death threats have been received but people have stated that this river is so important to them that they will die for it.

The foreign corporations are not limiting themselves to mining the land, but also have in mind to mine the sea bed for minerals such as gold, copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese. Sea bed mining has not taken place anywhere in the world yet, due to insufficient knowledge of the environmental, social and economic consequences and the lack of laws to govern its practice.

The PNG government has placed a moratorium on sea bed mining until 2029. However, coastal people living in the vicinity of the proposed sea bed mining area have grave concerns that the government will not live up to its promise. The PNG government has its own vested interests in the project proceeding. The people living here practice their traditional way of life and rely on the sea as their main food source. They are already organising against this project2.

The people of PNG face the same enemy as other Indigenous populations the world over, threatening their traditional existence and the destruction of the lands which they have nurtured over the eons.

Whether it is in PNG, West Papua, Palestine or the First Nations people of Australia there is common ground for the struggle against imperialism and colonialism.

Oppressed people of the world unite!

The CPA (ML) supports the struggle of the people of PNG for justice.
The CPA (ML) supports the struggle of the people of West Papua for independence.

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Benny Wenda: West Papua’s path to liberation

Written by: Benny Wenda on 7 June 2024

(Above: In March 2024, a shocking video emerged of Indonesian soldiers torturing a West Papuan man confined in a barrel of freezing water. He was repeatedly kicked, punched and stabbed. )

Our near neighbours, the heroic and long-suffering peoples of West Papua, are continuing their fight for liberation from the Indonesian colonising regime. Their struggle has our ongoing support. We are posting a statement from May by their leader Benny Wenda – eds.

President Wenda: The United Liberation Movement for West Papua Agenda is West Papua’s path to liberation
May 14, 2024

On behalf of the ULMWP and the people of West Papua, I call on all our supporters to renew your support for West Papua and stand behind our agenda for independence:

A) A visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights;

B) ULMWP Full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG);

C) An internationally-supervised self-determination referendum.

The ULMWP has a clear agenda for liberation, and our solidarity groups have a vital role to play in helping us fulfil it. Our agenda has been democratically endorsed by the people of West Papua through the 2023 ULMWP Congress, the first people’s mandate the ULMWP has ever received. When you fight for our agenda, you are fighting for the West Papuan people.

Our solidarity groups, artists, musicians, filmmakers, journalists, lawyers, rugby players and other sportspeople, NGOs, Churches, academics, individuals and families, can help by rallying their representatives in Parliament to support a visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. As part of our new campaign for a UN visit, we have held meetings in the UK, EU, Dutch and Scottish Parliaments, and launched the Brussels Declaration directly accusing Indonesia of refusing the UN access. The call for a UN visit has gone up across the world, demanded by over 100 UN member states, including all member states of the Pacific Islands Forum, Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States, and the EU Commission.

Since Indonesia first invited the High Commissioner into West Papua in 2018, over 100,000 Papuan civilians have been displaced by genocidal military operations. At least 1200 Papuans have died, killed by Indonesian soldiers or left to starve in the bush. Many of my people have been tortured or arbitrarily arrested. Indonesia gets away with its crimes with impunity partly because they hide West Papua from the world, banning journalists, NGOs, and international bodies like the UN. To force Indonesia to open West Papua to the world, we need to create even greater public pressure. Solidarity groups can be the voice of the voiceless people. Where we cannot speak, you must speak for us.

We also need our friends in Melanesia to lobby their leaders and Parliamentarians to do more to support ULMWP full membership of the MSG. The ULMWP gaining full membership is an essential step on the road to peace and justice in the Pacific. Only as full members will we be able to sit across the table from Indonesia and peacefully discuss the status of West Papua on an equal footing. With the war criminal Prabowo Subianto soon to take office as Indonesian President, West Papua needs full membership to defend itself and expose Indonesia’s crimes. Full membership is our guarantee of safety from annihilation.
Full membership would prove we are a responsible state-in-waiting, ready to manage our own affairs. Like our brothers and sisters in the FLNKS, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), or the Polisario in Western Sahara, we are a political organisation with a cabinet, constitution, and governing structure on the ground. We are ready to take control when our independence arrives.

The ULMWP is not an NGO: we are not asking Indonesia for internal dialogue, to improve their democracy, or take better care of our forest. West Papua is not an internal matter. We state clearly that all violations of our human rights and environment are rooted in the fundamental and continual violation of our self-determination. Self-determination is the start and the end of our journey. Merdeka is the only answer to our situation.

To Indonesia, we say that you have nothing to fear from West Papuan independence. We are not fighting to destroy Indonesian sovereignty but simply to reclaim the sovereignty that was stolen in 1961. Our sovereign state was declared that year and recognised by nations including Netherlands, UK, and Australia. It was taken from us and we are fighting to win it back.

To our people back home, activists, women’s groups, church groups, Indonesian solidarity groups, the Alliance of Papuan Students and KNPB, I ask that you rally behind the ULMWP and the Congress resolutions. We need unity if we are going to defeat our enemy and reclaim our sovereign state.

Thank you to everyone who has stood behind us in our anti-imperial struggle. Please continue to unite behind us, support our agenda, and support our independence.

Wa wa wa. Papua Merdeka!

Benny Wenda
President
ULMWP

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We swim in a toxic sea of capitalism. But we needn’t drown: Humphrey McQueen’s powerful new pamphlet on Capital launched

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 3 June 2024

Marking our party’s 60th anniversary, Vanguard invited Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen to Sydney to lead a discussion of his new pamphlet, on Karl Marx’s ‘Capital’.

The pamphlet’s cover ‘invites job reps and community activists to share insights from Capital into how we are exploited, how nature is plundered and how to put an end to both.’
Veteran comrade Lindy Nolan introduced the discussion.

We’re on Gadigal land, never surrendered, paying respects to all First Peoples for their sacrifices and ongoing resistance. May they grow in unity and strength.

Humphrey! Humphrey McQueen. I doubt there’s an Australian alive who’s studied Capital more deeply, or given more practical guidance from it. But thanking him means thanking Peter Curtis, for connecting us with this rebel with no phone or internet. Humphrey’s in person, so I’ll be relatively brief.

We swim in a toxic sea of capitalism. But we needn’t drown.

To chart a way forward, we seek truth from facts, not from wishful thinking.

The struggle for communism in the world – and in Australia – is littered with mistakes, rich with lessons. And with inspiring victories. Vanguard and the CPA(ML) are 60 this year. We’ve just reprinted the party’s first book, also from 1964.

Hogtied to capitalism

Emerging from the most bitter split in our movement’s history, a split destroying lifelong friendships and even families, EF Hill’s Looking Backward: Looking Forward, Revolutionary Socialist Politics against Trade Union and Parliamentary Politics, analysed collective errors, based on deep study of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao. The key was it analysed Australia.

Hill proved that, despite working class support, Labor was a capitalist party. The left labelled him “sectarian”.

Workers rightly hate when the left cannibalises itself. We were all guilty, for the stakes were high, liberation or exploitation, destruction and endless wars for profit. But real sectarianism is separation from the people.

All of Australia’s left grouplets are growing now, but none of us is capable yet of leading a revolution.

In 1964, Hill also challenged trade union politics, because while trade unions at their best teach workers that if you don’t fight you’ve already lost, and teach them to organise as a class – touch one, touch all – at best unions only win crumbs from the capitalist feast. Now more than ever, unions are hogtied to capitalism. Dialectically, new laws enforcing permanency, applied to those few unions like the NSW Teacher Federation whose members still elect its organisers and officers, now demand, once elected for over two years, members won’t be able to remove them.

Betraying workers for the new US boss

After WW2, the communist party here was over 20,000 strong. Hill’s book also showed how the anti-Marxist, class-struggle-denying ideology of US “communist” leader Earl Browder gripped the Australian party, paving the way for our new best buddy to shove British imperialism aside, betraying the workers and allies who could have fought this new master.

We’re now little more than a US imperialist puppet. It holds the commanding heights of our economy, our military is a wing of US forces, its culture poisons Australian minds.

It dominates through division and conquest, deception and force. What ever-diminishing peoples’ rights we still have, were won and defended in hard struggle.

In 1964 Hill showed Australia was a capitalist dictatorship, with parliament its “democratic” window-dressing.

Examples are endless. 94% of Australians opposed the war in Iraq. Howard joined the US invasion. This week 30% of the NSW prison population is Aboriginal. If the laws, courts, police, military, jails are independent, above classes, why are the biggest criminals living in unimaginable luxury instead of in jail?

The ruling class chooses violence

Resistance is growing. Palestine opens ever more eyes to reality, of who rules, who benefits. Who in their right minds would choose violence, invasion, destruction of the planet? The capitalist class, over and over again.

Mao Zedong said communists must be like fish in a sea of people, because it’s the masses who create revolutionary change, not small groups of likeminded people isolated in left blocs. We listen, take the ideas of the masses, collectively concentrate them into theory, take them back to the people to be tested in practice, in an ongoing spiral of learning for revolutionary change. Underpinning this, constantly enriched in struggle, are 170 years of Marxist theory. The voice of peoples’ needs demand action from Humphrey McQueen’s new pamphlet.

Marx said there’s no crisis capitalism can’t recover from, until workers and oppressed peoples organise to defeat it. US imperialism and its hangers on will never willingly surrender. If threatened, they will choose violence.

Right now we need to listen, to study, to organise, to build the peoples’ forces in struggle, build a party steeped in humility serving them, like fish in as sea of people. Our party strives and organises to be one day worthy of the Australian working class and its allies.

We’re glad Humphrey is a friend of our party.

Today we’ll listen and ask and collectively learn from each other.

My party had the good fortune to marginally contribute to the first version of this profound pamphlet for workers and community activists, then an extraordinarily skinny summary of Marx’s monumental three volumes.

This second bread and butter version launched today is far richer, collectively created from 14 years of group study in Canberra. Humphrey says The Communist Manifesto is poetry that begs to be read aloud. His new pamphlet is an epic poem, for understanding, for organisation, for liberation, for survival.

As Rosa Luxemburg wrote, the choice is simple socialism or barbarism.

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US company to design Osborne submarine shipyard

Written by: Nick G. on 31 May 2024

US company Kellogg Brown Root (KBR) has been selected to provide concept design services for the new nuclear powered submarine construction yard at Osborne in South Australia.

Profits from the deal will further enrich the pockets of wealthy US shareholders.

KBR has previously won massive US contracts for supporting the US military in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

However, its “Controversy” listing on Wikipedia is one of the longest of any multinational company, including price-fixing, bribery, negligence in relation to employee safety, sexual assault and abuse allegations, and a human trafficking lawsuit.

As recently as September 2022, 800 Filipino workers were stranded at the remote US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean due to an employment dispute with KBR. They alleged it had underpaid wages and denied holiday leave entitlements.

If the old saying is true that you can know a person by the company he or she keeps, we now know a bit more about the Australian ruling class and its subservience to US imperialism.

Withdraw from AUKUS!
Oppose KBR’s contract!

................

Update:

On Jue 6 2024, it was anounced that KBR had been given an Australian government contract to "monitor space above Australia."

The announcement stated: "KBR’s Iron Stallion technology can find, watch, track and report on the movement of objects in space and now forms an integral component of the Australian government’s space domain awareness. Iron Stallion is a command and control technology that is being used by the Department of Defence to support Australia’s need for advanced space-based surveillance capabilities. It has proved its effectiveness in the US and in the UK."

The militarisation of space is a direct consequence of imperialism's striving for "full spectrum domination". In the US, the Space Force sits alongside the Army, Navy and Airforce as part of the US military.

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Protest Modi government’s genocidal killing of tribal peoples

Written by: Nick G. on 30 May 2024

Today, May 30, 2024, is a day of protest in India against the fascist Modi government’s war on tribal communities and fighters of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)’s Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army.

Since 1st January 2024, the Indian state has rapidly mobilised more and more paramilitary personnel into the 6 military camps established in the Abujmarh region of Chhattisgarh, a land-locked state in Central India, under a new Operation Kagar.

This region, home to the Gond, Muria, Abujmarhia and Halbaas tribes also falls in the area which contains 700 million tonnes of India’s iron ore reserves, along with graphite ore, limestone and even uranium deposits. With the onset of Operation Kagar, for every 7 Adivasi persons (members of tribal communities) in Abujmarh, there are now 3 paramilitary personnel in the hills.

On New Years Day, the security forces attacked Muddum village, near Gangalur, in the Bijapur district, and killed a toddler- Mangli- in the lap of her mother while she was being breastfed. Relentless attacks have been regular, and killings have become routine. On April 2, 13 Maoists were killed in an encounter at Korcholi in Bijapur district. All of them were Adivasis, if not Maoists. Four months into this year, 80 Adivasis and revolutionaries have been shot dead in the name of encounters. Aerial bombing was also carried out for the fifth time on January 13 as a continuation of the aerial attacks carried out by the previous Congress government.

In the last month, three fake encounters have resulted in the deaths of 29 people in Kankar district. On May 10, 2024, 12 tribal farmers were shot dead by the army in Bijapur district. Indian paramilitary forces killed five people from Pedia village and seven from Etawar village in a fake encounter.

The villagers, out to collect 'Tendu' leaves, fled in fear at the sight of the security forces. The forces shot them as they tried to escape. Many villagers were dragged from their homes and shot dead.

This hidden war is a genocide of tribal farmers under the guise of neutralizing Maoists. A wide range of weapons, including airstrikes by Israeli-made drones, have been used in the area.

Operation Kagar strips away from the “rock star” Modi’s fascist Hindutva government its veneer of “democracy” which is killing the tribal farmers of Bastar district who are protecting their land and water, celebrating harvest and cultivation on their soil, alongside the Maoist revolutionaries fighting against corporates, Brahminical Hindutva fascists, brokers, landlords, and mining mafias.

The CPA (M-L) voices its solidarity with the protest day movement, and calls on the Indian diaspora in Australia to condemn the killing of tribal farmers labelled as Maoists. We call upon all democratically minded people to unite and condemn this genocide.

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US looks to drag Australia into space preparations for war with China

Written by: Nick G. on 29 May 2024

Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, head of US Space Forces, Indo-Pacific, told a conference in Sydney yesterday, that the US is “working very closely with Australia” to develop the ability to crack a Chinese space-based defensive line designed to keep US forces at bay.

The cooperation of Australian military officials and civilian contractors further enmeshes Australia into the military confrontation promoted by the US against China.

Mastalir said that “a formidable new technology — a jam-resistant Link-16 that now extends to and from space” enables radios to operate across all five US military services as well as with NATO and other allies so all users can see the same up-to-the minute intelligence, and automate fire control.

He referred to “kill chains” used by both the US and China to deny each other access to areas in the event of war. The kill chains are based on the so-called “island chain strategy” first conceived by US imperialism’s John Foster Dulles in 1951, during the US war of aggression against Korea.

The first island chain runs through Chinese territorial waters down to and including the nine-dash line in the South China Sea. The second island chain runs from Japan through Guam and Palau to the western end of New Guinea. A third island chain runs from Alaska through the middle of the Pacific to New Zealand.

Mastalir said China’s progress in strengthening its kill chain since 2019, built expressly to keep the United States well outside the second island chain, has been “breathtaking.”

But he said that testing of Link 16’s anti-jamming capability had strengthened the US’s own anti-China kill chain.

Further moves are afoot to prepare for war with China.

Mastalir revealed the military is planning to set up a US Space Forces -Japan based on their work in South Korea, where a component was established in December 2022.

“When we stood up Space Forces Korea, that’s the model that I’m using for Space Force Japan,” he said, without offering a date by which he expected the unit to be stood up.

And a week ago, so-called “regional experts” issued a call for an Arctic Quad comprising the US, Canada, South Korea and Japan to counter a growing Russian and Chinese presence in the Arctic where there is competition for resources and new trade routes being made possible by climate change.

None of these developments indicate any lessening of tensions in our region.

Despite the comprador media’s repeated references to Chinas “increasingly assertive and aggressive” presence in the region, it is US imperialism’s preparedness to use war to maintain its declining global dominance that threatens the future well-being of the Australian people.

Breaking news:

The embedding of US military and intelligence agents in the relevant Australian government departments underscores our subservience to the Empire. So it came as no surprise today (May 29) when Monash University and SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre announced the appointment of Lieutenant General Larry James, former Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a retired lieutenant general with the US Air Force, to their respective space research offices.

“The opportunities for Australia’s space sector are huge, and I hope to share my experience and knowledge with the talented teams at both institutions," Lt Gen James said.

"I am also keen to strengthen my connections and share expertise with Defence Space Command and the Australian Space Agency,” he said.

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May Day Talk 2024

Written by: Shirley Winton on 27 May 2024

We have had requests for the text of Shirley Winton’s speech at the Melbourne May Day event on May 5. Shirley was speaking on behalf of No AUKUS Victoria – eds.

Thank you May Day Committee for inviting us to speak on AUKUS, war and imperialism.

I’m on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulan nation, never ceded. I pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging and stand in solidarity with the First Nations people of this country in their 260 year long struggle against the brutal colonialism, for self-determination and sovereignty.

1 May is also 78th anniversary of the heroic First Nations pastoral workers in the Pilbara walking off the cattle stations in a long 3-year strike for pay and working conditions. And they won. Always was always will be Aboriginal land.

May Day is International Workers’ Day. A day when workers around the world proudly celebrate their hard won victories and the ongoing struggles for workers’ rights, for decent and secure livelihoods for all, for peace and a better world.

On May Day workers and their unions pledge their solidarity with struggles of the people around the world against exploitation, oppression and imperialist wars.

This year’s May Day workers around the world stand in solidarity with our heroic Palestinian sisters and brothers in their 76 year struggle against the Zionist Israeli colonial occupation and genocide. Working people, unions, students and millions around the world from all walks of life stand shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinian people’s resistance and determination to free themselves from Zionist Israel oppression and its backer, US imperialism.

Palestinian people’s struggle is setting the world on fire. Inspiring and giving confidence to workers, unions, students, the oppressed and exploited, in their struggles.

The Palestinian struggle for liberation is exposing the face of imperialism behind the wars of aggression, invasions, military occupations, political and military coups and foreign interferences in countries.

Most major military and political conflicts in today’s world can be traced to fierce competition between the imperial big powers for control and exploitation of natural resources, markets, people and the environment – the proxy war in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Latin America, in the resources rich Africa, and in our own Asia-Pacific region. Imperialism creates wars, refugees, and whips up racism to divide the people.

Today, the world is on the threshold of another global imperialist war threatening to engulf workers across the world.

A war that is being instigated and led by the US. And, as in all the imperialist wars, we the working people and the environment are the casualties, the disposable pawns in the super power competition and the profiteering weapons corporations and military industrial complex. It’s always us the ordinary people who pay with our lives, our health, our livelihoods and carry the main economic and social burden of imperialist wars.

In our region of Asia-Pacific, the US is preparing to start a war with China, its biggest competitor threatening to replace the US as the dominant global super power.

It will be a war of aggression forced on the people of this region. And Australia, the US deputy sheriff in the Asia-Pacific, is again marching to the beat of US war drums.

Australia has joined AUKUS, an aggressive war pact between US, UK and Australia, created and led by the US, to start a war with China. AUKUS and its nuclear powered submarines are not for the defence of Australia and peace in the region. It is an instrument of aggression to protect the US dominance in this region, not for the defence of the people of Australia, nor for “peace and prosperity” in the region.

AUKUS is more deeply enmeshing Australia politically and militarily into the US war plans and its multinational weapons corporations.

Australia, a US deputy sheriff doing the bidding for the US, enforcing the so called US global rules based order in our region, rubber stamping US actions in the UN and supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

AUKUS and Australia’s involvement in a US-led war with China will syphon off more than half a trillion dollars of Australian people’s taxes from urgent needs of Australian people in health, education, housing, social services, aged care, child care, and urgent action to tackle climate crisis. $368 billion on nuclear submarines and tens of billions more on US military and propping up the US and UK economies.

The only beneficiaries are the US economy and the hugely profiteering military industrial complex and fossil fuel corporations.

The winners from AUKUS and nuclear submarines are the multinational weapons and fossil fuel corporations – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, the military industrial complex – raking in $trillions of dollars in profits from suffering of people and destruction of the environment.

The only imminent threats to the Australian people’s safety and security come from the aggressive AUKUS war alliance, the US military bases across the country, the secretive US controlled Pine Gap spy base, the nuclear weapons carrying US bombers and warships in our ports and airfields, the AUKUS nuclear powered submarines in our ports, the deadly nuclear waste stored on the lands of the First Nations people, the US-Australia Alliance and the devastation of climate crisis These are the real threats to our safety and sovereignty.

Australia’s manufacturing industry is being turned into a production line for multinational weapons corporations and imperialist wars. This is because workers in this country are not in charge of what our labour produces. These are the weapons used in the horrific genocide of Palestinian people and against our sisters and brothers in other countries fighting for their rights and against oppression.

Multinational weapons corporations are embedding themselves in our universities and our schools. Public funds and universities are handed over to weapons corporations for research and development of their deadly weapons for wars of aggression. These are public funds much needed for scientific research into health and wellbeing of people and the environment. Australia’s military and defence are now deeply integrated into the US imperialist war machine.

Our fight is not against workers of other countries. Our battles are right here – for secure and decently paid work for all, for workers’ rights, for safety at work, for affordable and secure housing for all, for properly funded health care and education and tackling the climate crisis. For urgently needed funds to support women fleeing domestic violence and to end the violence against women epidemic.

Australian people don’t want Australia to be involved in another US war.

Workers, unions and people from all walks of life are coming together, uniting, working together and speaking out against AUKUS, for peace and against war.

Australian workers and their unions have always stood up for peace and against imperialist wars. Peace is Union Business.

We need an independent and peaceful foreign policy that upholds the sovereignty of all countries and builds solidarity with workers and the oppressed around the world. We must build a broad anti-war movement and fight for peace. The heroic Palestinian people are showing that protracted struggle will unite and mobilise the people against injustice and tyranny.

• Pease is Union Business

• Scrap AUKUS and nuclear powered submarines

• Remove all foreign military bases from Australia

• Close Pine Gap

• Cut ties with multinational weapons corporations assisting Gaza genocide

• End US-Australia Alliance

• End the Israel Zionist occupation of Palestine

• Solidarity with Palestinian people

• Solidarity with all workers and the oppressed around the world

• Touch one Touch all! Palestine will live!

Shirley Winton

May 2024

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For peace and an end to inter-imperialist wars!

Written by: Nick G. on 26 May 2024

It has become a truism in contemporary politics that you cannot believe anything until you’ve heard it denied by a US spokesperson.

A case in point was last week’s denial by US General Stephen Sklenka at the National Press Club that Australia would automatically be dragged into any US war with China over Taiwan.

Sklenka had been questioned about a statement by the director of naval submarine forces for AUKUS in the United States, Dan Packer, that the US Navy would have 440 Australians serving on board 25 American submarines under the first stage of AUKUS.

"We are completely, 100 per cent integrating them into our crew, from a complete and utter perspective – they will do everything that we do," he said.

Packer’s comments come after comments last April by US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell that Australian nuclear-powered submarines acquired under AUKUS could eventually be deployed against China in any military conflict over Taiwan.

The US online magazine, Breaking Defense, sponsored by arms manufacturer Northrop Grumman, said that General Sklenka’s reply was designed to “mollify” Australian critics of AUKUS.

Sklenka said "I think the Australian government, the policymakers in your government will determine whether or not those Australians will participate or not.”

That, of course, is hardly reassuring at all. The policymakers in our government are empire loyalists and betrayers of our sovereignty and independence.

It was entirely predictable of Prime Ministerial aspirant Peter Dutton, for example, when he said in November 2021, as Defence Minister, “It would be inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the U.S. in an action if the U.S. chose to take that action. And again, I think we should be very frank and honest about that, look at all the facts and circumstances without pre-committing and maybe there are circumstances where we wouldn’t take up that option, but I can’t conceive of those circumstances.”

And cheerleader for US imperialism within the current government, Richard Marles Labor’s Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, said in October 2023, Australia could not be a “passive bystander” in the event of conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

And in any case, when General Sklenka isn’t trying to “mollify” people, he sings a different tune, as he did in Darwin, in August 2022, when he said “We can talk all day long about trade deals and policy deals, but what says a heck of a lot more is who is by your side when you are in a fight. Australia is always on our side when that time comes, and we will always remember that.”

There is no doubt that inter-imperialist rivalry between China and the United States is intensifying. US imperialism is the main danger of war and the main driver of regional tensions driving the push towards war with China.

Australia must insist on the peaceful resolution of differences with China and pursue an independent and peaceful foreign policy. US imperialism wants war to try to arrest its decline and secure its position as the head of an empire that feeds off the control of the people and resources of other countries, including Australia. Its major industries are addicted to warfare and the profits that come from the sales of arms.

Australia must withdraw from AUKUS, expel all US military forces from Australia, and close all US military bases in our country.

Workers must take the lead. They have nothing to gain from empire loyalism and the sale of Australian sovereignty and everything to lose by being dragged into another unpopular and unjust US war.

For socialism and anti-imperialist independence!

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Freshwater sawfish: Iconic species threatened by capitalist development

Written by: Nick G. on 23 May 2024

Photo credit: Alex Westover

Gina Rinehart should stop obsessing about destroying an unflattering portrait of herself by acclaimed Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira, and concentrate on how to stop destroying the Martuwarra Fitzroy River and the critically endangered freshwater sawfish!

Of seven sawfish species known to exist in the world, four are found in Western Australia. These species – the freshwater, dwarf, narrow and green sawfish – are mainly found in the Kimberley and Pilbara. The freshwater sawfish can grow to 7 metres in length and are thought to live to 30 years or more. Their relatively low rate of reproduction means that sawfish stocks are slow to recover if depleted.

The freshwater sawfish is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is totally protected from recreational and commercial fishing under WA State legislation. In addition, the freshwater sawfish is protected under Federal legislation.

Rinehart

Rinehart, Australia’s richest person with an estimated net worth in excess of A$37 billion, is a mining magnate with extensive pastoral properties.
She has a license to pump water from a tributary of the Martuwarra for her Liveringa Station, a 2,650 square kilometres property with a carrying capacity of over 22,000 head of cattle.
Last November, 17 critically endangered freshwater sawfish died in a dry creek on Liveringa Station. The news has only just been revealed. It is the second mass sawfish kill on the station. Forty sawfish died at the Kimberley pastoral station in December 2018.

Those deaths were initially covered up to protect Hancock. Documents obtained under freedom of information showcased internal government communication, with concerns about a "negative story" and a manager from a government department "trying to prevent the issue getting out to the media".

First Peoples and freshwater sawfish

The sawfish has cultural significance for First Peoples across northern Australia.

They are a traditional food source for Aboriginal people living along the Fitzroy River. The species features in stories and beliefs. Bunuba people call freshwater sawfish ‘galwanyi’, the Gooniyandi people call it ‘wirridanyniny’, the Nyikina, ‘pial pial’ and the Walmajarri people, ‘wirrdani’. A traditional way of catching sawfish and other species by the Nyikina and Walmajarri people is to put bark from a freshwater mangrove tree in a waterhole. This removes oxygen from the water, causing the fish to float and become easy to catch. It also makes it vulnerable to declining water quality caused by over-extraction for pastoral and other irrigation purposes.

In early 2017, Gurindji girl Lisa Smiler caught a 2.7metre sawfish in Wattie Creek near Kalkarindji, 800 kilometres south of Darwin. Gurindji elders were surprised that the fish had come so far south, but, known as "kunpulu" in the Gurindji language, it has been documented in the area in Indigenous rock art found on Revolver Creek, a tributary of the Victoria River, near Kalkarindji. The same word is used in languages along the Victoria River.

Manage water for the environment, not Rinehart’s profits

The Martuwarra/Fitzroy's massive catchment area spans 40 cattle stations, including Mrs Rinehart's Liveringa, Fossil Downs and Nerrima stations.

Hancock’s company reportedly wants to harvest 325 gigalitres of surface water when the river is in flood to "supercharge" the region's cattle industry.

To put that in perspective, Perth's total overall annual water use is 395GL, according to the WA Department of Water's Water for Growth report.

The Martuwarra’s flow is already impeded by Camballin Barrage, 150 kilometres upstream from the limit of tidal influence. It is thought to obstruct the upstream migration of juvenile freshwater sawfish during much of the year when the river level is below the height of the weir. Originally built to divert water for farming, the weir is now a fishing and tourism spot.

Discussions over the future of water extraction along the river must be separated from capitalist commercial considerations.

The mighty Martuwarra Fitzroy River is the last stronghold for the sawfish and its last great nursery – which is why protecting the river is crucial for its survival.

This latest fish kill is a sad reminder of why the surface flows of Martuwarra Fitzroy River must be left alone and not put at risk for large-scale development.

Last October, under pressure from campaigners for the Martuwarra, the WA Government announced a commitment for no further surface water take from the Martuwarra Fitzroy River. This is good, but not enough. The existing water take must be adjusted downwards as the two recent fish kills have occurred under its arrangements.

Local campaigners are determined to stop the Martuwarra becoming another Murray-Darling disaster.

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Free Georges Abdallah!

Written by: Campagne Unitaire G Abdallah on 21 May 2024

At the request of our French comrades, the CPA (M-L) has signed an appeal for the release of imprisoned Lebanese communist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah (born 2 April 1951), the longest held prisoner in Europe.

Abdallah was arrested in 1984 by French police and convicted of the killing of a US military attache and an Israeli diplomat in retaliation for the Israeli Zionist regime’s 1982 invasion and occupation of Lebanon.

In 1999, Abdallah completed the minimum portion of his life sentence, but several requests for parole were denied. In 2003, the court granted him parole but the US Department of State objected to the court decision. Again, in 2013, Abdallah was granted parole. The US State Department’s Victoria Nuland intervened to stop his release.

The appeal reads:

At a time when the Zionist entity relentlessly pursues its genocidal historical project of annihilation of the Palestinian people from the sea to the Jordan; at a time when Western imperialists are working today as yesterday, and for more than 76 years, to politically and militarily support this entity – their organic arm in the region – and to tirelessly justify the unjustifiable; at a time when the French State is not a mere ‘accomplice’ but a fully involved player in its support for this ethnic cleansing of the land of Palestine; at a time when this same State is using all the means of its liberticidal violence to gag and criminalise any expression of denunciation of this crime against humanity and all forms of solidarity with the Palestinian people; finally, at a time when, in the very camp of this legitimate solidarity with Palestine, some are still hesitating about the form of resistance to support or are censoring themselves, Georges Abdallah - from behind the walls and after 39 years of detention at the hands of the enemy - and with him all the Palestinians involved in or alongside the Resistance are proclaiming forcefully and unambiguously: ‘Gaza will never carry the white flag of surrender!

Georges Abdallah himself always refused to make this white flag his own, choosing never to leave the camp that was and remains his: that of the ‘historic Resistance’, of all the Resistance, of the ‘promise of the Fedayeen’. It is for this unwavering support for the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people, but also of all peoples who have joined the resistance against oppression and for their emancipation, that Georges Abdallah remains in detention today. It is for this unwavering support, this refusal to give up and this determination to stand firm that Georges Abdallah remains in the hands of the enemy - for the symbol of resistance that he remains in Lebanon but also for the example that he has always been and remains even more so today for all his supporters in France and internationally.

Today, this support is ever more massive, and ever more people are taking action to ensure that any solidarity with Palestine must also include the demand for the release of one of its most loyal fighters. Just as we did so brilliantly at the 14th demonstration in Lannemezan on 6 April in support of our comrade and the prisoners incarcerated with him, we, the signatories of this appeal, pledge once again to coordinate all our forces in support of the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people and of Georges Abdallah during the next international week of action from 8 to 15 June and to mobilise massively for the new national demonstration organised on 15 June in Lyon to support the 10th request for the conditional release of Georges Abdallah and to demand his release.

The aim of this year's demonstration will also be to express our active solidarity with two comrades from the Ligue de la Jeunesse Révolutionnaire who are supporting Georges Abdallah and who will stand trial in Lyon on 18 June for having displayed the Palestinian flag and a T-shirt calling for the release of Georges Abdallah on 7 October 2022 on the pitch of the Olympique Lyonnais stadium during a football match with the Toulouse club, which was interrupted for several minutes and broadcast on every screen.

‘Gaza will never carry the white flag of surrender... Neither the Zionists nor any criminal force will ever succeed in breaking the will of the Resistance in Gaza’ (Georges Abdallah).

Neither the French state nor any criminal force will ever succeed in breaking our determination to snatch our comrade from the hands of the enemy. Free them! Let us free him!

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Book review: A View from the Horizon, Peter Duncan, Wakefield Press 2024

Written by: Nick G. on 20 May 2024

One evening in 1970, a tall, sandy-haired young man came down the stairs to the basement of the Adelaide Revolutionary Socialists building in Dequetteville Terrace, Kent Town. It was surprising to see him there as he was not a revolutionary but a well-known member of the Labor Party and of the pacifist-aligned Campaign for Peace in Vietnam.

What was more surprising was the handgun he was carrying, which he proceeded to show to his friend Rob Durbridge, leader of Students for Democratic Action at Adelaide University.

Why he had the gun, and what he later did with it, I’ve never known, but it didn’t impede his political career. Three years later, he was elected to the SA Parliament, and two years after that, at age 29, was sworn in as the State's Attorney-General.

Several days ago, I attended the launch of his book of anecdotes and memoires, A View from the Horizon.

Peter Duncan, the author, was later elected to Federal Parliament in the Hawke-Keating era.

He is justifiably proud of his record as a reformist social-democrat although it was never his intention to do away with capitalism: his legislative achievements were all in the area of social policy and did not, nor could have, done away with the economic base of capitalism.

Still, working with a premier who wore pink shorts to Parliament, he was able to achieve the abolition of capital punishment, the abolition of drunkenness in public as a crime, the criminalisation of rape in marriage, the abolition of legal consequences for illegitimacy, recognition of de facto couples, the criminalisation of racial discrimination and drug law reform. But it was his Private Member's Bill, the first in the world, to decriminalise homosexuality and establish equal rights for homosexuals with heterosexuals for which he is best known.

As a reformist social-democrat, Duncan is scathing in his book about the SA Labor governments that came after his and Dunstan's. He writes:

Some people may not be aware of the phrase 'went to water': its origins lie literally in what happens to ice when it melts from a robust solid state to a malleable and wet state. My comrade, Bob Mac, wittily observed that it must have been extremely hot in those Labor Cabinets under Bannon, Rann and Weatherill, because when good people entered those Cabinets, they 'went to water'. Sentiments I endorse entirely.

Later he writes:

Labor government either try to reform society or to manage it. Unfortunately, in the past 40 odd years, the managerialists have held sway. They could just as easily have left it to the Liberals.

It would be unfair to say that these views reflect illusions about capitalism. Both reformism and managerialism accept the permanence of capitalism and the legitimacy of bourgeois parliaments as the sole avenue for both reformism and managerialism. Duncan's post-political forays into business ventures, also examined in the book, illustrate his acceptance of capitalism.

Duncan was one of the few Australian state politicians to successfully move to the federal sphere. He was the federal member for the SA seat of Makin from 1984 to 1996, holding several ministerial positions under Hawke, but having any real influence blocked by the powerful Right and Centre Left factions of the ALP.

One of his first blues with Hawke, a cigar smoker, was over a ban on cigarette smoking on domestic airlines. Duncan gave his Transport ministerial support to a private member's bill introducing the ban. He writes:

…Hawke was furious and carpeted me, to no effect…Hawke’s anger must have been on behalf of the tobacco lobby. Of course, if he had ordered a backdown from what was a very popular initiative, it would have looked as if he was under the thumb of the tobacco lobby, which was the case, since they were significant donors to the ALP at that time.

In the same year, 1987, he recalls going into Hawke's office as the PM was on a special red phone call to transport boss Sir Peter Abeles, long acknowledged as a personal friend of Hawke. He "told Bob that as one of his ministers, I wouldn't mind having that 'red phone number', to which Hawke replied agitatedly, ‘

'And when you’ve done as much for me as Peter Abeles, you’ll be entitled to it'."

Duncan had been summonsed by Hawke to explain why his department had awarded a contract for northern coastal surveillance, on behalf of Customs, to a small operator, Amann Aviatics. The contract had previously been held by Sky West, but Amann had the superior bid and had won.

Unknown to Duncan, Sky West had been bought cheaply by Abeles who was furious to have lost the government contract. Hawke and Gareth Evans fabricated a narrative about Amann being unable to fulfil its contract which conflicted with the department's legal advice. According to Duncan, Abeles "lobbied Hawke to get the Amann contract rescinded" and that Hawke "colluded in this perfidy". A subsequent High Court challenge by Amann upheld its right to the contract.

This is not the only example of Hawke using an official position to look after, and curry favour with, influential capitalists. Duncan records that in 1975, when Hawke was still president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, he brokered a deal between Rupert Murdoch and Jimmy Hoffa, notorious boss of the Teamster's Union in the USA, to transport Murdoch's new US newspapers across the USA at a rate which undercut his competitors.

What grease was used to achieve this deal and what benefit Hawke obtained, I have no idea. What is clear that the leader of the ACTU at the time facilitated a deal that cut US workers' income and conditions.

During his book launch, which included a discussion with friend and former SA Premier and Vietnam Moratorium Committee leader Lynn Arnold, Duncan was only once interrupted with spontaneous applause. That was when he volunteered his view that SA’s anti-protest legislation, introduced by the Malinauskas Labor government, was "despicable". It was a strong statement, made in the presence of the current Attorney-General, Kyam Maher, who had overseen the lifting of penalties for "obstruction" from $750 to $50,000 and up to three months' gaol.

Two nights later, on May 16, on the anniversary of the rushed, overnight passage of the anti-protest laws, police arrested eight people who were among hundreds who occupied and held a sit-in at a city intersection to protest the legislation.

Significantly, and as a measure of popular opposition to the anti-protest laws, the eight were not charged under the new obstruction legislation, and were each fined only $156.

The task of removing the "despicable" legislation still remains.

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Albanese Government Facing Charges of "Supporting War Crimes"

Written by: Ned K. on 19 May 2024

Last week ALP Senator Fatima Payman broke ranks with the official Party line when she spoke up in the Senate against Israel's acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. She also defended the supporters of Palestinian people's struggle using the chant, "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free."

Albanese and his Cabinet Ministers quickly tried to shut down her comments and isolate her.
However the situation only got worse for the Albanese Government as it tried to shut Senator Payman's comments down.

The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network's AMAN Foundation was endorsed as a deductible gift recipient in the May Budget last Tuesday. A couple of days later AMAN wrote an open letter to the Senate opposing a motion in the Senate which tried to condemn the chant "From the River to the Sea..."

The AMAN letter said " From the River to the Sea is a call for freedom from Palestinians and their allies, fundamentally different from the annexation and colonization promoted by Netanyahu’s ruling Likud under the same phrase." Likud’s founding statement in 1977 said “between the sea and the Jordan river, there will only be Israeli sovereignty”. This expressed Zionist religious exclusiveness and supremacy to be achieved by the extinction of Palestine and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

The AMAN letter was followed by a director of AMAN, Moustafa Kheir leading a legal move to refer the Prime Minister to the International Criminal Court as an accessory to genocide, sending aa 92-page paper explaining the PM's complicity.

The media commentaries that Albanese may go to an early election are not surprising as each day the PM and his Government become more isolated from the people, especially western suburbs of Sydney where support for Palestinians is high.

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Workers Take Action at Osborne Naval Base in South Australia

Written by: Ned K. on 19 May 2024

Above:On May 9, ASC workers picketed the entrance to confront their CEO as he was leaving the base.

AMWU and CEPU members employed by the federal government's Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) have been taking industrial action against ASC to win better pay and conditions.

ASC is the federal government entity which employs highly skilled workers to build submarines and other navy vessels, including the proposed nuclear-powered submarines.

ASC also employs workers at its naval base in WA.

However workers at ASC's naval base in Osborne are paid 18% less than workers performing the same type of work at the ASC base in WA.

AMWU and CEPU members at Osborne are taking industrial action to win "wage parity" with workers in WA.

For the last three weeks AMWU and CEPU members have held rolling stoppages but ASC has not yet agreed to workers' wage parity demand. Industrial action is sure to escalate until workers win.

ASC has had a contemptuous attitude towards workers for many years resulting in numerous disputes.

The Australian Government says that the Osborne Naval Base workers and other defence bases are vital to the defence of Australia of Australia. However, their class position as primarily a representative of the interests of big business comes to the surface when one examines how they treat workers. At the Osborne Naval Base, the poor treatment of workers applies to support services workers at the Base as well. Most support services such as ground maintenance, security, catering and cleaning are contract workers on the low Award minimum pay. AMWU and CEPU members have been informed that in some cases the ASC cherry picks to enable contractors to pay wages on the lowest paying Award they can find.

All this is going on while the current and past federal Governments throw billions of dollars towards AUKUS and nuclear submarines designed to support a US war with China, which is little to do with defence of Australia's vast coasts and lands.

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Ukraine: Comic actor, serious scenarios

Written by: (Contributed) on 17 May 2024

Russian military advances in the Ukraine have been viewed with alarm in Kiev and the western backers of the Zelensky presidential administration. Ukraine is faced with a long, drawn out military struggle it is unlikely to win in a straightforward manner. The development has also been accompanied by a classic Cold War spy scandal as Zelensky seeks to consolidate a reliable power-base of support with declining popularity amongst many Ukrainians and little sign of any resolution to the war.

