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

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

" property="og:description" />

CPA (M-L) paper: International Theoretical Conference on Economic Crises of Imperialism March 2024

Written by: CPA (M-L) on March 2024

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.   

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.
  

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

"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. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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. "

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Book Review - BINA

Written by: Duncan B. on 16 September 2024

 

 

Bina- First Nations Languages Old and New is a book everybody should read.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

" property="og:description" />

Hervey Bay Sheraton leaflet

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 11 September 2024

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Disrupt War - YouTube

 

" property="og:description" />

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

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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)

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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?

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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
 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.  

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

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. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Freedom for Georges Abdallah!

Written by: United Campaign for the Release of Georges Abdallah on 9 September 2024

 

We have previously mentioned the campaign for the release of Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese Communist who worked with the Palestine Liberation Organisation.  He was sentenced to life imprisonment in France for killing a US military attache and an Israeli diplomat. He is now the longest-serving prisoner in Europe. Hs case comes up for review, coincidentally, on October 7. 

We reprint below a call for his release by the Free Georges Abdallah Committee. We have signed the call. The Committee, in thanking us for our signature, has indicated the importance of every expression of proletarian internationalism.

They wrote: “Good evening comrades, Thank you for your signature and for your constant and unconditional support for our comrade Georges Abdallah. Your commitment helps make this cause visible on the international level and this has a very important echo here. Long live proletarian internationalism! Let's continue the fight! Let's free Georges Abdallah! Solidarity greetings.”

Their statement follows -  eds. 

 

Freedom for Georges Abdallah!

October 1984 – October 2024: 40 years in prison is enough! On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released!

October 7! The news is official: on October 7, 2024, the sentencing court will hold a hearing in Lannemezan to rule on the request for release on parole and expulsion from France filed more than a year ago by Georges Abdallah's lawyer. 

October 1984 - October 2024: this decisive hearing will confirm, to the nearest few days, the 40 years of detention in France of our comrade. 

October 1984 - October 2024: we expect this hearing to result in the decision to release Georges Abdallah, this exceptional prisoner, the oldest political detainee in France and probably in Europe. 

October 1984 - October 2024: 40 years of detention after a conviction handed down following an iniquitous political-police setup and a first lawyer betraying his client by working for the secret services, 40 years of detention despite the end of his security sentence 25 years ago, 40 years of detention while his requests for release were twice accepted at first instance... then rejected on appeal by the prosecution under orders from the government!

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He who has had to face from the beginning the exceptional measures and laws aggravating the standards of the "rule of law" (special assize court, preventive detention, etc.). 

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He whose perpetual detention has been denounced by many institutions and even former senior officials of the country. 

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He who has already filed nine requests for release. The last one, dating from 2012, having been accepted... on condition that the Minister of the Interior sign an expulsion order, which E. Valls (like his successors) refused to do. This denial of a court decision was thus commented on in 2022 by the public rapporteur of the administrative court: "Such a solution is hardly satisfactory, but no other seems conceivable to us within the legal framework. We must hope that the situation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah can evolve by other means." […] "It is quite obvious that the continued detention of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, for almost thirty-eight years, obeys considerations of an extra-legal nature that escape you." 

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He who has therefore constantly been the object of pressure from political power, as when a Minister of Justice, J.-J. Urvoas, allowed himself to announce that "real life imprisonment" applies to Georges Abdallah. He who has also been repeatedly subjected to pressure from the highest authorities of the United States, demanding that the French government find a way to keep Georges Abdallah in prison. 

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! He whose return his country, Lebanon, has been officially demanding for a long time. 

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be released! We, the signatories of this text, proclaim and demand it and we will not stop chanting it, writing it, posting it and demonstrating it during a new and powerful month of mobilization, until this date of October 7.

This balance of power, a decisive issue for the release of our comrade, we have been building for many years. Today, there are thousands and thousands of us, in France and around the world, mobilizing, in various forms and respecting our diversity, to achieve our sole objective: to free Georges Abdallah.

As our comrade says: "Victory or victory!" This is why we will not give up until this victory, and this while fully respecting the political identity of Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese revolutionary activist, communist, fighter in the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people. The one who will be freed is indeed a symbol of resistance to oppression, who has never denied himself throughout these 40 years behind the walls. But it is in this lifelong struggle that we also recognize the indispensable internationalist solidarity with the struggles of peoples for their liberation and their legitimate right to free themselves from exploitation and domination.

