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. 

 

 

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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. 

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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. 

 

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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. 

 

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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.

 

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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. 

 

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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.

 

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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).

 

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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. 

 

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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.

 

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Report of the 15th Central Committee to the 16th Congress on the international situation

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 17 September 2024

 

Report of the 15th Central Committee to the 16th Congress on the international situation

A report on the international situation must avoid facile and superficial declarations and reflect Mao’s guidance that contradiction exists in all things. Those contradictions must be analysed and understood according to the approach in Mao’s On Contradiction.

The principal contradiction in the world today is between US imperialism and the world’s people. We have been saying for the last 30-40 years that US imperialism is in decline. That is true, and the trend towards further decline continues. However, that process of decline follows the law of uneven development, and within that, US imperialism displays a resilience born of its superior military forces, its imposition of policies and values on willing subordinates, and its continuing exploitation of working people around the globe. 

So long as imperialism exists, the US will not be the last superpower. Even when it is the strongest superpower, as it was following the decline of Soviet social-imperialism, it will be a superpower beset by challenges from emerging imperialisms. It will be a superpower embroiled in contradictions with its own allies among the advanced capitalist countries. So long as imperialism exists there will be bloc politics and unity amongst the imperialists against the world’s anti-imperialist peoples and nations, as well as inter-imperialist rivalries and divisions.

For US imperialism, the most significant of its inter-imperialist rivalries is with China. The declining superpower has to rely on its belligerence and its threats to provoke war, while the growing superpower girds its loins but advances its influence through relatively peaceful economic expansion. The Australian people are aware of and somewhat apprehensive of growing regional tensions caused by the competition between US and Chinese imperialisms. They can be expected to increase their demands for an end to the AUKUS arrangements, to US bases and military forces on Australian soil, and for an independent and peaceful Australia.

US imperialism and Russian imperialism are also in conflict. Now entering its third year, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and US support for its proxies in Kiev, has no immediate end in sight. Although the US can be expected to continue to fight Russia courtesy of the Ukrainian resistance, the economic cost of doing so has seen contradictions emerge at the level of the US Congress and its funding decisions in relation to the war.

There are other international conflicts that at first glance appear to have their own causes and rationales independent of the rivalries between the US, China and Russia.

Netanyahu’s bloodlust and the determination of Zionists to eliminate the Palestinians as a people, and take over all of Gaza and the West Bank, is one such conflict. US imperialism will always back the Zionist Israeli state, and supplies the weapons with which the Zionists carry out their genocide, but it does not have the capacity to impose its will (for a ceasefire, for a “two-state solution”) on the Israeli leadership. 

Although overshadowed by events in Gaza, the Turkish government continues to attack and kill the most successful of the anti-ISIS forces, the predominantly Kurdish People’s Defence Forces (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) of the independent region of Rojava in North-east Syria. In an example of the complexity of Middle Eastern regional politics, Turkish PM Erdogan has fiercely condemned Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while bombing and killing the Kurds in Rojava.

At the time of writing, it is still not entirely clear how Putin plans to reoganise the private Wagner group of mercenaries who have pursued the interests of Russian imperialism in Africa. There have been suggestions that the group, previously owned by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, will be renamed the Africa Corps (an unfortunate choice with WW2 connotations) and run at arm’s length by the Russian Ministry of Defence in order to maintain the fiction that they are not a Russian government armed force. The trend for African countries previously within the US-UK-French sphere of influence to move closer to the Russians continued in January 2024, when Chad’s junta leader, Mahamat Idriss Deby, met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow to “develop bilateral ties”. Chad previously had taken a pro-western policy. 

Elsewhere on the continent, fighting continues in Sudan, and killings in a conflict in the Congo have reached genocidal proportions. Lurking in the background of both conflicts are the imperialists. In the Congo, millions of people are being killed so that the western world can benefit from its natural resources. More than 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves are found in Congo, used in the production of smartphones.

Although the seven-year conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis was brought to a ceasefire in 2022, the Houthis are a very determined fighting force of anti-imperialists and have challenged the right of the imperialists to ship supplies to the Zionists. In the adjacent Horn of Africa region, the long-standing tensions between the Ethiopians, the Eritreans and the Tigrayans continue to simmer, and there continues to be sporadic fighting between the respective armies. Ethiopia is reliant on IMF and World Bank funds, while the Eritrean president visited Russia and China in May-July 2023 to cultivate support from the US’s global rivals.

Closer to home, diplomatic pushing and shoving between the US and Chinese imperialists, with military build-ups by both powers, continues to heighten tensions in our region. The small Pacific Island nations are caught up in this struggle for regional influence, and US imperialism puts greater demands on its closest "partners" like Australia to keep these smaller nations within its sphere of influence. China, meanwhile, approaches these small nations directly mainly with economic "aid" projects. The response of these small nations is not uniform with some siding with the USA while others take a more non-aligned position. Australia unashamedly pushes the US line, surrendering its military forces, defence planning and bases to US imperialism.

Virtually next door to us, the West Papuans continue their struggle for independence from Indonesia. The cause of the West Papuans is just and requires our support, just as support was once given to the Indonesians in their fight against the Dutch.

We support the long-standing anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle of the people of the Philippines led by the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New Peoples Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.   We support the call by the NDFP for resumption of negotiations that were cancelled by Duturte and for ending the abuse of human rights under Marcos Jnr. 

We support for the struggle of the people of Myanmar against the repressive military regime.

We support the struggles of working people in India against the tyrannical Modi - opportunist would-be imperialist and fascist.

If we leave the globe for a moment, the imperialist military reach now extends into Space. In open defiance of the letter and the spirit of the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty, the US, Russia and China are spearheading military intrusions into Space, developing satellites for offence and defence in that sphere. US imperialism has gone so far as to create a fourth armed force, the Space Force, to pursue its domination of Space. Russia is said to be developing a nuclear-powered satellite with offensive capability which will only pressure the US to do the same. Although China has declared that it “will not participate in any kind of arms race in outer space”, it successfully tested an anti-satellite missile in 2007, destroying one of its own satellites at an altitude of 865 kilometres, being the first country to do so. The significance for Australia is that our unique launch sites are being gifted to the US and will increase our likelihood of being targeted should China and the US go to war.

In short, contradictions are intensifying and no place on Earth or in outer space is beyond the reach of imperialist power politics. We must closely follow these events as they will impact in one way or another on our own domestic political tasks.

In particular, we applaud the Filipino and Indian peoples and their perseverance in people’s war against their rulers. We applaud the revolutionary transformations being implemented in Rojava.

Finally, we wholeheartedly support the united Palestinian resistance to Israeli Zionist ethnic cleansing and genocide. We support the goal of a single secular Palestinian state, “from the river to the sea”.

Wherever people rise against oppression and exploitation, they will have our proletarian internationalist sympathy and support.

 

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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, Le