News coverage about Russian military advances in the north-eastern part of the Ukraine around Kharkiv and their seizing of several villages was met with alarm in Kiev; Ukraine is still waiting for further military aid from US-led western supporters of the Zelensky administration. (1) It has been generally acknowledged that Ukraine is confronting a much better equipped Russian military, which has also made recent advances in the east of the country. (2)

A recent announcement from France's President Macron that 'Europe should consider sending troops to help defend Ukraine if Russian forces break through their defence lines', has been taken seriously by European leaders. (3) Increased aid to Ukraine in the form of military personnel would now appear an agenda item for consideration. The move has also been accompanied by European leaders agreeing last week to using billions of Euros seized from Russian central bank assets being allocated for Ukraine for arms sales and post-war reconstruction. (4)

Macron also provided a bleak analysis of the problems confronting Europe: aggression from Russia in both military and cyber-warfare, it was also falling behind in the economic and technological race between the US and China, the latter being allied with Russia. (5)

Escalating diplomatic tensions between Britain and Russia have also taken place: in early May the British government expelled Moscow's defence attache on allegations of espionage
incompatible with usual diplomatic status and also removing diplomatic status from several Kremlin-owned properties which Whitehall claimed were being used for intelligence-gathering. (6) Discussions appear to have also taken place in Whitehall about confiscating the properties and donating them to the Ukraine.

The British government has apparently been deeply concerned at Russian attempts to 'choke off support for Kyiv … with … hostile state activity in countries including Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland'. (7) The recent official high-level diplomatic meetings in Budapest between China's President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is also likely to be viewed along similar lines, particularly in light of a recent statement from the Hungarian Foreign Minister that the country would not support the proposed $100 bn EU fund for Ukraine. (8) A statement from the Belgian Royal Higher Institute for Defence issued immediately after the diplomatic visit acknowledged 'Hungary as the most likely pawn of Beijing inside the EU'. (9)

While visiting Hungary President Xi Jinping also used the opportunity to provide a diplomatic position regarding areas of interest: China believes in a multi-polar world, although not all countries have equal status; China should be allowed to be 'a dominant power in Asia, as the US is in the Americas – and as Russia wants to be in Eastern Europe'. (10) It met with complete diplomatic silence from the US and their western allies; there was, undoubtedly, a great deal of discussion behind the scenes inside western corridors of power about the proposed global blue-print!

The present situation in the Ukraine, likewise, is also causing the US and their western allies considerable concern; the announcement that the Ukrainian Security Service had foiled a plot to assassinate Zelensky in early May, has also raised serious issues about the stability of his presidential administration. (11) It was noted 'the involvement of senior officers in the alleged plot highlights the persistent problem of collaborators and moles in Ukraine's security services'. (12) It has been a matter of serious concern that since the beginning of the military hostilities following the Russian invasion, over 2,000 Ukrainians have been found to have committed treason by providing Moscow with co-ordinates for military targets and monitoring the movements of senior government officials in Kyiv. (13) Many of the bombings of infrastructure by Russia would appear not random, but targeted in order to make the Ukraine dysfunctional as a state.

While sacking the head of the security department in mid-May, Zelensky stated one of the two conspirators 'had personally provided rocket rounds, drones and anti-personnel mines for an agent to carry out the attack'. (14) The nature of the military equipment and the ability of the conspirators to access it, raise serious questions about the whole internal security system and accountability of armaments and sensitive equipment.

During the past two years since the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky had apparently survived five or six similar conspiracies aimed at assassinating him. (15)

The developments have also coincided with Zelensky's popularity falling from previous heights of 90 per cent, to around 60 per cent in recent weeks. (16) While he remains the most popular Ukrainian politician, the former comic actor is now facing some serious scenarios, as are the US and their western allies. With US-led military planners and analysts expecting Russia to ramp up offensives during the northern summer aimed at seizing large areas of the eastern Donetsk region, the unresolved issues surrounding the initial invasion in 2022 are now set to become even more problematic and show little sign of any resolution in the foreseeable future.

1. Russia opens new front in Ukraine, Australian, 13 May 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. We may have to fight in Ukraine: Macron, The Weekend Australian, 4-5 May 2024.
4. Europe to buy Kyiv arms with Russian money, Australian, 10 May 2024.
5. Weekend Australian, op.cit., 4-5 May 2024.
6. Britain expels Moscow attache, Australian, 10 May 2024.
7. Ibid.
8. See: Xi vows help for 'all-weather' friend Hungary, Australian, 13 May 2024.
9. Orban rolls out red carpet for Xi as the money rolls in, The Weekend Australian, 11/12 May 2024.
10. Xi vows, Australian, op.cit., 13 May 2024.
11. Ukraine foils plot to kill Zelensky, Australian, 9 May 2024.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Zelensky fires bodyguard chief after kill plot foiled, The Weekend Australian, 11-12 May 2024.
15. Ibid.
16. Australian, op.cit., 9 May 2024.

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For the independence of Kanaky/New Caledonia: no to unfreezing the electorate! no to recolonization!

Written by: Collectif Solidarité Kanaky on 17 May 2024

The events in New Caledonia, to which France has just sent some two thousand police, are both a legacy of French colonialism, and an extension of France’s alignment with the US imperialists against the growing influence of China in the region.

The US wants to strengthen France’s capacity to deny independence to the Kanaks, fearing that an independent Kanaky might seek closer ties with China.

At the same time, French prestige is at stake: France still sees itself as a Pacific power as it did when it used the Pacific as a lake for the testing of nuclear weapons.

The unfreezing of the electorate by the French National Assembly granting citizenship to French citizens with ten-year’s residence in New Caledonia could increase the anti-independence vote by 15%.

This report is from the French-based Solidarité Kanaky collective, which is supported by ICOR affiliate Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Leniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union). We have translated it from French using online translation services, so the text may not read all that fluently – eds.

For the independence of Kanaky/New Caledonia: no to unfreezing the electorate! no to recolonization!

by UPml May 15, 2024

By Collectif Solidarité Kanaky

The constitutional bill to unfreeze the Caledonian electorate is being debated over the past two days in the National Assembly. This law is understood in New Caledonia as a desire to put an end to the decolonization process initiated by the Nouméa agreement. Result: a rise in tensions, multiple and powerful mobilizations throughout the country, and the threat of a conflagration. The Solidarité Kanaky collective is calling on parliamentarians to withdraw this bill.

Paris on May 13, 2024,

To try to stop this dangerous process for the future of the Kanak people, the elected representatives of the Congress of New Caledonia met this Monday, May 13 and managed to adopt, by a majority, a resolution requesting the withdrawal of this bill. on the electorate. Elected officials remind the State that they are mostly against this bill.

30 years after the Nouméa Accord , as well as the transfer of skills and their rebalancing, inequalities remain very significant, the non-respect of priority to local employment: in many sectors, it is the metropolitans (French citizens – eds.) recently arrived in New Caledonia, due to attractive conditions (salary level and indexation, advantages in terms of housing or installation support), who occupy positions to the detriment of Kanak workers with equal skills. Thus continues a long tradition of privileges offered to French people going to work overseas.

These are conditions which make it possible to strengthen the settler colony that this Pacific territory has always represented for the French state. This is in total violation of international law. Indeed, Kanaky/New Caledonia remains a non-autonomous territory under international law, as such included on the list of countries to be decolonized according to United Nations resolution 15-14.

The Nouméa Accord is a decolonization agreement. It provided for 3 self-determination referendum consultations. The second referendum showed, in 2020, a surge in pro-independence votes: by only 9,000 votes, the “Yes” to the full sovereignty of New Caledonia was in the majority.

The conditions of the third and final referendum, at the end of 2021, are today still contested by all the independence movements, which had requested following the Covid epidemic and the confinement which prevented any campaign, the postponement of the consultation and the respecting both Édouard Philippe's promise to keep it in 2022 and the Kanak mourning period. This 3rd referendum is not recognized by the separatists who did not participate in the vote. A complaint is planned on this subject to the International Court of Justice.

Today , the French government has decided to use force. It unilaterally presents two draft laws on the institutional future of Kanaky/New Caledonia which put at stake the future of the Kanak people, and the stability of the country. They are aiming for an exit under highly contested and non-consensual conditions from the Nouméa Accord, with the consequence of a considerable worsening of divisions.

The first bill concerning the postponement of provincial elections was adopted last March, the second aims to modify the constitution which is central to the Nouméa Accord; no modification should be made by a unilateral decision of the State, without a global agreement between local political forces.

These bills revive the proven practices of putting the Kanak people in a minority in their own country, for the benefit of a local right which would like to find a majority in its favour by modifying the seats in the Congress of New Caledonia. The State is engaged in a brutal modification of the entire organization of democratic life in New Caledonia. This is a way of promoting the recolonization of the territory and the invisibility of the Kanak people!

In response, in Kanaky/New Caledonia mobilizations are growing against these two bills. More than 80,000 people in the streets on April 13 throughout the country. Historic mobilizations which are driven by the CCAT (Cellule for Coordination of Field Actions), which brings together all the independence currents. The objectives are clear: the request for the withdrawal of the bill on the unfreezing of the electorate, the non-recognition of the 3rd referendum, and the continuation of the decolonization trajectory.

This forceful move by the French state brings back sad memories and promotes an extremely dangerous dynamic of tension. The May 1 mobilization was massive and this year marked politically by this political context. The week of May 4, 2024 until May 13, 2024, was a week of continued mobilizations and actions by the CCAT. Started on May 4, 2024 – for the anniversary of the death of Jean-Marie Tjibaou on May 4, 1989, and the anniversary of the massacre of the 19 of the Ouvéa cave on May 5, 1988 – until the presentation of the text to the National Assembly this May 13, 2024. Rallies in front of all the country's gendarmes on May 5, 2024, marches in different cities every day. Many mines are already blocked, such as in Houailou and Thio. The mobilization is entering its 3rd phase.

On May 13, 2024, the two federations USTKE, THT (Air and Land Transport, Hotels) and Ports & Docks went on strike, followed by 99%.
At the port, only essential goods are released (perishable goods and medicines), all port companies have decided to close at 3 p.m. Slowing economy today. The Wetr chiefdom in Lifou has decided to close the island's airport.

At the Tontouta airport, plane flights were seriously delayed due to employees leaving their posts, disrupting the operation of services at the airport. The CCAT’s mobilizations on road access have also disrupted the country. The country is mobilizing everywhere, with roadblocks.

A mutiny broke out at the East Camp prison, where three guards were taken hostage and the RAID intervened.

Young people clashed with the police and mobile gendarmes, who fired flash-bullets at them, provoking their anger.

The country is experiencing extreme tension as it awaits the vote in the National Assembly.

Furthermore, repression is strong. A number of people prosecuted since the demonstration on 21 February went on trial on 19 April at the Nouméa Court, receiving very heavy sentences. Two demonstrators are being held in the East Camp, while five other demonstrators are free but wearing electronic bracelets. Since then, there have been a number of arrests, some people have been released but are still being prosecuted, while others are being held in pre-trial detention or in police custody. They are political prisoners!

On Monday 13 May 2024, 18 people were due to appear in court, but the trial was postponed, some simply because they were carrying the Kanaky flag! Unheard of!

The Solidarité Kanaky collective, created in 2007, brings together different associative, trade union and political organizations with the objective of organizing solidarity in France with the Kanak people in their trajectory of decolonization. Alongside the various pro-independence currents, we reaffirm our solidarity with the union and political struggles of Kanak and non-Kanak separatists, against the colonial, racist, capitalist and repressive situation of the French State in Kanaky….

This bill must be withdrawn.

Let us demand the release and dropping of charges for those accused of the current mobilizations.

Let's take solidarity actions here in France against the two bills and in solidarity with the current movement in Kanaky.

Solidarity with the CCAT and the mobilized Kanak people!

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The legacy of Soviet revisionism: the view from Russia today.

Written by: (Contributed) on 13 May 2024

Above: Anti-Putin protester dragged away by Moscow cops. Photo: www.reaction.life

Our Party has good relations with several groups of comrades in Russia. We won’t identify the source of the following description of conditions in Russia because of the danger its authors are in under the rule of the Russian imperialist bourgeosie and Putin’s government. Unfortunately, there are some on the Left in Australia who praise Putin for his rivalry with US imperialism and the NATO bloc. There are no grounds fordoing so. All imperialism is bad and must be overthrown – eds

The legacy of Soviet revisionism and social-imperialism, which completely permeates society and bourgeois power, causes great harm to party building in our country. On the one hand, this completely discredits the ideas of communism in society, equating them with Soviet capitalism. On the other hand, the bourgeois government and the bourgeois “opposition” demagogically use images of the Soviet past for chauvinist propaganda.

Many people in our country know about Mao Zedong from the fascist tales that were promoted by Soviet propaganda and which are enshrined in official academic discourse in books and the Internet. All this complicates the work of Marxists-Leninists in Russia. Moreover, after the strengthening of the fascist regime and the start of the genocidal war against the Ukrainian people, great-power chauvinism, racism and spy mania dominate in society.

There is information that about 116 thousand people were subjected to Putin’s repressions. There are many neo-Nazis in the FSB and the police who torture people, and after a recent terrorist attack, neo-Nazis in police uniform festooned with swastikas publicly cut off the ear of one of the suspects on camera and forced him to eat his ear.

Instructions from the police and army on how to properly torture people with electric shock are being actively distributed online.

Police and Nazis organize attacks on migrants in factories and commercial establishments, inducing them to go to war. In this way, the Russian army is replenished and at the same time terror is waged against the non-Russian workers remaining at the enterprises.

Moreover, after the failure of the military opposition in June 2023 and after Putin’s victory in the elections, the fascist regime began to fight with redoubled force against political opponents. Our organization suffers greatly from these repressions. At the same time, all street protests are now prohibited in our country and any unflattering word about the war and the Russian army faces criminal liability, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly have been destroyed.

In our country, trade unions are subordinate to the ruling far-right United Russia party, on which President Putin relies. Because of this, the economic struggle in our country is seriously complicated.

The left forces in our country are poisoned by Soviet revisionism. The majority of Russian "communists" support Putin, the fascist war against Ukraine and external expansion into European countries. Chauvinist Russian idealist philosophers and various bourgeois concepts, such as the “civilizational approach” or “world-system analysis,” are highly respected among them. Almost all Russian communists and social democrats are sexists and homophobes, supporters of traditional family values and the death penalty.

At the moment, Russian imperialism is merging in foreign policy with revisionist regimes. First of all, with social-imperialist China and the DPRK, which most pseudo-communists perceive as a socialist turn and “anti-imperialism.”

Russian imperialists are attacking feminism, women's right to abortion, and any protection against domestic violence. We are trying to fight this by developing a feminist movement in Russia. LGBT people in Russia are recognized as terrorists, as are Jehovah's Witnesses and many other religious and social forces. Many oppositionists are labeled as “foreign agents”, after which they are deprived of economic and remaining political rights.

May 2024

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Inflation hits Interest Rate Relief: The Crisis Grows!

Written by: John G. on 13 May 2024

Fruit & Veg prices not rewarding farmers. Source: publicdomainpictures.net CCO

Price inflation increased from October to March by 1.6% . That was after a drop in the previous 6 months which had government ministers and economists cheering and carrying on about a series of interest rate cuts coming right up.

On 7 May, the Reserve Bank swept those hopes aside and locked in the current rate, way higher interest rates than any in the last decade. Now talk is of a possible interest rate increase.

Price inflation increases have killed off hopes about imminent interest rate cuts and cast a shadow after over the whole country’s economic prospects.

Economists have commented how disastrous it is to have unemployment low at 3.8% while price inflation kicks up.

For them, “restoring economic activity” relies on unemployment being pushed up to 5%. That’s an extra 200,000 plus people thrown out of work.

They are disappointed just 7,000 more people were without work in March. In that month, total hours worked across the nation increased by as much as it had over the previous 11 months.

With price inflation growing and people not being put out of work in large numbers, capitalists and their top managers, top bureaucrats, bankers and government administrators set out for people to suffer much more misery.

Policy tensions reflect different corporate monopolies interests

There are tensions within corporate monopolies’ ranks between their economic needs and their political needs, as well as conflicts between different sectional interests.

The economic needs are for people to be put through hardships, businesses closing, bankruptcies, people unable to get what we want to live, being paid less and consuming less. The political needs are what people will tolerate without a significant turn against the corporate monopolies rule.

All sorts of differences flare up between financial corporations and bankers, consumer goods suppliers, mining monopolies, industrial manufacturers supplying different industries, and small and medium hospitality businesses. The businesses selling to consumers tend to support consumers being supported to keep business sales up. Others insulated from the consumer market like the mining monopolies and foreign bankers back severe cutbacks.

Different corporate approaches expressed in the parliamentary slanging match over spending.

Labor has been spreading a range of support around: electricity bill reductions, heavily subsidised childcare, increases to wages in aged care, providing free Vocational education for some careers , tax cuts extended to the poorer paid, childcare subsidies, rent assistance and payments that cut energy bills before they went to households, increases to bulk billing rebates, reduced costs of pharmacy scripts, an increase in jobseeker payments , rent assistance up 15%, increased single parent payment and expanded eligibility, opening up restrictions on wage struggles for a few workers, and more. It’s a significant spending program on services and support for people in difficulty.

It is nowhere near dealing with economic problems people face. Labor’s balancing act tries to smooth out some of the harsher effects of the crisis, and stave of tendencies for the troubles to break people’s acceptance of capitalism. They work on the monopolies’ economic needs while paying attention to political needs. Hardship, but trying to hold it to a level where lots of people won’t be rethinking the need to rebel and try to make the rich corporate monopolies pay.

Chalmers dubs his a ‘no scorched earth austerity’ policy. He presents himself ‘dealing with inflation’ while ‘supporting the economy’. Labor’s juggling defends the corporate monopolies by letting people’s consumption drop and hardships stalk the workers, making people pay to get out of the corporates’ inflation crisis while doing a bit to mitigate the worst effects.

Liberals ‘Cut Government spending policy’ for mining, finance and other corporates

The Liberals carry on about ending the ‘spend-a-thon’. They say they would ‘contain the growth in spending’ … to ‘take pressure off this homegrown inflation’ as Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor put it after the recent Reserve Bank meeting put interest rates on hold.

Taylor nominated cutting $209 billion he reckoned was increased spending since Labor’s election. While the Liberals are coy about details of what they would do, they are calling for cuts in spending programs on a variety of government services and support for people.

It’s the severe policy of the corporates of mining, banking and finance; increasing the harshness of the squeeze on people. It’s not quite the ‘scorched earth’ criticized by Chalmers, but it is policy for a disaster to be imposed on people doing it hard now, more out of work, holding back wage rises, while slashing services and supports Labor has put in place easing the harshest troubles hitting people.

Liberal’s approach: Devil Take the Hindmost

The Liberal’s and monopolies’ make a cynical and brutal calculation. They reckon better off sections of workers can tighten the belt for a while They work for the better off to turn a blind eye to the plight of poorer workers and non-monopoly business people most affected by recession, loss of consumer markets, government supports and services. The Libs work to bring workers and professionals in industries like mining, shipping and transport, banking and finance in support of the reactionary corporate monopolies’ approach.

The Liberals try to drag working people in mortgage trouble into the reactionary corporates’ orbit too. They push harsher measures as the path to reduce the time high interest rates torment mortgage holders in trouble. They try to use it as an appeal to outer suburban workers and tradies to back mining, finance and wider foreign monopoly corporates’ interests rather than stand for the workers’ own interests in a better life.

Insecure, casual and ABN employees cop the brunt of unemployment and hardships. The bottom 25% are crushed. The young are particularly affected by insecure work, shift cuts, high rents and interest rates. Small and medium businesses providing people’s goods and services and subbies in all sorts of industries lose customers and work. People with mortgages and renting cop even higher rates.

For the bulk of people, the Liberals promise a hell of a lot less ‘economic activity’, a brutal devastation of many people’s lives and the futures of today’s generation of students in their later years looking to get into good paying jobs.

The Greens perform around the edges of government administration, raising banners for more housing, caps on rents and interest rates. They float various schemes. They perform and act to advocate for Labor to improve its game. Labor does fall short and bumbles on various fronts. The Greens aren’t going to have a decisive say in parliament any time soon. Their policies attach themselves to consumer market interests. They stand against the reactionary corporate interests of mining monopolies, finance and banking corporates.

Labor and Liberal are wrangling about which way to make capitalism work and get back to profitability, while keeping corporate monopoly rule over the country secure. That’s no real use to workers.

This system is failing us. It can’t keep going without periodic crashes where the corporate monopolies make working people and small business suffer to prop up their system and get it back to turning over.

Now is a time to get serious about getting organised to get rid of the dominating US corporate monopolies’ rule over the nation and free the nation and the working class. Standing out as some initial steps to defend poor workers and start to develop organisation for workers to take command:

First: Organise poorer workers and younger people to stand against severe policies to make poor workers pay for the corporate monopolies’ crisis. Better pay, cheaper rent, lower interest rates, better government support and services, tax the corporate monopolies to relieve peoples’ hardships.

Second: Win better-off workers, professionals and small business people to stand with poorer workers against policies of leaving people subject to severe hardship.

Third: Reject Liberal/Coalition policies to stop spending to relieve people of some effects of price inflation and high interest rates, while they also work to impose real wage cuts and much higher unemployment. No severe economic shock to get big monopolies out of trouble.

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Rival imperialists and their Ukraine agendas

Written by: (Contributed) on 11 May 2024

A huge US-led military assistance package for the Ukraine has left little ambiguity in what the Pentagon appears to have assessed as a viable option for prolonging hostilities.

The Pentagon appears to have drawn up military planning to last several years with the full support of the military industrial-complex. It remains, therefore, to be seen just how long the US-proxy war is kept running and to what cost, financially, and in terms of casualties.

A US-led military intelligence assessment from a senior NATO official about the prevailing balance of forces between the Russian Federation and Europe is best viewed in the context of recent increased western support for the Ukraine. Fears have arisen about western vulnerability to military incursion, particularly in Germany. Some recent developments in Germany have also revealed new Cold War dramas being played out, as a re-run of a previous age.

Toward the end of April an announcement about a previously delayed US$95 billion military package of which two-thirds was destined for the Ukraine, was noted as 'big business for the US defence industry for years to come'. (1) The news was greeted with optimism from Kiev as 'US military jets started flying fresh supplies from Pentagon stocks to Ukraine' the following day. (2) It was noted Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies) were the largest beneficiaries of the already outstanding US$30 billion in federal contracts to supply Ukraine. (3)

The UK military assistance to Ukraine also rests upon previously awarded US$44 billion during the past two years. (4)

The time line of the Pentagon military planning, nevertheless, is particularly revealing; an official media release 'detailed a $66 billion package of new weapons, training and spare parts that will be sent to Ukraine over the next several years … and … Frank St. John, Lockheed's chief operating officer, said the extra funding approved last week would sustain factories for years to come'. (5) No doubt the shareholders are rubbing their hands in glee.

The US economy, it should be noted, is not in a particularly strong position and the failure of Ukraine's armed forces to dislodge areas of the country which are Russian-speaking, has revealed their inability to deal with Moscow's territorial claims.

The announcement was also accompanied by further military support for Ukraine from US allies: Australia pledged a new A$100 million package of new drones and air defence systems, Canada has allocated $6.154 billion and Japan, $8 billion. (6) Washington appears to have issued directives for their allies to follow.

The developments are best viewed in the context of disclosures from Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank, Commander of NATO's military logistics centre in Germany, who stated 'NATO leaders have suggested the alliance has as little as perhaps three years to consolidate its defences against a possible Russian offensive'. (7) The open source intelligence assessment has placed Germany in the forefront of possible further Russian military incursion.

Elsewhere, similar concerns have also been raised about Russia possibly acquiring basing facilities in Eastern Libya for their nuclear submarines, 'boosting its influence in the central Mediterranean and placing nuclear weapons on Europe's southern flank'. (8) It was also noted, furthermore, that 'Libya is a perfect stepping stone for Russia in Africa as it looks to supply its military presence in Mali, and perhaps Niger, Chad and Burkino Faso'. (9) In recent years imperialist Russia has emerged as a serious challenger to western neo-colonial power in numerous African countries.

While the open source intelligence assessment was linked to interoperability of military equipment and logistics, it noted 'another significant headache for NATO planners is the tangle of regulations restricting the exchange and transport of military equipment'. (10) The Pentagon regarded itself as hindered by numerous political and other obstacles to its military interoperability with different governments in Europe. The implications created by the outcome of the Brexit poll, were not pursued in the intelligence assessment although they clearly remain problematic for the tendering, transportation and logistics of sensitive military equipment.

A recent statement from President Macron has clarified the position of his administration although it had also shown some of the political obstacles: in offering to share France's 'nuclear umbrella to the continent … opposition groups have … voiced outrage at … putting France's nuclear arsenal, consisting of 300 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles, at the service of European neighbours'. (11)

French and German diplomacy was never been particularly straightforward: while France has long treasured a status as a relatively independent military power, Germany has fallen under strict US-led NATO defence and security provision. Similar diplomatic positions exist elsewhere in Europe, as a legacy of the previous Cold War and more recent Brexit.

Moves, for example, by Britain, which have included high-level diplomatic meetings with Germany and increased defence expenditure, were accompanied with the statement 'they were to announce plans for a joint endeavour to develop artillery systems' (12) The stated agenda is one thing, the hidden agenda quite different; the sabre-rattling is intended to prop up the present Conservative administration in Westminster, which has declining support in election year along with Britain not being diplomatically part of Europe for trade, transportation and logistics. Placing sensitive military equipment on the back of a truck destined to Germany, is not as straightforward as the Pentagon would wish.

It is also what has not been openly revealed about Germany's perceived vulnerability which, nevertheless, remains highly relevant; the resurgence of the far-right in the eastern part of Germany and the former GDR, has clearly proved problematic. Forthcoming elections in Germany for the European Parliament are likely to see the far-right Afd being able to create a substantial political power-bloc. In recent years the Putin administration in Moscow has developed strong political links with far-right groups as a means of extending their influence into Europe and elsewhere.

It has been officially noted, for example, that Australia 'is becoming a growing hotbed for far-right extremism given the rapid proliferation of far-right groups and mainstreaming of extremist thought'; many of the groups are openly pro-Russian and have created a huge case-load for the security services. (13)

Cold War dramas, the logical outcome, are also being played out on the daily basis.

Russian diplomacy toward far-right political groups has also coincided with the discovery of four spies, including one allegedly Chinese agent, working as a parliamentary assistant to Maximilian Krah, a member of the European far-right inside the European Parliament. (14) European countries, in the grip of Cold War paranoia, fear the emergence of a fifth column inside their political systems, particularly lurking under the guise of pro-Russian allies and their Chinese counterparts.

The recent increased US-led military budget for Ukraine would appear aimed at locking Russia into a longer-term war as a means of draining their economy, while deflecting their
attention away from further possible planned incursions elsewhere in Europe and Scandinavia. The US-led military planning might, however, backfire in a spectacular fashion, pushing Russia diplomatically closer to China and draining the US and western economies.

1. Ukraine aid lifts defence firms amid profit, Australian, 30 April 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Marles' $100m aid for Ukraine, Australian, 29 April 2024; and, Ukraine deserves more support, Editorial, Australian, 29 April 2024.
7. NATO must prepare for Russian attack on Europe, generals warn, Australian, 30 January 2024.
8. Russia eyes nuclear subs base at Tobruk, Australian, 1 February 2024.
9. Ibid.
10. NATO, Australian, op.cit., 30 January 2024.
11. We can share nuclear arms with Europe, says Macron, Australian, 30 April 2024.
12. Britain to raise military spending, Australian, 25 April 2024.
13. See: ASIO reveals up to 40% of its counter-terrorism cases involve far-right extremism, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 22 September 2022; and, The shape of far-right extremism in Australia, The Strategist, ASPI., 21 March 2019; and, Scott Morrison signs on with global political network home to 'intolerant far right', The New Daily, 14 September, 2022.
14. Berlin detains fourth 'China spy', Australian, 25 April 2024.

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What is this economic crisis?

Written by: John G. on 11 May 2024

Free Food Pantries have sprung up across cities and towns

The capitalist economic system and US imperialist domination of Australia is very destructive for this country and the working class.

For capitalist economists, commentators and planners, economic activity is measured by stock exchange prices and corporate monopoly profits. Just look at ‘financial’ pages in the press, on TV and in digital media news.

For workers economic activity is measured in wages and what we can get for them. We are looking for wages, government benefits, production and sale of goods and services for people to live.

They are completely contradictory outlooks, the contrast sharpened in times of crisis.

Capitalist economics can only conceive of people’s well-being - having good homes, food on the table, education and healthcare - as an outcome of the capitalist economic system ticking over making profits, propped up by workers’ hard yakka.

Crisis rescue operations for bankers, mining monopolies and corporate giants generally rely on carving holes in reasonable living standards and driving heaps of people into hardship. They can only consider a system with corporate well-being as the foundation on which people can eke out some life.

But what is happening now? We all know our families and friends are in a recession. Our incomes don’t satisfy our wants, just create worries over making ends meet. When you think about it, it’s really dumb relying on the system created by, developed by and dependent on capitalist investments as the starting point to sustain people.

All it’s set up to sustain is the accumulation of profits, not the well-being of people.

In this interest rates/ price inflation crisis, we all know, our lives are poorer.

Small and medium business sales are slow. That pressures them to cut margins and cuts costs to keep sales up. They face high rents and high interest rates on loans for mortgages, stocks and machinery. Dropping turnover, lowered margins, and debt mean small and medium businesses are not able to drop prices.

They are forced to hold and increase prices in many categories.

They are in recession. Bankruptcies and closures are rapidly increasing. According to debt monitoring firm CreditorWatch, more Australian businesses are now in the hands of external administrators than ever before, rising more than 22 per cent since this time last year.

Bonza airlines one of the latest to hit the wall

At the heart of the crisis, workers are in recession.

Current economic news outlines numerous features of the crisis the country’s in, and details how we and others are suffering. They can help when we are looking at ways to fight our way out of it.

Customers are in trouble, sales down, consumption in recession

An MYOB survey of 1000 firms with less than 200 employees across the country found pressure on customers had disrupted their customer purchases.

• 28% are buying fewer products;

• 20% have moved to cheaper goods and services;

• 20% put off purchasing altogether.

• That’s 68% of firms seeing customers spending less.

Just 6-7% of firms reported an increase in sales.

It is a national recession in working peoples’ consumption.

There were few differences between small, medium and large businesses, and was common to both cities and regional areas.

Retail Sales data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded a 0.4% fall in the value of sales economy wide in March alone. In the year to the end of March retail sales grew by just 0.8%. Only the DotCom crash, the GST introduction and the pandemic saw such slow growth in the last 35 years. The fall in sales occurred on both real value and in volume of goods and services.

People are being driven to consume less in volume and in quality, reflected in cheaper goods and services. In the Pandemic the low growth happened when the population went down. The effect was that ‘per capita growth’ didn’t fall anywhere near as much as now. Current population growth is reported at 3.6%.

Sales of clothing, footwear and personal accessories were 4.3% down, and department store sales down 1.6% in the year. Household spending on household goods, cafes, restaurants, hotels, vehicles, and tobacco products, takeaway was also down. Food retailing was up 0.9%. In the December quarter, household discretionary spending was down 0.9%. Eating is not discretionary. With spending on cafés, takeaway and restaurants down, eating at home and taking lunch to school and work makes sense where you’ve got the income.

Prices and wages

Prices for education, health, rent, food, fuel and power, and insurance drove inflation rises. Rent rose 7.8% in the year even with the Commonwealth rent assistance rise providing some relief. A nationwide housing shortage guarantees rent inflation will continue. Insurance prices rose 16.4% in the year, driven by higher costs of reinsurance and ‘natural’ disasters.

Education prices were up 5.9% in the March quarter alone, with prices across primary, secondary and tertiary sectors.

The increases in household incomes was 4.2% last year according to the Bureau of Statistics. Employee households recorded a rise in living costs of 6.5% over 2023, down from a peak annual rate of 9.6% in April-June 2023. Household incomes were 2.3% lower than the rise in employee household living costs.

Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force reports for March 2024, found

unemployment rate increased to 3.8%.

participation rate decreased to 66.6%.

employment decreased to 14,259,900.

employment to population ratio decreased to 64.0%.

underemployment rate decreased to 6.5%.

monthly hours worked increased to 1,956 million.

full-time employment increased by 27,900 to 9,853,800 people.

part-time employment decreased by 34,500 to 4,406,100 people.

House prices nationwide were up 11.1% in the year to January according to Corelogic. They have kept rising since, though there are minor falls in some localities, notably a 0.1% drop in Melbourne in April.

Population Growth masks the extent of Recession

The drop in consumption of day-to-day goods and services has been happening despite a rapid growth in population of 3.6% in the year to March.

That means the 0.8% retail sales growth in the economy to the end of March translates to a 2.8% drop in sales per capita, a recession in homes across the country. Food sales per capita also dropped 2.7%. Little wonder there is a scramble to bad-mouth and direct the initial distress at supermarket monopolies.

Now population increase is being slowed by tightened visa requirements, particularly on international students. That will add to pressures on sales and consumption, giving businesses more headaches.

Some International features

The International Labour Organization (ILO) reports that the global unemployment rate in 2023 was 5.1 per cent, with number of unemployed and underemployed close to 435 million, remaining high. Average hours worked remain below their 2019 pre-pandemic levels. The number of workers living in “moderate poverty” – earning less than US$3.65 per day per person – increased by about 8.4 million in 2023. The number of informal workers reached 2 billion.

Over $15 trillion was added to the global debt mountain in 2023, bringing the total to a new record high of $313 trillion. The global debt-to-GDP ratio is 330 per cent.

Real interest rate increases in 2023 made the debt burden on many poorer countries unbearable. Since March 2020, Argentina, Zambia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Ukraine defaulted on their government debt, and Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan and Tunisia are in danger of defaulting.

Working people and small and medium businesses are carrying the burden of the slowdown of the capitalist cycles of production and sale for profit.

Contradictions within countries worldwide have intensified. Internal civil conflicts are rife. Imperialism is meddling and interfering everywhere. Proxy wars by client states raised tensions. Preparations for war between rival nuclear-armed imperialist camps haunt the globe. Divisions grow within imperialist homelands.

National Liberation struggles are reaching new high points. People’s struggles for freedom from imperialism and its local agents grow.

This crisis drags on and capitalism’s hold is weakening. Imperialism is strong but faces billions of people whose lives the imperialist system is devastating.

While capitalist crisis keeps hitting people, the call for workers’ power has plenty of fertile soil in which to flourish.

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Free Palestine rally leads Melbourne May Day march

Written by: Bill F. on 6 May 2024

Highlight of this year’s May Day in Melbourne was the extended march through the city streets led by Free Palestine supporters who had already marched up to Trades Hall from the usual Sunday rally at the State Library.

This more than doubled the numbers who had earlier turned out for the annual May Day rally, this year falling on May 5th. At least 2000 at a guess.

Prior to this, the May Day event attracted a number of trade union members and activists from Construction unions, Plumbers, Maritime workers, Rail Tram and Bus, Nurses and Midwifes, student unions and individual unionists.

Various radical, revolutionary and environmental groups set up stalls and handed out literature, while banners and placards supported the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Zionism and condemned US imperialism and its criminal AUKUS war pact.

The popular Trades Hall Choir delivered its usual stirring songs of struggle, and a guest speaker from the Construction union deplored the falling living standards faced by working people whose wages and conditions were being whittled away in the face of ever rising costs and lack of social services. Housing, decent education and accessible and affordable healthcare were all getting further out of reach for many families. He called for workers to take action, to increase the level of struggle and not let the bosses get away with it any longer.

The second guest speaker exposed the rotten AUKUS agreement embraced by the Albanese Labor government. Her powerful speech pointed out that it was a war pact designed to tie Australia into a US instigated war with China rather than anything to do with the defence of Australia. She pointed to the sinister role of the US controlled Pine Gap spy base in supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the danger of this being a nuclear target in any war with China. “The only imminent threats to the Australian people’s safety and security come from the aggressive AUKUS war alliance, the US military bases across the country, the secretive US controlled Pine Gap spy base, the nuclear weapons carrying US bombers and warships in our ports and airfields, the AUKUS nuclear powered submarines in our ports, the deadly nuclear waste stored on the lands of the First Nations people, the US-Australia Alliance and the devastation of climate crisis. These are the real threats to our safety and sovereignty.”

She continued, “The Palestinian struggle for liberation is setting the world on fire, exposing the face of imperialism behind the wars of aggression, invasions, military occupations, political and military coups and foreign interferences in countries.”

When the Free Palestine rally marched up, they were given a warm welcome as they joined in the May Day crowd, livening things with drums and music. This continued as the whole combined rally marched through the city and then returned to Trades Hall, chanting “Free, free Palestine!”, “The workers united, will never be defeated!”

On the return to Trades Hall, two Palestinian speakers addressed the crowd, expressing the determination of the Palestinian people to win their liberation in facing the genocide and expressing respect for the solidarity shown to them by people across the world, including many Jewish supporters.

The final speaker was the Chairperson of the Melbourne May Day Committee, Len Cooper. He also denounced the role of US imperialism in financing and arming Israel’s aggression and racist genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Melbourne May Day rally ended with the ceremonial burning of a US effigy and flag, which delighted the crowd and was a fitting recognition of the main enemy of the oppressed people of the world.

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Free Palestine Rally Puts University of Adelaide in Spotlight

Written by: Ned K. on 7 May 2024

On Sunday, 5 May, supporters of Palestinian peoples struggle against Zionist Israeli government and its imperialist backers once again rallied on steps of Parliament House in Adelaide.

The speakers at the rally included students from University of Adelaide who joined students from campuses throughout USA and other countries and set up a camp on the University grounds.

The speakers let people know that the University of Adelaide was up to its eyeballs in actively seeking more and more involvement of US military companies like Raytheon and Boeing on campus, with the University facilitating research for new weapons of destruction to be used by the USA and Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The students vowed to continue their campus occupation until the University broke all ties with these corporate merchants of death and destruction.

Following the student speeches the MC of the rally advised that the usual route of the demonstration that followed the Sunday rally would divert to the grounds of the University to join the student occupation.

However the police advised that if the march was going to end at the University grounds, marchers would be banned from taking to the streets and had to walk to the University via the footpaths!

This was not received well by those at the rally!

In response people took to the street and there were so many people who did so that the police backed off and people marched on the streets as they had done every second Sunday for the last seven months in support of Palestinians.

It seemed like the exposure of the University’s deep involvement with the military corporations has hit a vulnerable spot in the image the University and indeed state and federal governments like to build of the University of Adelaide.

The University is on the verge of a merger with the University of SA which is being portrayed as a great opportunity for young people of South Australia to learn in a world class University!

Students want to learn subjects that benefit humanity and the planet. As expressed by them today, they do not want to be researching new weapons for mass destruction.

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How the Australian state machine breeds terrorism

Written by: Louisa L. on 6 May 2024

Anti-Vietnam War demonstration outside Phillip Street Court, Sydney. Wiki Commons Image courtesy of the SEARCH Foundation, from the collections of the State Library of New South Wales

In 2003, when Australia joined the US invasion of Iraq, Coalition politicians were obsessed with terrorist threats.

They ignored the fact that imperialist war is terrorism at its worst. They ignored that Sadam Hussein was an enemy of Al Qaeda. They knew Iraq would become another wartime training ground for terrorists to overflow from the US war on Afghanistan declared just two years earlier, after 9/11.

Yet for years there was only one terrorist attack here, at Sydney’s Lindt Café. The perpetrator was on bail for 43 sexual assaults, and organising his wife’s murder. Not terrorism?

But what has shifted in 20 years since then, for seven teens, at least one with mental illness and disability, to be charged with terrorism? With their right to silence and independent lawyers denied, much reduced levels of evidence needed, and presumption of innocence reversed, not guilty verdicts are unlikely.
But surely, even with churchgoers quickly defending their priest, a trained terrorist had time to inflict a fatal blow.

US imperialism and traitors like John Howard

People capitalism calls terrorist usually take individual action because they feel powerless against injustice. They don’t understand real change comes from mass action.

In 2003, at one southwestern Sydney school with a high Muslim enrolment, every staff member, from teachers to cleaners, wore purple ribbons against the war. When students walked out statewide, the school was almost empty of older students of all backgrounds. At a peace assembly, the principal told the whole school, “We should not go to war with Iraq. If we don’t stop the war, at least we will have tried.”

He knew 94 percent of Australians supported his stand. The Muslim community knew their enemies were US imperialism and traitors like John Howard, not our peoples.

And now? At the same school, students have been suspended for refusing to remove the keffiyeh. They’ve been hauled to the principal and berated for drawing Palestine flags on their hands, or wearing Palestine bracelets.

Teachers at some schools refused orders by principals to remove keffiyehs. Those principals mostly backed down, knowing they risked community backlash.

Staff and students have been told not to discuss Palestine at all. Repeat that at schools across the region. It’s statewide department policy, backed by the government. To their credit, some principals refuse to cave in to this abusive, US imperialist-driven policy.

So, troubled young people without guidance went underground to seek answers.

Funding cuts bite

The NSW Teachers Federation took a good stand on Palestine, much to the fury of Zionists. It has supported staff. But it’s nowhere near as strong as it once was. Funding cuts have savaged the state system.

State schools enrol the vast majority of students with disabilities, especially the most complex and serious ones. In April, the Australian Education Union revealed, each state school student eligible for Commonwealth disability payments, on average, receive $2,941 while private school students get $10,000.
The parents of the teenager charged over the stabbing said their son had severe behaviour issues at home and at school. Did that teenager get the help he needed?

Did the school he attended have teachers to staff each class? For two decades, the union repeatedly warned governments of predicted teacher shortages. Ignored! Last year shortages hit with a vengeance. Especially in poorer areas, students frequently had no teachers. Parents who could, turned to private schools. State school enrolments plummeted.

Instead of tackling the problem, the government squeezed teachers. It demanded deputies and assistant principals head back to classrooms. It didn’t know that in primary schools they’d never left!