In the final stretch of this new legal offensive launched by Georges Abdallah, all of us, signatories of this text, commit to supporting his approach by making it resonate wherever we are, until the hearing on October 7 - and if necessary even after, in particular on October 26 where a new national demonstration will take place in Lannemezan - to increase the pressure on the French State and finally succeed in making it give in.

So, let's increase the pressure even more to snatch victory, keeping in mind what Georges Abdallah told us in 2022: "The various solidarity initiatives that you have developed in this international campaign for a month provide a stinging denial to those who were banking on the loss of momentum of your mobilization." 

May a thousand initiatives flourish from September 7 to October 7, 2024 for this international month of coordinated actions, everywhere in France, in the streets and in the neighborhoods, in the universities and even in the Assembly, on the walls and in the media, and internationally in front of French embassies and consulates.

May a thousand initiatives flourish to finally obtain the freedom of Georges Abdallah by making our solidarity cry heard: "Georges Abdallah, your comrades are here!" 

40 years in prison, a whole life of fighting! Freedom for Georges Abdallah! 

On October 7, Georges Abdallah must be freed! On October 7, Georges Abdallah will be free!

Paris, August 22, 2024
United campaign for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

CPA (M-L) concludes 16th Congress

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 8 August 2024

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) recently concluded its 16th Congress.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Message from the "Department of Foreign Affairs at DFLP": Aggression on the West Bank

Written by: DFLP on 3 September 2024

 

(Above: The war criminal Netanyahu points to a map from which the West Bank has been erased, as per the policy of his Likud Party.)

In response to the desires and pressures of the fascist and extremist wing-right in Israel, the Israeli occupation army launched a military aggression on August 28th, targeting several cities and Palestinian camps in the West Bank. The stated goal was to eliminate the Palestinian resistance and its military arms. In line with this goal, the aim is to reshape Palestinian areas to align with Israeli plans, which involve emptying certain areas of their inhabitants to expand colonial settlement areas

This operation cannot be viewed as a reaction to any specific event, but rather as a new aggression that continues the systematic killing practiced by the occupation army against the Palestinian people in various areas of the West Bank. According to international law, United Nations resolutions, and the recognition of hundreds of countries around the world, these areas are Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. The Palestinian people have the right to resort to various forms of struggle and resistance to liberate these lands and exercise their national rights freely, far from all forms of occupation and dependency.

This aggression also occurs within the framework of two interconnected issues: the first being the genocide committed in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues to benefit from the support provided by the Western and NATO international alliance to achieve the greatest possible ground gains. The second issue is the attempt to impose the Zionist plan known as the "Decisive Plan" through blood and fire. This plan has been openly announced by several Israeli officials, in clear defiance not only of the Palestinian people but also of the entire international system, which has failed to translate its resolutions into reality on the ground and has also failed to provide protection to a people living under occupation.

By examining the general outlines of the "Annexation and Decisive Plan," it becomes clear that Israel is working to detail this plan, which confines Palestinians to distant cantons on a very small geographical area. According to Israeli visions, this area only needs an improved living reality, which Israel will work to develop, completely ignoring all Palestinian political and national rights. Based on this, Israel presents the Palestinian people with three options:
The first option is to accept the annexation plan and "peacefully" coexist with the occupation and its future projects, with the possibility of creating job opportunities and open commercial areas, as was suggested by the Manama Workshop held in Bahrain in 2019 as part of the arrangements for the American Deal of the Century.

The second option is the opening of the door to "voluntary migration" with Israeli financial and administrative facilitation. This will be done after several steps that Israel will take, which are likely to force the majority of Palestinians to choose this option. These include laws and decisions that restrict Palestinians in their land, and harassment by heavily armed occupation soldiers and settlers.

The third option, for those who reject the first two, is persecution, killing, and imprisonment. This is what is currently happening in the cities and camps of the West Bank and on the roads and streets connecting the Palestinian cities and camps.

Therefore, the invasions of cities and camps, the displacement of residents, the destruction of infrastructure, and the perpetration of mass massacres are part of a well-thought-out process that shifts the war of displacement, annexation, and ethnic cleansing to its comprehensive bloody phase. In this phase, the occupying state resorts to all types of weapons, from warplanes to tanks, bulldozers, artillery bombardment, the imposition of blockades on hospitals, the obstruction of medical teams, and turning the northern West Bank, in particular, into a theater of gratuitous killing, extending the brutal aggression happening in the Gaza Strip.