For years, elitist private schools with higher wages, better conditions and fewer discipline problems (because any student with problematic behaviours would never be enrolled) lured teachers into their system.

Collective antidote

Meanwhile, an epidemic of teacher-sackings plagues the state system. It takes just three months to sack a teacher.

There are still many strong principals who support staff. But authoritarian behaviour and culture is rewarded with promotion. Secretive “Teacher Improvement Programs”, TIPs, are largely a tick-box affair for supervisors. Now union reps are being sacked, or pressured to resign beforehand.

All unions have been systematically disempowered by repressive industrial policies of successive Labor and Coalition governments since the mid-1980s. There’s an old union saying, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’. Even unions that lead successful wages’ strikes can’t survive if they can’t protect their members.

In 1970, unionists round the country were strong enough ‘to stop work to stop the Vietnam War’. Despite being bigger than the three 1970s anti-war protests, in 2003 the working class didn’t go on strike against Australian war against Iraq. Unions were no longer strong enough.

Both war and terrorism arise naturally from capitalism. Collectivism, embodied in the working class, is its antidote. It’s time to do much more, learn much more, build organisation and strength. Capitalism is the problem. It has to go!

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May Day rally in Adelaide – strength in diversity in action.

Written by: Ned K. on 5 May 2024

On Saturday 4 May, about 2000 people rallied at Tarntanya Warma (Elder Park) and in high spirits marched to Tarntanyangga (Victoria Square)

The rally and march was a "sea" of flags of different colours from the Aboriginal flag to many union flags to Palestinian flags, carried by unionists in their equally colourful union t-shirts.

The rally started with a Welcome to Country from Kaurna woman Rosalind Coleman.

She emphasized the importance to Kaurna people of the starting point of the rally and said that the name of Tarntanyangga, where the march was to end, referred to the red kangaroo and kangaroos only move forward and that was a timely message in itself for a May Day celebration.

The main speaker at the rally was a United Workers Union member who worked in Early Childhood Education. She said that Early Childhood Education workers were one of the first sections of the working class to put the Albanese Government's multi-employer bargaining laws to the test. Thousands of low paid almost entirely women workers in the sector were ready to take industrial action against private for-profit corporate childcare centre owners if they did not agree to at least 25% wage increases as a first step towards valuing the work performed by mainly women workers in what was now an essential service.

A representative of the ACTU spoke about the declining real living standards in Australia manifested in rising prices of food and household goods and the crisis of lack of affordable housing.

The welcomed historic presence of Palestinian flags and members from Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) was a reflection of the ACTU's expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people and their recent demand that the Australian Government end all military trade with Israel.

The combination of Kauna leader Rosalind Coleman's Welcome to Country, the diversity of unions represented at the rally and the presence of Palestinian flags and AFOPA was a timely reminder that for May Day 2024, the call - "WORKERS AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF THE WORKD UNITE" is as powerful and relevant as ever.

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Australia and Imperialism in the 21st Century

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Organisation is the central aspect of the revolutionary question of arming the masses

Written by: Adam K, on 3 May 2024

There has been recent media coverage of the creation of a National Firearms Register with accompanying images of the destruction of firearms surrendered under the Permanent National Firearms Amnesty which began on 1 July 2022. Nearly 30,000 firearms and other weapons have been surrendered under the Amnesty. When these measures were first suggested, in 2018, we discussed the issue in the following article, which we thought it timely to reproduce – eds.

Guns and gun control laws are once again a topic for discussion following the news of yet another mass shooting in the United States, this time at a high school in the state of Florida. It is a topic that sparks a wide range of responses from various perspectives.

For Marxist-Leninists it is imperative to understand that the most basic element of a correct revolutionary approach to the gun question is that of organisation.

Marxism recognises that fundamentally the State is the instrument for the rule of one class over another. In capitalist society that means the rule of the capitalist class (or bourgeoisie) over the working class (or proletariat). In a superficial democracy, like Australia, the ruling class may first try to maintain its rule through deception via institutions like parliament, but ultimately this rule of the bourgeoisie rests on force and violence. It relies on the police, the law, the courts and the jails. Always backing up this force and violence in case it isn’t enough is the central component of state power: the army. The armed force of the capitalist class can only be overthrown by the armed force of the ideologically and organisationally prepared working class. This is a historically proven universal truth and a basic principle of Marxism-Leninism.

This is one reason why some communists and revolutionaries often argue against the call for legislation to prohibit and restrict the ability of ordinary civilians to acquire firearms. In short, they argue it renders the working class unarmed and leaves the state and its agents with a monopoly on armed force. While this is partially true, it still neglects the most decisive factor in the question of armed struggle between the classes; the ideological and political preparation and organisation of the working class into a fighting force under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Failure to understand and give this most decisive factor its due importance often means falling in to the trap of bourgeois legalism and overemphasising the importance of this or that particular legal reform in order to defend the working class. From a revolutionary perspective, the legality of the working class owning guns is largely irrelevant. The arming of the organised working class in a revolution will not be dependent on any legal right to do so and acquiring arms will mean doing so by any means available. Sufficient preparation and organisation, as well as correct leadership from the proletarian party, will solve these problems at the appropriate time.

Marx on arming the proletariat

There is a quote by Marx that is often used by those who argue against the introduction of laws to restrict the sale of firearms to ordinary people to give their argument a ‘Marxist’ justification.

“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.” – Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, March 1850

This cherry-picked quote taken out its historical context, and indeed the context of the surrounding text, seems to justify the arming of the working class under any pretext.

In 1850, the working class of Europe had already experienced two years of revolutionary upheaval against the remnants of feudalism. In France, the revolutionaries were successful in abolishing the monarchy, but in Germany the revolution was mostly defeated. By 1850, the seizure of power by the petty bourgeois democrats in Germany was imminent, and Marx foresaw that they would turn on the workers’ movement the moment they achieved power. Marx was calling for the workers’ party to “go into battle with the maximum degree of organization, unity and independence, so that it is not exploited and taken in tow by the bourgeoisie as in 1848.”

He was not arguing for the spontaneous and haphazard arming of the working class masses regardless of historical context, or arguing in defence of any existing bourgeois legality to keep and bear arms, but was calling for the maximum organisation of the working class to defend its own independent agenda in a volatile revolutionary situation.

The centrality of the element of organisation to Marx’s argument is clear if we read the quote in full.

“To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party , whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.”

Armed struggle and Australia’s revolution

The debate over gun control laws has largely been settled in Australia for the time being, and there is little desire among the Australian people to see the sort of lax gun laws or gun culture that exists in the US.

Although notable exceptions exist such as the war of resistance by First Nations people to British colonisation (known as the Frontier Wars) and the Eureka Stockade, historically speaking armed struggle has not been a major form of struggle in Australia. One of the main reasons for this has been the strong hold of the illusions of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and the faith of the people in the forces of social democracy and the trade unions which have time after time been used to defuse and funnel the anger of the people back into the peaceful and legal struggle of the ballot box.
Despite this, the people’s movement is continuously met with the force and violence of the state. We see examples of this with draconian legislation against civil liberties, police assaults, the increasing militarisation of the police force, and the deployment of increasing numbers of riot police and their willingness to deploy non-lethal chemical weapons at otherwise peaceful rallies and protests.

Sooner or later, the people will need to confront this state violence. The fact remains that the highest form of revolution is the seizure of political power by armed force. This is a truth and Australia is no exception.

Following our theory of a two-stage continuous revolution, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) analyses the current stage of Australia’s revolution to be the anti-imperialist universal struggle for independence under the leadership of the working class as the first stage on the road to socialism.

To overthrow imperialist domination will require intense revolutionary struggle by Australia’s working class and its allies, and will inevitably be met by the counter-revolutionary force and violence of the reactionary ruling class. To defend against this counter-revolutionary violence the Australian people will need to be well organised for armed struggle.

The question of arming the anti-imperialist forces will inevitably arise as the cause of anti-imperialist independence and revolution becomes a mass question. Firstly, this requires the Australian people to be convinced by their own experiences that such a revolution is necessary. But it also requires the Party to be organised deep in the heart of the working class and among other progressive strata of the people, learning from them and in turn teaching them, step-by-step raising their ideological and political understanding. It means building organisations and institutions that can serve their immediate needs and further their struggles, directing them against the main enemy of imperialism in Australia.

It is with this spirit of serving the people that our Party and its members approach the revolutionary tasks that lay before us.

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May Day Solidarity - Victory for Palestine!

Written by: Alice M. on 30 April 2024

Palestinian Resistance Isolates Zionism and US imperialism

By Alice M.
Palestine’s fight for liberation is turning the US imperialist dominated world upside down.

Seven months of relentless Israeli slaughter of the people of Gaza and the West Bank has only spread the flames of Palestinian resistance and the solidarity of the great majority of peoples of the world.

Zionist Israel and its US-led imperialist backers stand isolated and exposed in their massacre of 34,000 Palestinians, nearly half of whom are children. Thousands more are still buried in mass graves under the rubble when Israel bombed countless homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, child care centres, kindergartens and a university.

Not satisfied, Israel is now intent on starving the remaining Palestinian population of Gaza.

Heroic resistance
Yet, Israel, the world’s bloodiest military after the US, armed to the teeth with the most advanced high tech and intelligence weaponry, militarily and politically supported and funded in trillions of dollars by US imperialism, has failed to extinguish the 76 years of the Palestinian resistance to Zionist Israel’s brutal occupation and oppression.

The seven months of Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank to wipe out the existence of Palestinians, has only strengthened the unity and determination of the 5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to resist and fight for their liberation.

Their steadfast fight against the brutal colonial occupation by the fascist Israeli state is an inspiration and a beacon for millions around the world oppressed by colonialism, capitalism and imperialism.

Israel’s genocide and the heroic Palestinian resistance is mobilising millions around the world in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Millions across the world support Palestine’s struggle for liberation. Palestinians are showing that peoples of the world have the absolute right, and duty, to resist oppression, exploitation and fight for national liberation and freedom.

Seven months into Israel’s invasion and genocide in Gaza and mass rallies of hundreds of thousands across the world in solidarity are growing in numbers and influence. The Zionist Israeli state and US imperialism are exposed and isolated.

People’s mass organisations and actions against Israel’s genocide and complicity by imperialist powers and their lackeys, like Australia, have spontaneously sprung up in all corners of the world. People of the world are demanding Israel be boycotted, charged with genocide, and prosecuted before the International Court of Justice for its genocidal war crimes.

US and its lackeys condemned
The Palestinian struggle has widened the gulf between the people and ruling classes of the capitalist world, sharpening contradictions between the exploited and their exploiters.

Capitalist and imperialist drive for control of the world’s resources, markets and bigger profits are behind Israel’s colonial occupation and genocide. Palestinian liberation is sharpening struggles between the governments of capitalist and imperialist countries and the people. Palestinian resistance is exposing the leading role of US imperialism and its military industrial complex as accomplices in the genocide.

People power from below is demanding the ruling classes and their governments condemn Israel, stop exporting weapons and aid to Israel. Dock workers are striking, refusing to handle weapons bound for Israel, banning Israeli shipping lines and blockading international ports.

Across the world communities are blockading multinational weapons manufacturers’ factories. Students are occupying their universities, demanding multinational weapons corporations are kicked out of universities. Tens of thousands protesting against Israel and the US are being arrested in the US and Israel.

Since the start of Zionist Israel genocide in October 2023 in Gaza, growing numbers of Jewish people are condemning Zionism and protesting against Israeli genocide and the 76 years of Zionist occupation of Palestine. Jewish Anti-Zionist organisations and groups have been formed across the world.

In Australia, Jews Against Zionism, Jews Against the 1948 Occupation, Loud Jew Collective and the reconstituted progressive Jewish Council of Australia are active in the Palestine solidarity movement. The anti-zionist Jewish Council of Australia has commended the university protests and rejected claims that they are antisemitic. https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/media/university-encampments-are-no-threat

In the US, ruling class support for the Zionist Israel genocide is deepening contradictions between the people and monopoly capital, exposing the US hypocrisy. Democrats are losing their supporters as Biden desperately tries to win them back for the next election, crying crocodile tears, asking Israel nicely not to kill “civilians”, and in the same breath sending $26 billion in military aid to assist Israel in its genocide.

The complicity of US-led imperialist powers in the genocide of Palestinian people is exposing the reality of US global “rules-based order”, hastening its political demise. No longer can US imperialism and its lackeys, like Australia, hide their support and complicity in genocide.

Australia – puppet of US imperialism
As in everything, the puppet Labor government is dancing to the tune of US imperialism, unwilling to veer one small step away from supporting US world domination and colonial Zionist Israel. In the UN it loyally follows the US and rubber stamps every move to protect Israel’s brutal occupation and genocide.
Meanwhile, US imperialism uses its Pine Gap spy base to provide military intelligence and co-ordinates to assist the murderous Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Australian people are disgusted with the Labor government’s complicity in Israel’s and US massacres. In the middle of Israel’s killings of 34,000 Gazans the Australian government signed a $917 million contract with Elbit, Israel’s biggest developer and manufacturer of weapons. That’s $1billion gifted to one of the world’s biggest perpetrators of war crimes.

Zionist Israel in crisis
Israel itself is deeply divided, beginning to implode and on the brink of open fascism.

Fault lines and conflict of interests and strategies are opening up between Israel and the US, its biggest and most important sponsor without whose support Zionist Israel would not have survived as long as it has. Israel is a crucial base for the US economic, political and military dominance in the region. Palestinian resistance is uniting and mobilising the masses of the Middle East against US imperialism.

Israel’s genocide is showing the world the reality of 76 years brutal colonial occupation. The world is learning about Nakba, about Gaza as a concentration camp created by Israel. About violent and armed Zionist settlers, supported by the Zionist state and Israeli army, stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank and brutally evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.

The world is learning about Israel stealing water and destroying Palestinian farms and olive groves in the West Bank, deliberately making life unbearable for Palestinians to force them to leave or die.

The world is learning about the thousands of Palestinian prisoners as young as 10 or 12 rotting for years in Israeli gaols for merely throwing a rock at an Israeli Occupying Force (IOF) soldier, for flying a Palestinian flag. The world is witnessing Israel’s horrific apartheid.

But the Palestinian struggle is turning the tide and shifting the ground for all the oppressed peoples of the world.

As long as the Palestinian people control their own destiny, they will surely be victorious.

Close Pine Gap!
Kick Elbit out of Australia!
Ban Zim and all Israeli shipping companies from entering Australian Ports!
Impose BDS against Israel!
Support Palestine Liberation!
Independence for Australia from all super powers!

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May Day – unite to lift the level of struggle

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 1 May 2024

We are reprinting the font page of the paper Vanguard to be distributed free of charge at May Day rallies. The entire paper can be downloaded by clicking the link "Latest Publications" on the left hand side of our homepage. Our Party's statement follows:

May Day 2024 sees Australian workers and their communities gripped in a major cost of living crisis.

Aid agencies and food distribution centres report that it is no longer the unemployed and homeless seeking their support: people in low-paid jobs, people struggling to pay escalating rents and those with mortgages caught out by rising interest rates show that the virus of economic crisis is spreading through the wider community.

No real relief is in sight.

It's called imperialism

At the same time, there are now more billionaires in our country, and their wealth has increased. According to Forbes magazine, Australia’s 50 richest tycoons are collectively better off from a year ago. They added $9 billion or around 4% to take their combined wealth to $222 billion.

On the global stage imperialism continues to wreak havoc. The division of the world into rich and poor nations is backed by oppressive state machines and military pacts. In addition to those serving the needs of US imperialism, there are those of its rivals, Russian imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism. They franticly compete to develop new killing machines and new areas of control.

Artificial intelligence is identifying people to kill without the need for human oversight. It is being used in Gaza where the Zionists say that it is acceptable to kill 100 citizens using AI “identification” in order to take out one alleged Hamas operative by drone attacks.

In flagrant violation of UN treaties on Outer Space, US imperialism has created the Space Force to ensure US military control of the Space domain.

Australia has agreed to pay the fantastic sum of $368 billion to surrender its sovereignty to US imperialism through the AUKUS arrangements. US spokespersons have confirmed that they expect “our” submarines to take part in any conflict with China over Taiwan. They will determine whether we go to war with our major trading partner.

What does all this mean for May Day in Australia?

May Day is the day of international working class struggle and solidarity for a world free of exploitation, imperialist wars and repression.

On May Day we express our solidarity with the struggles of the working people of all countries, and send our warmest greetings to the courageous comrades in revolutionary parties and organisations around the world.

May Day belongs to the working class

For as long as there are workers determined to fight for the interests of the working class and all oppressed people, no-one can take May Day from us, stamp it out, buy it off, commercialise it or make it acceptable to capitalism.

It’s a day when workers proudly proclaim their confidence in the future.

They acknowledge the sacrifices that have been, and will be, made and declare that they will not be deterred by the deceptions and violence of the reactionaries.

Today, the urgent demand is for the defeat of Israeli Zionist genocide and an end to their ethnic cleansing of the homelands of the Palestinian people.

Behind the Zionists stand the US imperialists and their lackeys in various countries.

And beyond the urgency of the defeat of the Israeli aggressors are yet other struggles on every continent against feudalism, capitalism and imperialism and for the rights of working people.

In our country, the best elements of the working class embrace and support the struggles of First Nations peoples, of women and youth, of environmental campaigns, and of struggling rural communities.

The ruling classes use the tactics of racism and religious fundamentalism to try and divide the working class; they prepare war and fascism to try and solve the economic and political crises besetting their system.

For an independent working class agenda!

An independent working class agenda, an independent set of demands backed by unity of action in achieving, them are urgently needed.

That agenda is embedded in struggles against fascism, war and environmental destruction.

We call on Australian workers to strive to lift the level of struggle for the achievement of the people’s demands.

For anti-imperialist independence and socialism!
Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!

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ICOR May Day statement

Written by: ICOR on 30 April 2024

Our Party is an affiliate of the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR). The ICOR May Day statement was drafted by us and based onour own May Day statement which is the lead article on the hard copy of Vanguard which will be distributed at May Day rallies. We will post our statement tomorrow - eds.

To all ICOR members

May Day call of ICOR on initiative of CPA(M-L) Australia:

May Day – let us unite and develop our struggles!

26 April 2024

May Day is the day of international working class struggle and solidarity for a world free of exploitation, imperialist wars, environmental destruction and repression.

On May Day we in ICOR express our solidarity with the struggles of the working people of all countries, and send our warmest greetings to the courageous comrades in revolutionary parties and organisations around the world. We are united in the struggle for socialism all over the world.

May Day belongs to the working class

For as long as there are workers determined to fight for their own class interests and those of all oppressed peoples, no-one can take May Day from us, stamp it out, buy it off, commercialise it or make it acceptable to capitalism.

It’s a day when workers proudly proclaim their confidence in the future.

They acknowledge the sacrifices that have been, and will be, made and declare that they will not be deterred by the deceptions and violence of the reactionaries.

Today, unjust, imperialist wars are flaring up in various hot spots around the world. The Israeli Zionist genocide and ethnic cleansing of the homelands of the Palestinian people must be stopped immediately. Behind the Zionists stand the US imperialists and their lackeys and accomplices in various countries. So it is urgently necessary to defeat the Israeli Zionist aggressors. Beyond that there are other struggles on every continent against feudalism, capitalism and imperialism and for the rights of working people.

The need for mutual support and proletarian internationalist unity of all progressive forces is more evident than ever. Thus the fight to defeat the Russian imperialist invasion of Ukraine and against US and NATO expansion in Eastern Europe; to defend Rojava against fascist Turkey’s attacks; to end conflicts in Sudan and the Congo; to prevent aggression against Yemen; against US-China rivalry in the Indo-Pacific; against Indian encroachment on Nepal; on the fight for West Papuan independence from Indonesia.

Working people around the world are under immense and fierce attack from the imperialists and corporate ruling classes. The decaying system of capitalism is in economic and political crisis. Millions of people are struggling to make ends meet, more are thrown into poverty. At the same time, billions in profits, created by the labour of workers, are taken by the parasitic ruling class. Capital’s war on the working class and nature is relentless and escalating. Fight to improve the social situation of the broad masses! Fight to protect the natural environment, the basis of our life!

The ruling classes use the tactics of racism and religious fundamentalism to divide the working class; they prepare war and fascism to try and solve the economic and political crises besetting their system.

But around the world the masses are rising up, especially against fascism and in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. The international working class is speaking out, with a 6-week strike by automobile workers of several monopolies together in the USA and fearless struggles by textile workers in Bangladesh for higher wages.

For an independent working class agenda!

An independent working class agenda, class demands, and unity of action to achieve the demands of the working class are urgently needed.

That work is embedded in the agenda of the anti-imperialist united front against fascism, Zionism, war and environmental destruction.

ICOR calls on all revolutionary parties and organisations to strive to lift the level of struggle for the achievement of the people’s demands.

Long live May Day - long live socialism!

Signatories (as of 29 April 2024)
1. PCPCI Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast)
2. UPC-Manidem Union des Populations du Cameroun - Manifeste National pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie (Union of Populations of Cameroon - National Manifesto for the Establishment of Democracy)
3. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)
4. PCT Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo)
5. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia
6. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh
7. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal
8. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
9. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)
10.MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)
11.UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France
12.KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)
13.RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands
14.UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)
15.RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)
16.MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)
17.KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine
18.UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia
19.OAPCM Organización Apoyante del Partido Comunista de México (Supporting Organization of the Communist Party of Mexico)
20.PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))
21.PPP Partido Proletario del Perú (Proletarian Party of Peru)
22.PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic
23.APR Ação Popular Revolucionária (People’s Revolutionary Action), Brazil
24.CPPD Chinese People's Party for the Defense of Mao Zedong
Additional signatories (Non-ICOR):
SUCI (C) Socialist Union Center of India (Communist)

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May Day 2024

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May Day 2024

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May Day 2024

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Civil defence and the imperialist agenda

Written by: (Contributed) on 28 April 2024

The release of a report from a right-wing defence and security lobby organisation with strong links to the military-industrial complex was timed to coincide with the release of the government’s 2024 National Defence Strategy in Canberra. Military planners appear to be considering a return to civil defence provision along similar lines to that used in the previous Cold War. Sensitive military documents from the period, which were subsequently declassified, have revealed some areas of serious concern; the same problems are now set to reappear in contemporary Australia.

In April, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation released a report calling for a return to civil defence provision similar to that used in Australia during the previous Cold War. (1) While the main part of the plan was presented as the defence and security of Australia, the hidden agenda was clearly something else; it provided a chilling picture of shadowy, clandestine organisation, preoccupied with intelligence-gathering and covert operations.

The report, in fact, actually specified that the 'defence of the Australian theatre would be a higher priority than sending our forces abroad'. (2)

The Williams Foundation was named after Sir Richard Williams (1890-1980), a well-known Australian military figure, and from its official web-sites prides itself on 'independent and innovative thinking'. In reality, it is something else; a high-pressure defence and security lobby organisation inside the corridors of power, with strong links into the military-industrial complex. Multinational armaments manufacturers dominate. Lockheed Martin is a platinum corporate partner; Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are gold corporate partners; Boeing is a silver corporate partner; CAE Inc. (formerly Canadian Aviation Electronics) is a bronze corporate partner; while corporate sponsors include General Atomics Aeronautical and BAE Systems.

The Foundation’s website claims “The Sir Richard Williams Foundation conducts its operations independently and has no political or industry ties.” Yet its Board members have numerous political roles and actively work for companies including its multinational sponsors. The Board comprises:

• Air Marshal (Retd) Geoff Brown AO. He was operational commander of the RAAF during the illegal war on Iraq after which he became a Director of Lockheed Martin (Australia), and Chairman of the Advisory Board of CAE Asia Pacific and Middle East.

• Air Chief Marshal (Retd) Mark Binskin who was recently appointed by the Australian Government to advise on Israel’s response to its murder of Zomi Frankon and other aid workers in Gaza. Since his retirement he has worked as a Non-Executive Director with BAE Systems Australia and Nihon Cyber Defence.

• Ken Moore, a former top public servant who is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at the INSEAD Business School in France and the Senior Defence Resource Management Program at the US Navy Postgraduate School in California.

• Nicole Quinn, head of a government advisory company whose clients include Mitsubishi Motors (Australia), CAE and NEC Australia. She was previously General Manager of the regional security think tank the Institute for Regional Security.

• Vice Admiral (Rtd) Tim Barrett

• John Conway, who commanded the United Kingdom’s largest Permanent Joint Operating Base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus between 2005 and 2008 enabling the airbridge into Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the owner and Managing Director of Felix, an independent company providing specialist air domain and intelligence capability development, and creative services to Defence and industry. He was previously a business development executive with Raytheon Australia.

• Gerard Foley, the Chief of Growth for Raytheon Australia where he has worked for the last 22 years.

• Emily Frizell who owns a successful engineering and management specialist consulting company, AeroPM, which is a specialist service provider supporting Defence to acquire complex assets to support the warfighter.

• Major General (Retd) Fergus "Gus" McLachlan. He was awarded the United States Legion of Merit for his service in the international coalition force in Afghanistan. He is a Senior partner at Bondi Partners, founded in Washington DC in early 2020 by former Australian Ambassador to the United States, Joe Hockey. Its website states “With the evolution of AUKUS – a trilateral security pact between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. – Bondi Partners footprint continues to grow across the Pacific and the Atlantic. Today we have teams in Washington, Los Angeles, Sydney, Canberra and London where we partner with businesses which want to grow and invest across allied and global markets.”

• Air Vice-Marshal (Ret’d) Steve Roberton is a full-time senior advisor with US multinational McKinsey and Company.

• Katherine Ziesing, Strategic Communications Manager at South Korean Hanwha Defence Australia.

While great play has been made in the report to the seeming vulnerability of Australia to attack, plans for the new proposed civil defence organisation to deal with 'social cohesion, domestic security and public safety', should not be taken literally. (3)

The discredited reactionary and former senior public servant, former Australian Secretary of Home Affairs, Mike Pezzullo, spoke at a Williams Foundation seminar on April 11, He said “With very little notice the Australian Defence Force could be called upon to undertake rapid deployments into the nearby arc of small states. While necessary and important, such ventures would only be marginally relevant to today’s great issues of war and peace.”

He added that “the threats in front of Australia now needed to drive a re-set in efforts that considered the engagement of the society in its own defence”.

“Now as a practical suggestion to focus relevant effort, we should consider modernizing the earlier practice from the 1930s and then again from the 1950s of the preparation of a war book. The war book of those times were guides on what would need to be done and by whom, in the event of war. Preparing a new war book would help to focus the national mind.”

“A new war book would deal with the entire span of civil defense and mobilization which would be required to move to a war footing… All one has to look around you and find the activity of the multi-polar authoritarian world and the end of the American-led “rules-based order” to understand the future is now.” (4)

The earlier War Books

In all cases a common pattern of government and military policies included the closure of anti-fascist civil defence provision activated during the Second World War and subsequent re-establishing of similar provision in the late 1940s and 1950s with recruitment of 'safe' anti-communists. (5)

At a meeting of the NATO Confederation of Reserve Officers in Westminster in August 1948, a decision was taken to lobby for a revival of a civil defence capacity for Western Europe. A 'representative from the British Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve told the meeting it is not the case of training a force to be kept in reserve doing nothing while waiting for a war that might never happen. It has a useful function during civil emergencies'. (6)

While Australia was not a NATO member, its links with the British Commonwealth served a similar purpose.

The War Book issued in 1957 took place when Australia was governed by a right-wing Menzies administration which followed US-led Cold War military policy. Publications from the period leave little to the imagination. Those associated with the War Book were the most aggressive side of the business-classes. The main plan was to control civil society and channel political opposition; the main achievement of those concerned was to split the ALP and render it politically unable to win federal elections for decades. Trade unions, likewise, were subject to constant vilification.

Reviving conscription?

One of the main perpetrators behind the thinking outlined in the recent report is James Paterson, Opposition Home Affairs and Cyber Security spokesman. He is not a quiet, thoughtful individual. Addressing the annual ANZAC Oration at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne, he warned 'that urgent action is needed to bolster the ADF and address a workforce crisis'. (7)

The new proposed civil defence provision would appear part of the same package. The Liberals, likewise, have long toyed with the return of conscription on the basis of social cohesion, terminology used specifically in the report.

Similar references can also be found in the main National Defence Strategy 2024 publication which contains an emphasis on the fear of subversion without specifically using the terminology categorically. (8) Emphasis is also placed in the publication on supply-lines and Australian industry. (9)

While stated aims remain, political agendas, however, can easily be hidden.

The main enemy of Australians during the previous Cold War was not the Soviet Union but the 'enemy within': anti-communist far-right organisations developed strong links with those wielding class and state power. The far-right National Civic Council, for example, 'was approached by Australia's spy-chiefs when the possibility of their anti-communist crusade became apparent to ASIO and allied authorities'. (10) The NCC counterpart, the Australian League of Rights (ALOR), likewise, also retained similar links and as the Australian affiliate to the notorious World Anti-Communist League was an advocate of civil defence. (11)

The subsequent demise of the Soviet Union in 1990 resulted in vast troves of western defence and security documents from the Cold War suddenly being declassified. Plausible denial was then not possible for those wielding class and state power.

During the mid-1960s, for example, the US military began upgrading training manuals for counter-insurgency and counter-intelligence programs. One program, Project X, included provision for 'aerial surveillance, eavesdropping, interrogation, basic counter-sabotage measures, hiring and firing informants, lock picking and censorship'. (12) It was used through intelligence agents infiltrating 'a wide array of groups, including political parties, labour unions, youth and student groups, religious organisations, and publishing organisations … one manual even cast suspicion on the electoral process. Insurgents can resort to subversion of the government by means of elections'. (13)

During the early 1970s the US began 'exporting Project X material to US military assistance groups working with friendly foreign countries. By the mid-1970s the Project X material was going to military forces all over the world'. (14) A noticeable trend with the US military assistance was channelling expertise through seemingly out-sourced private organisations, created to enable the US to use plausible denial if challenged. Studies of the matter have, however, shown that many of those operations during the previous Cold War were 'CIA sub-contracts'. (15)

Due to Australia's close military alliance with the US, there is every reason to expect the training material to have been incorporated into Australian Defence Force provision. In fact, ADF training manuals from the same period include similar provision. (16) Military biographies from the previous Cold War provide more than adequate evidence that the US used Australia as a convenient hub for 'US interests' in the wider region from soon after the end of the Second World War. (17)

A common pattern with the military training included use of civil defence organisation for a variety of purposes including general surveillance of civilian populations where lists were drawn up following profiling together with the use of paramilitary groups. (18) There was little ambiguity in the eyes of the Pentagon as to whom were the targets: one training manual noted the co-ordinated counter-intelligence activities worldwide were against those who oppose the US Defence Department 'during peacetime and all levels of conflict'. (19)

Those associated with the Williams Foundation who lurk inside the corridors of power lobbying for civil defence provision are pursuing a Cold War hidden agenda in support of the US military-industrial complex and a return to the same problems of yesteryear.

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Credible chance of war: Why we must plan for attack, Australian, 19 April 2024.

2. Ibid.

3. Website: Williams Foundation.

3. Australian, op.cit., 19 April 2024.

4. Ibid.

5. See: NATO Secret Army's, Daniele Ganser, (2005); and, Secret Army's war on the Left, The Observer, (London), 18 November 1990.

6. NATO and civil emergencies, State Research, Bulletin 1, October 1977, page 9.

7. Libs' Defence prescription to head off future conscription fight, Australian, 23 April 2024.

8. See: National Defence Strategy 2024, (Canberra, 2024), on-line book, page 18.

9. Ibid.

10. Benign spy-master built global network, The Age (Melbourne), 3 March 1998.

11. See: The Australian League of Rights, Andrew A. Campbell, (Victoria, 1978); and, Voices of Hate, K. D. Gott, (Melbourne, July 1965); and, Inside the League, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, (New York, 1986), Appendix, The League List, pp. 275-85; and, Ted Serong, The life of an Australian counter-insurgency expert, Anne Blair, (Melbourne, 2002), pp. 186-192.

12. Army's Project X had wider audience, The Washington Post, 6 March 1997.

13. Ibid.

14. Lost History: Project X, The Consortium magazine, 31 March 1997.

15. Inside the League, op.cit., page 305, footnote 18.

16. See: The Division in Battle, Pamphlet Number 1, Organisation and Tactics, Military Board, Army Headquarters, Canberra, 1 June 1966; and, Infantry Training, Volume 4, Part 2, Army Headquarters, Canberra, 1 May 1967.

17. See: Ted Serong, Blair, op.cit., pp. 73-203.

18. Washington Post, op.cit., 6 March 1997; and, Counter Insurgency Operations, US Army, Army Foreign Intelligence Assistance, ref: 19960709 052; and, US Army Regulation, 381-20, The Army Counter-Intelligence Program, declassified 15 November 1993.

19. US Army Regulation 381-20, ibid., Section 1.5, Mission and Policy, page 1; and, see also, US Army Field Manual 30-31, Appendix B, about the controversy surrounding those associated with civil defence type provision and the far-right and terrorism.

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Congratulating the DFLP on the success of its eighth national conference

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 28 April 2024

We recently received the good news from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) about the successful conclusion of their eighth national conference. We immediately sent them the following congratulatory message for which Comrade Fouad Baker at the DFLP's Foreign Office has thanked us. A message of congratulations to the DFLP was also sent by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - eds

To the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

27 April 2024

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) congratulates the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on the successful conclusion of its eighth general national conference.

Meeting in conditions of the greatest difficulty, conference participants in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and throughout the Palestinian diaspora elected a new Central Committee with Comrade Fahd Suleiman as General-Secretary and Comrade Nayef Hawatmeh as head of the DFLP.

The conference upheld the commitment of the DFLP to scientific socialism and supported the Palestinian people in continuing to rally around the resistance.

The 70-plus years of Zionist Israel’s attempts to complete the ethnic cleansing that characterised the Nakba, and the intensified genocidal aggression against Gaza since early October 2023, have brought Australians into the streets every week in their tens of thousands, have seen attempts by activists to disrupt the manufacture and export of war parts to Israel, and to blockade ports against Israel’s Zim shipping line. New groups have emerged to promote the struggle against Zionism, including Unionists for Palestine. Officials of the Maritime Union have been arrested for leading port blockades against Zim ships.

Reflecting the growing involvement of working class Australians in opposition to the Gaza genocide, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has called for an end to the occupation of Palestine, and called on the Australian Government to immediately:

• Use all influence, pressure, and diplomatic measures to achieve a permanent ceasefire.

• End all military trade with Israel

• Enact targeted sanctions on Israeli officials who have called for the denial of aid, and military and civil servants denying essential food and materials to civilians of Gaza.

• Commit additional funding of $100 million in humanitarian assistance to Gaza and the West Bank

Anti-Zionist Jews have responded to Netanyahu’s criminal bloodlust by forming their own Jewish Council of Australia, opposing Zionist attempts to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.

Resistance comes at a cost, but submission means ceasing to exist.

We salute the heroic and continuing resistance of the Palestinian people.

Death to Zionism and imperialism.

Nick G.

Chairperson, CPA (M-L) on behalf of the Central Committee

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A workers’ party of a new type

Written by: Ned K. on 25 April 2024

If you ask people what comes to mind when you ask them the question "what political party, if any, do you support?" many people will say the Liberal Party or Nationals or Labor Party or the Greens or even "the Teals". An increasing number of people will say " None, they're all the same!"

What all these parties have in common is that they equate a political party with parliament and the people's involvement being the one day of the year every three or four years when elections are held.

Within official trade union circles, most are affiliated to the ALP and their leaderships urge their members to vote Labor because they are "better than the Liberals". If members ask for more information, they may get told that both the Unions and the Labor Party are part of the " labour movement".

So many workers especially, generation after generation, have voted for the Labor Party in the hope of significant changes to their working, family and community lives. More and more workers question what type of "labour movement" the Labor Party leaders are talking about. The decline of the Labor primary vote at elections is an indication of this disillusionment with the Labor Party as the working people's political party.

Kevin Rudd, the former Labor Party leader and Prime Minister, gave an insight in to what the ALP's "labour movement " means in his first parliamentary speech in December 2006 when he said,

"Our movement for a century fought against Marxism, if you bother to read your history. We have had nothing to do with Marxism and madness. We have always seen our role as what we can do to civilize the market. That is where we come from as a tradition...So when it comes to our Labor values of equity, sustainability and compassion, we do not just believe that these, in themselves, are self-sufficient and worthy of being pursued. We also hold that they are values necessary to enhance the market itself."

Yet it is the volatility of the so-called "free market" of the system Rudd talked about that led to hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs as one manufacturing industry after another moved overseas because the "free market" was more profitable for the capitalists.

The Labor Party and all parliamentary parties and even the ACTU leaders were powerless to stop it at best and at worst supported this "free market" destructive impact on working people's lives.

Workers Party of a New Type

One day about twenty years ago in Melbourne, I was at a union and community meeting about what needed to be done for workers to break out of the cycle of hope and disappointments experienced with Labor in parliamentary office, I heard a woman who identified as Dulcie (above) start talking about how workers needed a Party of a new type. Someone asked her what she meant by a "Party of a new type".

She replied with words to the effect that parliamentary politics and their parties were a very limited form of democracy which was outside of the involvement and control of the people who put them into parliament on election day.

She said that people sensed this, and this is why workers and community struggles and issue-based organizations arise on all sorts of issues.
She said in all these struggles, leaders arise at the grass roots level. Some of these leaders were invited to channel struggles into parliamentary channels, but not many. Most remained leaders among the people involved in their particular struggle and community.

Dulcie said that what was needed in her view was a political Party that linked all the leaders within the myriad of people's struggles into an unbreakable network across the whole country. Such an organization would unite people for fundamental change of society away from capitalism's "free market" economy.

Someone asked Dulcie why she thought this would happen. She replied that through exchange of views between grass roots leaders and exploring ideas and social theories that served working people and their communities rather the free market and profit motive, a people's movement would develop so powerful that the parliament and the small minority of corporations would be overcome and a new society of socialism serving people not profit would emerge. She said the big money people and those with privileges in parliament would not give up without a fight, but "we are many, they are few"

She said that was what the CPA (ML), of which she was a member, was striving to become: a Party of a new type, but that it was the working people themselves who would determine if it "made the grade".

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Before Sydney stabbings, capitalism’s cupboard was bare for mental health

Written by: Louisa L. on 24 April 2024

(Above: Outside Bondi Westfields where seven people died on April 13)

The tattered remnants of public mental health care in NSW are held together by family members and volunteers.

The week before six people were fatally stabbed in Bondi, and a mentally ill 16-year-old stabbed a priest, two Uniting Church psychiatric hospitals were closed in Sydney, because they were losing money.

When six strangers in a crowded public place are killed, grief and shock is inevitable. The media fans it to fever pitch. But people are frequently “murdered” by family members suffering psychotic episodes. And police too often shoot mentally ill people who ought to have been in hospital or long-term residential rehabilitation.

Instead of suggesting triple zero and an ambulance, when “you or someone you know” is mentally ill, the media choruses Lifeline and Beyond Blue. A young friend frequently uses Lifeline’s skilled volunteer services. Being alone and suicidal is not enough to be admitted to hospital – unless she’s taken an overdose.

On a pension she pays private health cover, so she can have occasional and much needed treatment in an expensive private hospital.

After the ambulance left

The mental health system is designed to stop people being hospitalised, unless they have money to pay, and they are well enough to understand they need help.

Last winter, under a suburban Sydney neighbourhood centre awning in pouring rain, a close friend, a mother and two adult daughters, waited for police and an ambulance.

It had taken hard arguing to convince my friend that police be called after her 16-year-old son threatened them, so he could be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. A centre worker did unpaid overtime while they talked.

What happened? The son, who had previously assaulted his mother, sister and brother, assured the ambulance officers and police he wouldn’t harm himself or anyone else. Imagine the family’s vulnerability when the police and ambulance officers left. Instead of a dangerously ill young person receiving necessary treatment, the three women each found separate accommodation. An uncle and a youth worker checked on my friend’s son the next day, but he lived alone for over two weeks until his still fearful mother returned.

Desolation and grief

But his family’s grief is nothing compared to the desolation of the Bondi attacker’s parents whose son endured a living nightmare, denied desperately-needed health care, his life ended in such terrible circumstances. Nor does my friend’s ongoing worry compare to the grief of the families of those killed in that suburban shopping centre, or the family of the 16-year old on terrorism charges.

The media babbles about “people falling through the cracks in the mental health system”. What system? It’s not cracked. It’s been dismantled brick by brick because the mentally ill and their families are weak and unable to defend themselves. They are the bottom of capitalism’s heap. Their treatment is expensive, not privately profitable. They are disposable.

Mentally ill people are disproportionately part of the homelessness epidemic. Alongside First Peoples, alongside the poor and illiterate, mentally ill people fill our jails. Because under capitalism there’s always money for jails to mop up its normal functioning.

NSW Premier Minns announced an $18 million inquiry into what went wrong in the lead-up to the Bondi stabbings. Unless it’s accompanied by struggle to reinstate public mental health care at all levels, it will be just another whitewash. We know the state government funding cupboard is bare, after decades of corporate plunder and privatisations.

For mental health, it’s been empty for decades. More deaths, more suffering – that’s capitalism’s promise to profoundly ill people and their families. Seven more dead and a 16-year-old charged with terrorism? Collateral damage. Nothing $18 million, plus media evasions and a lot of sorry talk, can’t sweep from sight.

We need a new system. We need a revolution.

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Productivity Commission wonks still pushing discredited economic rationalism

Written by: (Contributed) on 24 April 2024

(Above: The designers of this Mambo t-shirt understood the link)

Commentary from right-wing economic figures about the failure of globalisation to provide sustainable growth have revealed their sense of denial about the main cause of the problem.

Their failure to also provide a satisfactory explanation for the increasingly dysfunctional state of economic affairs has provided further insights into their peculiar mind-sets.

A serious of pronouncements from two right-wing figures with links to the Productivity Commission have revealed just how out-of-step they are with reliable economic criteria; their continued pushing of an economic rationalist agenda has been shown to not produce sustainability or growth. In fact, a recent IMF report has shown the advanced economies hover at below two per cent growth rates, with little sign of an upturn. (1)

Longer term projections have also shown a steady decline of GDP from the time of the global financial crisis in 2008 to a projection it will sink to zero toward the end of the present decade. (2)

It is, however, the pronouncements of those guiding or commenting of government policy which require scrutiny.

Michael Brennan, former head of the Productivity Commission, for example, has drawn attention to 'three decades of uninterrupted growth which followed the early 1990s recession'; it is not supported with reliable economic criteria or statistics. (3) The Commission is an official Australian government body, nevertheless, with extensive glitzy websites which have advisory capacities. It would appear to be truly stacked with right-wing coalition supporters and others of a similar ilk.

The present economic debate has become increasingly focussed upon levels of government intervention to provide stable growth and a political division between those who continue to support economic rationalism and those who question its prolonged use.

The general implementation of economic rationalism grew out of right-wing think-tanks during the early 1980s which influenced international financial institutions controlled by the US and Wall Street. Earlier, the Chilean military coup in 1973, had established a test-tube for those linked to the Chicago School of Economics which had quietly pushed economic rationalism for decades, behind the scenes inside the corridors of power.

Economic rationalism was, however, only part of a much bigger picture to place the US at the centre of the global economy.

Submitting as report to US Congress on 21 July 1994 about the so-called New World Order, then President Clinton defined the three main elements of security policy: to enhance security by maintaining a strong defence capability and promoting co-operative security measures; to open foreign markets and spur economic growth; and to promote US-style democracy overseas.

The outcome was the wholesale implementation of economic rationalist policies which included three elements: de-regulation, privatisation, liberalisation.

Economic rationalism has been economic vogue thinking for nearly half a century; the present state of affairs has been the readily observable outcome. The floods of finance capital flung to the four corners of the globe has produced dysfunctional economies often leading to political instability and crisis. The vision of those in control of international financial institutions was akin to that of a casino, where risk-taking was commonplace. It also created the conditions for a drastically reduced manufacturing base in Australia, which subsequently led to revised GDP totals in an ever downward spiral.

An eighteen-month study conducted by the US National Security Council using independent economists found it unlikely globalisation 'would lead to general well-being … because the gap between rich and poor – both between countries and within them – is growing'. (4) The study, conducted around the start of the present century, was subsequently leaked to a Spanish language media outlet, although never publicised in English language outlets and was allowed to remain relatively hidden, for obvious reasons.

The distribution of income from globalisation remains noteworthy; in fact, it can be successfully argued economic rationalism was never intended to provide a sustainable model, only to enrich the already rich and powerful. It was a means to reduce the bargaining power of labour and hinder their political opposition in favour of the business-classes and their cronies overseas, thereby strengthening traditional class and state power.

Early studies of the model showed the income of the advanced countries rose from eleven times greater than the developing world, to 23 times larger by 2000. (5) Economic rationalism can therefore best be viewed as a form of neo-colonialism. Within countries the rapid emergence of billionaires has been well recorded. (6) The manner in which such people flout their wealth on the Forbes websites while paying their workforces well below CPI and inflation rates reveal a great deal about their mind-sets and limited vision of the world. They reside in a parallel world, devoid of the working-class. The fact the latter produce the wealth and the former acquire it, is an issue they never address.

Recent studies of the Australian economy have revealed massive differences between rich and poor. Average wealth of the top ten per cent of the population have recorded faster growth rates than the lowest sixty per cent since 2003. (7) The wealth of the top ten per cent also soared 84 per cent, from $2.8 million to $5.2 million, whereas the lowest sixty per cent only rose 55 per cent, from $220,000 to $343,000. (8) The poorest twenty per cent of Australians had a recorded average wealth of just $41,000, which is only seventeen per cent higher than it was in 2003. (9)

It was noted from a study conducted by the University of NSW and the Australian Council of Social Service that the average housing wealth for those in the lowest twenty per cent of the Australian population was zero. (10)

The wealth gap, for those under 35 years of age, is even more startling; it recorded the lowest sixty per cent accruing an increase in their wealth rising by only 39 per cent, from $68,000 in 2003 to $80,000 in 2022, while the highest ten per cent rose 126 per cent in the same period, from $928,000 to $2 million. (11)

Despite the spurious motives for retaining economic rationalism, it can clearly be established to not have produced sustainable growth anywhere, or a betterment of life-styles
for the vast majority of people.

When challenged, however, right-wing economists continue to defend the model although they are inclined to offer furphies as additional factors. Those linked to the Productivity Commission, for example, have drawn attention to the failure of Australian entrepreneurs to register patents. Stating Australia is 'among the least innovative economies in the world', a report has recorded under ten per cent of registered patents are Australian-based as opposed to the US where more than seventy per cent are used by US businesses. (12)

The report does not refer to the fact that Australia only contributes 1.67 per cent of global GDP, whereas the US has a 25.3 per cent standing. (13)

Criticism from the Productivity Commission about recent government grants to support Australian manufacturing, likewise, has been revealing, with statements issued which have included reference to 'a return to old think industry protectionism', and not establishing a revival of a strong manufacturing base. (14)

The fact their economic model of choice has proved dysfunctional and created a state of affairs whereby an IMF projection for Australia's GDP being only 1.5 per cent this year, possibly increasing to two per cent in 2025, has, likewise, been conveniently ignored.

The Productivity Commission and those linked to the organisation can best be regarded as benefiting from economic rationalism and therefore have no reason to change the model; they are quite content to languish in economic mediocrity.

1. IMF warns on 'stalling' progress to reduce inflation, Australian, 17 April 2024.
2. Economic decline, 'Goodbye good times, hello reality', Australian, 11 April 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Hunger does not subside and slavery returns, Granma International (Havana), 24 June 2001.
5. How globalisation fuels poverty, Socialist Campaign Group News (Westminster, London), July 2005.
6. See: Survival of the Richest, OXFAM Report, 2000.
7. 'Disturbing' gap between haves and have nots, The New Daily, 18 April 2024.
8. Ibid.
9. Australian, op.cit., 11 April 2024.
10 Bonanza for rich leaves poor in their wake, Australian, 18 April 2024.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. World GDP, World Bank, 25 July 2023.
14. Australian, op.cit., 11 April.

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Honour the Past, Fight for the Future

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 24 April 2024

With May Day fast approaching, we reprint the editorial from the 8-page Vanguard newspaper that will be distributed at rallies and marches. It is free of charge, so look out for our distributors and take your own copy – eds.

On May Day, class conscious workers come together to express solidarity with comrades across the world in their struggles for liberation, peace, justice and a decent life.

Only the working class has these deep feelings of international class solidarity, based on their recognition that they are all victims of the class system, all subject to exploitation, abuse, deceit, and all threatened by the murderous war policies of imperialism.

At gatherings, The Internationale rings out, “Arise ye workers from your slumbers, arise ye prisoners of want…” calling on the class to take up its historic mission of leading the masses through fundamental social change that eventually wipes out the class system altogether.

In places, The Red Flag is also sung, recalling the bitter struggles and sacrifices the working class has endured. It pays tribute to the heroes and martyrs that resisted the violence of the state, the hired thugs and fascists. “The workers’ flag is deepest red, it shrouded oft our martyred dead, and ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.”

In spite of defeats, oppression and betrayals, the working class never gives up, has no choice other than to struggle for survival and a better life, as the chorus rings out “Then raise the scarlet banner high, beneath its shade we’ll live or die, though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the red flag flying here.”

Australia’s working class
Workers in this country have won many hard-fought battles against local and foreign capitalists and multinational corporations. In the post-war years they achieved improving living standards and some progressive social benefits through union action and solidarity.

But, ever since the days of the Accord under the Hawke government, union membership has fallen away in many trades and professions, with most of the remaining unions falling in behind the parliamentary Labor Party and only mobilising members at election time.

Consequently, there is little strike action, little ACTU activity outside of the courthouse, and practically no solidarity actions which are now illegal.

Result – falling wages, unemployment, rampant cost of living increases, housing and rental crisis, small businesses going broke, banks and supermarkets screwing their customers ever harder.

Capitalism reasserts itself as always. The lesson for workers is that whatever is won by struggle will always be challenged and whittled away, and this cycle can only be finished when capitalism is replaced by socialism.

Imperialism and the globalised economy
But that is only part of the story. At the same time, this “restructuring” of the economy encouraged further multinational investment and eventual control of key sections of Australian industries.

Obscene profits and rampant speculation followed, as the rich get even richer while the workers go backwards.

The political influence of US imperialism has now become dominant, reflected in the operational control of Pine Gap, the AUKUS deal and the growing intrusion into Australian military bases and airfields by the US military, aided and abetted by the sucking up antics of the current and previous Labor and Liberal governments.

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Swissport CEO shows contempt for workers

Written by: Duncan B. on 22 April 2024

Recently, Australia was graced by a visit from Warwick Brady, who is the President and CEO of Swissport, which is a giant Zurich-based airline ground handling company.

Swissport controls 45% of the Australian market, and 15% world-wide. It is looking to expand its cargo and airport lounge interests.

This company is the one to which Qantas outsourced its baggage handling operations in 2020, with the loss of 1700 jobs at ten airports in Australia. The Transport Workers’ Union took Qantas to the Federal Court, which found that Qantas acted illegally, and could not prove that its decision to outsource its baggage handling was not motivated by a desire to avoid industrial action from airport unions.

Brady defended the outsourcing of ground handling by airlines, claiming that this allowed for lower airfares for passengers. Commenting on the Qantas court case he is quoted as saying, “For Qantas, the economic benefits plus the service benefits are still better for the outsourcing.” He went on to say, “In the end, if you’ve got a workforce that costs you a lot of money, your passengers are going to pay more.”

He is also quoted as saying, “unions sometimes get in the way of market dynamics.”

If workers fighting against employers for their rights and for better pay and conditions is “getting in the way of market dynamics,” we are all in favour of workers’ struggle!

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Book Review: SLOW DOWN

Written by: Duncan B. on 20 April 2024

Slow Down. How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth, by Kohei Saito is the second recently-released book which we are reviewing. Kohei Saito is a Marxist scholar and an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. He is a member of the MEGA project which aims to publish the complete works of Marx and Engels, including many works never previously published.

The author firmly bases Degrowth Communism on his study of Capital and other works of Marx, including unpublished works discovered by the MEGA project.These works show that Marx deeply studied ecology and the relationship between capitalism and the natural environment. Like Vulture Capitalism, Slow Down shows that Marx is still relevant today.

The author discusses the effects of the climate change crisis, and how it particularly affects the countries of what he calls the “Global South.” He describes how the wealthy capitalist countries of the “Global North” exploit the resources of the “Global South” and shift the burden of the environmental crisis on to the countries of the “Global South”.

He debunks the Sustainable Development Goals being promoted by the United Nations and other world bodies. He also criticises ideas such as the “Green New Deal,” “Green Keynesianism” and other attempts to allow capitalism to keep functioning as normal while reducing the burden on the environment. “Decoupling,” which seeks to use new technologies to allow the economy to grow while reducing carbon dioxide emissions is another example of these ideas.

Saito’s answer to the environmental crisis is what he calls “Degrowth Communism.” This means winding back capitalism’s never-ending drive for growth at the expense of the environment, and developing a society where production is carried out to benefit the people within the limits of what the environment can bear.

He writes, “Yet it is capitalism, with its demands for unlimited maximisation of profits and economic growth, that is fundamentally unable to protect the earth’s environment. Both humanity and nature become objects of exploitation under capitalism.”

There is a need for people to band together in solidarity to rein in capital and protect the planet. To achieve this, Saito puts forward what he calls “The Five Pillars of Degrowth Communism.”

1. Transition to a use-based economy. This means producing goods that meet people’s basic needs, rather than producing luxury items and status symbols.

2. Shorten work hours. Workers will improve the quality of their lives when meaningless work is eliminated.

3. Abolish the uniform division of labour. This means ending the division between physical and mental labour and returning creativity and autonomy to work.

4. Democratise the production process. This means communal management of the means of production and deciding what, and how much should be produced.

5. Prioritise essential work. This means prioritising and valuing labour-intensive jobs such as nursing, education, child care and aged care.

Capitalism is destroying our planet. Only the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a communist society will stop further damage to our earth. Slow Down is a book which should be read by all who are concerned about the destruction of our environment by capitalism.

I will leave the last word to Marx. In chapter XLVI of Volume Three of Capital he wrote, “From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.”

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Book Review: VULTURE CAPITALISM

Written by: Duncan B. on 20 April 2024

Vulture Capitalism. Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom by Grace Blakeley is the first of two recently-released books which we will be reviewing. Grace Blakely is a staff writer at the English magazine Tribune, and is a political and economic commentator for the BBC.

The book is based around the idea of planning under capitalism. We are led to believe that capitalism is based on the free market, and planning is something that happened in places like the former Soviet Union. However there is a very large element of planning under capitalism.

It is the author’s aim to show how capitalist planning works and how we can start to resist it. She aims to discuss what capitalism is, how it has changed over time, while centralised planning has remained constant. Major institutions capable of planning within capitalist societies: firms, financial institutions, states and empires are examined. On p13 the author says, “Finally I’ll outline how we can start to replace the current system of oligarchic capitalist planning with democratic socialist planning.”

Vulture Capitalism begins by exposing some of the many scandals surrounding big companies such as Boeing’s sales of faulty aircraft, Henry Ford’s relations with Nazi Germany, the collapse of companies such as Enron and the financial crisis of 2008.

In a chapter titled "Disaster Capitalism" the author exposes how many companies benefitted during the COVID pandemic, receiving large handouts and lucrative government contracts. She shows how companies are benefitting from the climate change emergency and the rise in energy costs arising from the war in Ukraine.

Vulture Capitalism exposes how big corporations, financial institutions such as banks and governments unite to bail out failing companies, including those which really should be allowed to collapse, but which have friends in the right places.

The author refers to initiatives being taken in various countries to base planning at the community level where local people and community organisations are planning for the needs of their communities in areas such as health, education and infrastructure. She sees initiatives like these as a way forward.

However she does recognise that the capitalist state does use violence when challenged. Her analysis of the destruction of the Allende government in Chile makes this clear. She says (p269), “Socialists must struggle within and outside all social institutions - including those of the state - to shift the balance of power within society in favour of workers.”

Vulture Capitalism gives the reader much useful information about the workings of capitalism. A positive feature of Vulture Capitalism is that the author refers regularly to Marx and other Marxist writers in explaining the operation of capitalism and in developing her arguments against it, showing that Marx’s theories are as relevant today as they ever were.

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ADSTAR: Info-wars and the military, Canberra, 2024

Written by: (Contributed) on 23 April 2024

The organisers of the Australian Defence Science, Technology and Research (ADSTAR) summit in Canberra in September have already publicised their provisional agenda. Representatives of key US allies and defence and security partners are already registered to attend. One of the listed items has far-reaching implications for Cold War Australia; it is doubtful, however, that conference delegates will be discussing the item in the context of a recent US legal decision about non-legitimate intelligence-gathering techniques.

The main agenda for the forthcoming ADSTAR summit has six listed items: hypersonic missiles, directed energy, trusted autonomy, quantum technologies, information warfare, long-range fires. (1) Organisers of the summit are expecting in excess of 1,700 delegates, 'including a line-up of international luminaries' to attend the event, which will provide the military-industrial complex with bigger defence budgets and increased likelihood of 'real-war scenarios', more likely than not, in the Indo-Pacific region.

It has already been publicised the summit will include defence leaders being part of panel-led discussions to prioritise what they regard as 'opportunities across the military realm', from India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, the UK and US together with Australia. (2) It has been noted that Heidi Shyu, US Under-Secretary of research and engineering at the Department of Defence will deliver the keynote speech, while no Australian figures have so far been named as participating at that level.

War, and the preparations for war, are, quite clearly, big business. And ADSTAR figures are, no doubt, rubbing their hands with glee. With western defence budgets set to increase over the next decade, the ADSTAR summit would appear a central consideration for the pushing of military agendas.

It is, however, the fifth listed agenda item which is the most revealing for contemporary Australia; information warfare and countering disinformation campaigns have become a major problem in recent years and has become a major pre-occupation with law enforcement agencies. (3) While it has generally been accepted that social media has enabled disgruntled and disaffected users to gravitate toward conspiratorial far-right political organisations, which then espouse anti-science disinformation and distrust in government, it is also the ability of the state to harvest vast troves of personal information with intelligence-gathering techniques which raise alarm.

A recent legal decision in the US has revealed how Google had tracked users without their knowledge. The outcome of a class-action lodged in a San Francisco federal court, has led Google to plan to destroy a vast trove of data collected from millions of people about their web-browsing histories. (4) It was noted by a lawyer who represented consumers that, 'the settlement required Google to delete and remediate in unprecedented scope and scale the data it improperly collected'. (5)

The legal decision did not, however, note how Google was party to the improper methods of intelligence-gathering from its earliest beginnings. Revelations emerging about US-led intelligence-gathering during the previous Cold War by using Crypton AG equipment also provided information about their later use of the internet; it was noted, for example, that the US National Security Agency's attention eventually 'shifted to finding ways to exploit the global reach of Google, Microsoft, Verizon and other US technical powers'. (6) Such state-controlled intelligence-gathering techniques remain outside usual legal jurisdiction; there is little, if any, accountability.

As attendees of the forthcoming ADSTAR summit participate in the part of the conference dealing with information warfare and countering disinformation, it is extremely unlikely any consideration will be given to the role of their intelligence services trawling daily through confidential communications between internet users. The fact the information accessed by the state is frequently used for profiling purposes was also not addressed in the recent US legal decision; or whether Google had already passed such information onto interested third parties for a whole variety of motives.

1. Strategic advantage key to ADSTAR conference, Defence Science and Technology supplement, Australian, 3 April 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. See: Australia's far right gets COVID anti-lockdown protest booster, Aljazeera, 5 October 2021.
4. Google to destroy its 'Incognito' data, Australian, 3 April 2024.
5. Ibid.
6. The intelligence coup of the century, The Washington Post, 11 February 2020; and, Compromised encryption machines, The Washington Post, 17 February 2020; and, Operation Condor: The CIA is not innocent, The Guardian (U.K.), 23 February 2020.

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ACOSS survey and the need for a revolutionary class analysis

Written by: Alan Jackson on 23 April 2024

Above: Anti-poverty activists in 2021

Everyday life is getting harder for the average person. This is disproportionately the case for First Nations people, Immigrants, Precarious workers and Pensioners, who are being impacted the hardest in these hard times.

History continues to show us that under capitalism the poor stay poor while the rich get richer. Time and time again history continues to show us this fact. The fundamental issue in this is Class.

Capitalists are constantly gutting our livelihood for profit; this is inherent to Capitalism, sometimes when the economy is booming, we are able to get concessions but it is important to remember that these are simply concessions, and inevitably as the boom goes to bust, as History also shows always must bust under capitalism, our concessions are slashed and gutted and we are back to square one.

Where are we now? How are these concessions? The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) has released its report on poverty in Australia this year and highlights some very important insights into our situation.

In the Inequality Report it states “According to the latest available data (in 2019), the highest 10% of households ranked by income had an average after-tax income of $5,200 per week, over two-and-a-half times the income of the middle 20% ($2,000) and seven times that of the lowest 20% ($800).”. (1)

The gap here is extremely problematic. While the bottom 60% of Australians are struggling the highest 10% of Australians are getting up to seven times the amount of the lower 60%. This isn’t even looking at the gap within the top 10% which starts messing with amounts of money that are conceptually hard to wrap your head around.

There is clearly a very large disconnect between the highest 10% and the lower 60% which can be shown in the table below. The ACOSS also found in a previous report in 2020 that “The poverty line (based on 50% of median household after-tax income) is $489 a week for a single adult and $1,027 a week for a couple with two children, based on the latest data from the ABS.” (3.) The table also says that the lowest 20% earns on average $794 per week. Therefore, the lowest 20% of Australians are on the poverty line. According to Centrelink’s own website you can only earn a maximum of $381 per week as a single person with no children and $408 per week with a child. With a partner the maximum you can earn is $349 per week. This puts most people on Centrelink benefits on the poverty line. (4.)

(2.)

The report also states that “Unequal access to employment and wages accounts for 89% of income inequality (before tax and transfers).” (5.) and that “Unequal distribution of earnings is caused by inequality of paid working hours and hourly wages.” (6.)

This shows that what is most important is everyone has access to constant and well-paid work. This can mean so much more than what you may think surface level. This means a home where one can sleep and survive, clothes you can wear to an interview, a phone you can use to contact potential employers, food and drink to function and so much more that is near impossible for the average person without these necessities to gain upward mobility.

Not having access to transport, a home or a phone is debilitating for access to employment hurting your chances even more. These things can’t be accessed on government benefits and access is generally a matter of chance. It also reports that “Wealth inequality has escalated over the past two decades, with the highest 10% - who hold an average of $5.2m in wealth capturing almost half (45%) of the overall increase in wealth between 2003 – 2022. Of this 45%, almost half (22%) went to wealthy older households (older households in the highest 10%)” (7.)

This emphatically supports the fact that the rich succeed while the poor suffer. We are in desperate need of change and the contradictions are only sharpening. This can also be shown by further statements such as “in 2019-20, the highest 10% of households ranked by income had an average $5,248 per week after tax, over two and a half times that of the middle 20% ($1,989) and six times that of the lowest 20% ($794).” (8.)

They continue, saying “Wealth is divided much more unequally than income. In 2022-23 the highest 10% of households ranked by wealth (those with over $2.5 million) held 44% of all wealth, an average of $5.2 million each. This is three times the wealth of the next 30% with $1.5 million, 15 times that of the lowest 60% with $343,000 and 126 times that of the lowest 20% (with $41,000).” (9.) and “In 2023, there were 159 billionaires in Australia with average wealth of $3.2 billion each. Their total wealth was $503 billion – so that 3.2% of all household wealth was held by 0.0007% of all adults.” (10.)

Now that some of the key issues have been highlighted, what recommendations do the ACOSS make to fix these issues? In order to fix these issues, the ACOSS has suggested a few things. The policy solutions suggested by the ACOSS are: “Increase the lowest income support payments including Jobseeker Payment and Youth Allowance; Restore full employment and reform employment services for those unemployed long-term; Reduce tax concessions for investment income (such as the reduced tax rate for capital gains) that primarily benefit those with high income.” (11.) And “Reform the tax treatment of housing to discourage speculative investment that inflates home prices (such as curbing negative gearing, reducing CGT concessions and extending state land taxes to owner occupied dwellings). Remove inequities in the tax treatment of superannuation contributions; and extend the 15% tax on superannuation investment income tax to postretirement accounts, which are currently tax-free.” (12.)

Whilst I would welcome these changes and, on the surface, these are quite commendable changes to the current situation, they are only short-term fixes and don’t address the root of the issue. The issue with the suggested fixes is that they are just concessions and can only be concessions. They can never become full-term solutions. The only solution is Socialism.

Not only are the solutions offered only just band-aid solutions, the problem is these solutions only begin to recognise the knife that is lodged in the back of the peoples. These solutions do not remove the knife and heal the wound in our back like the late and great Malcom X once said. They simply point at the knife in our back and try to wrap a bandage over it.

For immediate actions that can help take us to socialism, check out the ‘Draft Fighting Program of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist).’

The destruction of capitalism is the only true solution. It is only true way for the masses to heal. For a strategic approach to the destruction of capitalism, for a strategy beyond useful and necessary immediate changes, see the Party’s General Program .

Sources –

1. - Australian Council of Social Service – Inequality in Australia 2024: Who is affected and how? (Page 12)

2. – Ibid.

3. - Australian Council of Social Service – Poverty In Australia 2022 A Snapshot (page 9)

4. - https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/how-much-jobseeker-payment-you-can-get?context=51411

5. - Australian Council of Social Service – Inequality in Australia 2024: Who is affected and how? (Page 12)

6. – Ibid.

7. – Australian Council of Social Service – Inequality in Australia 2024: Who is affected and how? (Page 13)

8. – Ibid

9. – Ibid

10. – Ibid

11. - Australian Council of Social Service – Inequality in Australia 2024: Who is affected and how? (Page 12)

12. - Australian Council of Social Service – Inequality in Australia 2024: Who is affected and how? (Page 13)

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Rail workers strike for a living wage

Written by: Ned K.. on 20 April 2024

(Above: RTBU organiser Hayden Boyle)

Rail workers including suburban train drivers in Adelaide are taking strike action to win a 20% pay rise over four years.

In their way stands multinational corporation Keolis Downer who operates the suburban train services under contract to the SA Government.

A 20% pay rise over 4 years is by no means an exorbitant wage claim when inflation rates and increases in cost-of-living increases in real terms are arguably higher than 5% per year.

Keolis Downer's current wage offer is 14.7% over 4 years.

The Rail, Tram and Buses Union (RTBU) members have taken strike action of 4 hour to 5-hour periods of time a couple of times a week over the last two weeks. They have timed the stoppages to escalate the impact of the action which has included overtime bans.

On Friday 19 April, the RTBU members telegraphed to Keolis Downer and the SA Government that they would strike for 24 hours on Thursday 2 May if Keolis Downer did not agree to members’ claims.

Thursday 2 May is the same day that the two SA based AFL teams Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide play their first of two annual "showdown" games. With no trains running on that day, the SA Government will have to organize extra buses to provide alternative public transport to and from the Adelaide Oval. Thousands of fans travel by train to the games and businesses will be pressuring Keolis Downer and the SA Government to "resolve the dispute" before Thursday 2 May.

Bread and Circuses

A big part of the Malinauskas Government's strategy is to keep the people happy by feeding them one "circus" after another in one form or another. The showdown football matches between Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide are two of the annual "circuses",

The potential 24-hour strike action on 2 May will disrupt the showdown "circus " but the SA Government also knows that workers like the RTBU need more than the cost of "bread" being offered by Keolis Downer.

Publicly the Government is saying that the dispute is an industrial matter between the employer Keolis Downer and its employees represented by the RTBU. Behind the scenes though, bet London to a brick that the Government is in earnest talks with both Downer and RTBU. An added concern for the SA Government is that the higher wages rail workers win, the more likely that other public sector workers will want to match it in their Enterprise Agreements where the SA Government is their employer and the harder it will be for private capitalist businesses to keep wages as low as possible.

The Malinauskas Labor Government is finding out that it is no easy task to make capitalism acceptable to workers and at the same time be viewed favourably by capitalists!

Suburban trains were outsourced to Keolis Downer by the previous Liberal Government. The Malinauskas led Labor Government won the last state election in March 2022 vowing to reverse the outsourcing of train services if it won the election.

In 2023 it announced that it would phase out Keolis Downer's contract over four years with train drivers the first to once again be directly employed by the SA Government in late 2025 and other Keolis Downer employees becoming government employees by the end of 2027.

How seriously will the SA Government be looking at introducing an automated rail transport system with no train drivers?

They would be aware this has occurred in a limited way in NSW.

Another aspect of the dispute is that the RTBU is a relatively small union. In the age of big unions covering many different industries, the RTBU has maintained its identity and independence and a high level of member engagement in the running of the dispute and solidarity between members.

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Communist Party of the Philippines: Persist in armed struggle, frustrate US war plans

Written by: Communist Party of the Philippines on 17 April 2024

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CCP) has issued an important statement calling on its New People’s Army (NPA) to continue the armed struggle against the oppression of the Filipino people. It has also called on the Filipino people to reject US plans to turn the Philippines into a base for war against its imperialist rival, China. We salute the CCP and the NPA and call on Australians to oppose Australian military ties with the US-Marcos regime – eds.

The NPA must fight more to defend oppressed Filipinos, and to stop US from dragging PH in war against China
Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines
March 31, 2024

1.The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA) and all revolutionary forces roundly reject Gen. Romeo Brawner call for Red fighters to abandon the armed struggle. The need to wage armed struggle is now greater than ever before amid the worsening socioeconomic conditions and oppression of the Filipino people and threats to the country’s sovereignty.

For the broad masses of peasants, workers, and other toiling people suffering from land grabbing, economic dispossession, low wages, joblessness, and other forms of gross social injustice, waging armed struggle now is ever more just and necessary. The US-Marcos regime has aggravated the situation of the people by serving the interests of foreign capitalists to the detriment of the Filipino people’s welfare and rights.

Under Marcos, the fascist reactionary armed forces has become even more aggressive and brutal in driving the peasant masses and indigenous minorities from their land to allow mining companies, plantations, real estate, energy and other infrastructure projects to expand their environmentally-destructive business operations.

Only by having the New People’s Army can the peasant masses effectively fight back against the onslaught of foreign and big business economic aggressors. In the interest of the broad toiling masses, the armed struggle can never be abandoned. To fight with arms is the only way for the oppressed to defend their life and dignity and fight for a better future.

2. In the face of increasing danger of the Philippines being dragged by the US military to its conflict with China, there is even greater need for the NPA to fight vigorously. The NPA must further intensify the armed struggle to help prevent US plans to fully utilize the country as a springboard for its acts of aggression. The US imperialists want to see an end to the NPA’s armed struggle so it can fully utilize the AFP as a pawn in its plans of aggression and hegemonic expansion.

General Brawner is a remorseless US mouthpiece when he declared in his statement that “external forces”, clearly referring to China, “undermine Philippine sovereignty and challenge our rights.” Brawner is utterly hypocritical to claim defending the country’s freedom against external forces when as chief of the armed forces, he has opened a number of Armed Forcesof the Philippines (AFP) camps to give foreign military forces from the US extraterritorial rights to station its troops and military equipment, and turn the country’s land and water as their playground.

The US military forces in the Philippines have been using the AFP and the Philippine Coast Guard to raise the temperatures of military conflict in the West Philippine Sea through joint patrols, as well as US-backed “supply missions.” These operations are succeeding in pushing back against China’s incursions into Philippine maritime territory, but are being done at the expense of allowing US and its NATO allies to position their naval forces in Philippine waters.

The US plans to turn Marcos into a new Zelensky–a shameless beggar of military and economic aid from the US and NATO. They want to portray Marcos as a defender of Philippine freedom against the “empire”, while actually turning the Philippines into a protectorate of US-led Western imperialist powers, against their imperialist rival China.

Over the next few days or weeks, the Marcos regime is set to receive a major shipment or deployment of US military equipment for use of the AFP to turn it into a more aggressive force against China. This is timed with US plans to hold the Balikatan exercises in April as cover to deploy more of its troops in the country’s outlying islands, from the northernmost tip of Batanes, to the westernmost tip of Palawan. Even now, the US has already deployed Special Operations Forces in the Kinmen Island in the Taiwan Strait, a mere five kilometers off the eastern coast of Xiamen, China.

The Filipino people reject claims of the US imperialists of being “friends, allies, and partners” of the Philippines. It is utterly repugnant at all levels for the Marcos regime to ally itself to the number one terrorist who has connived with the Zionists in Israel in raining bombs and missiles on the civilian population of Palestine in Gaza, killing more than 32,000, more than half of whom are children. The US and Israel has also been supplying bombs to the AFP to carry out the same terrorist act in the Philippine countryside. The same imperialist US is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos during the US war of occupation of the Philippines, and the subsequent plunder of the country’s economic and human resources.

All the patriotic and revolutionary forces of the Filipino people must heighten their struggle for national freedom and draw inspiration from their long history of resistance to US military intervention and war–from the anti-colonial war of the early 1900s, to the mass protests leading to the eviction of US military bases and American troops in 1991.

Presently, they must vigorously resist US schemes and resist the plans to drag the country into US war provocations against China. Such a scenario will endanger the lives of the Filipino people and further place the country’s fate in the hands of the US imperialists.

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Madeleine King: Helping the Pentagon to our nickel

Written by: Nick G. on 17 April 2024

(Above:original photo WA Today Nathan Hondros)

Resources Minister Madeleine King has approved the use of government funds to ensure the US military has access to Australian nickel.

She met with the US Under Secretary of Defence for Acquisition and Sustainment William La Plant at the Pentagon on March 8 to evaluate available options amid weakening nickel prices that led to several operating Australian nickel facilities either announcing a reduction in operations or going into care and maintenance.

“I think it’s fair to say they are keen to work with us to make sure we’re able to have a nickel industry that survives,” King said.

Nickel is known for its resistance to corrosion, and was a popular metal for coins. The US 5 cent coin was made from nickel and known as a “nickel”.

Nickel is one of eight critical minerals for military purposes.

The US National Mining Association says “Nickel can be used in steel, and this has been used for armor plating in tanks and anti-aircraft firearms. In addition, nickel is used in military batteries for propulsion and storage…A shortage of nickel would hurt goals in both the transportation and defense sectors.”

It is an essential component of high-temperature alloys used in aerospace, and essential to US imperialism’s plans to be the dominant military power in Outer Space.

Nickel (Ni) has long been widely used in batteries, most commonly in nickel cadmium (NiCd) and in the longer-lasting nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries, which came to the fore in the 1980s.

It is also a major component of the lithium-ion batteries used to run electronic vehicles.

The United States is not a major source of nickel. It has only one operating nickel mine which is planned to close in 2026. Last September, the US Department of Defense provided Talon Metals, a Rio Tinto subsidiary, with $26 million to support prospecting work in Michigan and Minnesota.

Taking a leaf out of the US corporate charity book, King, prior to her trip to the Pentagon, placed nickel on the Critical Minerals List, giving nickel companies opportunity to access up to $4 billion dollars in Commonwealth funding.

Australia is one of the world’s largest producers of nickel.

There are more than 186 nickel mines in operation globally, of which 127 are in Australia.

The five largest nickel mines here are owned by Swiss multinational Glencore, Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, Australian IGO (which is also invested in a lithium focused joint venture with Chinese partner, Tianqi Lithium Corporation, which comprises a 51% stake in the Greenbushes Lithium Mine and 100% interest in a downstream processing refinery at Kwinana producing battery grade lithium hydroxide), and two by BHP (more than 70% US-owned).

It is anyone’s guess how much of the billions of Australian taxpayers’ dollars King is prepared to splash around will go to foreign-owned miners, but she has made it perfectly clear that this is to support a supply chain directly into the murderous US military.

None of this would happen if we were a genuinely independent and anti-imperialist country.

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Profits before People

Written by: Jed J. on 16 April 2024

In the age we live in gas and electricity are necessities. They are not commodities which we can choose to buy or not buy.

Yet in the capitalist system the supply of these essential needs is in the hands of private companies whose main aim is to maximise profits.

The supply of gas and electricity should be, as they once were, controlled by government Utilities to ensure they are available and affordable for all.

Since these utilities were privatised, many working people are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for these basic necessities.

There is a cost of living crisis today and energy costs are contributing to it.

Australian gas is being sold overseas in quantities that allow people in foreign countries to pay less for gas than in the country of its origin.

To maintain their profit levels private energy companies are resorting to large increases in their supply costs.

Many Australian workers, as a result, are finding it increasingly difficult to pay their energy bills while the suppliers make increasing levels of profit.

So what is the government planning to do? Are they planning to introduce price controls? Are they planning to limit export of our natural resources? Are they planning to de-privatise the supply of energy and put it under the control of government controlled Utilities?

No. They are talking about another round of handouts to vulnerable sections of the people, supposedly to help them cope with the price rises.

Actually the public funds used to do this will help guarantee that the energy companies will not miss out on the profits they make selling gas and electricity to these vulnerable people.

The profiteers will be the main beneficiaries of the government’s largesse. Public funds will be used to bolster private profit.
If the government is serious about helping people cope better in this present cost of living crisis they would de-privatise the energy companies and place them in the hands of government controlled Utilities.

That would be the best way to reverse the present trend and put people before profits.

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Israel gets a taste of its own medicine

Written by: Nick G on 14 April 2024

Image: www.hiiraanweyn.net

Iran’s retaliatory missile attacks on the Zionist Israeli regime are a necessary and justified response to Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria two weeks ago, which killed 18 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

We know that the Iranian state authorities are reactionaries and that the Iranian people have waged courageous struggles for democratic rights and the liberation of women.

That does not change our opinion towards the justness of their response to the consulate attack.

By way of contrast, the Zionist-supporting Australian government has condemned the retaliation in which more than a hundred drones, dozens of cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles were sent to specific targets in Israel.

For too long, Israel has arrogantly chosen targets in Lebanon and Syria and carried out targeted assassinations with seeming impunity. The assassinations include those of five Iranian nuclear scientists for which Israel has never been held to account.

Its attack on the Iranian consulate was typical of that arrogance.

It followed reports by Western analysts that Iran was not seeking to escalate regional tensions. That remains Iran’s position, its spokesperson saying after its retaliation that the "matter can be deemed concluded".

Iran’s retaliation punctures the arrogance of the Zionists and will boost morale among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

It comes three days after Israeli PM Netanyahu boasted “We have determined a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we will harm them.”

Netanyahu is now getting a taste of his own medicine.

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Museum workers lead action to save SA Museum

Written by: Ned K. on 14 April 2024

On Saturday 13 April about 2,000 people held a rally outside Parliament House on busy North Terrace Adelaide to protest about proposed cuts to jobs and research at the South Australian Museum.

The rally was organized by the Museum workers and their union the Public Service Association and concerned members of the SA community who had made donations, both large and small to the Museum.

In the week leading up to the rally, concerned supporters of, and donors to, the Museum paid for a full page advertisement in the local Adelaide Advertiser headed "An Open Letter: The Future of SA's Museum Is At Risk"

The letter started,

"Dear Premier Malinauskas,

Capturing 165 years of continuous research and tens of thousands of years of First Nations’ cultural knowledge, the collections housed at the South Australian Museum are not only one of the most significant cultural assets in SA, they are among the most significant in the world".

A newly appointed head of the Museum, CEO David Gaimster, and the Museum Executive and Board decided to ram through a "restructure" of the Museum at the expense of research carried out by highly skilled scientists and researchers in the natural sciences including zoology, mineralogy and palaeontology and natural history generally.

Over the last three decades of economic rationalism, the Museum staff had been reduced to just 73 people and the SA Museum, a state government Statutory Authority, was trying to get rid of the top 27 research positions.

During this period, the SA Museum and other SA Government icons next to the Museum, (Library and Art Gallery) had experienced outsourcing of support services such as cleaning, catering, security, maintenance and research assistants. In some areas of the Museum, scientists and researchers relied on the goodwill of volunteers to complete their work.

One speaker at the rally said that the loss of the 27 individual research staff equated to the loss of 474 years of expertise and knowledge.

Research into and management of biodiversity is threatened with cuts to scientific staff. Since British colonial invasion, more than 300 species have been lost. Studies of collections as to Museum assists in species adaption and survival.

Speakers at the rally included Ngarrindjeri/Kaurna Elder Major "Moogy" Sumner who expressed concern that the cuts to research would be a loss for First Nations communities. With only one position in the restructure reserved for Indigenous expertise, it was possible that the cultural knowledge of First Nations women could be lost. Lack of funding would bring an end to the repatriation of the thousands of First Peoples’ remains from collections from the UK and other European countries and the USA.

The SA Museum Act 1976 states that a core function of the Museum is " to carry out, promote, research into matters of science and historical interest, and to accumulate objects and specimens of scientific or historical interest".

One of the placards at the rally summed up just how the proposed restructure by calling the Museum ATM standing for "Automatic Tellya Museum

Key In Pin
Select Research
Press Enter
Insufficient Funds"

with a picture of a small child trying to make sense of it all.

The Public Service Association Secretary spoke on behalf of all unionists employed at the Museum and informed the rally participants that the Museum had not even complied with its own Enterprise Agreement in trying to ram through cutbacks to staff at a time when what was actually needed was an increase in funding of both Museum staff and resources.

The SA Government has been caught out. There is plenty of money for supporting the US war machine and football events and stadiums, all at the expense of areas of society that the Government thinks will not get it re-elected for another 4-year term of office. Adelaide Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith, a former Chair of the SA Museum Board and Minister of Education in the Rann Labor Government, said that multiple State government had stagnated funding of the museum. She said there had been no real funding for over 20 years. Cultural institutions, she said, had been neglected by a bread and circuses culture.

More broadly, the struggle of the Museum workers is another example of how most of the surplus value created by the working class as a whole ends up in the hands of the ruling capitalist class rather than being used for the benefit of the working class and those unable to work, such as children, unemployed, and the aged.

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CPI (Maoist) announces the immortalization of 50 people's fighters

Written by: Communist Party of India (Maoist) on 11 April 2024

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) has issued a statement commemorating the deaths of 50of the fighters of People’s Liberation Guerilla Army. The Maoists and other progressive forces are subjected to brutal attempts at elimination by the Modi saffron fascist regime. We salute their sacrifices-eds.

....................

April 9, 2024

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) issued a statement announcing the death of 50 guerrillas from January 1 and calling on the people to protest the massacres.

"WE TRUST THE POWER OF THE MASSES"

In its statement, the CPI (Maoist) said, "For the last 50 years, a revolutionary movement has been going on in our country under the leadership of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) with incredible sacrifices. The ruling classes are constantly conducting military operations to stop India's revolutionary movement at its very inception. The Government of India, which has declared our party as the only major threat to the internal security of the country, has been carrying out large-scale, long-term military pressure operations for the last 20 years," he said, noting that at least five thousand CPI (Maoist) guerrillas and people have been killed in 20 years.

"Despite this, our revolutionary movement for the democratization of the people in our country continues on its way with great devotion, determination in the face of many tides, with the support of fraternal movements, and by relying on the organized power of the broad masses," the statement continued.

"50 OF OUR COMRADES WERE MARTYRED"

From January 1, 2024, the reactionary Indian state has launched a new military operation called "Operation KAGAR". In a statement, the CPI (Maoist) announced that nearly 50 of its comrades were immortalized within the scope of this operation and summarized the details of the operations as follows:

"Six people were massacred in Chipurbatti, 13 in Korcheli, 3 in Pujari Kanker and 2 in Kerajhiri Dabri. We condemn these murders and commemorate all our heroic martyrs with respect. We will pledge to build a gender-equality, secular and democratic system without exploitation and caste for their unfulfilled dreams.

"For the past two decades, conflict zones across the country have been constantly populated by central and state armed governments, as well as police forces. Unprecedented military repression is being exerted in the conflict zones of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Maharashtra states of the Central Region, Chhattisgarh and Chhattisgarh, which are the battlegrounds of Bihar-Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Assam states in the Eastern Region, which have been identified by the predatory ruling classes as powerful states for the Maoist movement.

"Only modern weapons, anti-mine vehicles, drones and helicopters fly and shoot in the sky. Police are conducting a search operation in thousands of forests. They attack villages and kill people, especially young people, without even seeing the distinction between men and women and the elderly. They chase the revolutionaries, shoot bullets. In fact, seeing all this reminds us that a war is going on in enemy territory. The Indian government is waging a civil war against the citizens of India. The government's war against the people of India must be stopped immediately."

PRESSURE ON THE PUBLIC IS INCREASING

In the continuation of the statement, it was explained that the people were attacked in order to destroy the Maoists and information about these attacks was given: "The reactionary forces have decided to end the Maoist movement throughout the country in the next three years. They target all those who oppose their exploitative policies, anti-people governments, and divisive policies among the people in the country and carry out different kinds of attacks on them. All kinds of activities of citizens are monitored. Modern industry keeps an eye on this. For the last 10 years, the Hindutva dictatorship of the RSS-BJP forces has been going on in the country. By doing many things and abusing power to put a mask of parliamentary democracy on their administration, the 18th century, they hold their Lok Sabha elections.

"The entire village of Prabal is being crushed under the boots of the murderous police. Due to the constant intensive search operations of the police, the chances of survival of people in villages and forests are getting worse and worse. Today, in the forests, there is no guarantee of the safety of life and property of the tribal people, respect for women, protection of children and youth. The police brutally murder those caught in forests and villages, calling them Maoists and fabricating false and fabricated stories about the seizure of weapons and ammunition from them."

BANDH CALLED

The statement concluded: "Fraternal movements must be built in favour of the peoples who are struggling wherever possible for the survival of the Indigenous people against the fascist regime and to stand against the ongoing arbitrary attacks against them.

"Students, intellectuals, human rights activists, social workers, journalists and friends of the media, writers, artists and lawyers are working to establish peace in the forests. People in the Central Region (Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh), especially Indigenous people, protested against the harsh conditions faced by Indigenous people and condemned the ongoing attacks against them and demanded an immediate halt to the attacks."

The CPI (Maoist) called on the people to carry out propaganda and demonstrations from 13 to 15 p.m. and bandh on April 15.

(A bandh is a 24-hour strike)

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Ants and Elephants: Middle Class relations with the Imperialist Bourgeoisie and the Working class

Written by: John G. on 11 April 2024

Australia is a capitalist country.

Big corporates rule the economy, their key owners are overseas capitalists with American moneybags top of the heap. British bosses are next in line with Japanese, German, French and other European capitalists being joined by latecomer Chinese owners.

Their involvement in the country is to make profits, either directly here or by securing resources for profit-making elsewhere, or both.

Workers

Among Australians, the working class, the people who have to work for a living selling themselves to a boss, is the largest class.

There’s a section who sell themselves at very generous premiums, doing very well out of looking after capitalists’ interests; managers, top bureaucrats, people doing the dirty work of policing workers in commissions like Fair Work, police and judges and the like. Many are paid handsomely to keep other workers in line and the capitalists on top.

Still, there’s 3/4s of the population who work for a living in the grind of capitalist exploitation.

Our interest in having comfortable lives, good education, good accessible healthcare, a good living, stand in conflict with capitalists making the best profit they can get. Working class interests are the mainstay of the opposition to capitalists plundering the country, its people, its resources and its environment.

However, working class organisation and capacity to stand up for itself is at a low point. Unionism overall is below 10%. In the public sector, it’s higher but still under 20%. In the private sector unionism is in the lower part of single digit percentages.

Union coverage varies hugely between industries, between industry sectors, and between sections of the workforce within an industry or industry sector. In construction, unionism is higher on major city jobs and tiny in housing construction. Among government school teachers, unionism is very high while it’s much lower in the private sector . In hospitals, unionism among nurses runs well over 70% while among hospital administrative and support staff it’s below 30%.

Overall, there is weakness in the working class but there are some areas of strength.

In the confrontation over capitalist profit-chasing at the cost of working-class living standards, the capitalists’ interest dominate, living standards lose out and down we go.

Middle Classes

Classes other than the working-class superhero and the capitalist supervillain, are wedged between the two.

Middle classes of small and medium businesses, self-employed professionals and the like, vary between those reliant for their social position on the big corporate capitalists and those screwed down by the system of finance and markets monopolised by big corporates. Sometimes they are in both situations simultaneously.

With the working class relatively quiet, the smaller classes and sections pull their heads in and try to do the best they can in circumstances dominated by big corporate monopolies led by US and British imperial capitalists. Those that get desperate, facing imminent ruin or losing out big time, pop up from time to time and squeal, but generally they hunker down. Some take advantage of workers’ support for local production and use the space that affords them to promote locally-owned businesses and locally-produced products, with the success available.

In the building industry, there is experience of subbies and smaller builders supporting workers, some providing jobs when the big builders have blacklisted militants. At the same time they are capitalists, making profits from exploiting workers. Working with and struggling against, is just how it works sometimes.

The main point however is that generally small businesses can’t afford to put a target on their back when the working class is weak, disorganised, lacking direction and fight for its own well-being and freedom and for the nation’s liberty from the plunder of foreign corporate giants.

Workers' relations with Middle classes

When the working class is not able to impose its overall strength on the imperialists, our strategy has to be defensive.

Within that defensive position, sections burst out on tactical offensives. Many public sector workers leapt into strike and protest campaigns in a few states last year. Workers’ sufferings grew as their locked down wages left them open to hardships as inflation raged. That wave of struggle gained concessions and has eased now.

Wollongong Nurses and Midwives in struggle for ratios last year

While workers are on the defensive and under the boss’s thumb, the opportunity to call for middle classes to back the struggle against imperialist rule and get useful responses is limited. It should be carefully considered until workers are on the move.

If the workers are weak at the moment, those middle classes are pretty hopeless. The limits on anti-imperialist struggle among them reflects the reality of class relations today. There’s a tendency to engage with limited reformism and use what influence they have to hold back the working class from confrontation with imperialism.

The old African proverb “When elephants fight, ants get trampled” applies to middle classes keeping their distance in our current situation.

Judgement of the relations of middle classes to the two giant class forces in Australian society and the anti-imperialist struggle won’t really be able to be made until workers are able to take the initiative in offensives against imperialism.

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Binskin appointment comes with a conflict of interest

Written by: Nick G. on 10 April 2024

Photo credit: militaryleak.com

The Australian government’s appointment of Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin (Rtd) to serve as Special Adviser to the Australian Government on Israel's response to the Israel Defense Forces strikes which killed Zomi Frankcom, and six of her World Central Kitchen colleagues, comes with a major conflict of interest.

Binskin is a non-executive director for Defence and National Security Policy of BAE Systems Australia. Its UK parent company is literally making a killing out of Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.

A non-executive director of a company is usually not an employee, but advises the company in return for fees, equity (shares) and cash payments.
Binskin’s ties with the commercial life of BAE Systems began in 2018. He was Chief of the Defence Force when BAE Systems Australia was awarded the $35 billion Future Frigate contract, the largest surface warship program in Australia’s history.

The following month Binskin retired. The contract for the $1.2 billion upgrade of the Jindalee Operational Radar Network was also awarded to BAE in the final months of Binskin’s tenure.

In July 2019, one year later, the minimum timeframe permitted, Binskin joined BAE Systems, a position he still holds.

BAE and Israel

BAE Systems, headquartered in London, supplies the Israeli military with a wide variety of weapons, including components for combat aircraft, munitions, missile launching kits, and armoured vehicles. BAE technologies are also integrated into Israel's main weapon systems, including fighter jets, drones, and warships.

BAE Systems provides weapon systems and components to the Israeli Air Force's fleet of F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter jets.
In 2018, BAE was contracted to manufacture $20.4 million worth of transmitters for Israel's F-35s through the U.S. government's Foreign Military Sales program. Even before October 7, the Israeli Air Force has used the F-35 to launch airstrikes in and around Gaza. BAE in the U.K. produces 15% of the components for these F-35 jets.

Additionally, BAE has provided the Israeli military with electronic missile launching kits and gunsight technology for F-16 aircraft. Israel's use of these weapons against civilians in Gaza is killing Palestinians in their thousands.

BAE partnered with Israeli state-owned weapon manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to upgrade Rafael's MK-38 Typhoon gun system, a remotely controlled naval weapon system installed on the Israeli military's unmanned Protector drone. The drone has been used to enforce Israel's illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. Gazan fishermen, who are restricted by Israel to severely limited fishing areas, have reported being fired at by the Israeli Navy on an almost-daily basis.

In 2015, in close collaboration with the Israeli military, BAE developed the Rokar Silver Bullet, a precision guidance kit used to transform large-caliber projectiles, fired, for example, by tanks and warships, into highly accurate munitions. BAE has supplied Israeli weapon manufacturer IMI Systems (owned by Elbit Systems since 2018) with its Silver Bullet for integration into M401 155mm cannon artillery.

Israel has routinely fired 155mm heavy artillery into residential areas of Gaza City long before the resistance breakout on October 7.

Mark Binskins

It is not good enough that someone working for genocide profiteer BAE Systems will investigate the World Central Kitchen murders.

If Binskins returns a report that is in anyway inconclusive, that in anyway refuses to see what even Blind Freddy can plainly see, then it will have no credibility given his conflict of interest.

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Adelaide People Gather Round For Palestinians

Written by: Ned K. on 9 April 2024

Sunday 7 April, marked 6 months of fortnightly rallies and demonstrations in Adelaide in support of Palestinian people oppressed by Zionist Israel regime and its imperialist backers, particularly the USA.

The rally on steps of Parliament House gathered around guest speaker Nasser Mashni (above), President of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN).

Nasser is a Palestinian Australian and despite the devastation and loss of over 30,000 Palestinian lives including over 13,000 children, he was full of optimism about the heroic struggles of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Many passers-by on their way to AFL Gather Round game at Adelaide Oval that afternoon stopped to hear what Nasser had to say. There were Hawthorn and Collingwood scarves and jumpers among those at the rally.

Nasser said that the bombing of aid worker vehicles and the killing of aid workers was a tragedy but it was no accident. Nasser explained that it was part of a familiar Israeli Defence Force (IDF) playbook. He said that the main purpose for the bombing of the aid workers and their vehicles was because one element of the Zionist regime strategy is to use starvation to add to Palestinian deaths, as part of their overall strategy to eliminate Palestinians from Palestinian land altogether.

Nasser said that soon after the bombing of the aid workers, a ship containing food supplies and other aid that was headed for Gaza turned around. The bombing of aid workers also took the spotlight off the slaughter of Palestinian health workers and patients in the largest hospital in Gaza.

Nasser said that finally Albanese and Wong showed some anger towards the IDF and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. However Albanese and Wong and their Government still supported Israel as a “democracy”. They failed miserably by siding with colonial oppressor rather than with the indigenous Palestinian people. Nasser said there was a lot in common between the struggles of the Indigenous people of Australia and Palestinians.

Nasser gave the example of the recent multi-million dollar contract the Albanese government signed with an Israeli owned defence company, Elbit Systems.

Before people at the rally commenced their street demonstration, Nasser urged Palestinians living in Australia to hold their heads high as they had the support of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world, including non-Palestinians living in Australia.

Nasser also noted the presence of Unions at rallies across Australia he had been part of.

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“Grey-Zone” intelligence assessments and real-war scenarios

Written by: (Contributed) on 8 April 2024

The US diplomatic response to credible competition from China in the Western Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific region has taken the form of an intensification of Cold War hostilities using grey zone-type intelligence assessments. They rest upon their desperate attempt to reassert traditional hegemonic positions, although remain fraught with dangers of real war scenarios for the US and their allies upon which they are increasingly dependent.

The recent high-level diplomatic visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Philippines was accompanied with a brief media release high-lighting the perceived threat of China's 'grey-zone strategy' which had been assessed as a threat to 'US interests'; it included reference to 'a constant ratcheting up' of China's diplomatic brinkmanship. (1)

Grey-zone conflict in military jargon has been usually associated with subversion and has included: destablisation, weakening or undermining traditional structures, in order to systematically weaken an adversary. It has become the face of the new Cold War which exists in the murky area in-between 'between peace and conflict'. (2)

It is, however, accompanied by grey-zone conflict in political circles which has far-reaching implications for civil society and contemporary Australia. It has taken Australian society into the darkest depths of Cold War positions whereby anything linked to China is regarded as suspicious in classic 'reds under the beds' scenarios. (3)

A typical example of the crude conspiracy theories entering into mainstream Australia has been the claim by the so-called US Centre for Strategic and International Studies that China's Qinling base on Antarctica 'was perfectly located … to spy on Australia and New Zealand particularly the satellite launch location in the Northern Territory'. (4) More sensible commentary, however, has noted 'many South-east Asian and Pacific countries are closer, and some would be more hospitable hosts. The growing number of Chinese satellites going over Australia could also do the job'. (5)

It is important to note the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies is a Washington-based 'think tank' with tentacles reaching deeply into Australian academia through seemingly harmless associates; to the contrary, it is an arm of the massive military-industrial complex designed specifically to serve 'US interests'. War, and preparation for war, is big business.

The US-led diplomatic position and controversy about the Qinling base has rested on two significant points: the decision by the Pentagon to transform their Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) early in the last decade to provide as many as 1,600 newly recruited intelligence-gathers 'into a spy service focused on emerging threats'; a highly controversial study conducted in Washington which found 'the US is no longer the dominant power in the Western Pacific and would struggle to win a conflict against China'. (6)

The former has included extensive use of open-source intelligence (OSINT) with intelligence assessments based on information already in the public domain, raising problems that anything even remotely linked to China or Chinese endeavour can be spied upon and subject to surveillance as being regarded as suspicious. Intelligence-gatherers now also lurk on-line or in university libraries accessing post-graduate research documents while Defence publications openly flout links between universities as centres of learning with military-based programs. The position actively promotes the worst aspects of the previous Cold War now being played-out in the present one; publications from the past have revealed the extent of contemporary class, state paranoia and hysterical mind-sets. (7)

Within those hysterical circles of Cold War fanatics, those who pay the piper, invariably call the tune; the Pentagon remains closely linked with the US military-industrial complex which thrives on increased defence budgets and arms sales. The US defence budget for the last year amounted to $816.7 billion. (8) Vast amounts of US defence spending support the corporate sector and research and development programs, often directly linked into universities which have become dependent upon the hand which feeds them. China, by contrast, had defence spending at only $224.79 billion. (9)

The US imperialists, nevertheless, are relentless and seek to increase their defence budgets on the annual basis in order to reassert traditional hegemonic positions. They fear any competition from China, whether it originates from economic considerations and trade, or defence and security concerns.

The increased US defence budgets, however, have not made the world a safer place. In fact, to the contrary, we live in a world of seemingly endless US-led sabre-rattling and escalating diplomatic tensions. Australia is clearly drifting toward a US-led confrontation with China, and successive governments in Canberra have done little to stand-up for national interests; Australia, furthermore, is increasingly out-of-step with regional neighbours.

The recent ASEAN Special Summit in Melbourne in early March, for example, saw Australia assume the role of the sub-imperial power, although it failed to achieve the Cold War US-led consensus it sought. It took place at a pivotal time. The ASEAN countries have a total population of about 600 million and have become China's largest export market with $790 billion in trade, pushing the US into second place. ASEAN member countries, furthermore, see little benefit in choosing sides between the US and China; they have little to gain from side-lining China.

Some ASEAN political leaders were also forthright in their chosen diplomatic position: Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, for example, used his visit to Australia to push for countries in the region to remain neutral and non-aligned, with foreign policies decided upon by their sovereign governments, not foisted upon them by Washington and the Pentagon.

In conclusion, the US-led 'grey-zone' assessments of China have taken the region into a dangerous diplomatic position whereby even Washington has acknowledged the strategy is 'on track to create a serious regional crisis and probably armed conflict'. (10)

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Grey-zone response a way to call China's brinkmanship bluff, Australian, 22 March 2024.
2. Today's wars are fought in the 'grey zone', Atlantic Council, 23 February 2023.
3. See: Labor's national security kowtow a win for the CCP., Australian, 26 March 2024.
4. China's Antarctica moves should be a cause for concern, Australian, 4 April 2024.
5. Ibid.
6. Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012; and,
Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
7. See: None dare call it treason, John A. Stormer, (Missouri, 1964), which was distributed across Australia by the far-right Australian League of Rights. The book was first published in 1964 and was subsequently re-printed twenty times in-between February and October of that year.
8. Website: US Department of Defence, Biden Signs, 23 December 2022.
9. See: China to increase defence spending, CNN., 7 March 2023; and, China's 2023 defence spending, Jamestown Foundation, 14 April 2023.
10. Australian, op.cit., 22 March 2024.

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As Australia aids Israeli genocide, Elders say it’s time to target Pine Gap.

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 8 April 2024

Above: Peltherre Chris Tomlins at the Frontier Wars protests in Canberra on 25 April, 2018. Mr Tomlins has opposed Pine Gap for decades and is a staunch anti-Zionist. Last month he stepped down as Greens' candidate for the seat of Araluen in NT, after being falsely accused of anti-semitism.

While Palestinians are deliberately murdered and starved, Australia aids Israeli genocide, through Pine Gap near Mparntwe Alice Springs.

At a recent online forum on Pine Gap and Palestine, Professor Richard Tranter from Nautilus Institute made clear Pine Gap is Australia’s biggest contribution to US and Israeli wars.

In 2003 John Howard declared war against Iraq, against the wishes of 94 percent of our people. Back then, Pine Gap guided missiles to strike Iraq. Now its surveillance and targeting means Australia is at war with Palestine, without declaring it.

First Peoples know undeclared wars are as deadly as any other. The Frontier Wars are proof.

Forum speaker, Aunty Barbara Flick called for a protest at Pine Gap near Mparntwe Alice Springs, like the huge mobilisation she joined in the 1980s. Such a protest would bring allies to Mparntwe when its First Peoples’ communities and their young people most need it.

Parallel surveillance, parallel genocide
Associate Professor Kathryn Gilbey, an Alyawarre woman, spoke of the two-week Mparntwe curfew, exposing a parallel to Pine Gap’s mass surveillance systems targeting Palestinians with the escalating surveillance of First Peoples, since the 2007 NT Intervention. Its fifteen-year genocide, particularly of children, went almost unreported in mainstream media.

She mentioned the lies against Palestine and lies triggering the Intervention. The key trigger was on ABC’s Lateline where an “Uluru youth worker” falsely alleging “paedophile rings run by Elders”, actually worked for Howard’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister. Truth uncovered didn’t stop further lies. “The little children are sacred” report is still frequently cited as the Intervention’s cause. Yet both report authors vehemently opposed the Intervention.

The “Emergency” legislation to “save children” didn’t mention the words ‘child’, ‘children’, ‘young’ or ‘youth’. It was full of map coordinates. Entry permits were removed and white businesses replaced successful Aboriginal-run projects in communities and towns. Mining and gas corporations were given land rights with no custodian vetoes.

Young Aboriginal Peoples were swept from the safety of now defunded and disempowered homeland communities, where elders and culture had been strong, into crowded and unsupported regional centres.

Children of the Intervention
Last year Vanguard said of a Saturday Paper expose, “In Children of the Intervention, Gurnaikurnai Wotjobaluk journalist Ben Abbatangelo gives voice to those central desert Peoples who have yet again been blamed. “He writes, ‘This desert town has been depicted as a war zone and its people as alien-like problems that need to be solved.’

“Of the so-called out-of-control young people, Abbatangelo says, ‘Dispossession and displacement lives within each of these kids. Most adolescents at the centre of the firestorm are also the grandchildren of the Stolen Generations and the great-grandchildren of those who were herded onto missions or massacred.’

“Aranda woman and Ntaria/Hermannsburg community organiser Que Nakamarra Kenny told him, ‘What’s clear is that no one cares more about Aboriginal people than Aboriginal people themselves. We’re at the tail end of the Northern Territory Intervention and these children are a product of that. They are the children of the Intervention who have grown up watching their parents be demonised and rejected.’”

Making clear links
For fifteen years, Elders like Aunty Elaine Kngwarraye Peckham and the late Harry Jakamarra Nelson, and younger leaders like Aunty Barbara Shaw trekked thousands of kilometres from Mparntwe and elsewhere to tell Intervention stories. They did this, even as they lived under the daily brutality of its regime, tried to support their people, especially their children.

Right now, when genocide in Palestine is mirrored by ongoing genocide against First Peoples, it’s time to make links clear, and return some immediate support and truth telling for those parallel sacrifices.

It’s time to create to hope through another convergence of allies at Mparntwe, and at the murderous US war base at Pine Gap.

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Developers’ divisive dream: First Peoples’ lands to feed real estate bubble

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 6 April 2024

(Above: Collage of demolition of Redfern's Block, which began in 2011. All of the original buildings including the flag mural have been removed. Wiki Commons)

Capitalism must constantly expand. Government decisions on when, where and how to develop Australia have always served it.

Brilliant new research, Unshackled, reminds us how 160,000 convicts created colonies and wealth here for British capitalists. On stolen lands.

Two centuries later, NSW governments led and fed the current residential real estate explosion. To link distant potential housing estates, they sold public assets to fund a spaghetti of tollways under and over the Sydney basin, and freeways on its north and south coasts.

Transurban, which grew from Macquarie Bank, purchased the government-subsided tollways with guarantees of ongoing mega profits. Transurban’s top security holder is Unisuper Ltd, but combined its three bigger US-owned runners up – State Street Corporation, Blackrock Group and The Vanguard Group – could easily outvote it.

This expansion is underpinned by high immigration. While governments locked up or locked out desperate refugees, and living costs soared, immigration also drove up rents and house prices. A review means soon only skilled migrants, earning $135,000 per year, will get visas (or afford housing).

Last December ABC’s Nassim Khadem wrote Australian residential real estate value “has hit $10.3 trillion”, around three times bigger than superannuation holdings ($3.5 trillion) or listed stocks ($2.8 trillion). It’s a bubble.

The cry is now ‘More LAND for housing!’ Ten per cent of NSW, including national parks, will soon be transferred to local Aboriginal lands councils. Corporations aim to grab it.

Land is wealth

In 2017, my Driving Disunity, the Business Council against Aboriginal Community revealed the Business Council’s crowned Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council as custodians because it was prepared to sell sacred lands for real estate. It met fierce collective resistance led by First Peoples who came from that land.

Westpac had trained Darkinjung to claim protected environmental land on the NSW Central Coast. It then sold what’s now a massive coastal resort and suburb, Magenta Shores, to BCA member Mirvac, despite huge local resistance. For all this, plus two other developments where 208 lots were sold, just 30 Aboriginal homes (including mobile ones) were built.

Darkunjung now has 1000 potential land claims, but other big coastal and Hawkesbury River headwater developments have already started. Meanwhile, First Peoples and allies mobilise to defend sacred lands.

Westpac shared its template for removing environmental land caveats to 119 other NSW lands councils and claims are multiplying across the state. On Botany Bay, for example, Mirvac has been in talks with La Perouse custodians.

Separate to this, in Sydney Harbour, Goat Island was given to Sydney Metropolitan Lands Council, initially excluding local custodians, who protested. Future plans for Cockatoo Island with First Peoples’ involvement include a hotel.

Likewise, the Block in Redfern was a famed 1970s Aboriginal public housing project. Despite a 29-month Tent Embassy occupation, it was redeveloped for the Aboriginal Housing Authority for 24 storeys of fee-paying overseas’ student accommodation. The Embassy won 62 affordable housing apartments for First Peoples including families, at 80 per cent of market rent. It excludes those displaced.

'The wealth is in the land’

This story told about NSW flowed on, though with some differences, nationwide.

Native title is not land rights. While its punishing process can provide benefits to individual First Peoples, successful applicants can’t veto mining and gas projects.

On other projects including real estate, proving custodian heritage can be extremely difficult without research skills and ongoing funding. With corporate backing, such problems dissolve, leaving greater division and dispossession, as the BCA-Darkingjung “partnership” shows.

The famed IATSIS map of Aboriginal Australia is based on public sources up till 1994. It shows what it calls ‘Darkinung’ lands in NSW to the west of coastal Awabakal and Kuring-gai lands of the Central Coast. While, among other things, the map emphasises it’s “not suitable for native title and other land claims”, the shift which eliminated Kuring-Gai claims is telling.

Some First Peoples who have faith in corporations will try to share benefits. But, once some environmental land is sold, pressure will be on to sell the rest. Capitalism will pave the world without remorse.

As Kuku Yalanji man John Hartley points out, “The wealth is in the land. Once it’s sold, it’s gone.”

When the bubble bursts, Australian governments will prop up profits not our peoples’ needs.

Unshackled reveals how often convicts rebelled. So too today. First Peoples and their allies will not give up. Our joint enemies become clearer day by day. As strong as they seem, their foundations are starting to crumble. Injustice breeds resistance.

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Haiti: for thousands of new Louvetures

Written by: Alan Jackson on 4 April 2024

Above: Portrait of Toussaint Louverture -artist unknown Wikimedia Commons

Haiti is a country that has a rich history in revolution and has been an inspiration to revolutionaries across the world ever since the Haitian revolution in 1791, that roared until 1804 when Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared independence of Haiti.

Deeply inspired by the French revolution, in a French colony once called Saint-Domingue, the enslaved masses stood up and crushed their slave masters. Haiti’s revolution is far more significant today considering this was a slave revolution and Frances’s revolution was a bourgeois revolution.

I’m not discrediting the historical significance and necessity of the French and other bourgeois revolutions but when we look at what Marx and Engels’s vision of the proletariat is, that “The Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, they have a world to win”, (1) we can see very clearly the masses of Haiti that were subjected to slavery literally had nothing to lose but their chains. Sadly, they couldn’t win the world but Toussaint Louverture the revolutionary general of the Haitian revolution and the Haitian masses won a piece of the world in the Haitian revolution of 1791.

Today is a different story though. On the 11th of March 2024, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken “announced an additional $100 million to finance the deployment of a multinational force to Haiti following a meeting with Caribbean leaders in Jamaica to halt the country’s violent crises.” (2) “The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Benin and Chad have also formally notified the United Nations of their intent to contribute personnel to an international force to help Haitian national police fight armed gangs.” (3) With the history of US Imperialism and the destruction and interference that has followed, it is almost certain that if successful, Haiti will become another puppet government and proxy state like so many other third world countries US Imperialism and their imperialist running dogs have sunk their teeth into.

Before the revolution Haiti was under French occupation and the masses of Haiti were enslaved. The enslaved being “Afro-Haitians” being imported from West Africa by slavers to the colony and the Indigenous population called Taino. Haiti was very much a typical case of settler-colonialist terror with treatment being horrific and harsh. Even freeman who were Black or what was then known as “Mulatto” were treated with the utmost discontent and exploitation. The Slavers and Plantation owners didn’t even want to permanently reside in Haiti and saw France as their true home country.

Seeing their time in Haiti is a lag time in the colonialist’s mindset also led to the degradation of any infrastructure that wasn’t purely for profit. Haiti and its people were overworked and not paid at all. They truly had nothing to lose but their chains. Haiti being a French Colony was inspired when it saw the French masses rise in the French revolution in 1789. Toussaint Louverture was inspired by the Jacobins and Robespierre particularly and rallied the masses of Haiti to overthrow their French slave masters. They were successful and unstoppable. The power of the masses was truly unleashed on their French Colonial occupiers.

Toussaint and the revolutionaries of Haiti were supported by the French revolutionaries until 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered a coup d’etat that lead to the counter-revolution both in France and Haiti. Louverture was assassinated and 50,000 troops were sent to Haiti to cement the counter-revolution and reinstitution of slavery. Napoleon the person who would be put into the books of history as one of the greatest and most destructive conquerors, could not defeat the revolution. Napoleon was defeated and the masses of Haiti were victorious. The Haitians After many wins and setbacks, officially declared independence in 1804 under Dessalines.

Haiti is the first and only case of a successful slave rebellion leading to the seizure of the old and establishment of a new independent state. This victory of the once toiling and enslaved masses would inspire the oppressed, the world over for centuries to come.

It is important to know that the labour power wasn’t the only economic resource colonialists and imperialists sought in Haiti. Haiti is extremely rich in all resources, timber, copper, hemp, soil, sugar, rum, flour, coal, tobacco and much, much more. Its environment allowed for very profitable resources to flourish. The strongest rising economic power at the time realised this in 1915 and wanted to capitalise from it. This imperialist power was the United States.

On the insistence of the National City Bank of New York, President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Haiti at this time to take control of its political and economic resources and institutions. This led to an ultra-violent, colonialist occupation and subjugation of the Haitian masses for dominance of the region and resources for U.S Imperialism.

Although the U.S officially withdrew from Haiti in 1934 it continued to interfere with Haiti’s political and economic climate through Haiti’s Bureaucrat Capitalists and U.S Neo-Colonialism. This situation remains to this day and is flaring up dramatically with a multi-national force being readied for deployment in Haiti. If all goes to plan for the U.S, this will result in occupation and overthrow of Haiti’s Government and the establishment of a puppet regime to secure interests for U.S capital.

As Australians we can not save Haiti. Haiti is to be liberated by thousands of new creative and socialist Louvertures and the Haitian masses. The only way we as Australians can help is by overthrowing capitalism at home and establishing socialism in Australia.

Australia as it is, is a running dog for U.S Imperialism. If we can break our leash and become an independent, socialist Australia, we can take pressure off Haiti and stop our support of U.S Imperialism.

…………….

For an amazing resource on the Haitian revolution I strongly suggest reading C.L.R James – The Black Jacobins.

Sources –

(1.) Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto (Chapter 4)

(2.) - https://apnews.com/article/blinken-haiti-jamaica-prime-minister-gangs-ff6b76b6ba9a9d7b8f95fbf95a1d462c

(3.) - https://www.thestkittsnevisobserver.com/barbados-defence-force-getting-ready-for-haiti/

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On the introduction of supermarket security checkpoints

Written by: Comrade Swanston on 3 April 2024

First introduced in mid-2023 to combat the rising number of incidents concerning shoplifting and what the talking-heads of the bourgeoisie have declared to be a sudden and unprovoked “rise in aggression” against their employees in Australian supermarkets, Coles’ and Woolworths’ anti-shoplifting programs demonstrate plainly the bloated and disconnected hubris of the bourgeoisie.

These programs demonstrate a ruling class that is becoming more severed from the lived experiences of the working-class and working-poor with each passing day. It demonstrates a class with such little awareness of its conditions that it ignorantly believes that its own lies it tells to cheat us will simply be taken as fact: by both employee and customer alike. By those it exploits through undercutting wages, and by those it endlessly price gouges out of every dollar.

Yet this lie that they repeat, this lie that they are introducing these means to protect some of Australia’s most vulnerable workers, is acknowledged by all those who toil day to day for what it is! As a sham! As a maliciously crafted excuse which has but one true purpose: to protect capital, From South Melbourne to Carrum Downs, from street to street this is acknowledged earnestly by all people.

One emergency service worker recalled to me that Woolworth CEO Brad Banducci’s panopticon makes them feel as if “everyone is presumed to be a criminal”, and a young single mother told me that ever since those gates first came up in South Melbourne (along Clarendon Street) that she has only seen one thing change. That those “blackshirts” as she calls them, the corporate security of these shopping-centres, have only become ever more energised to brutalise and abuse those they deem “to look too poor” to shop.

To hide behind excuses of fighting crime and to force people to come behind cameras and into that dreaded back room. To come into that back room and face the consequences of surviving and being able to live another day. This is the reality of these programs. This is the reality of the class conflict.

Such measures such as the introduction of so called smart gates, of anti-theft fog and security databases, such measures such as the expansion of security teams and of the trolley-lock system only harm those within working-class suburbs. They do not even affect the wealthy and well-off, the bosses, nor the bureaucrat.

This is even evident in where they place these measures. For what connects South Melbourne to Carrum Downs, what connects my own suburb to all the suburbs chosen for this program is that they are predominantly and historically working-class and host a large population who sit underneath the poverty line. A large population which relies on welfare payments and who reside in public housing. A large population who has long been exploited and shamed by the capitalist system and its supporters.

Like all things in the class conflict, this issue has not remained stagnant over the course of a few months. For it must be acknowledged that this attack has not been one that has been strictly led against consumers, but as ever has been expanded against these corporations’ hard-working employees.

For as reported by several worker-representatives of the Retail and Fast-Food Worker Union, Coles has further expanded this campaign upon its own workers. That is, Coles now again will harass and coerce its employees alongside customers with their “blackshirts”, who will gleefully collaborate and undoubtedly restrain their hardworking and underpaid retail-clerks for but a suspicion of theft. Likely with threats of reporting them to management if they do not comply. With threats of loss of job and livelihood!

These scenes though will be ironic to those who know of Coles’ long history of blatant wage theft. For Coles and Woolworths: the happy hypocrites who cry ‘thief!’ as they rob their workers of their rightful wages have always with a crocodile’s smile attempted to cast blame on others.

They would not dare admit that their employees are being unpaid and should have the ability to shop where they work! They would not admit that the statement from the Retail and Fast-Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) could be true. That as Josh Cullinan, Secretary of RAFFWU puts it, that “the reason they’re bag checking is because they know that their own workers are forced to think about stealing because they can’t afford food”.

For these corporations and their bosses would rather sit lying between their teeth with yearly salaries so high (collected from all their robbery) that the average person could not achieve such in a lifetime.

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Philippines Constitutional change: lingering spirits and the ghosts of the past

Written by: (Contributed) on 29 March 2024

Above: Filipinos rallying in February 2024 against Changes (“Cha”) to the Constitutional Charter (“Cha”)

Claims by political opposition figures in the Philippines that the presidential administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. is conspiring to make changes to the constitution in order to enable the president to serve longer terms of office, are an indication of US foreign policy complicity inside the Philippine political system.

The Philippines has long been considered a vital strategic part of US regional defence and security provision with the Marcos oligarchy widely regarded as puppets with Washington and the Pentagon pulling the strings.

The US is still haunted, even in the aftermath of the previous Duterte presidential administration, from when the Philippines democratically distanced itself from the US and sought a more stable diplomatic position toward China; the US do not want a re-run of the problem in any forthcoming elections. Philippine democracy is seen as an obstacle.

On the 18th and 19th March, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken visited Manila for high-level diplomatic talks with the presidential administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. It was Blinken's second such visit to Manila, highlighting the move by the US to push the Philippines into the front-line of US-led regional foreign policy and diplomatic hostilities with China.

The diplomatic talks were accompanied with officially prepared media releases which contained no ambiguity. It was officially announced, for example, the diplomatic visit was 'to strengthen the US-Philippine alliance in pursuit of common interests ... with … Marcos' desire to be closer to Washington'. (1) The announcement that 'the deepening of Washington and Manila ties had also led to expanding cooperation with neighbours in the Indo-Pacific', was also acknowledgement the Philippines was officially linked into the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). (2)

The US-led IPS is based on the US-Japan alliance as a global strategy, resting upon the so-called 'Quad' of the US, Japan, India and Australia, effectively hemming in China on four sides. (3) It is, therefore, not coincidental to note forthcoming high-level diplomatic relations scheduled in Washington next month include those between Blinken, Marcos and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishada. (4)

Surprise agendas are unlikely. The IPS has evolved from a previous hardening of US-led attitudes toward China; over a decade ago Japanese diplomatic officials who actually spoke Chinese and had direct contact with counterparts in China were 'removed from the front-line of diplomacy', laying the basis for the present Cold War position. (5)

Two serious considerations have arisen: claims by Philippine opposition figures that the Marcos administration is planning to alter the constitution to extend single six-year presidential terms of office; an official acknowledgement that Blinken's second visit to Manila took place to track 'a serious regional crisis and probably armed conflict'. (6)

The former is a particularly sensitive issue for most Filipinos; the 1987 constitution was designed to deal with the legacy created by Marcos' father who governed the country by dictatorship and repression. For many, the move to alter the constitution remains reminiscent of the 1973 move by Ferdinand Marcos Snr. 'that indefinitely extended his term of office, leading to rampant corruption, human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings'. (7)
The US, nevertheless, would clearly like the present presidential administration to continue to remain in office for as long as possible, in the name of 'US interests'. (8)

One of the most vocal of the critics of Marcos Jnr. has been former president Duterte, who pursued a more independent foreign policy toward China. His presidential administration was subsequently regarded as problematic for both Washington and the Pentagon, and they were glad to see his demise and the rise of Marcos as more in line with traditional regional hegemonic diplomatic positions.

President Marcos Jnr. has already proposed a referendum to take place alongside mid-term elections next year about the proposed constitutional changes which he announced 'was not written for the globalised world … to enable … greater foreign investment'. (9) Foreign investment into the Philippine economy is at present limited to forty per cent of ownership, and the US is only too pleased to further increase their foothold into the political system; the moves can best be viewed as diplomatic manoeuvres akin to a puppet and puppet-masters. The present Marcos presidential administration, for example, has already been noted as 'the new darling of the West because of its principled and robust stance it has taken on China and its expanding security cooperation with western partners and allies'. (10)

The latter is a problem which has emerged following flawed intelligence assessments that China, the main imperialist rival to the US, has systematically embarked upon 'grey-zone activities in the South China Seas', and been pursuing unclear political and military agendas. (11) In recent years, using the Marcos Jnr. presidential administration, the US has extended its military presence in the Philippines from five to nine bases, including some in the northern part of the country facing Taiwan which they regard as a potential 'theatre of war'.

The US has been concerned about the growing imbalance of power across the Taiwan Straits for over a decade, and a recent announcement that the US were training Taiwanese troops on 'outlying islands that would be on the front lines of a conflict with its neighbour', has coincided with recent developments. (12) One of the islands concerned, Kinmen (Jinmen in Mandarin, meaning “Golden Gate”), has military facilities for amphibious soldiers; it is only ten kms from the Chinese city of Xiamen in Fujian Province, while being 187 kms from Taiwan. Kinmen's beaches have been noted as having numerous anti-invasion spikes, military posts and bomb shelters. (13) The fact US troops are officially based so close to China must be regarded by Beijing as extremely provocative. Moves by many Kinmen residents to push for a de-militarised zone and peace island, with a bridge constructed to link the island with mainland China, has been ignored by the ruling DPP presidential administrations in Taipei, revealing their intention of following Cold War US regional foreign policy. (14)

These are worrying developments, increasing the likelihood of real-war scenarios
in the Indo-Pacific region, with serious implications for Australia:

We need an independent foreign policy!

(Important extra reading - a statement by Compatriots of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.)

1. Blinken's second Manila visit, The Philippine Star, 15 March 2024.
2. The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
3. Ibid.
4. Philippine Star, op.cit., 15 March 2024.
5. Choppy weather in the China Seas, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2012.
6. Marcos accused of grab for power, Australian, 19 March 2024; and, Grey-zone response a way to call China's brinkmanship bluff, Australian, 22 March 2024.
7. Australian, op.cit., 19 March 2024.
8. See: The Objectives of the US., The Guardian, 6 August 2003.
9. Australian, op.cit., 19 March 2024.
10. Ibid.
11. Australian, op.cit., 22 March 2024; and, See: Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012.
12. US trains Taiwanese troops on islands, Australian, 21 March 2024.
13. A China-Taiwan DMZ., CNN., 1 June 2023.
14. Ibid.

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MUA HERE TO STAY - supporting their members and the Palestinian people

Written by: Ned K. on 27 March 2024

Above: NSW MUA Branch Secretary Paul Keating was one of 17 arrested at the ZIM blockade. Photo: UnionistsforPalestine

The members and the leaders of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) are leading the way in working class action in support of the Palestinian people in their struggle against imperialist backed Israeli Zionist regime.

Last Sunday, there was a demonstration against the unloading of an Israeli ship at Port Botany in NSW. Fifteen people including the MUA NSW Secretary, an MUA Organizer and MUA rank and file Delegates were among those arrested on the usual "nonpolitical" charges of obstruction of vehicles and failing to comply with police directives to move off roadways and the like.

The hundreds of people at the demonstration peacefully assembled at the Patrick Terminal at Port Botany.

They demanded that federal and state governments ban Israeli ships owned by Israeli shipping company Zim from all ports in Australia.

They also demanded the federal government action broader sanctions against the Israeli Zionist government.

The MUA is leading by example in support of the Palestinian people. It is far in advance of many official union leaderships who remain silent, presumably because they do not want to go public against the ALP government. History will not judge their silence well. They will fade away as irrelevant while unions that take a stand against oppression will be like the MUA - HERE TO STAY!

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US submarine visits not welcome and will never be “normal”

Written by: Nick G. on 25 March 2024

On Sunday March 10, the US Los Angeles class submarine, the USS Annapolis, arrived at the Stirling Naval Base in WA from its home base in Guam. The date signified the first anniversary of the signing of the AUKUS arrangements. Rallies in Australia cities were held to oppose AUKUS.

The visit was primarily a propaganda exercise designed to normalize the presence of foreign submarines in Australian waters. The propaganda exercise included a “gridiron friendly” between the US submariners and a WA state team.

Under the AUKUS Optimal Pathway program, up to 4 U.S. Virginia-class submarines and one United Kingdom Astute-class submarine will use HMAS Stirling as a rotational base. The Submarine Rotational Force – West (SRF-West) will operate on the same principles as the US marine rotational base near Darwin, and see more than 700 American personnel at the WA base to support the submarine presence.

The Australian government has announced expenditure of $8 billion to upgrade Stirling’s facilities. According to a March 21 report in the US online Breaking Defense Indo-Pacific, Stirling “needs to be enlarged to cope with larger Virginia-class sub visits and must be secured to meet US and UK standards for protecting nuclear secrets and equipment.”

The $8 billion is on top of the $9.4 billion already gifted to US and UK companies in preparation for building nuclear-powered submarines that will be an Australian appendage to the US Navy as it sits off the coast of China and threatens war with that country.

The US lackey and Prime Minister of Australia, Albanese, claims that once the AUKUS submarines are in operation they will fly the Australia flag and be under Australian sovereignty.

That is not how the US sees it. Former independent SA Senator and submariner Rex Patrick tweeted the text of the conditions under which the US sale of Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines will take place.

They require their use to be “consistent with United States foreign policy and national security interests.” In other words, not the coastal defence of Australia, but deployment off the coast of China.

And, as is now widely known, the sale is provisional on the US having enough submarines for its own imperialist military requirements. Having enough for itself to release second-hand Virginias to Australia requires an annual US production of 2.3 submarines a year.

But the US has just reduced its submarine production to 1 submarine per year, much to the embarrassment of Albanese and Marles.

Hopefully, the program will collapse under the weight of its own stupidity.

But much more likely is that it will need to be swept away by continuing people’s actions.

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A tale of two payments…

Written by: Nick G. on 24 March 2024

In the same week that the government gifted $4.7 billion to Rolls Royce in Britain to help them build submarine nuclear reactors, which we will then have to buy from them, the automatic CPI-based indexation of welfare payments will see the unemployed get an extra 97 cents a day.

The JobSeeker Payment, Parenting Payment Partnered and Special Benefit rates are usually adjusted on 20 March and 20 September each year in line with CPI movements over the preceding six month period.

“This increase – not even a dollar a day – is barely enough to cover a packet of pasta, and will not be noticed by people who are still copping heartbreaking rent rises of $30, $40, $50 dollars, or more, as well as contending with rises in food, medical, utility, and other basic expenses”, Anti-Poverty Network SA spokesperson, Jasmin Witham said.

Ms Witham said: “Almost two years ago, the Albanese government was elected on a promise to ‘Leave No One Behind’, but people on JobSeeker have been largely forgotten. Last year’s Federal Budget saw an insulting and miserable $2.86-a-day rise to JobSeeker. With this latest indexation, JobSeeker will still be $34-a-day – $238-a-week – below the Henderson poverty-line of $88-a-day.

Unlike the Australian unemployed, Rolls Royce must be rubbing its hands in glee.

The $4.7 billion gift from the Australia taxpayer matches exactly the same amount gifted to US shipyards struggling to build one Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine a year.

The government will argue that the $9.4 billion to be shared between US and UK masters of war will be spread over ten years, but so what?

There are currently 565,000 unemployed people in Australia. Shared between them $9.4 billion would mean $16,370,000 per person over ten years, or $1,637,000 per year for a decade.

Instead, they are offered 97 cents a day.

For the sake of selling out our sovereignty, and making it impossible for us to back out of any war the US imperialists wish to drag us into, we are robbing Australians of a decent way of life.

There is no difference between Labor and Liberal in terms of their blind obedience to their US masters.

The waste of money on AUKUS must be stopped.

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AUKUS: Jobs diversion scheme

Written by: Nick G. on 22 March 2024

Above: For the broader implications of AUKUS, see our AUKUS video.

The $368 billion (and counting) cost of the AUKUS nuclear-powered subs folly was promised by Labor to create a 20,000 jobs bonanza. Looked a rationally, however, it is a massive jobs diversion scheme and a huge wasted opportunity for working Australians.

Having already committed to transferring $4.6 billion to pump prime the struggling US shipyards, Labor announced today an equivalent $4.6 billion transfer to the struggling British shipyards.(1)

That’s 9,200 million dollars that we will not see in Australian jobs creation, jobs that could substantially ease the ramping crisis in our hospitals, improve rural roads, assist in lifting public schools to the same funding level as the privates, or reduce the gap in Indigenous disparities.

And that’s only 1/40th of the total spend on AUKUS subs.

The $368 billion is said to be the largest transfer of wealth outside of Australia.

And we are promised 20,000 jobs spread over 30 years for that! And only 8,700 of those jobs will actually be on submarine construction itself.

Economist John Quiggin at the University of Queensland pointed out in May last year that the cost of the AUKUS jobs “bonanza” worked out at $18 million per job.

How many teachers, paramedics, road workers or engineers cost $18 million a piece to train and employ?

In 2015, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) reported that automation could replace an estimated 40 percent of Australia’s workforce within the next 20 years. That’s approximately five million jobs that could be replaced by robots.

The World Economic Forum in its Future of Jobs Report estimated that as many jobs will be created through AI - notably machine learning engineers, robotics engineers and data scientists – as will be destroyed. Even if this is true – and not a case of putting lipstick on a pig- there will be a huge mismatch between the skill sets of those who lose their jobs through automation and those required in the new areas of employment. There will be no large-scale employment transfer opportunity.

While each of the jobs to be created though AUKUS will be welcomed by those who can access them, there are so few spread over such a long time that the promised jobs “bonanza” is in reality a massive jobs inadequacy.

The cost of AUKUS is a diversion of much-needed government funding away from real widespread employment creation.

Imperialism dictates that the public bear the cost of US preparations for dragging Australia into another of its wars.

AUKUS must be stopped.

The movement for an independent and peaceful Australia must be strengthened.

Only a socialist Australia will make it possible to use government funds for socially useful purposes and real jobs creation.

(1) It has now been revealed by UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps that the Australian gift to the Rolls Royce plant at Derby where nuclear reactors for submarines are built. Shapp was over the moon, saying it would double the size of the Derby site, allowing it to create 1,170 skilled jobs. That's at a cost to Australia of $4 million per UK job.

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Transparency: who will the Australian Government listen to?

Written by: Nick G. on 21 March 2024

Original photo: Chris Shannen Flickr Commons

Will a US arms manufacturer have more luck than Australian citizens in getting some transparency from the Australian government?

Frustration at the lack of transparency surrounding decisions of the government is growing.

At the head of the list is self-styled “Transparency Warrior” and former independent SA Senator Rex Patrick. He has bombarded various government departments including Environment, Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence with Freedom of Information requests that are more often than not denied. The former submariner and AUKUS opponent’s X (Twitter) account regularly updates readers with the lack of government transparency.

The Department of Defence is one of the least transparent, with many in the so-called defence community railing against the closed-doorism of the department. They include editor of the online Asia Pacific Defence Reporter Kym Bergmann, who has often complained about the lack of transparency in Defence. He said in a podcast last October that “the cult of secrecy – particularly surrounding anything to do with Defence and national security - is having such a corrosive effect.”

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties recently condemned the government for its lack of transparency surrounding the cancellation of visas for Palestinians escaping the Gazan genocide.

“There has not been any transparency from the government regarding their visa cancellations,” wrote Council President Lydia Shelly in an open letter to the Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil.

Peak legal body, the Australian Law Council, began the year with a call for more transparency in government policy decisions, saying the government had been much more closed off to policy discussions in the wake of the PwC tax leak scandal.

The views above represent a very broad cross-section of the Australian public, yet the government continues to have its ears in its pockets.
However, that may soon change.

US arms manufacturer Northrop Grumman “is readying itself for what it hopes will be a steady stream of business as part of the AUKUS submarine plan for Australia, two company executives” said in Canberra on March 19.

According to a report in the US online Breaking Defense platform, the company was hoping to win contracts for repair and maintenance work on the AUKUS submarines, and was also looking for “small to medium enterprises here that can provide components to the US for the US production”.

In order to position itself to profit from the AUKUS arrangements, Northrop Grumman told the government it needed to help them by being more transparent.

Northrop Grumman executive Tom Wears called on the government to “Provide transparency on what the path ahead is. You know, what are the ultimate objectives? What’s the timeline? What are the milestones along the way so that all industry can be ready to engage at the right time to bring the information that they need to put the plan together… one thing I would encourage the government to do, is be transparent as possible on what the plans ahead are so industry can respond and be ready.”

There is no doubt that two executives of a major US imperialist weapons manufacturer will get their way where Australia citizens cannot.

This is the outcome of the sale of our national sovereignty to US imperialism and the control of our economy by US capital.

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North American Indigenous people support Palestinians

Written by: Assiniboine Nation on 21 March 2024

In Australia, the carrying of the Aboriginal and Palestinian flags side by side has been a feature of many of the rallies against the Gazan genocide.

Many Australian First Peoples instinctively recognise the parallels between the struggles of both peoples against settler colonialism’s ethnic cleansing and genocide.

We reproduce here a statement from the Assiniboine Nation of Montana, USA, one of the Indigenous peoples of North America, and their reasons for supporting the Palestinian people.

The capitalist press seeks to disunite the people, and will never promote the mutual understanding and support between Indigenous peoples.

We will.
…………….
As “Maka Yuchanch,” “Shakes the Ground,” Lance FourStar of the Red Bottom Clan of the Assiniboine Nation in Northeastern Montana, speaking on behalf of a tribe which faces similar struggles against political and economic manipulation and suppression perpetrated by occupying forces, we recognize and stand in compassionate solidarity with the Palestinian people.

We acknowledge that the United States government's deliberate actions to prevent Indigenous tribes from exercising their right to self-determination, dissent, and cultural healing mirror the oppression faced by Palestinians. We acknowledge that just as our Assiniboine tribe experienced starvation at the hands of an occupying force, so do Palestinian civilians suffer under siege tactics aimed at exerting unearned authority over indigenous populations previously thriving on their own land.

We urgently appeal to the federal government to fully restore autonomy and the right to self-determination to Indigenous tribes, to honor the treaties that have been abandoned, to return rightful control over ancestral lands and provide meaningful support to tribes whose territories have been occupied for centuries, to end the cycle of exploitation and suppression, and urge an effort to embrace a new tradition of genuine partnership and respect for Indigenous sovereignty.

Likewise and in complete solidarity with a similarly oppressed Indigenous people, we call for a bilateral ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the siege, the blockade, and all actions against the civilian population of Palestine that prevent its Indigenous population from thriving. We call on Hamas to release all remaining hostages, and on Israel to release all prisoners currently held without trial.

Make no mistake, it does not escape us that so many of the dead and wounded children in Gaza look like they could be our siblings, our children, our grandchildren. It does not escape us that the Assiniboine people can look out our windows and see the graves of victims of intentional starvation by our own colonizers, just as the Palestinian people can see mass graves holding the bodies of their similarly martyred loved ones. It does not escape us, and we will not forget.

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Poverty in Australia: more entrenched than ever

Written by: (Contributed) on 19 March 2024

Original photo by Fernando Goncalves

Some recent studies have revealed just how much the Australian working-class have lost in the past few years with rampant inflation which has undermined living standards. Lower socio-economic groups have been particularly hard-hit. While economists continue to discuss the likely causes of the problem, the seriously dysfunctional nature of the Australian capitalist economy would appear the likely outcome of being part of the imperialist globalised economy.

A recent study conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has found 970,000 Australian workers were employed in multiple jobs, up by 13,600 compared to the previous quarter ending last December. (1) Many Australian workers find it difficult, if not impossible, to retain their living standards with one job. Australia, in recent years, has been hard-hit with soaring price/profit inflation levels which have reduced spending power by as much as 20 per cent to 25 per cent.

Australian workers have experienced a drastic wage-cut.

While Australia has a total workforce of 14,201,300, the participation rate has remained relatively constant at 66.8 per cent. In reality, therefore, the workforce is only 9,486,468. (2)
Using the official government statistics as the benchmark, therefore, a total of 10.23 per cent of the Australian working class cannot financially survive with only one job.

The what extent the second jobs remain outside the usual structured and policed economy with recorded wages and entitlements together with income tax and super being paid and non-official work with payment in the form of cash-in-hand is difficult to accurately establish. The latter, nevertheless, is a factor which has to be taken into account together with the problem of wage-theft.

A further problem workers experience when employed in more than one job is that entitlements for injuries are affected; income protection insurance for main employment, for example, does not apply usually apply if a worker is injured in a second job. If the second job is in the informal economic system, serious legal and liability issues automatically arise during the subsequent investigation.

The official statistics are all the more appalling when taking other criteria into account.

Those employed on the casual basis or precarious levels of employment, while sometimes earning high wages, usually lack credit ratings to raise a mortgage to buy their own homes. They are, subsequently, frequently found in rental accommodation. A recent study conducted by PropTrack has established rental affordability is now at the worse levels since records began. (3) While the average national median household income has increased 19 per cent during the 2019-24 period, rents have increased by 38 per cent during the same period. (4) Last year an ABS study found city rents across Australia increased by an average of 7.3 per cent. (5)

Soaring interest rates have also exacerbated the problem, with the age of cheap credit well past. Many Australians with credit card debts now experience serious financial difficulties.

While economists continue to argue about the causes of the price/profit inflation, a common theory is that it has been the natural outcome of a financial stimulus by the then Trump administration in Washington, designed to ease the problems caused by the COVID pandemic. It was noted 'every year from 2017 when Trump took over from Obama, his administration increased the federal deficit significantly, ultimately adding more to US debt than all former US presidents combined'. (6)

Due to the globalised economy, the problem quickly spread through financial and banking systems to those countries such as Australia which remain strongly linked to the US.

At the top-end-of-town, however, unequal distribution of wealth has continued to be a serious problem. The rich and wealthy continue to expand their portfolios well above levels of inflation while giving their workers wage increases below half that of existing inflation rates! (7) There is no sign the problem of price/profit inflation will end in the near future.

1. Multi-job record a sign of bad times, The Weekend Australian, 9-10 March 2024.
2. ABS: Australian Workforce, January 2024.
3. Rental crisis worst on record, The Weekend Australian, 9-10 March 2024.
4. Ibid.
5. Quoted: Prefabricated and build-to-rent houses, The Conversation, 12 March 2024.
6. Trump or Biden? It won't matter to the US economy, Australian, 14 March 2024.
7. Website: Forbes List, where the rich openly flout their wealth and gloat over their ill-gotten gains; information about what they pay their workforces can be accessed through the ABS and trade-unions.

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Farewell Judy Henstock Murupaenga

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 18 March 2024

Judy Henstock (Huri Murupaenga)
1943-2005

When Sydney journalist Judy Henstock Murupaenga died in November last year New Zealand, her birthplace, and Australia lost a passionate advocate for human rights and equality. For those who knew and loved her, there was tremendous sadness in her passing, but also gratitude for a precious legacy.

Judy’s son named her the “Joan of Arc of Balmain”. She was always out and about in her local area, talking, but above all listening. For her, an essential part of understanding objective conditions, being able to ‘read’ them, was listening to a large number of people.

She spoke of an experience that provided a template for her later activity. As an isolated, young mother, she created a petition against the Vietnam War, door-knocking in her local area with children in tow. She built connections but also gauged people’s attitudes, beliefs and levels of understanding.

Communist methods were her guide. The daughter of leading New Zealand communists Alec and Molly Ostler, Judy understood the strengths and weaknesses of communist practice. According to Judy, communists have to be active in the issues that naturally surround them, and set an example of decent, ethical service to the people. Judy believed communists have to be respectable in its truest sense, of being ‘able to be respected’.

Judy experienced first hand what it meant to be broke for long periods of time, yet her willingness to listen to others, her home cooked meals, small gifts and especially her wonderful Maori bread (a reminder of her proud communal heritage and struggle) were legendary amongst friends and family.

Judy condemned dogmatism and sectarianism. She was a deep thinker and analyser, determined to see beyond appearances, to discover the essence of things. Activity must be based on current mass understanding, backed up by mass education. She believed in studying real Australian and world conditions, including data from government sources and organisations like St Vincent de Paul and the Brotherhood of St Lawrence. She was adamant that information be sourced: we couldn’t expect people to believe us just because of who we were.

She urged patience and respect for others, rather than rushing into activities like a bull at a gate, yet she coupled this with an intense desire to act against injustice. She hated preaching. She rephrased Lenin’s advice not to tell people what they already know into the earthier idiom, “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”

She believed we have to discover new ways of organising, new methods of work. “We have to constantly review ourselves, changing from week to week, month to month,” she said. She despised ruling class deceit and manipulation. “I read lots of magazines,” she said. “People reading are having a relationship with people they’ll never meet. Howard has set himself up like this and he does it well. We need to use similar methods.” She singled out key ruling class organisations: “We need to name the names behind the Business Council of Australia, and do it often. It’s people who drive it, who organise it. We need to give life to their class links, their directorships and clubs.”

Her deepest motivation, was an optimism based on experience that fundamental change was not only possible but inevitable. Her starting point was an analysis of mass sentiment. “People are angry but feel futile. We need to show that things are winnable,” she said. “We have to keep trying till we find something that works.”

In the latter years of her life Judy became active in the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, but was frustrated by poor health. “We have to keep reminding people that new laws are leading to terrorism by the ruling class,” she warned. “People being picked off, one at a time, like Nazi Germany.”

Judy’s eyes would sparkle with a thousand plans. Despite years of illness and intense pain, Judy was determined to help change the world. While it took its toll, her bright words on facing another setback, “Never mind!” showed her refusal to give up.

In the last days of her life Judy joined tens of thousands protesting against Howard’s industrial relations’ laws.

Judy made the world a better place.

“A red libation to your good memory, friend. There’s work yet, for the living.” Hone Tuwhare.

(From a biography of Maori poet, Hone Tuwhare, by Janet Hunt)

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Jack Shapiro: A star shining in our sky

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 18 March 2024

Jack Shapiro, “Our British Correspondent” died on 29th January, 2010 at the age of 93. Through several generations and many decades his comradeship with our party was both deeply political and deeply personal. How lucky we are to have been his comrade! Our ideas were shaped through his articles, through conversations and letters. No book written by Comrade Ted Hill was published without Jack's clear analysis and criticism. He stood shoulder to shoulder with our party in the struggle against the revisionism that tried to take the revolutionary heart from Marxism-Leninism.

As our party's message of condolence published in the last edition of Vanguard said of him, “Alongside his wife and comrade, Marie, he made an inestimable contribution to the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) … in his unwavering commitment to Marxism-Leninism as a science which must be deeply studied and constantly tested against reality in order to be developed.

“Jack truly embodied what the word 'communist' means. He dedicated his entire life to the service of the ordinary people of the world. He knew that if they were led by a working class imbued with Marxism-Leninism, they were an unstoppable force. But he knew that this would not happen spontaneously, that without the guidance of communist parties, organised and steeled in the particular struggles of their own countries, capitalism would continue to triumph.”

The finest cause on earth

Jack was born on the anniversary the storming of the Bastille by French revolutionaries, and he too took a revolutionary role in momentous events.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), the CPGB(ML), described some of his contributions, “Born into the working-class Jewish community in east London, Jack served a full eight decades in the communist movement; decades that took him from a young teenage militant in the ranks of the Young Communist League to Britain’s most cherished veteran communist fighter.

“To paraphrase the words of Ostrovsky in 'How the Steel Was Tempered', our Comrade Jack can have no regrets for a cowardly and trivial past. In dying, he can truly say that all his life and all his strength were given to the finest cause on earth, the liberation of mankind.

“It is indeed appropriate that his final speech should have been given from his wheelchair on 3 October 2009 at our party’s celebration of the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese revolution.”

In his final years Jack became the Honorary President of the CPGB (ML) and of “Hands off China!” The CPGB(ML) wrote that for their party, he was “truly a star shining in our sky”. No better words describe his contribution to our party as well.

Mass line

Jack was fierce in the struggle to implement for the mass line.

“Listening to the workers on the job is vital, for in what they say can be detected the wisdom that carries onto the path of correct activity. That was what Mao meant when he said 'all wisdom resides in the masses'. By listening to those in the front line of the struggle and applying our understanding we can give leadership,” he wrote.

On another occasion he pointed out, “The main thrust must be to get rid of US hegemony. In Australia and even in Britain, the heavy hand of USA imperialism holds down the people of the world. The USA has bases in 172 countries. It moves its soldiers and their armaments from one place to another either to clamp down or stir up or to move in with its local collaborators.

“In the process of struggle many people begin to see the evils of the USA dominance and it is precisely in the course of this struggle that there will be found people who want to do more than get rid of USA dominance and are then ready to embrace the revolutionary way forward.”

A garden grows

The breadth of Jack's connections amongst the people was extraordinary. The ceremony to award him Honorary Life Membership of the CPGB (ML), drew 100 people, among them the Chinese First Secretary, the North Korean Ambassador, and the Director of Xinhua News Agency. With characteristic modesty he said, “I had to pinch myself that it was all about me.”

As well as various other left publications, the conservative 'Times' newspaper carried an obituary for him. Last year he was a runner-up in the first Times/Sternberg Active Life Award, which celebrated the achievements of older people, for his work on behalf of deaf people and those with tinnitus. In that work he drew in Lord Astley and the Duchess of Devonshire but it was with ordinary people that he worked most closely.

The Times' article contains an extraordinary list of achievements, rightly describing them as 'prodigious'. He truly served the people. Yet 'The Times' did not mention that he was a communist, or include any of his directly political work.

Jack wrote of the genesis of his work for the deaf, “Many years ago I posed a question to Ted Hill. As there was no ML party here, what could a restless person like me do? Well, said Ted, you could write for Vanguard and raise some funds...but then I asked Ted, what about the deaf (as I am) and those with tinnitus (like me)? Ted encouraged me to plunge into the work for deaf people and also suggested that we form a Tinnitus Association for people to help themselves as there was no help elsewhere.”

In 2002 he wrote in the British Tinnitus Association magazine, 'Quiet”, “The future holds much promise. The BTA can fulfil the hopes of all people with tinnitus. The watchword is always HOPE.”

That hope for the future was at the core of his work as a communist. He wrote of his much-loved garden as a metaphor for the revolutionary change be knew to be inevitable, “But the buds are swelling on the magnolia tree, the grass is green and many of the plants already indicate that Spring is on the way. Shelley says, 'If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?' He meant it in a political sense. It augers well for us.”

Farewell Comrade. You have helped plant and tend a garden of the people. The buds are swelling on your magnolia. Here the beautiful Australian wattles set their autumn buds, buds of revolution that you from so far away helped nurture.

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Farewell Marie Shapiro, comrade and internationalist

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 18 March 2024

In December, 2008, the working class of the world, but particularly of Great Britain and Australia, lost a comrade who had spent her life in their service. Though few would know her name, Marie Shapiro made an enormous contribution to the cause of communism.

Marie was born in London on December 11, 1913 of Polish parents who returned to their homeland the following year. In fascist Poland Marie saw the suffering of her own people, but she also heard the stories of the great Soviet working class which was creating a new society under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by Josef Stalin. At sixteen she secretly joined the Polish Young Communist League, demonstrating an unwavering bravery that would stand her in good stead all her life. Not long after she served nine months in a Polish prison for distributing leaflets proclaiming May Day.

Her parents obtained a British passport for her, and she was expelled from Poland as a British citizen. By that stage she was already a member of the Polish Communist Party.

Marie’s aptitude for foreign languages and the law saw her accepted at the Sorbonne, but without funds she was unable to remain in Paris, and journeyed to London. Her independent spirit was irrepressible. Determined to support herself rather than live off the charity of her English relatives, Marie become a seamstress. She joined the Tailor and Garment Workers’ Union and also the Communist Party of Great Britain, and actively recruited her fellow workers to both organisations.

Yet already she knew that communism, not economism, was the way forward. Trade unions were, and are, great mass organisations and training grounds for the working class, but ultimately only a strong Marxist-Leninist party could lead beyond the day-to-day battles within capitalism to socialism, where the dictatorship of the proletariat could liberate the vast majority of people for the first time and pave the way for the classless society of communism.

In 1933, a year after her arrival in London, she met the man who would become her lifelong partner, comrade and best friend, Jack Shapiro. For both, Yiddish was their first language, and they mixed with the progressive element of the East London Jewish community, who were helping to awaken the English working class about the horrors of rising fascism in Germany and Italy.

In 1936 Franco attacked the Socialist Government in Spain. Both Marie and Jack were determined to join the International Brigades and fight in Spain. They took Spanish lessons before approaching the party. To their bitter disappointment they were told that they could do much more for Spain if they stayed in England. Nine of their group went to Spain, but only four returned. Their sacrifice made Marie more determined never to waver from the struggle for communist internationalism for which her comrades gave their lives.

After World War Two, Jack and Marie made their first of ten trips to the fledgling People’s Republic of China, but it was in the bitter battle against the revisionism that eventually led to the collapse of socialism and the outlawing of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, that they became staunch supporters of and contributors to our party. They recognized the leading international role played by Ted Hill, the founding chairman of the CPA (ML), in repudiating revisionism.

Hill exposed the bankruptcy of the secret speech of Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, just three years after Stalin’s death. While using the name of Marxism-Leninism, Khrushchev rejected key Marxist-Leninist concepts such as the dictatorship of the proletariat while espousing the path of peaceful transition to socialism, despite Lenin’s searing critiques of such wishful thinking in classics like ‘The State and Revolution’.

Both Jack and Marie deeply studied the Marxist-Leninist classics and applied them to British conditions, but revisionism had a near stranglehold of the British communist movement at that time.

Jack became Vanguard’s decades long ‘British Correspondent’, but not a word of his that was ever published passed without Marie’s sharp scrutiny. Many drafts were developed before the articles met Marie’s approval. It was in every way a partnership right to the end.

Jack and Marie remained active in many progressive campaigns. Marie was never idle, but it was not until the last years of her life, when she was terribly ill that that she gave her support to the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) that had risen above revisionism and begun to chart a way forward.

Jack and Marie lived in frugal comfort, ensuring a constant flow of finance to support our party’s work, but able to provide support for their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

We send our condolences to Jack, to her daughters Doreen, Susan and Rosalind and to her seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren, and to the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) who have lost a comrade small in size, but mighty in communist stature.

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The return of the Philippines puppet Mark 2

Written by: (Contributed) on 16 March 2024

The recent visit of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. to Australia for high-level diplomatic talks marks a return to the days of the previous Cold War now being played-out with the present one against China.

Taking place on the eve of the ASEAN Summit in Melbourne, the Marcos address to parliamentarians in Canberra was designed to act as a rallying-cry for a further escalation of diplomatic hostilities between US-led positions and China inside the regional trade body.

The Philippines has had a long history of political leaders who acted as puppets for US-led regional diplomacy; the present President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. is no exception to the general rule. Historically, US military strategists have used the Philippines as the centre of an arc which swings to the more economically developed countries of northern Asia and the under-developed yet resource rich countries of South-east Asia. (1) Operations have followed the regional planning.

An arc from sensitive US intelligence facilities based at Pine Gap, Central Australia, likewise, swings to counterparts on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Guam in the Pacific which have been upgraded as hubs for regional operations. (2) The arc also cuts across the Philippines where the US now has access to nine military bases in strategic areas of the country based on the defence and security of 'US interests' in Taiwan and sensitive island chains used to restrict access and egress across the region. (3)

While great play was made of the Philippines closing some of the huge US military bases in the 1990s with the end of the previous Cold War, the Pentagon soon returned by stealth; emphasis was placed upon re-opening former military facilities then hosted by the Philippine government, partnered to enable US troop rotations with 'permission to operate from the old installations as guests, mostly on the temporary basis'. (4) The moves in the Philippines were also accompanied by similar diplomacy across the region; high-level diplomacy conducted by then President Obama toward traditional allies included numerous agreements about increasing the US military presence without too much publicity about longer-term implications. (5)

The relationship between US-led regional foreign policy and the Philippines, nevertheless, soured considerably with the election of President Rodrigo Duterte whose administration pursued a popularist and pragmatic line; Duterte, politically, came from outside the traditional ruling oligarchies imposed on the Philippines by the Spanish colonial administrations. Instead of, therefore, pursuing the US-led policies of confrontation with China, the Duterte administration stated that it 'will not take sides with any parties contesting China's move to set up a missile base on some of the islands in the South China Seas … this is to avoid the Philippines being dragged into a conflict between superpowers'. (6) The political and diplomatic position was quite clear. It included reference to 'it is not in our national interest … to … be involved in any armed confrontation between China and the US … an independent foreign policy is the best position to take … everything will be resolved in peaceful and diplomatic means'. (7)

The position of the Duterte administration also included their questioning and possible termination of a 1998 agreement with joint US-Philippine military exercises, which set alarm bells ringing frantically in the Pentagon. (8) It effectively threatened to push the US into a front-line position as opposed to lurking behind regional partners and allies. When then President Obama addressed a graduation of US military cadets at West Point, New York, in 2014, for example, he stated 'it was possible for the US to lead through example and by creating international alliances … and … the promise of a less aggressive American foreign policy', was subsequently used for the later Indo-Pacific Strategy. (9)

With the demise of the Duterte administration and election of Marcos Jnr. the US gave a sign of relief; the oligarchies were back in control, with the Marcos oligarchy holding presidential power. Washington and the Pentagon were subsequently able to return to the traditional hegemonic and diplomatic positions of the previous Cold War, now played-out in the present one against China.

It was, therefore, no surprise to observe President Marcos Jnr. being given a big welcome in Canberra; Australia is a regional hub for 'US interests', with defence and security considerations resting partly on the Philippines. In fact, the US regard the Philippines as the front-line with its diplomatic hostilities toward China, with 'Australia the main rear for US military forces'. (10) The diplomatic positions include preparations for 'real-war scenarios'. In recent times, for example, Australian military facilities have been upgraded specifically for this purpose, coinciding with the formal Visiting Forces Agreements between the Philippines, Australia and the US leaving little to the imagination about longer-term implications.

Marcos, furthermore, used his visit to Canberra and address in Parliament House, on the eve of the ASEAN Summit in Melbourne, to state the Philippines 'is prepared to choose a side', namely the US against China. (11) Most ASEAN member countries, however, prefer to not take sides between the US or China; they benefit from diplomacy with both sides. (12)

No doubt the US is, therefore, pleased with their Marcos Mark 2 puppet in Manila, who is serving 'US interests' well, as his father did before him, together with the sowing of seeds of doubt and division inside ASEAN, the premier Asian trade bloc:

We also need an independent foreign policy!

1. The objectives of the US, The Guardian, 6 August 2003.
2. See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
3. US plans to expand its military presence in the Philippines to counter threats against Taiwan, USA Today, 2 February 2023.
4. US eyes return to south-east Asian bases, The Guardian, 29 June 2012.
5. US signs defence deal in Asia, The Guardian, 2 May 2014.
6. Duterte won't antagonise China over missile system, The Philippine Star, 9 May 2018.
7. Ibid.
8. Philippines rethinks defence deal with the US, Australian, 4 June 2020.
9. US signals foreign policy shift away from military might, The Guardian, 6 June 2014, and; The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
10. Guardian, op.cit., 6 August 2003.
11. Bongbong knows he needs friends, Australian, 1 March 2024.
12. See: Tapping in to ASEAN needs, Australian, 7 March 2024, with reference to the 'China plus one' strategy of ASEAN member countries.

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Aged Care Workers Win Higher Wages and Some Respect

Written by: Ned K. on 15 March 2024

Source: United Workers Union, X

On Friday 15 March 2024 the Fair Work Commission handed down its second Decision on wage increases for aged care workers. In 2022 the Commission handed down a Decision increasing nurses and personal care workers and chefs in aged care facilities a 15% wage increase.

The principal unions with membership in the aged care sector (Nurses Union, Health Services Union and United Workers Union) initial case was for a 25% wage increase for all occupations in the aged care sector.

The second Decision of the Commission handed down on Friday 15 March 2024 increased the wage increase (inclusive of the 15%) to up to 28.5% for nurses and personal care workers and a 6.8% wage increase to support service aged care workers such as cleaners, laundry workers and food preparation workers assisting the chefs.

Although aged care workers did not take industrial action to win increases in pay, they raised their voices in unity exposing to Royal Commissions, politicians and the media the impact that low pay had not just on their own personal lives but on the quality of care of elderly people dependent on aged care. It has been their stories that demanded the Fair Work Commission and the federal government ensure that aged care workers be paid wages that reflect the skill and complexity of the work they perform.

Aged care workers’ wages are paid from money allocated to the aged care employers who own and dominate the aged care sector, both residential and home care.

Many aged care sector employers, even the so-called not for profit operators, have a history of mis-allocating federal government money provided to pay workers.

Sometimes this has been done by outright underpayment (wage theft) of workers and sometimes by "creative rostering" and not replacing staff absent from work.

With the increase in wages to aged care workers, the temptation to continue bad practices will no doubt continue.

However, through the workers’ campaign for higher wages and respect for the work they do, they have become more united and organized with thousands joining their appropriate union for the first time. Many are migrant workers who are standing up for their rights and the rights of residents like never before.

The next big battle for the aged care workers and indeed communities is to tackle the question of ownership and control of the sector.

Is it in the interests of aged care residents, workers and communities as a whole that aged care is dominated by private for-profit operators, many of them large overseas owned conglomerates?

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Party Anniversary and Congress

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 15 March 2024

Today, March 15, 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of our Party’s founding.

To mark the occasion, we are announcing today that we will be holding our 16th Congress this year.

Congress is taking place at a time of intensifying inter-imperialist rivalries and continuing crisis of global monopoly capital. Although US imperialism is still strong, especially militarily, it is more widely exposed and isolated. The gulf between the ruling classes of monopoly capital and the masses is widening globally. Conditions for expanding anti-US imperialist forces are strengthening, not least in Australia. Economic and living conditions of the people are worsening. Climate crisis is rallying the people against monopoly capitalism. Nevertheless, we need to take account of uneven conditions and developments.

The heroic Palestinian resistance is isolating reactionary and imperialist forces, inspiring and mobilising the oppressed and progressive forces. The overwhelming international solidarity for Palestinians is an antidote to the ruling class’s push towards fascism.

The inter-imperialist rivalries between the US bloc and China/Russia bloc are intensifying, threatening imperialist war, giving rise to anti-war and independence movements.

Congress consultations offer excellent opportunities to examine Australia’s and international conditions, class struggle, the people’s and revolutionary movements, enabling the party to set the direction for our work and study in the next 4-5 years.

Central Committee
CPA (M-L)

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Australia surrenders sovereignty again: integrates with US-UK military exports and RnD

Written by: Nick G. on 13 March 2024

A new set of policies on Australian exports introduced last November has been designed to make local research and development interoperable with that of our AUKUS “partners”, the US and UK imperialists.

Hugh Jeffrey, Australia’s Deputy Secretary of Strategy, Policy, and Industry made the announcement during a Canberra speech sponsored by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

Hugh Jeffrey has had 4 overseas postings, including as Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC and to NATO in Afghanistan, where he was Senior Adviser to the International Security Assistance Force Commander and the NATO Ambassador.

Jeffrey said that the changes will mean “a net decrease in regulatory compliance costs, and actually expand the amount of research that can occur internationally without a permit”.

“…with the national exemption for export permits from the US and UK, (the changes will) remove regulation from $5 billion of almost $9 billion in annual Australian defence exports.”

That will please not just the American and British, but also our good friends in the Zionist genocidal army to which we are exporting arms and technology.

But local researchers outside the US loyalists in the Australian military, public service and government, are worried about the implications.

The president of the Australian Academy of Sciences, Chennupati Jagadish, was concerned about the prospect of a brain drain towards the military. “My ability to attract the best and brightest in the world, wherever they are, will diminish,” he said. “It’s timely to ask what Australia is really seeking to secure if we are restricting the development of technologies that are critical for the future of our country?”

Even people in the US close to their military are surprised at the gullibility of their Australian servants.

Bill Greenwalt, who as a staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote many of the US export control rules, said he thought “Australia just gave up its sovereignty and got nothing for it.”

Greenwalt, also a former US deputy undersecretary of Defense for industrial policy, warned that incorporating many of the principles of the International Trafficking in Arms Exports (ITAR) regulations to gain access to US nuclear submarine technology would set Australia back 50 years.

The changes are designed to more closely bind Australia to the United States and Britain in return for access to the technology and intellectual property that comes with the primary goal of the AUKUS agreement — buying and building nuclear-powered attack submarines.

The gullibility extends to a promised gift to the US of A$4.7 million to pump prime their submarine production at a time when there is no guarantee of that happening. A matching contribution of US$3 billion has yet to pass Congress, held up by the same Republicans who are hoping for a Trump return to the Presidency.

Editor of the online Australia Pacific Defence Reporter, Kym Bergmann, commented yesterday: “In the US the return of Donald Trump to the Presidency is suddenly looking more likely – and if he scraps AUKUS it might do us all a favour by bowing to the inevitable.”

Commenting on US-Australia relations, former Senator and submariner Rex Patrick wrote yesterday that “There are no guarantee the US will actually deliver. US national interests will always take precedence.”

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also said yesterday that under AUKUS, Australia has ‘lost all sovereignty, all agency’.

Australia will never have the capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy so long as our economy is dominated by the US, and our ruling circles are blindly loyal to US imperialism.

Related reading: Client State: Australia the "51st state of the US" for deadly weapons destruction by Farah Abdurahman

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WOMAD: Marley to perform, Palestinian musicians banned

Written by: Nick G. on 9 March 2024

Photo: Asbjorn Kanck

Yesterday, members and supporters of the Australia Friends of Palestine Association picketed the entrance to the popular WOMAD music festival calling on audiences to boycott the performance by Ziggy Marley, son of the famous Rastafarian Bob Marley.

Their very vocal calls of "cease fire NOW" and "stop the genocide" rang out during the one and a half hour-long rally. Drivers of passing cars honked their horns in support.

The AFOPA bookshop in Adelaide said that many with tickets to WOMAD had called at their shop to purchase pro-Palestinian t-shirts to wear to WOMAD.

Excuse to test new anti-protest laws.

The head of security bloke was in civvies walking around outside the entrance talking to people. He was hired direct by Womad whereas the security guards were contract security guards employed by SRS.

He said he had a specific contract with Womad and that the police were running the security show and applying/testing those new security laws that the Malinauskas Government rushed through after an Extinction Rebellion protest last year. The new Bill increased the financial penalties for obstruction of a public place 66 times, to a new fine of $50,000, and introduced a three month’s jail time.

At one stage a police officer spoke to a Palestinian demonstrator who was walking on the pedestrian side of the two lane pathway on Frome Road. The other lane was for bicycles.

The Palestinian bloke had a placard about boycotting Ziggy Marley as he walked towards the city facing the Womad patrons who were coming from the city.

The Palestinian guy was told by the police he was obstructing the public.

The organisers of the protest AFOPA met with police prior to the protest and under some new law they were told they had to have no placards or flags within 50 metres of the entrance to the event. The police did not enforce this strictly as even the largest gathering of protesters on the western side of Frome Road were less than 50 metres from the entrance.

Why Marley?

Calls on WOMAD organisers to drop Marley from the program owing to his support for Israel and its armed forces, calls rejected by the organisers, had fuel added to the fire when the same organisers, at the last moment, withdrew their invitation for Jordanian-based Palestinian group 47SOUL.

Marley’s wife Orly Agai, is an Israeli of Iranian-Jewish descent. In Israel in 2011 for two concerts, Marley told the Zionist Israeli news agency Ynet: "The history of our connection to the roots of Israel, to David, Solomon, goes way before I met my wife. My father, my Rastafari culture, has a tight link to the Jewish culture. We have a strong connection from when I was a young boy and read the Bible, the Old Testament.” He told the agency that he “felt very close to Israel”.

In November 2018, Marley displayed that closeness when he joined US rapper Pharrel Williams on stage at the annual Friends of the Israel Defence Forces gala which raised US$60 million for the genocidal army.

Their audience included Israeli soldiers in uniform.

Although he claims his music sends a “message of justice, love, and peace for all people,” on October 20, 2023 Marley posted a picture of a raised hand, along with the words, “You know wha! There must be a better way. Free Gaza from Hamas.”

He also signed an open letter affirming his support of Israel amid the war with Hamas.

The letter instructs Hollywood “to speak out forcefully against Hamas, to support Israel, to refrain from sharing misinformation about the war, and do whatever is in their power to urge the terrorist organisation to return the innocent hostages to their families”.

WOMAD director Ian Scobie tried to defend his decision to allow Marley to perform, saying that it was a lie that he had performed for the IDF and only promoted harmony in his songs.

47SOUL a no-go

47SOUL, which had twice before performed at WOMAD, were to be banned, he said, because of the way feelings were running in the community at the moment, and his inability under those circumstances to be able to guarantee their safety. He added that they could perform in 2025 if they wanted to. This was a bullshit excuse, because anyone can see how feelings are running in the community at the moment.

47SOUL issued a statement on the withdrawal of their invitation to play:

"Having initially accepted the invitation, we were later informed that WOMADelaide took the decision to rescind 47SOUL's invite, citing doubts at being unable to present a 'suitably safe environment' for the artists and audiences at the festival due to community protests taking place in Australia," it said.

"We find this line of reasoning deeply problematic and disheartening as it feeds into the narrative of Palestinians being an inherent source of danger to others.

"At this critical time, the message of multiculturalism that WOMAD seeks to espouse, and its specific relevance to the events we are witnessing, could not be of greater importance."

British-Lebanese multi-genre music producer and DJ Saliah withdrew from WOMAD in protest, saying “I am of British-Lebanese heritage. Members of my family are currently suffering daily bombardment by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Force) in Lebanon….WOMADelaide…refuses to provide a ‘safe’ platform for Palestinian artists and their allies at a time when amplifying our voices could not be more critical.”

Australian singer-songwriter Jen Cloher, who is part of Sunday’s WOMADelaide program and has vowed to donate any profits from that performance to 47SOUL and the Palestinian cause, lashed out at organisers’ claims the decision was based on safety.

Tunisian performer, Emel Mathlouthi performed last night, waving a Palestinian flag for a supportive audience.

Writers Week encourages discussion of Gaza conflict

In contrast to the deplorable decisions that have mired WOMAD in controversy, peaceful audiences of many hundreds of people listened with great interest to speakers on Palestinian and Israeli issues at the previous week’s Adelaide Writers Festival.

Avi Shlaim, whose Arab-Jewish family fled their Iraqi homeland after the First Arab-Israel War in 1948, described the discrimination his family faced from the Ashkenazi Jews who had come to Israel from Europe. He had researched the circumstances of the large-scale migration of Jews from Iraq to Israel at that time, and had discovered “incontrovertible proof” that three of the five terrorist bombs directed at Iraq’s Jewish community had been planted by the Israelis themselves to induce a state of panic, forcing Iraq’s Jews to seek refuge in Israel. He explained why he rejected the “two-state solution” and now sought a singular secular and democratic state of Palestine. His book is Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew.

Tareq Baconi serves as the president of the board of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. He was listened to without interruption by more than 2,000 people at 8am as he outlined the origins of Hamas, its political ambitions and the reasons why it has the support of the people of Gaza. His book is Hamas Contained.

Several hours later, another huge audience heard Israeli-born Ilan Pappé address the question of Israel and Palestine more broadly. The author of several books on the topic, he is best-known for his detailed study of the Zionist crime of ethnic cleansing that both pre-dated and continued through the Naqba. It was “a crime that needs to be confronted politically as well as morally”, he wrote in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

As a tale of two decisions, Adelaide Writers Week and WOMAD could not be further apart.

Further protests are planned at the latter.

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Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Written by: Ned K. on 8 March 2024

Above: Early Childhood Workers at a rally in 2022.

The dust has settled on the federal government's changes in the Fair Work Act in relation to enterprise bargaining. Workers and their Unions are looking to see where the changes can be used to advantage workers and what are the traps to look for.

The employers said the sky would fall in if the federal parliament approved widening the opportunities for multi-employer bargaining. So far that has not proven to be the case. One of the few sectors where the new multi-employer laws have been applied is the Early Childhood Education sector. The sector is now dominated by private equity companies and other private for profit operators while the wages paid to workers are highly dependent on federal government funding.

The Early Childhood Education workers (predominantly women) and their Union, United Workers Union, initiated multi-employer bargaining and utilised the new provision in the Fair Work Act regarding relevant funding third parties being involved . The third party involved was the federal government as it funded the wages in the sector. While the federal government said it as sympathetic towards the low pay and poor conditions of workers in the sector it dragged its heels on committing to fund wage increases.

Consequently the sector owners stalled the bargaining process.

The workers and their Union responded in February this year by giving notice of a strike on Internatinal Women's Day, 8 March.

About a week before the intended sector wide strike, the federal government announced it would fund a substantial increase in wages. Union members' Delegates agreed in consultation with members to postpone the strike action and possibly withdraw it altogether once they knew the exact amount that the federal government was going to agree to fund in the form of wage increases and over what time frame.

Delegates thought it best to keep the powder dry as they realised that their members may only get one clean shot of strike action as under the new laws the employers and fderal government had plenty of legal options to try and block on-going industrial action.

The threat of industrial action definitely moved the federal government's position on funding wage increases in the sector.

From the workers' perspective, their Union had utilized changes in the new laws to apply the "rising tide (of struggle) to lift all boats(multiple private for-profit Early Childhood Education Centre owners)".

On International Women's Day, thousands of women workers in the sector will be keeping a close eye on developments and waiting to see the dollar signs from the federal government.

In a completely different sector of the economy, the stevedoring and maritime sector, there is a history of protracted enterprise bargaining disputes between the Maritime Union members and a single employer. The new laws in relation to enterprise bargaining have strengthened the powers of the Fair Work Commission to arbitrate when an employer or group of employers argues that workers and their Union are being "unreasonable" if they have not accepted an employer offer after 9 months of bargaining. The new provisions come under an Intractable Bargaining section of the Act.

This new provision of the Act went through without headlines in the daily press and for good reason. The big corporations and no doubt both Labor and Liberal governments want to limit the power of the workers in key areas of the international economy such as shipping trade and turn around time of containers on and off ships.

So whatever the laws of capitalism regarding the class struggle within workplaces, workers and their Unions learn how to both use the laws to their advantage and how to avoid the worst aspect of the laws to further the interests of the working class as a whole to maximize the opportunity of a rising tide lifting many, if not all boats!

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International Women's Day and Palestinians' Struggle

Written by: Ned K. on 8 March 2024

In Adelaide, celebration of International Women's Day starts early with the now traditional International Women's Day Breakfast at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

Each year thousands of women arrive at the Convention Centre from about 6.30am for a 7am start.

Many school children also attend the Breakfast and there are women from many different backgrounds and occupations in attendance.

This year the guest speaker was Annabelle Crabb and as in previous years, the Breakfast was attended by politicians including Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong who hosted the Breakfast.

Nothing different about that.

The difference this year was that as women approached the Convention Centre from north Terrace's footpath they saw police paddy wagons. Once up the escalator and on the plaza they would have seen more paddy wagons and a large contingent of uniformed police spread across the plaza in a straight line.

Were they there to protect the people entering the Breakfast? Possibly.

Or were they there to keep an eye on the small group of mainly women carrying large Palestinian banners standing behind a blockade especially placed to separate them from people entering the Breakfast, especially Penny Wong, the Foreign Affairs Minister so supportive of Zionist Israel?

Many women entering the event would have put two and two together to see the Palestinian flags behind barriers, a row of police nd Penny Wong being the host of the Breakfast.

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International Women’s Day lifts struggle for liberation of women and socialism!

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 8 March 2024

All power to women of Palestine resisting the occupation!

On 8 March, International Working Working Women’s Day, women all around the world demonstrate their determination to struggle for the liberation of women and humankind from the shackles of colonialism, capitalism, imperialism and its wars. Women resolutely oppose fascism in all its disguises.

We fight for our rights as women workers, as carers, cleaners and society’s nurturers, indispensable for the profit making by the capitalist class. We stand as equals in the long struggle for a revolutionary change. We fight against gender exploitation, commercialisation, abuse and violence against women. We lead numerous struggles for our livelihoods, for our kids, for the environment, for peace and a better future for humanity and the earth.

Many struggles for women’s rights and liberation are joining the widening stream of people’s struggles flowing in the direction of socialism. We welcome and celebrate the growing numbers of women joining the revolutionary struggle for socialism and communism.

We are inspired by the resilience and tenacity of generations of working women overcoming extraordinary obstacles and hardships of oppression and subjugation, only to rise stronger, and more determined to pass on the baton of struggle for liberation and revolutionary change to the next generation of women.

Palestinian women

We dedicate this International Working Women’s Day to the courageous women of Palestine who, after 76 long years resisting the brutal Zionist colonial occupation and genocide, refuse to give up their struggle for the liberation of their people and country from brutal Zionist colonialism propped up and supported by US imperialism.

76 hard years of brutal occupation, intimidation, genocide, torture and rotting in Israel’s gaols, has not held back the Palestinian women’s lifelong resistance, many joining the armed resistance and charting the Palestinian people's revolutionary road to liberation. Women in the struggles for liberation can break the chains of patriarchy.

Around the world women weep and rage in solidarity with the women of Gaza and occupied territories, for their unbearable grief and loss of children, families, friends, neighbours and entire communities. We are inspired by their courage, resilience and generosity, and draw on their strength for our struggles.

We stand in solidarity with the women of Israel who defy the fascist Israeli state in opposing the Zionist colonial occupation and genocide of Palestine. These courageous women are themselves exploited, attacked and vilified by the fascist Zionist capitalist state. They long for friendship and solidarity with the women of Palestine.

More Palestinian and Jewish voices are calling for one truly democratic, equal and secular state for the people of Palestine, Israel and all peoples, that can guarantee lasting equality, peace and security for all.

We also pay special tribute to revolutionary women of the Philippines and India engaged in their people’s armed struggles against colonialism, fascism and imperialism.

Working women of Australia

Day in, day out, the great majority of working women are burdened with the rising cost of living, many struggle to make ends meet, in constant fear of losing jobs, unable to pay for roof over their heads, healthcare, education and child care. Rising homelessness is endemic, especially amongst women. Equal pay is still unattainable. Recent figures show the gender pay gap in Australia is on average 29%. Foreign controlled banks and finance sector monopolies have the largest pay gap between women and men workers. Women still overwhelmingly dominate in insecure and part time jobs.

For over a hundred years women in Australia have struggled to alleviate the economic and social burdens on their lives. The few progressive reforms we’ve achieved to alleviate the burdens on women have only been won through women’s long struggles for better pay and working conditions, affordable child care, legal abortion, laws on sex discrimination and violence against women. Many are now being take away or made unenforceable by the capitalist state.

These are permanent problems and burdens of capitalism, and can never be solved within the capitalist system that totally relies for its survival on the exploitation of people and the environment.

As long as the capitalist exploitation and discrimination of women goes on, generations of women inevitably continue this fight.

The First Nations women are leading the militant fight against the settler colonialism and imperialism, demanding land rights and self-determination. They spearhead campaigns to stop the disproportionate incarceration and deaths in custody of young Aboriginal people, against the poverty and dispossession of their people and country.

The First Nations peoples’ long struggles for self-determination is gathering wide support from non-indigenous Australia.

Working women - organise and mobilise in workplaces and communities!

Equal pay for equal work and work of equal value
Lift wages of all workers
Bring child care into public hands – make it affordable
More public and affordable housing
Increase Single Parents’ Benefits
Implement and enforce anti-discrimination legislation across society
Ban commercial profit-driven culture that commodifies women as sex objects
Oppose involvement in imperialist wars

Make the multinationals pay!

“Socialism will create the necessary conditions for women to achieve their full potential, economic independence, equality and respect in all sectors of society. In a socialist system, working women will be empowered to run the society as equals for the benefit of all working people”. General Programme of the Communist Party of Australia Marxist-Leninist.

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Tuvalu’s Taiwan ties remain, but seeks to regain sovereignty from Australian security pact

Written by: (Contributed) on 7 March 2024

Above: People of Tuvalu protest Australia's indifference to global warming in 2019

Concerns arising about the new government of Tuvalu led by incoming Prime Minister Feleti Teo switching diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China appear to have been resolved, at least for the time being. A diplomatic note from Taiwan's ambassador to Tuvalu stated he had assurance ties with Taipei would be maintained in line with existing defence and security provision. While Tuvalu is a tiny Pacific Island country, it has important geo-strategic significance for US-led regional diplomacy and Taiwan.

In late February the Taiwanese Ambassador to Tuvalu issued a brief diplomatic statement that the incoming government of Prime Minister Feleti Teo in Funafuti would continue to maintain existing links with Taiwan. Concerns had arisen about a possible diplomatic switch to China, following a statement from former Finance Minister, Seve Paeniu, that 'Tuvalu's new government … would review … its Taiwan ties'. (1)

Tuvalu, a small country strategically placed in the Pacific has, historically, maintained full diplomatic ties with Taipei in return for a 'large assistance program'. (2)

Tuvalu achieved independence in the mid-1970s and although it has low levels of economic development, its membership of the British Commonwealth, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), together with a treaty of friendship with the US, nevertheless, have shown its vital strategic importance for regional western military and security provision.

Its security pact with Australia, likewise, has revealed its continued significance for Canberra. (3) The Falepili Union, signed last year, allowed for increased migration to Australia, while surrendering veto power over Tuvalu's security arrangements to Canberra. Tuvalu still broadly supports the deal but wants to make changes it says will make the arrangement more "workable" and will safeguard the "integrity of the sovereignty" of the country. Its decision to revisit the pact has dealt a blow to Australia's signature foreign policy initiative in the Pacific. (4)

A major issue arising during recent election campaigning during the New Year was climate change and the very real fear Tuvalu could eventually submerge with rising sea-levels in a few decades. The offer by China, therefore, to create artificial island projects to protect Tuvalu from submerging was taken very seriously by the peoples of Tuvalu. (5) While China's offer was eventually not accepted, the problem, nevertheless, remains unresolved.

In fact, informed opinion has already noted it was too early to expect the Teo administration to categorically maintain its ties with Taiwan, thereby creating continued disquiet amongst those linked to US-led militaryand security provision. (6)

Studies of Tuvalu reveal little about the role of US-led regional diplomacy, which in itself may be an indication of its highly sensitive nature. The US Department of State, however, acknowledge Tuvalu is part of its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). (7) The IPS is based on the global alliance established between the US and Japan, which, in turn, rests upon the Quad. (8) Tuvalu is situated approximately in the centre of the Quad and also strategically-placed at the inter-section of the equator and International Time/Date line. (9)

As Tuvalu also rests on an arc from sensitive signals facilities in Queensland, it would appear an important part of US-led regional military and security provision, particularly for the South and Western Pacific.

The Quad is also composed of numerous lower-level partners inside the main alliance, and Tuvalu would appear part of the regional IPS provision. Part of the US-led IPS strategy has been to build an anti-China missile network along sensitive island chains, used to restrict access and egress of adversaries across the vast region. (10) The geographical, political and diplomatic position of Taiwan is, furthermore, central to the US-led Island Chain Theory.

1. Tuvalu PM 'rock solid with Taiwan', Australian, 27 February 2024.
2. Tuvalu, GlobalSecurity.org – March 2024.
3. Pact with Tuvalu in the balance, Editorial, Australian, 30 January 2024.
4. Tuvalu's new prime minister indicates he will revisit deal…, ABC News, 28 February, 2024
5. See: Fears of Tuvalu turn to China, The Weekend Australian, 20-21 January 2024.
6. Australian, op.cit., 27 February 2024.
7. US Relations with Tuvalu, Website: US Department of State, 23 June 2023.
8. The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
9. Ibid., and, See: Peter Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
10. See: US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei, 5 March 2021; and, US Indo-Pacific Command proposes new missile capabilities to deter China, RFA., 5 March 2021.

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ICOR Call for International Women’s Day

Written by: ICOR on 7 March 2024

Above: Fighters of the Women's Protection Unit, Rojava are in the front lines of women's emancipation

Today we publish a statement from ICOR on International Women's Day. Tomorrow, on International Women's Day we will publish our own statement - eds.

********************

Women’s consciousness has awakened internationally – for the liberation of women in genuine socialism!

This year’s International Women’s Day, March 8, is marked by an awakening international women’s consciousness. Women are standing up against wars and crises. Despite the most difficult living conditions and repression, mothers, sisters and partners of soldiers in the Ukraine are protesting against the sacrificing of men at the front. In Russia, the ban on assembly can no longer prevent women from publicly demanding the return of soldiers from the front. These are important signals in a situation of growing imperialist rivalry and the resulting threat of world war and the accompanying heightened danger of war in many hot spots around the world.

The call of women in Iran “Woman - Life – Freedom” (Jin Jiyan Azadi) has gone around the world and can no longer be ignored. In Iran, the women’s and working-class movements are strengthening each other mutually in their resistance against the fundamentalist-fascist mullah regime. In Latin America, women are bravely defying the countless femicides and encouraging women worldwide to do the same.

Seventy percent of the victims of Israel’s barbaric war in Gaza are women and children. This outrages us deeply. Their struggle for survival and their resistance has our deepest sympathy and support. A worldwide movement of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle has emerged, in which hundreds of thousands of women are active. We vigorously support the fearless struggle of women in the DR Congo, Sudan and the Sahel countries (Burkina-Faso, Mali and Niger). They do not stop fighting against the unjust wars imposed by the imperialist powers to plunder natural resources and destroy the environment. In Congo-Kinshasa, the increasing armed conflicts, controlled from Rwanda and supported by multinational mining companies, continue to claim thousands of lives. Women and children are the main victims. Today, women are in the front line demonstrating in front of the embassies of Western imperialist countries to denounce their duplicity in this tragedy, which has already claimed millions of lives.

In the ongoing global economic and financial crisis, capitalism is trying to shift the burdens onto families in particular, and therefore especially onto women. But the bourgeois family system has long since become too restrictive for many women. Women are standing up against the intensification of double exploitation and oppression. Women in Britain, Canada and Germany have developed self-confidence and fighting power in strikes by educators and in the health service.

The global environmental catastrophe that has begun is accompanied by women becoming activists for the protection of people and nature. In India, women farmers are fighting fearlessly against the destructive consequences of the steel and cement industries for their livelihoods. In Yemen, despite personal threats, women are revealing the devastating consequences of the war there for the environment and people's health. Their aim is to mobilize women all over the world.

In order to achieve its goals, the imperialist world system is increasingly resorting to ultra-right and fascist methods of government and reactionary demagogy, especially with regard to the role of women. Indian women – especially from minorities, the working class and the peasantry – are greatly suffering under the fascist Hindutva and corporate Modi government. All this has strengthened an international anti-fascist movement. Women from Russia report that before the elections in March they are already preparing to fight against the ban on abortions that threatens after the elections. Courageous women in Afghanistan are organizing secret girls’ schools and, despite deadly threats, are repeatedly taking to the streets to protest. In Rojava, Northern Syria, women and the masses are defending themselves against renewed violent attacks by the fascist Erdogan regime and Islamist gangs.

The International Women’s Day on March 8 was adopted on the initiative of the socialist Clara Zetkin at the Second International Socialist Women’s Conference in 1910. Since then, this day has united the militant women’s movement around the world. In many countries, women have fought and continue to fight courageously for their rights and quite a few have paid for this fight with their lives. They embody the socialist perspective of women’s liberation on this day. The ICOR is committed to this perspective and is actively engaged in the debate on how such a perspective can become reality today. The orientation towards the struggle and the needs of the masses of women and the close connection between the women’s movement and the working-class movement are integral parts of the struggle for liberation for both. This also includes discussing the necessary lessons to be learned from the betrayal of socialism with its negative consequences for women. After the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 under Lenin, the fight for women’s liberation became a guiding principle for society as a whole for the first time. On their path to liberation, women in the socialist Soviet Union had achieved the most far-reaching political and economic rights to date, as well as a guiding principle of equality and liberation for society as a whole. To learn from these and other experiences women definitely should attend the ICOR seminar “Lenin’s teachings are alive”. It will take place in Germany from September 13 to 15.

Let us strengthen the worldwide militant women’s movement!

Let us make March 8 a day of struggle around the world for the liberation of women and all of humankind!

Signatories (as of 6 March 2024, further signatories possible):

1. PCPCI Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast)

2. ORC Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo

3. MMLPL Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Line

4. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

5. PCT Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo)

6. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

7. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh

8. CPI (ML) RS Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Red Star

9. NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

10. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

11. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

12. БКП Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)

13. БРП(к) Българска Работническа Партия (комунисти) (Bulgarian Workers Party (Communist))

14. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

15. MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

16. UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

17. KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

18. RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

19. UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

20. MLP Marksistsko-Leninskaja Platforma (Marxist-Leninist Platform), Russia

21. RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)

22. MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

23. MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

24. KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

25. UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia

26. OAPCM Organización Apoyante del Partido Comunista de México (Supporting Organization of the Communist Party of Mexico)

27. PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))

28. PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

29. PCR-U Partido Comunista Revolucionario del Uruguay (Revolutionary Communist Party of Uruguay)

30. CPPD Chinese People's Party for the Defense of Mao Zedong

Additional signatories (Non-ICOR):

SUCI India

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Indonesia: Shadowy hands, shady dealings

Written by: (Contributed) on 6 March 2024

A carefully worded high-level diplomatic statement recently released from Canberra regarding regional trade organisation has revealed how Australia has followed US-led initiatives to undermine ASEAN in favour of the OECD.

Fears exist that ASEAN has proved ineffective at confronting China's regional influence.

The statement appears to show how US-led regional diplomacy has pushed hard against the BRICs, with other considerations played down to avoid unnecessary publicity and controversy.

The announcement that the OECD has been willing to accept Indonesia as a full member was greeted with enthusiasm from Canberra. (1) The sprawling 38 member countries, largely from the advanced, industrial west, appeared to accept Indonesia on the basis that it was an emerging economy destined to become 'an advanced economy by 2045'. (2) While the country has had involvement with the OECD from 2007, the move toward full membership has important implications. The fact that China has remained Indonesia's largest trading partner has not caused undue concern, at the present time.

Behind the scenes, however, the shadowy hands of those well-placed in Canberra has been duly noted.

The present OECD secretary-general, Mathias Cormann, has remained a well-placed Australian Liberal Party member from the National Right faction; a former senator from 2007-20, he was also finance minister, spanning the three successive administrations of Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison in Canberra. (3) In fact, it was Morrison who actually nominated Cormann for the elite OECD position in lavish display of patronage. (4)

The patronage chain linked to Morrison has also included his membership of the board of the so-called International Democrat Union (IDU), which has been aligned with the 'intolerant far right', linked to pro-Trump political groups in the US. (5) The IDU has had a long-time involvement with the Australian Liberal Party and their coalition 'friends'; John Howard was chair of the organisation for more than a decade, while serving as Australian Prime Minister. (6) The period was marked by a particular sycophancy toward the US with his nearly every political move.

In recent times a major push has taken place from Canberra to establish more amenable diplomatic relations with Indonesia, largely due to its geo-strategic position in the neighbouring region. Allegations of war-crimes by leading Indonesian political and military figures, particularly in East Timor and West Papua, have been played down.

Indonesia, historically, has also been more closely associated with ASEAN, an important regional trade body composed of neighbouring countries. In recent times, however, concern has been raised about the continued usefulness of ASEAN for US-led regional diplomacy. Its member countries all retain important trade links with China, and they have little time for choosing either side in the rising diplomatic hostilities between the US and China. They have vested interests in maintaining the present diplomatic status quo.

Indonesia, therefore, has been taken by the OECD as a test-case; it is an important part of Australia's defence and security concerns and Canberra has noted 'it will also have a ripple effect through other countries across South-east Asia in terms of encouraging a greater alignment to OECD standards at a time when China seeks to assert its influence throughout the region'. (7)

Indonesia has also chosen not to apply for membership of the BRICS trade body last year, which came with a sigh of relief from Canberra. The BRICS, composed of China, Russia, and other strategically-placed countries has in recent years dramatically expanded its diplomatic influence across emerging economies. At its Pretoria Summit last year, the BRICS began high-level diplomatic discussions with the Palestinians and called for a State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as the capital. (8) Australia clearly did not want a BRICs member country geographically close in the neighbouring region.

While the BRICs initiative enhanced the diplomatic standing of the Palestinians, it met with complete silence from the West. There was no official media coverage, which was duly noted with interest.

It is, therefore, revealing to also note the recent Canberra diplomatic statement included three references to Israel, and concerns raised by Tel Aviv about Indonesia's support for the Palestinian people. The OECD leadership, nevertheless, appear to have provided encouragement for Indonesia to join the trade body. It was noted, for example, that Cormann was the 'driving force behind getting the other 38 OECD member nations on board. This wasn't easy. Israel was staunchly opposed'. (9)

What relevance this political chicanery has in connection with developments which took place on 7 October and afterwards has yet to be accurately clarified and established.

1. See: Jakarta in a nickle pickle amid its bid for OECD membership, and, Talks signal a key shift towards the West, Australian, 22 February 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Wikipedia: Mathias Cormann.
4. Ibid.
5. See: Scott Morrison signs on, The New Daily, 14 September 2022.
6. Ibid.
7. Australian, op.cit., 22 February 2024.
8. BRICS Summit, Pretoria, WAFA News Agency, 20 July 2023.
9. Australian, op.cit., 22 February 2024.

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We support the international campaign to free Ecevit Piroğlu

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 5 March 2024

At the request of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) Turkey/Kurdistan, we have petitioned the Serbian Ambassador to Australia for the release of Kurdish prisoner Ecevit Piroğlu. Our letter follows:

H.E. Ambassador Mr. Rade Stefanovic
Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Canberra

Your Excellency,

On June 4, 2022 I wrote to you in relation to the Turkish national Ecevit Piroğlu who is currently facing an extradition request by Turkey for his return to that country from Serbia.

Since 1 June 2022, Kurdish political activist Ecevit Piroğlu has been in detention in Serbia following an extradition request from Turkey. He was denied his legitimate right to asylum. Last year, he went on a 136-day hunger strike in protest. An international campaign stopped his extradition.

On 12 January 2024, Ecevit Piroğlu was released, but the Serbian immigration police were already waiting outside the prison to unlawfully arrest him again and take him to another extradition camp. Piroğlu, who does not accept these unlawful practices, has since gone on another hunger strike for his freedom.

This illegitimate action by the Serbian judiciary, which indicates close cooperation with Ankara, has been going on for 32 months. Turkey is known for systematic human rights violations and attacks on democratic institutions and organisations. The extradition of Ecevit Piroğlu to Turkey would jeopardise his life. With great concern the democratic world public is following the illegality of the Serbian state and is calling for immediate compliance with international and Serbian law. Lawyers from all over the world are informing themselves about the situation and condemning the arbitrariness of the Serbian judiciary.

We protest in the strongest possible terms against these actions of the Serbian state, which violate all human rights. Extradition to Turkey would be a serious violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." This means that extradition to a country such as Turkey, where there is a risk of such treatment, is prohibited. The imprisonment of Ecevit Piroglu is therefore already a gross violation of the law.

We respectfully request that Ecevit Piroğlu be allowed to seek asylum in Serbia and that the extradition order made on behalf of Turkey be quashed.

Nick G.
Chairperson,
Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
5 March 2024

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Condemn the Israeli bloodlust!

Written by: ICOR on 2 March 2024

The Zionist aggressors with their massacre of the starving have reached new depths of criminal depravity. They stand condemned by world public opinion, with only the US imperialists and their veto powers at the UN Security Council protecting their genocidal bloodlust.

The International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR) is a collective of Marxist-Leninists from around the world. It released a statement, which we have signed, on February 25. The situation is more urgent now and grows worse with each passing day. Australia must send the Israeli Ambassador home and immediately resume and increase its payments to UNRWA.

……………

ICOR resolution:

The planned attack on Rafah and the intended destruction of the UN refugee relief organization UNRWA accelerate the genocide of the Palestinian people!

By stopping their payments to UNRWA, the USA, Germany, Britain, Japan, Austria, Canada, Australia, Finland and Italy are intensifying the development of Israel’s Zionist aggression towards genocide. Over two million people in the Gaza Strip are dependent on UNRWA aid to avoid starvation. The destruction of the UN refugee relief organization would also have devastating consequences for 5.9 million people in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

On 26 January the Israeli government accused 12 UNRWA employees of participating in the Hamas attack on 7 October. This is how the Western imperialists justify the suspension of their payments. Even if this were true: 12 employees out of 13,000, 12 employees who now no longer work for UNRWA, 12 employees who, like all UNRWA employees, were checked annually by the Israeli secret service.

The Israeli government is not interested in these 12 employees, it is interested in liquidating food supply and health care for the Palestinian people. Said imperialist powers on the side of Israel are accomplices to war crimes and progressing genocide.

The Zionist military’s planned air and ground attacks on Rafah have the same goal of genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Originally, 170,000 people lived in the city – now 1.1 million refugees have arrived. They were deliberately driven south by the Israeli military. Either a bloodbath, or a Gaza Nakba to Egypt, or driving the masses into the sea – all of them plans in the offing for the annihilation of the Palestinian people. Since 7 October 2023, 30,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been murdered.

At the same time, all initiatives for an immediate ceasefire are rigorously rejected.

No pasaran! They must not get away with this! Let’s take the protest to the streets by the millions worldwide! Immediate ceasefire! Withdrawal of all Israeli occupation troops from Gaza! Reconstruction at the expense of the Zionist invaders and their backers! Punishment of Israel for devastating violations of international law!

Freedom for Palestine!

Signatories (as of 1 March 2024, further signatories possible):

1. PCPCI Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast)

2. ORC Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo

3. MMLPL Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Line

4. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

5. PCT Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo)

6. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

7. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh

8. CPI (ML) RS Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Red Star

9. NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

10. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal (Revolutionäre Vereinigte Front von Nepal)

11. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

12. БКП Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)

13. БРП(к) Българска Работническа Партия (комунисти) (Bulgarian Workers Party (Communist))

14. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

15. MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

16. Symp.PFLP Sympathisanten der PFLP (Sympathisers of the PFLP), Germany

17. UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

18. KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

19. RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

20. UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

21. MLP Marksistsko-Leninskaja Platforma (Marxist-Leninist Platform), Russia

22. RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)

23. MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

24. KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

25. UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia

26. UoC Union of Cypriots, Cyprus

27. OAPCM Organización Apoyante del Partido Comunista de México (Supporting Organization of the Communist Party of Mexico)

28. PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))

29. PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

30. PCR-U Partido Comunista Revolucionario del Uruguay (Revolutionary Communist Party of Uruguay)

31. CPPD Chinese People's Party for the Defense of Mao Zedong

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US imperialism has no friends, only ‘interests’

Written by: (Contributed) on 28 February 2024

Above - Island chain theory - see reference in article

Those observing the dysfunctional nature of US politics may have overlooked one of the serious side-effects of the irrational behaviour. Three Pacific countries which remain dependent upon US foreign aid, have been kept waiting for financial support to materialise with no sign it will take place at some future date. It has been noted from more sensible quarters the three countries, at present diplomatically linked to Taiwan, are, in effect, being pushed closer to switching to China, and thereby, creating greater problems for US regional foreign policy and foisting likely military options upon their allies

Decision-maskers in Washington, supposedly operating in line with Pentagon military planning, can hardly be described as behaving in a rational manner and pursuing a straightforward agenda; they are pushing policies which are clearly counter-productive. Other countries, also dependent upon US foreign policy, including Australia, should perhaps take notice of the highly questionable political and diplomatic behaviour, and evaluate it accordingly. The US budget impasse has thrown elements of AUKUS planning into doubt, according to some in the Australian military community.

With US presidential elections looming later this year the spectacle of an ageing president with cognitive problems being confronted by a far-right buffoon backed by red-necks and gun clubs has become a daily event. It is hardly worth speculating their next move; in fact, it is difficult to take the spectacle seriously.

The latest political chicanery has included pro-Trump supporters wanting to re-introduce an amendment about funding for security on the US border with Mexico into the budget; they have actively campaigned for building a wall to prevent asylum-seekers from Central America as a central part of their increasingly racist and nationalistic political agendas.

Behind the scenes, however, they are pursuing a peculiar and devious agenda, which contributes to undermining US leadership positions in the Pacific; the region is a centre of geo-political battles between the US and China. The US budget impasse has hindered US foreign policy toward Palau, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, effectively cutting their financial support. Dependent upon US foreign aid, the three countries have been kept waiting for months for vital foreign aid. (1) There is no sign the budget impasse will be resolved in the near future.

In fact, reliable observations about the debacle have noted the three Pacific countries signed a twenty-year agreement last October with the US which cost Washington $7.1 billion, designed to safeguard sensitive shipping lanes in competition with China; the cost of replacing the agreement with military options has been estimated to cost $100 billion. (2)

Most of the Pacific islands had neo-colonial economic relations foisted upon them with independence; their economies have never been sustainable without foreign aid. The mass of the populations live subsistence lifestyles. Essential services are usually provided by foreign aid.

Elsewhere in the region, countries such as the Solomon Islands which made the diplomatic switch in 2019, were rewarded with extensive support from China. Beijing, historically, has been generous with its regional aid programs. It has, therefore, been noted by the President of Palau, Surangel Whipps Jnr., that he was 'coming under domestic political pressure to shift his country's allegiance from the US to China, dropping support for Taiwan'. (3) He further noted that 'every day … the US budget is not approved … plays into the hands of China'. (4)

Similar concerns have also been raised in neighbouring Tuvalu following recent presidential elections where the pro-Taiwan leader lost his seat. Nauru, likewise, made the diplomatic switch from Taiwan to China following recent presidential election last month.

The three Pacific countries, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, also form a strategic component part of Taiwan's New Southbound Policy, based on forging closer links with countries in the region and using their diplomatic links to gain access to regional dialogues and trade organisations. (5)

Taiwan, however, has become increasingly diplomatically isolated with a declining number of countries supporting Taipei, none of the remaining countries can be regarded as diplomatically significant. In fact, Taiwan stands the very real risk of total diplomatic isolation as countries switch allegiance to China. In practical terms, as the number of countries diplomatically recognising Taiwan dwindles, decision-makers in Taipei have fewer supporters to assist them at UN level.

Taiwan, however, is diplomatically important for Washington and the Pentagon, marking the centre of Island Chain Theory, used for regional foreign policy with tiny Pacific countries having huge significance by providing strategic access and egress across the vast waterways. (see diagram) Each diplomatic switch from Taiwan to China also enables Beijing to gain access to exclusive economic zones, rich in minerals and natural resources. (6)

Other regional defence and security considerations include the Pentagon planning to build a radar base on Palau and the Marshall Islands hosting the Space Fence, a sensitive space surveillance system. (7)

Returning to the budget impasse in Washington, it is perhaps appropriate to see the whole spectacle as a collapse of political will at the imperial centre being played-out inside a constitution which one side does not even regard as legitimate; it has far-reaching implications for Australia and other US allies.

The US appear to be abandoning Taiwan, if not in word, then by their actions; both Washington and the Pentagon, it should be noted, appear to expect their allies within the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) to take greater responsibility for regional operations. (8)

Bound ever closer to the US through the 'alliance' and numerous military agreements, Canberra, for example, has been forced to accept greater responsibility for regional 'US interests'; the defence and security of strategic Pacific countries, therefore, is a major concern foisted upon Australia. The recently published list of military acquisitions reveals longer distance deployments outside of Australia's usual areas of concern, already been planned by the Pentagon.

In order to increase US production of nuclear-powered submarines and thus have several to pass onto Australia, both countries agreed to provide US$3.3 billion – or A$4.6 billion from our side – but the US payment has been delayed by Congress. Editor of the online Asia Pacific Defence Reporter Kim Bergmann commented: ‘So while Australia remains on the hook for a contribution of $4.6 billion – which neither the government nor the RAN can justify – the Americans refuse to spend their own money to speed up submarine production. What an ally! Unless Virginia class submarines are being built at a rate of 2.33 per year, Australia will receive nothing.’

The vast Australian defence budget is also set to increase dramatically, lifting spending from 2.05 per cent of present GDP to 2.3 per cent by the end of the decade. Much of the increased expenditure is based on military systems and equipment with designed interoperability with the US under their command; little thought or consideration has been given to the defence and security of Australia itself. (9)

The IPS, likewise, has established an agenda to only serve 'US interests', not those of its allies:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. See: US budget impasse driving Palau into arms of China, Australian, 21 February 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. See: Beijing keeps a wary eye on new Taipei outpost, Australian, 18 June 2018.
6. US v. China, Japan Forward: Politics and Security, Dr. Rieko Hayakawa and Jennifer L. Anson, 14 February 2020.
7. Ibid., and, Australian, op.cit., 21 February 2024.
8. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019, with details about the US regional policy for allies taking responsibility for US-led operations.
9. Introductory remarks to APDR Podcast no. 37

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Cancel the Elbit contract!

Written by: Nick G. on 28 February 2024

Above - the Hanwha Redback PHOTO Andrew Green via Australian Ministry of Defence

Israel’s Elbit Systems announced yesterday that it had been awarded a US$600 million - A$917 million - contract by the Australian Department of Defence for the supply of systems to South Korean company Hanwha.

Hanwha is to produce 129 Redback Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) for the DoD at Geelong.

Hanwha and Elbit last year signed an agreement to cooperate on the manufacture of the IFVs which already include the Redback Turret, which is based on the latest generation of Elbit’s 30 mm manned turret with the COAPS gunner sight, additional electro-optic systems, Iron Fist active protection system, Elbit's Iron-Vision advanced situational awareness head mounted display system, and Elbit's ELAWS laser warning system.

The contract for the IFVs is worth $7 billion AUD ($4.6 billion USD), of which will go to Elbit, in addition to the additional $917 million.

All of this was negotiated by the DoD last year after the Zionist army attacked Gaza, and is a totally unwarranted reward for Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.

The significance of the contract was omitted from today’s online Australian Defence Magazine’s announcement, but was prominent in yesterday’s US online Breaking Defense report.

The US report said that the contract ‘expands Elbit’s role in Australia. It is also the largest contract announced by the Israeli firm since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.’

The Australian report did not say why we needed the IFVs, but the US report was less coy, quoting the DoD as saying that ‘The acquisition of these infantry fighting vehicles is part of the Government’s drive to modernise the Australian Army to ensure it can respond to the most demanding land challenges in our region.’

What ‘land challenges’ there might be ‘in our region’ were not specified, although it strongly suggests preparation on the part of the DoD for military action in other people’s countries in the South Pacific.

This contract must be cancelled. There should be no purchases of military equipment from the genocidal Zionists, nor should there be any arms sales to them.
By way of a postscript, the Wikipedia page on Elbit documents other countries that have taken a moral stand against dealing with the company.

Ethical concerns and divestment

A number of financial and investment organizations have divested their interests in Elbit.

On September 3, 2009, the Government Pension Fund of Norway's ethical council decided to sell the fund's stocks in Elbit due to the company's supply of surveillance systems for the Israeli West Bank barrier. At a press conference to announce the decision, Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen said "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law". The Norwegian Ambassador to Israel, Hans Jacob Biørn Lian, was called to a meeting at the Israeli Foreign Ministry where the decision was protested.

In January 2010, Danske Bank added Elbit to the list of companies that fail its Socially Responsible Investment policy. A bank spokesman noted that it was acting in the interests of its customers by not "placing their money in companies that violate international standards". The Danish financial watchdog DanWatch placed Elbit on its ethical blacklist in 2011. In 2014, one of Denmark's largest pension fund administrators PKA Ltd announced it will no longer consider investing in Elbit, stating "The ICJ stated that the barrier only serves military purposes and violates Palestinian human rights. Therefore we have looked at whether companies produce custom-designed products to the wall and thus has a particular involvement in repressive activities."

In March 2010, a Swedish pension fund, not wanting to be associated with companies violating international treaties, boycotted Elbit Systems for its involvement in the construction of Israel's West Bank barrier wall.

In December 2018, HSBC divested from Elbit following Elbit's acquisition of IMI Systems. HSBC cited IMI's manufacturing of cluster bombs, which violated the bank's ethics policy of not investing in companies linked to the manufacturing or marketing of cluster munition.

In 2019, Axa partially disinvested from Elbit Systems following pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The move followed several years of campaigning by NGOs, including an April 2018 petition launched by SumOfUs that received 140,000 signatures. Axa "quietly reduce" its investments in Elbit and Israeli banks. Axa remains indirectly invested in Elbit and Israeli banks through a non-controlling interest in its former subsidiary Alliance Bernstein.

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Aaron Bushnell – rest in power…

Written by: Nick G. on 28 February 2024

The self-immolation of an American serviceman in protest against US support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, has gone largely unreported in the Australian media.

The event is a major embarrassment for the US and for supporters of Zionism.

The 25-year old US Air Force senior airman set himself alight outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on February 25.

As he collapsed to the ground in flames, one security guard pulled a gun and pointed it at him. Another, with a fire extinguisher, remonstrated with his colleague, yelling "I don't need guns! I need fire extinguishers!"

As he approached the embassy, Bushnell declared: "I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine it is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

As flame engulfed his body, he kept shouting ‘Free Palestine’.

Hamas released the following statement on Bushnell’s death:

The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, extends our heartfelt condolences and unwavering support to the loved ones of American pilot Aaron Bushnell. His name will forever be remembered as a champion of human rights and a staunch opponent of the oppression faced by the Palestinian people at the hands of the American government and its unjust policies.

We also honor the memory of American activist Rachel Corrie, who tragically lost her life in 2003 while standing up against Zionist aggression in Rafah.
The responsibility for Aaron Bushnell's untimely death lies squarely with the Biden administration, which has continuously supported the brutal actions of the Zionist regime against our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Bushnell made the ultimate sacrifice in an effort to bring attention to the genocide committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Aaron Bushnell's bravery will forever be etched in the hearts of the Palestinian people and all those around the world who stand in solidarity with our just cause. His tragic passing serves as a stark reminder of the growing discontent among the American populace towards their government's complicity in the suffering of our people.

We call on the global community to join us in condemning the actions of the American government and demanding justice for the Palestinian people. The legacy of Aaron Bushnell will serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration in our continued struggle for freedom and justice.

It gives us no joy to report this young man’s death.

However, the murderous Israeli security agency, Mossad, was jubilant. On its Twitter page on February 26, it gleefully declared ‘Our enemies kill themselves’.

It took the post down the nest day, prompting one of it supporters to ask: ‘You posted yesterday that our enemies are killing themselves and you deleted a post. (Referring to the soldier Bbq'ing himself). Do you consider the US an enemy?’ Mossad replied, ‘the post was deleted because it came across that way. The US is an ally and a friend. Individuals don't change it, not even a president,’ which was hardly a retraction at all.

The people of Gaza do not need more guns, tanks, planes, bombs, drones sent to Israel from the US, Australia, and others in the imperialist bloc.

They need the very real fire extinguisher of the defeat for all time of Zionist expansion, aggression and genocide.

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Explaining China: How a socialist country took the capitalist road to social-imperialism (Italian)

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Greetings to DFLP on its 55th anniversary

Written by: DFLP and CPA (M-L) on 21 February 2024

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine is one of the constituent bodies in the Palestinian resistance. Tomorrow marks the 55th anniversary of the founding of the DFLP. We received a message from them and have sent a reply. They are both below.

Dear comrades,

On the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the founding and launch of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) on February 22, 1969, and in light of the Israeli genocidal crimes committed against the Palestinian people that have continued for more than 75 years, the DFLP continues its struggle and resistance in order to end the Israeli occupation of its lands and establish the independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the return of refugees to their homes, and self-determination of the Palestinian people.

DFLP has sacrificed a large number of martyrs in the face of the Israeli occupation and its crimes against the Palestinian people, including members of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau, and it is still defending its Marxist-Leninist ideas in order to implement its political program.

Based on the extent of the real suffering and tragedy that the Palestinian people are experiencing in the Gaza Strip, DFLP will suspend its celebrations on the 55th anniversary of its launch, and activities will be limited to support the resistance and struggle of the Palestinian people.
……………..
Our reply reads:

On the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) expresses its solidarity with, and support for, the heroic and long-suffering Palestinian people.

The Australian people have been shocked by the genocidal slaughter imposed on Gaza by the Zionist regime. In their hundreds of thousands they continue to rally and march for the right of Palestinians to exist peacefully in their homeland from the river to the sea.

The bloodlust of Netanyahu, and his determination to eliminate Palestinians from the last of their territory, will bring thousands more into the movement, including those Australian Jews who refuse to allow Netanyahu to speak in their names.

Comrades, your adherence to, and defence of, Marxism-Leninism in the context of the need to maintain the broadest united front against Zionist aggression, is an inspiration to Communists everywhere.

Long live the Palestinian resistance!

Smash Zionism and its imperialist backers!

For Marxism-Leninism, the ideology of successful revolutionary struggle!

The Central Committee
Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

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The Solomon Islands and the 'Look North' policy.

Written by: (Contributed) on 20 February 2024

Above - Sogavare and Xi Jinping establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership July 10, 2023. Photo China Daily

The Solomon Islands goes to the polls on 16 April with the present government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare expected to retain power. The ruling Sogavare administration remains popular with Solomon Islanders although it has been demonised in recent years by right-wing defence and security hawks in Canberra, backed by the US. An assessment from the right-wing Lowy Institute, influential in the corridors of power in Canberra, therefore, has provided an interesting insight into the nature of Australia-Solomons Islands diplomacy.

With electioneering taking place in the Solomon Islands, the present government of Prime Minister Sogavare has announced its five key policy priorities if returned to office; the priorities are all linked to China and its active diplomatic involvement since the Solomon Islands switched to Beijing from Taipei in 2019. They include a national broadband project by Huawei, closer involvement with the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese police training their Solomons' counterparts, with closer security co-operation with China together with strengthening existing relations with China. (1)

The new Look North policy of the government has also been strengthened with the formation of a ruling political organisation, the Ownership, Unity and Responsibility (OUR) Party.

Politics in the Solomon Islands, like much of the vast Pacific region, has traditionally been based on strongly localised leaders representing a multitude of different ethnic groups. The new OUR Party, however, is based at the national level and has over-ridden many of the ethnic problems which have plagued the Solomon Islands for decades, hindering economic development of one of the poorest countries in the region.

The problem was also exacerbated by diplomatic links between the Solomon Islands and Taiwan; Taiwanese aid programs were channelled through provincial government administrations, the outcome favouring some ethnic groups over others. The decision by the Sogavare government in 2019, to switch diplomatic links to China was regarded by many Solomon Islanders as a good move, although those ethnic groups which lost their aid provision on Malaita Island subsequently marched on the capital Honiara and attacked businesses regarded as owned or controlled by China. Direct involvement from Canberra for law enforcement was necessary to restore political stability.

The Solomon Islands, as part of the South Pacific sub-region, has always been regarded as an important addition to Australia's defence and security in conjunction with neighbouring Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. It is, therefore, in keeping with the relationship for the arc from Australian military signals intelligence facilities in Queensland to swing through the capital cities of all three Melanesian countries. (2)

While the three countries have their own defence and security provision, established when they achieved independence, they have historically been over-ridden by Australia as the former colonial power. Australia retained the status of the Mother Country afte independence. The defence and security facilities, however, are also further over-ridden by the US, with its global intelligence system at Pine Gap, Central Australia. The US, nevertheless, has usually relied upon Australia for localised operations in line with Five Eyes provision; the 'alliance' always has been the dominant force in US-Australian diplomacy as part of the elite Five Eyes intelligence facilities.

From the early 1970s the US National Security Agency (NSA) together with the British GCHQ starting sharing intelligence work with other members of the Five Eyes. (3) It has now evolved into a highly sophisticated defence and security-based relationship. The origins, however, were not coincidental. In 1973 the US opened sensitive intelligence facilities on Diego Garcia in the Indian ocean which operated in conjunction with Pine Gap.

The opening of the US intelligence facilities included counterparts at Silvermine, near Cape Town, in South Africa, likewise, became operational at the same time. The stated range of the South African intelligence facilities reached from Argentina to Bangladesh, and from north Africa to the South Pole, providing defence and security provision for the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions. (4) The South African facilities maintained direct contact with both the US and UK, as dominant within the Five Eyes. (5)

As the present Cold War position taken by the US toward China has escalated, regional defence and security provision has become increasingly important for the Pentagon and its military planners. A quick study of the US regional military involvement has revealed endless obsession and preoccupation with the maintenance of traditional hegemonic positions in the face of increasing competition from China.

The US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), for example, has included Japan being elevated into a global alliance with the US for regional operations, resting on the so-called 'quad' designed to hem in China on all sides. (6) The 'quad' is linked to lower-level partners. (7)

Elsewhere, the Pentagon has re-opened a multitude of military facilities across the vast Indo-Pacific region. (8) The US-led regional foreign policy has included re-using Island Chain Theory (ICT), largely discredited during the previous Cold War, and using it to host numerous missile networks. (9) The ICT is, at present, being upgraded to include the Indian Ocean. (10)

It is, therefore, hardly surprising to find the Sogavare administration has been increasingly demonised by right-wing defence and security hawks in Canberra eagerly pursing the US line; it cannot be trusted to follow their diplomatic positions. A recent assessment from the Lowy Institute, for example, included reference to 'the wide array of China-backed policies that will continue to cause Canberra unease if Mr Sogavare is returned after the April election, as is expected by many analysts … he fully intends to pursue closer ties with China'. (11) No recognition was provided in the assessment for Melanesian traditional diplomacy conducted along lines of the peoples of the sub-region being 'friends to all and enemies to none'. (12)

In conclusion, the diplomatic position of Canberra toward the Solomon Islands remains one based in neo-colonial attitudes based on wanton speculation.

At this stage, Australian and US fears that China plans to establish a military base in the Solomons appear unfounded, but China is pursuing its own imperialism – with Chinese characteristics – and must be watched if countries are to maintain their independence.

Every country needs an independent foreign policy!

1. Solomons PM vows: 'I'll look to China', Australian, 14 February 2024.
2. See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
3. Spyworld, Mike Frost, (Canada, 1995), page 40.
4. 'Maritime Operational Communications HQ', The Star (South Africa), 10 March 1973; and, Security in the Mountain, The Star (South Africa), 17 March 1973.
5. Ibid.
6. The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
7. Ibid.
8. US eyes return to south-east Asian bases, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 29 June 2012; and, The Guardian Weekly, (U.K.), 2 May 2014.
9. US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei Asia, 5 March 2021.
10. Wikipedia: Island Chain Theory.
11. Australian, op.cit., 14 February 2024.
12. Ibid.

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Workers’ power and closing the loopholes industrial laws

Written by: Ned K. on 18 February 2024

Above - the Perfection Press women, as part of their campaign, released a CD available here.

The federal Labor Government has succeeded in having its Closing the Loopholes industrial laws passed through both Houses of Parliament.

The new laws will find their way into the Fair Work Act and become operational over the next 6 to 12 months.

The new laws make some attempt to regulate working conditions for gig economy workers and owner drivers in the transport industry. They also provide a more detailed definition of casual employment which may assist some casuals to be recognised as permanent workers with at least minimum paid sick leave and annual leave.

David Peetz, a researcher well-respected by workers and their unions, recently wrote an article online in the Pearls and Irritations website about the recent changes.

Peetz's most astute observation about the "rough and tumble" in parliament by Dutton and his cronies about the new laws is that possibly the most important change of all the laws went through "under the radar", so to speak.

Peetz was referring to the changes to the Fair Work Act arising from the Closing the Loopholes Bills that for the first time since the early 1990s see the term Union Delegate and rights of Delegates included in the industrial relations Act of the day.

The Fair Work Act will now require the rights of Delegates in workplaces to be included in Awards and Enterprise Agreements.

Peetz has done very detailed research of the impact on workers’ collective strength in workplaces of the decline in Union Delegate numbers in Australia during the period from early 1990s to about 2015.

His research showed a direct correlation between decline in union membership in workplaces and the decline and/or complete absence of Union Delegates in workplaces.

His research also showed the relationship between strong Delegate networks and stronger industrial outcomes in wages and conditions, respect of workers by bosses and better job security and control of casualization of the workforces, even during the onslaught of Workchoices and the (Un)Fair Work Act years.

Peetz's research findings are backed up by two recent disputes that have been prominent in the media in the last few weeks.

The dispute between stevedore multinational DP World and the MUA and their members saw these maritime workers take industrial action in various forms over a number of weeks against DP world in order to win wage increases and better conditions.

Why were the MUA members able to maintain their struggle for a considerable period of time and win?

One important factor was that throughout all the attacks on the MUA since at least the 1930s, their members have maintained organization and elected Union Delegates across the whole maritime industry.

The second dispute that made headlines was the shocking and utterly disgraceful exploitation and sexual harassment of migrant women farm workers at the biggest tomato producer in Australia, Perfection Fresh.
Twelve courageous women farm workers with the strong support of their Union, United Workers Union, have taken Perfection Fresh to the Federal Court after being sexually harassed by labour hire male workers in positions of power over them.

One important reason these women workers have been able to take this action is because the hundreds of mainly migrant workers in their workplace at Virginia, north of Adelaide, have courageously organized themselves (supported by their Organizer) and elected their own leaders including Union Delegates. Without that level of collective Strength within the tomato glasshouses of Perfection Fresh, the twelve women's decision to take action would have been much more difficult.

As David Peetz correctly points out, even with the new laws giving formal recognition to the rights of Delegates in workplaces, it is up to union leaderships to ensure that workers are given full support and opportunity for development when they step up as Union Delegates in their workplace.

Workers will soon notice which Unions want to organize the unorganized and further develop the already organized.

If David Peetz's research is still valid today, when workers unite and organize, bosses will tremble.

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ADF in trouble as personnel leave in droves

Written by: (Contributed) on 12 February 2024

The ADF beset with recruitment and retention problems PHOTO: defenceconnect.com.au

Cold War US-led diplomatic hostilities and sabre-rattling continue to escalate across the Indo-Pacific region on the daily basis. An official statement from Duntroon has, therefore, proved particularly revealing when placed in the context of developments in the Western Pacific. While the statement was primarily concerned with training provision and serious shortages of personnel, it revealed the sense of urgency taking place within military planning circles inside the corridors of power, for Australia to be prepared for 'real-war scenarios' at the behest of the US in the next few years.

In early February the Royal Military Training College at Duntroon issued an official media release announcing the beginning of a two-year trial for army officer training provision whereby their standard 18-month courses would be shortened to 12-months. (1) While the stated reason for the shortening of the training provision was 'recruiting and retention problems', a sense of urgency would appear to have taken priority. (2) The present course structure of six separate modules has also been altered to enable students to take each stage separately and not in the usual sequence. The statement also quoted a Lieutenant General Stuart noting that 'officer cadets were keen to get out there and apply what they have learned'. (3)

During the next two years Duntroon will be providing training provision for between 500-600 military officers who, after graduation, will then form part of the command led by the Pentagon for largely regional defence and security provision and military operations.

Following the re-organisation of the elite US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) over a decade ago, the Pentagon now receives a regular stream of regional military assessments from various locations in the Indo-Pacific; the region has seen the US experience a serious challenge to traditional hegemonic positions with the rise of China and is regarded as a potential theatre of war. (4)

The US military assessments have already provided the Pentagon with what they regard as a serious problem.

Serious problems face US imperialism

Assessments of the Western Pacific region, for example, have revealed the US is no longer the dominant power. (5) The recent attempt by China to win over the government of Nauru for diplomatic recognition away from Taiwan has heightened tensions still further; it has been noted that 'Nauru could not have been unaware how the timing of its announcement would put the region again on the geo-political frontline'. (6)

Taiwanese diplomatic recognition elsewhere in the region is also under threat with serious concerns about Tuvalu and Palau, the last two countries in Micronesia which support Taipei. (7)

A major US concern is that China has been able to win support from Pacific island countries enabling them to gain access to their huge exclusive economic zones (EEZs); some of the EEZs are used by the US to host sensitive military and intelligence facilities. (8)

North of the Marshall Islands, for example, the small US territory of Wake Island together with the Japanese territory of Minami-Torishima both host highly sensitive facilities for US-led military facilities. (9)

Many of the small Pacific islands also mark sensitive areas of the US-led Island Chain Theory, used for demarcation of the region; they have already been used to host defence and security provision against China. (10)

ADF to recruit footsloggers and commanders from the Pacific

The changes to training procedures reflect government and ADF concern about the numbers of people leaving the ADF. The military recorded a separation rate of 11.2% in 2022/23, falling short of its retention targets. For several years, the right-wing ASPI and similar groups have called for a relaxation of ADF screening of recruits, believing too may are turned away.

In early January, then-acting Defence Minister Keogh announced the ADF was looking to island nations in the Pacific for recruits. At the same time, Pacific military leaders are being given command positions in the ADF. In a first for the ADF, Colonel Boniface Aruma from Papua New Guinea and Fiji's Colonel Penioni Naliva have been appointed deputy commanders of Australian Defence Force brigades. In Naliva’s case, the screening could not have been that thorough – Amnesty International wants him investigated for human rights abuses following the 2006 coup in Fiji.

What seems to have been more important to the government and the ADF is the way the appointments would be perceived: “…as strategic responses to China's increasing influence in the Pacific…This region is traditionally considered within the sphere of influence of Australia and the United States. The ripple effect of these appointments is expected to have vast geopolitical implications, altering the balance of power in the Pacific region.”

Black Hawks darken our skies…

What is also particularly significant about the recent statement issued by Duntroon is their emphasis upon helicopters, in fact about half of the statement was focussed upon the US providing Australia with Black Hawk utility helicopters following the phasing out of existing Taipans together with provision of a Black Hawk training simulator. (See our recent comment Heads must roll to clear Defence of US loyalists).

It was noted Australia will eventually be acquiring forty Black Hawks together with a further 29 AH-64E combat helicopters. (11)

Helicopters have traditionally been associated with rapid deployment in and out of difficult terrain. Small and remote landmasses are, no doubt, already in mind!

The new helicopters have been accompanied by upgrades to sensitive military facilities in Queensland, facing the western Pacific.

The time-line from defence and security provision into likely military operations, therefore, would appear to be shortening:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. Army officers on fast track to command, Australian, 7 February 2024.
2.. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012.
5. See: Study – US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Paul D. Shinkman, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
6. Island recruits a win-win solution for ADF shortfall, Australian, 18 January 2024.
7. Pact with Tuvalu in the balance, Editorial, Australian, 30 January 2024; and,
Tuvalu security pact in jeopardy, Australian, 29 January 2024.
8. See: US v. China, Japan Forward, Politics and Security, Dr. Rieko Hayakawa and Jennifer L. Anson, 14 February 2020.
9. Ibid.
10. See: US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei, 5 March 2021; and, US Indo-Pacific Command proposes new missile capabilities to deter China, RFA., 5 March 2021.
11. Australian, op.cit., 7 February 2024.

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Current trends in Australian agriculture

Written by: Duncan B. on 10 February 2024

Australian agriculture in 2024 sees the continuation of the trends we have regularly reported on in previous years. Foreign-owned companies continue to buy up big, with more Australian farms and agribusinesses entering foreign hands.

Canadian and US pension funds, particularly the Canadian fund PSP continue to make big purchases of agribusinesses and farmland for cropping, grazing, wine production, nuts and horticulture. Properties with water rights are especially sought after.

Other foreign buyers are active as well. For example, Australia’s largest fruit and vegetable wholesaler Costa Group will be taken over by a consortium comprising US equity firm Paine Schwartz and other partners in a $1.5 billion deal. French agribusiness giant Louis Dreyfus has bought Namoi Cotton Limited in a $104 million takeover.

Interestingly, according to the latest Foreign Investment Review Board figures, the amount of Australian farm land controlled by overseas interests has declined slightly, down from 53 million hectares, (14.1%), to 47.7 million hectares, (12.3%.)

Chinese investors control 2% of Australian farm land, (7.8 million hectares), although only 750,000 hectares of this is freehold land, the remainder being leasehold land.

There have been some recent purchases of Australian cotton, wine and wool properties by Chinese companies, apparently seeking security of supply of these commodities. There have also been a lot of sell-offs by Chinese investors. This is due to them seeking investments in Africa and South America. No doubt the hostile atmosphere towards China by the Liberal Government was also a factor in the sell-offs.

We are seeing the emergence of a comprador class in Australian agriculture, with Australian individuals and companies entering into partnerships with foreign buyers of Australian farms and agribusinesses. Mao Zedong defined compradors as “a class which directly serves the capitalists of the imperialist countries and is nurtured by them.” (Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society)

Australian collaborators with overseas companies include Lawson Grain which is backed by the Canadian Alberta Investment Management Corporation. Recently Lawson has been making multimillion dollar purchases of cropping and grazing farms in various areas.

There are many others serving foreign masters. PSP also regularly seeks out Australian farm operators as partners in their conquest of Australian agriculture. They look for top-tier farm owner operators, preferably families already running successful businesses, but who lack the capital to expand their operations. The owners of these companies have become keen advocates for foreign investment in Australia.

All of this puts further pressure on the small and medium farmers who struggle to survive against floods, cyclones, droughts and ever-increasing costs of fuel fertiliser, electricity, insurance and all their other inputs.

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Heads must roll to clear Defence of US loyalists

Written by: Nick G. on 9 February 2024

Senior figures within the Australian Department of Defence are agents of influence for US imperialism and must be removed if we are ever to have the capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy.

They have tied defence procurement exclusively to the needs of US arms manufacturers, and their concept of “interoperability” is that the moment the US creates an excuse for war with China, Australia will automatically take part.

These senior figures are protected by like-minded US loyalists in both the Labor and Liberal parties.

This group was complicit in reviving a 2013 proposal by the US that Australia lease and operate ten or twelve Virginia-class nuclear submarines. PM Morrison subsequently scrapped the submarine contract with the French, and, via the AUKUS arrangements, announced that we would purchase, not lease, several second-hand US nuclear-powered subs and have others manufactured on the same model at an estimated cost of $368 billion. That was in addition to the $835 million settlement with Naval Group for the dumped $90 billion French submarine program.

Tanks for nothing…

The same group of US empire loyalists were responsible for a controversial decision to replace the army’s 59 Abrams M1A1 tanks, which were bought in 2007 but have not seen combat.

Abrams tanks are made by the former US car manufacturer Chrysler Corporation, now operating as General Dynamics Ground Systems. The existing tanks will be replaced by 75 M1A2 main battle tanks, which feature some minor upgrades on the previous model, as well as some other armoured vehicles, at a cost of $3.5 billion. The decision was controversial because Australian tanks have not been used for over half a century, in the Vietnam War; their huge weight (70 tonnes) makes them difficult to transport either within or outside the country; and the small differences between the M1A2 and the earlier M1A1 do not justify the increase in numbers nor the huge cost.

But the decision did show the willingness of the US loyalist clique to feather the bed of US arms manufacturers, earning brownie points with their US masters.

Australian Defence Review cuts out Australian manufacturers

Australian manufacturers are angered that the Smith-Houston Australian Defence Review, commissioned by the Albanese government, firmly prioritised purchases of US military equipment over that which could be suppled locally. They cited the example of a decision to spend over $307 million to buy towed array sonar systems that could be made locally from Australian industries already supplying the equipment to the US, UK and French Navies. Instead, Defence opted to purchase US-made sonar systems.

According to the online Australia Pacific Defence Reporter magazine’s editor Kym Bergmann, “the pro-U.S. faction only want things with the stars and stripes plastered on them – and AUKUS will make that mentality even worse”.

This matches continuing uncertainty about the Arafura-class offshore patrol vessel (OPV) program. Originally, a contract for 20 OPVs was let to the German company Luerssen Australia and building the vessels has begun in South Australia and Western Australia. Then the loyalists started a campaign against the German build, and had the number reduced to 12. One option under consideration by the government is to halt production, transfer any completed vessels to the Australian Border Force, or possibly Papua New Guinea, and instead relet the contract to the US for a fleet of missile-armed corvettes.

Which leads us to the current controversy over the disposal of Australia’s NH90 Taipan helicopter fleet. The Taipans were manufactured by a European consortium of French, Italian and German arms manufacturers headed by France’s Airbus. They are operated by a number of countries, but were involved in several accidents here in Australia which led to the whole fleet being labelled “unsafe”. The US loyalists in Defence were behind this campaign to call for the replacement of the Taipans, and were successful, with the announcement that the Taipans would be jettisoned in favour of US-manufactured Black Hawk, Apache and Chinook helicopters.

Rather than offering the Taipans for sale to other countries, including those currently operating them, or gifting them to the Ukrainians to assist their fight against the Russians, Defence hastily arranged for the Taipans to be broken up – destroyed – and buried.

According to Bergmann, this was done because “senior officers in the Army would be highly embarrassed if another nation was able to safely and effectively operate Taipans when they have so mismanaged the program.”

This means that $3.7 billion, the estimated cost of the Taipans according to the National Audit Office in 2021, is being deliberately poured into a hole in the ground by the US loyalists – both those in Defence and those in the Albanese government.

The 40 Black Hawk helicopters, manufactured by Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky, will set Australia back an estimated $2.8 billion plus blowouts.

Additionally, the following payments will be made:

• $340 million to Lockheed Martin Australia for support and maintenance of the UH 60M Black Hawk fleet.

• $306 million to Boeing Defence Australia for a seven-year Initial Support Contract for the Apache helicopter for maintenance, engineering, training and logistics services.

• A $184 million contract awarded to Boeing Defence Australia to extend the Chinook Integrated Support Services Contract to August 2028.

Why Defence and the government would trust Boeing with a maintenance contract when its civilian 737 MAX passenger airliner has been grounded worldwide following crashes and the loss of hundreds of lives, caused by poor design and maintenance, is anyone’s guess.

Australia’s armed force are being reshaped to have no role outside that of supporting the declining US empire.

To understand a nation’s foreign policy you need to look at its economy, and Australia’s is dominated by imperialist finance capital of which the substantial portion is US capital.

To have an independent and peaceful foreign policy means the revolutionary overthrow of the political structures that serve US economic domination of Australia.

Such a fundamental change must be led by the working class acting according to its own independent class agenda.

Out with the US loyalists!

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Iran, Iraq and the isolation of US imperialism in the Middle East

Written by: (Contributed) on 7 February 2024

Above - Iraqis call for removal of US troops in 2020 following US assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani
Image: Thaier Al-Sudani/REUTERS

High-level diplomatic talks between the Iraqi and US governments about a US military withdrawal from the country reveal the changing balance of forces across the region has had its effect upon the ruling presidential administration of Abdul Latif Rashid in Baghdad. US policy against the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and since has rebounded; the Middle East has responded, effectively challenging traditional hegemonic positions, and pushing Iran into a regional leadership position. Despite huge financial budgets for their military incursions into the Middle East, the US have not achieved either their initial objectives or any realistic lasting presence in the region.

When the masses in Iran rose up in 1979 and ousted the Shah and established and Islamic Government under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the US lost one of its most loyal allies in the Middle East. The Shah was a US puppet - he 'remained the lynchpin of America's anti-Soviet efforts in the Middle East'. (1) In fact, he had been installed 'with the assistance of the CIA and Britain's SIS in 1953 in a coup organised against the left-leaning government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq'. (2) The motive left little to the imagination; US interests were the order of the day. It was noted that 'the catalyst for this action was Mossadeq's imminent nationalisation of western interests in Iran's oil industry … the … CIA subsequently provided organisational and training assistance for the establishment of an intelligence organisation for the Shah … and was placed … under the guidance of US and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957'. (3)

Five decades later the US has been left with the legacy of their interference in Iranian affairs; while creating a Cold War diplomatic position toward the Islamic Republic in 1979, the US has not achieved its objectives. In fact, they have proved counter-productive.

It has given rise to three significant developments:

Firstly, a changing strategic relationship between Iran and its Arab neighbours, linked to the uncertainty about the future of the US role in the region. (4) Iran's initial relationship with its closest neighbours, for example, was strained; while the country was regarded as the centre of Islam, Iranian involvement with US interests was problematic. Slowly, however, the US Cold War position pushed Iran into a leadership role against US interests across the region.

The establishment of a Revolutionary Guard in Iran under a decree issued by Khomeini on 5 May 1979 with 'the ultimate responsibility of guarding the revolution itself', saw Iranian operatives form links with like-minded groups and organisations. (5) Its tentacles now spread across the wider region and into a multitude of armed and opposition groups.

It is, therefore, not surprising to observe Hamas in Gaza, establishing links with Iran. While differences exist between different strands of Islam, the common goal of ridding the region of US interests can be regarded as a binding force.

Secondly, Iran's growing capabilities for asymmetric warfare can be regarded as a serious challenge for US interests. (6) While maintaining a large standing army of regular forces, Iran has also forces trained in unconventional warfare: guerilla tactics, insurgency, rebellion, terrorism. Their influence has grown with the changing balance of forces following the failure of western backing of anti-Assad groups in Syria and the growing influence of Russia, Syria and Turkey, across the Middle East; US backing for anti-government forces and the so-called Arab Spring, was a serious mistake. It has rebounded upon Washington and the Pentagon; their initial intelligence assessments were clearly flawed.

Finally, Iran's success in creating more effective air-defence systems including drones, can be regarded as a serious challenge to US-led military hegemony across the wider region. (7)

The recent attack of a US military facility in Jordan and high-level diplomatic talks between Baghdad and Washington have to be assessed in that context.

The attack, by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, on a secret US Tower 22 military facility in Jordan, close to the borders with Iraq and Syria, took the US by complete surprise. The pro-Iranian militia used a drone to attack residential quarters, killing three service personnel and injuring many others. (8) It was part of a program which has included at least 165 similar attacks on US interests across the region since last October, with serious implications. (9) A pro-Israeli intelligence source, for example, has noted that as 'the war in Gaza heads into its fifth month … it has brought … the region to the brink of full-blown conflict'. (10)

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohamed Shia al-Sudani’s call for a withdrawal of US troops from the country has also led to high-level diplomatic talks; Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh recently issued a statement noting 'the US footprint in Iraq will certainly be part of the conversations as it goes forward, indicating that Baghdad's desire for a reduction in these forces was on the table'. (11) A statement from Baghdad, however, revealed that the Iraqi government was attempting to 'ease pressure … from … militia groups to oust US forces'. (12) There is no wish to prolong the US presence.

The US, at present, has 2,500 military personnel in Iraq together with 900 based in Syria, and a further 900 deployed elsewhere. (13) Their longer term future is questionable. It is unlikely they will have a lasting presence, as the balance of forces continues to slowly swing away from previous US hegemonic positions. A recent statement issued by Hamas, for example, noted 'the continuation of the American-Zionist aggression on Gaza risks a regional explosion'. (14)

It should be noted, furthermore, that during the 2001 to 2019 period, the US Department of Defence has estimated regional operations had been costed at between $2,002.4 to $2,106.2 billion. (15) There has been comparatively little gained for the massive financial costs, and the position of the US, in general, would now appear precarious.

1. US foreign policy and the Iranian Revolution, Christian Emery, (London, 2012), page 2; see also, Project Dark Gene / Project Ibex, www.spyflight.co.uk / dark gene.htm; and, Iran / RSA, Le Monde Diplomatique, December, 1976; and, Project Dark Gene and Project Ibex, Tom Cooper and Art Kremzel, www.acig.org
2. Espionage, Spies and Secrets, Richard M. Bennett, (London, 2002), pp. 142-46.
3. Ibid.
4. Iran and the changing military balance in the Gulf, CSIS., 20 March 2020.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Three US troops killed and 34 hurt, The Sun, 28 January 2024.
9. Drone mix-up blamed for deaths, Australian, 31 January 2024.
10. US pushes for deal to end war, Australian, 2 February 2024.
11. America, Iraq to hold talks on troops, The Weekend Australian, 27-28 January 2024.
12. Militia to suspend attacks on US, Australian, 1 February 2024.
13. Australian, op.cit., 31 January 2024.
14. President vows revenge for dead troops, Australian, 30 January 2024.
15. CSIS., op.cit., 20 March 2020.

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Hobsons Bay community rally for Palestine

Written by: Shirley Winton on 7 February 2024

On Friday 2 February, 200 residents of Hobsons Bay community, western suburbs of Melbourne/Naarm, gathered outside the electorate office of our local member and Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Tim Watts.

The rally, organised by Hobsons Bay Community 4 Palestine demanded Tim Watts and the Labor government stop supporting the genocide in Gaza, called for immediate and lasting ceasefire, and for the immediate resumption of the desperately needed humanitarian aid to UNRWA. Speakers included Palestinians and First Nations People.

Many passing cars honked in support of the rally with drivers shouting solidarity messages and waving.

At the end of the speeches the 200 protestors spilled on to the busy Melbourne Road in a short march to “unveil” a newly painted mural (below) on a large wall near Tim Watts' electorate office, and next to the busy Newport Railway station. After unveiling the mural, the organisers treated the protestors to numerous large slices of watermelon, symbolising the banned Palestinian flag and the determination of the Palestinian people’s struggle for justice and self-determination.

The rally called on the local Hobsons Bay Council to pass a community resolution condemning the genocide in Gaza and Australia's complicity, and supporting the Palestinian people."

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Barngarla join fight to reposition Pt. Lincoln desal plant

Written by: Nick G. on 2 February 2024

Above - a 2021 rally in Pt Lincoln against the desal plant Photo by ABC Eyre Peninsula: Jodie Hamilton

The Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation, which led the successful fight to block the proposed nuclear waste dump at Kimba on Eyre Peninsula, has joined Pt. Lincoln aquaculture companies to oppose a $313 million 3.5 gigalitre desalination plant at Billy Light’s Point about 1km across the water from the local marina.

Oceanographer Professor Jochen Kaempf and Dr Paul McShane, a highly experienced marine biologist, have criticised the selection of Billy Light’s Point because its waters are part of Boston Bay, which has poor flushing characteristics within the bay and poor water circulation.

Desalination plants remove salt from seawater to produce freshwater. In doing so, they produce hyper-saline effluent (at least twice the concentration of normal seawater) which is discharged into coastal waters. Because of the potentially harmful effects of their effluent, desalination plants are recommended to be situated on high energy coastlines where wave action and ocean currents can disperse effluent to harmless levels.

In fact, SA Water first identified three sites in the Sleaford Bay, 25km south of Pt Lincoln as an area for a desalination plant for Eyre Peninsula in 2009. Sleaford Bay is on the southern side of the Lincoln National Park and faces the deep open waters of the Great Australian Bight, whereas Billy Light’s Point is on the northern side of the Park, and sheltered by it from the currents of the open coastline.

Aquaculture in Boston Bay includes the growing of mussels and industry leaders say their industry would be threatened by a desal plant’s hypersaline discharges. Five local councils around Pt. Lincoln oppose Billy Light’s Point as the site for the desal plant.

When a Billy Light’s Point site was announced it sparked community protest in November 2021 with a rally of about 350 people and a flotilla of fishing vessels under the banner Hands Off Boston Bay

The Barngala people regard the Billy Light’s Point waters as a site of cultural and heritage significance.

Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation deputy chairman Jason Bilney said Billy Light’s Point had some of the last pre-colonial fish traps in the Port Lincoln area and echoed community concerns about environmental damage to the lucrative aquaculture industry. The Barngarla were ignored when the marina was developed and lost heritage fish traps to the development.

The South Australian government, which is currently calling for nominations from SA First Peoples for elections to the Voice to the SA Parliament, faces a real test of its commitment to listen to First Peoples.

It can either listen to the Barngarla and relocate the desal plant to Sleaford Bay, or it can follow the dictates of capitalism’s destructive war on nature.
The indications so far are that the economics of the capitalist path represent the government’s preferred option.

Climate, Environment and Water Minister Susan Close, deputy premier and a leader of the so-called “Left” faction of the ALP in SA, has said that the Sleaford West site would cost $150 million more than the Billy Lights Point proposition.

"Billy Light’s is the one that stacks up. It stacks up because it is the cheapest," Dr Close said.

Eyre Peninsula needs a desal plant. Its 35,000 customers currently use the local Uley Basin water supply, but require a further 1.7 gigalitres pumped annually all the way from the Murray River.

Surely the cost of a 25km pipeline from Sleaford Bay is worth saving the aquaculture industry of Boston Bay and the Barngarla’s heritage fish trap sites.

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Nauru’s diplomatic switch to China is a setback for US imperialism

Written by: (Contributed) on 30 January 2024

Above; Chinese Embassy opening, Nauru, January 2024 Photo Xinhua

A brief, short diplomatic statement from the government of Nauru, that it had decided to switch diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China, was largely overlooked by western media outlets. It was not expected and obscured by the Taiwanese general elections only two days earlier. The timing of the diplomatic switch together with the terse nature of the statement, however, would tend to reveal a major diplomatic stand-off has taken place; it has, furthermore, been a major setback for US-led regional foreign policy.

On 13 January the people of Taiwan returned a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government for a third term of office with president-elect Lai Ching-te. It is, however, a minority government with 51 MPs as opposed to the Kuomingtang (KMT) with 52 seats. The small Taiwan Peoples Party (TPP) had eight MPs elected, ensuring that it holds the balance of power. The election results, nevertheless, were given high-profile through US-led media outlets, stressing the 'democratic' nature of Taiwan's political system.

Quite unexpectedly, only two days later, the government of Nauru announced it was switching diplomatic allegiance immediately from Taiwan to China. The diplomatic statement included that Nauru would 'no longer recognise Taiwan as a separate country but rather as an inalienable part of China's territory …. and ... Nauru said it would sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan immediately and no longer develop any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan'. (1)

No official explanation was provided about the diplomatic switch although a statement from Taiwanese deputy foreign minister, Tien Chung-kwang, said 'the government was ending diplomatic relations with Nauru to safeguard our national dignity'. (2) It was accompanied with an official statement from the Biden administration in the White House, that 'criticised the micro-state's distorted rationale'. (3)

Political intrigue inside the corridors of power in Nauru would appear to have taken place in secret. Following the elections in Taiwan on Saturday, Nauru was the first country to congratulate Taipei on the success of the elections the following day, while on Monday morning the diplomatic switch took place! (4) The timing was also particularly embarrassing for the Biden administration which had sent a senior US delegation to Taipei including former national security adviser Stephen Hadley, to assist president-elect Lai for what has been regarded as a 'tense five-month period before his inauguration'. (5)

The US is quite clearly concerned about Taiwan: last October, for example, Nauru president Russ Joseph Kun was given what was regarded as a hero’s welcome in high-level diplomacy with Taiwan; on returning home he was ousted with a no-confidence vote led by David Adeang who was responsible for the sudden announcement about the diplomatic switch to China. (6)

The diplomatic switch has been a further addition to the failed DPP New Southbound foreign policy which is now left in tatters; attempts to foster stronger diplomatic ties across the Indo-Pacific region have seriously backfired. Nauru is the tenth country which has cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan since the DPP took office in 2016, with President Tsai Ing-wen. Taiwan now only has official diplomatic links with twelve countries, none of which are major players in global diplomacy. A recent statement from a former senior Taiwanese foreign ministry figure, likewise, has also caused concern by suggesting 'another one or two of Taiwan's allies … could … be poached by China in coming months'. (7) More to come?

While it is difficult to generalise about China's ability to marginalise Taiwanese diplomacy research conducted by AidData, based at the William and Mary University in the US, has established Chinese diplomacy remains strongly based in economic and financial criteria; Beijing is not reluctant to offer developing countries meaningful aid packages in return for mutually beneficial diplomatic ties. China's aid packages in the Pacific region have been particularly generous over the past two decades. (8)

It has been strongly speculated that Nauru's diplomatic switch away from Taiwan to China was caused by the Australian government winding down aid packages for its off-shore asylum-seeker facilities on the islands causing a shortfall with their budget. (9)

While Taiwanese officials have been invited to regional dialogues and forums, China has effectively forced them out, emphasising the One China policy. (10) Taiwan, nevertheless, maintains 112 representative missions in over seventy countries; in less than sixty years it has been transformed from a rural backwater to a highly developed economy and part of global supply chains for semi-conductors. (11) Its diplomatic future now, however, is beginning to look increasingly vulnerable and precarious, with dwindling diplomatic recognition.

The developments have been particularly problematic for the US; it is not difficult to track US-led regional miitary and security concerns and their inability to maintain traditional hegemonic positions in the face of competition from a strongly assertive China. The Nauru diplomatic switch is all the more acute for the US due to local politician, Barron Waqa, soon to become the next secretary-general of the highly influential Pacific Islands Forum. China, potentially, will be able to use its newly established diplomatic links with Nauru to present a favourable image to a wider regional audience. (12)

Taiwan is a component part of the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy and its diplomatic links are also used for intelligence-gathering. The increasing diplomatic isolation of Taiwan, therefore, rebounds strongly inside the Pentagon and also the 'Quad', used to contain and encircle China. (13) Countries switching diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China are regarded as problematic: Nauru, for example, has a relatively central position in the Pacific, the arc to US military facilities based in Guam also swings through sensitive Australian military signals facilities based in Queensland. (14)

Secondly, Taiwan is the vital component part at the head of US-led Island Chain Theory (above); small Pacific countries, such as Nauru, have huge strategic significance for access and egress across the wider region.

Demands, from inside the ruling DPP presidential administration for eventual full independence, have a huge significance for the US and its allies, including Australia!

1. Nauru switches diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing, Australian, 16 January 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. US says Nauru switching ties from Taiwan to China 'disappointing', The New India Express, 16 January 2024.
4. China advances into Indo-Pacific, Editorial, Australian, 17 January 2024.
5. Beijing warns of 'harsh punishment', Australian, 16 January 2024.
6. Editorial, Australian, op.cit., 17 January 2024.
7. Beijing 'buying up' allies in Pacific, The Weekend Australian, 20-21 January 2024.
8. China's billions make new allies, Australian, 8 November 2023.
9. Editorial, Australian, op.cit., 17 January 2024.
10. See: Beijing keeps a wary eye on new US Taipei outpost, Australian, 18 June 2018.
11. See: Democratic Taiwan proud to stand with regional partners, Editorial, Australian, 15 January 2024.
12. Nauru gave Australia advanced warning of decision, SBS., 16 January 2024.
13. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
14. See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.

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Book Review: THE NEW CHINA PLAYBOOK

Written by: Duncan B. on 30 January 2024

Nearly every day there are articles in the newspapers about China’s economy. These are some recent examples from the Melbourne Age.

Fading giant: Why China is facing a difficult future. (Nov 9); Weakened China badly needs a truce with the West (Nov 10); China’s tech billionaires bleed as Biden inflicts pain (Nov 22); China’s green surge could be watershed for the world (Nov 23); China’s financial cancer spreads and sounds alarm bells (Nov 28); Stay of execution for Chinese property giant (Dec 6); China put on notice as it tries to repair its economic mess (Dec 7); The Chinese tians making a killing, but far from home (Dec 20); Beijing shifts gears to avoid fate that trapped Japan (Jan 16); China hits it growth target, but no one’s impressed with data (Jan 19); Red Sea crisis is a serious risk to Beijing’s economic interests (Jan 20); China’s $9 trillion problem won’t be solved by quick fix (Jan25); Warning for investors over China’s market woes (Jan 27).

How do we work through this overload of sometimes contradictory information about China?

The New China Playbook by Keyu Jin may help. The author is an associate professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was born in China and educated in China and abroad.

Keyu Jin was born in 1982, making her a member of the first generation of Chinese born in the era of Deng Xiao Ping’s economic reforms which started in 1978. She writes, (p23), “I was born into this era of China’s modern economic transformation and experienced its life-changing effects firsthand.”

On page 283 she writes, “The miracle of China over the past four decades is not the nation’s record-breaking span of dizzying GDP growth, but the unimaginable transformation that has taken place for hundreds of millions of Chinese and their children within a single lifetime. This was true for my family and for most families we knew.”

In The New China Playbook Keyu Jin traces the development of China’s economy and the transformation of Chinese society from 1978 when Deng Xiao Ping’s reforms started, to the present day. There have been many negative features accompanying this transformation such as environmental degradation and pollution, massive waste of resources, extremes of income differences, property speculation and corruption. (Of course these were a feature of the development of capitalism in England and the USA in the nineteenth century.)

On the positive side there has been a large growth in GDP, the considerable improvements in the Chinese peoples’ lives as described by the author and the incredible growth in technology in China. Keyu Jin is a supporter of the current state of affairs in China, to the point of being coming across as an apologist for the Chinese government and its policies.

While The New China Playbook is useful to help us understand what is happening in China, as Marxist-Leninists, we must be aware of our Party’s position on China. In 1978, Deng Xiao Ping steered China onto the capitalist road, ultimately leading to the imperialist power that we know today.

The CPA (M-L) position on China is explained in the booklet Explaining China. How a Socialist Country Took the Capitalist Road to Social-Imperialism, and other publications such as the Australian Communist.

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