The successive massacres and crimes against the Palestinian people throughout the years of occupation, which have escalated in recent years with the rise of the fascist right to power in Israel, accompanied by the deliberate destruction of infrastructure, will not succeed in breaking the will of the Palestinian people or in implementing the displacement and annexation plans pursued by Israel and some of its officials. Instead, they will only ignite and expand the resistance, increasing its creativity in its forms.

The occupation has previously carried out a similar operation during the "Defensive Shield" aggression in 2002, when Israel mobilized more than 30,000 soldiers, fulfilling an electoral promise made by Ariel Sharon to his voters under the slogan "Let the army win," with the aim of crushing the intifada. However, after about five weeks (from March 29th to May 10th) of killing, bombing, destruction, and using all of its immense power without any restraints, Israel failed to achieve a decisive victory despite the heavy human losses among the Palestinian people. It also failed to crush the resistance, which only increased its intensity inside Israel. The only thing Israel succeeded in was violating Palestinian Authority areas and breaking the geographic divisions imposed by the Oslo Accords in the distribution of security, military, and functional control between the Authority and Israel. This reasserted Israel’s direct occupation, ignoring the agreements signed with it, confirming the true intentions and goals behind those agreements.

Today, what the occupation army and its settlers are committing in the West Bank can only be seen as collusion and partnership by some Western powers, led by the United States of America, and a disgraceful Arab and international silence that provides the occupying enemy with all the reasons for strength and arrogance, encouraging it to continue the genocide, which is nearing the end of its first year in the Gaza Strip, aiming to liquidate the Palestinian cause in service of Western imperialist countries and the Zionist movement's dominance over the Middle East and the world.

Israel's practices and its method of dealing with the Gaza Strip, through siege, wars, destruction, and humiliation, were among the reasons, along with others, that led to the eruption of resistance and the development of its capabilities, culminating in the "Al-Aqsa Flood." What is happening today in the West Bank is a prelude that requires all components of the Palestinian national liberation movement, led by the security institutions affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, to defend the Palestinian land and its owners who face the dangers of death, displacement, imprisonment, and abuse as part of the ethnic cleansing operations committed by the Israeli occupation. Every free person in the world must understand that the volcano of revolution in Palestine may cool down a bit, but its fire will never go out. The great explosion is inevitable and will be a major revolution that will burn all those who conspired, shirked, and contributed to the crime committed by the Israeli fascist army against the Palestinian people.

We, in the "Department of Foreign Affairs at DFLP”, place this information in the hands of political parties and social frameworks of all kinds. We call for expanding their actions and deepening their engagement with what is happening to exert pressure on their governments for more balanced positions that align with the minimum humanitarian, ethical, political, and legal standards, all of which are being violated by the Israeli fascism supported by the United States and Western countries.

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
-Department of Foreign Affairs-
02/09/2024

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Culture Serves the Ruling Class

Written by: Duncan B. on 1 September 2024

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Pacific Islands Forum beset by problematic scenarios.

Written by: (Contributed) on 3 September 2024

 

The officially stated agenda of the Pacific Island Forum (PIF), 2024, hosted by Tonga, was couched in various criteria and concerns relevant for their eighteen member countries. Other US-led considerations were not, however, openly publicised, and subject to official diplomatic silence.

Specific issues arising from a US-led agenda, nevertheless, proved difficult for them to hide amidst their regional Indo-Pacific defence and security provision and escalating diplomatic hostilities with China.

The 2024 PIF took place during the last week of August in a region racked with US-led diplomatic hostilities toward China. The influential Pacific body, nevertheless, issued briefly stated agenda items couched in language designed specifically to not create division within the organisation and a regional environment fraught with problems. (1) Recent developments have been important: the Pacific, historically, was regarded by the US as a backwater; a multitude of small islands and countries with low levels of economic development that did not attract much diplomatic attention from Washington and the Pentagon. (2) There was not much of an assessed threat to 'US interests' and hegemony.

The rise of China as a serious regional and global competitor to traditional US hegemonic positions, however, has resulted in the US increasing their defence and security provision following revelations from a US Congress commission in 2019, 'that the US is no longer clearly superior to the threats it faces around the world … and the US … would struggle to win a conflict against China'. (3)

The enlarged Indo-Pacific region has also been subdivided by the US into island chains planned to restrict China's access and egress across the wider region, with newer plans in place to add fourth and fifth chains across the vast Indian Ocean. 

The issue of Taiwan and its recognition by some PIF member countries has also remained a pressing and divisive consideration. Three Micronesian countries, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Palau, officially recognise Taiwan, with full diplomatic links. Other PIF member countries across Polynesia and the South Pacific recognise China.

An attempt by the Solomon Islands to exclude Taiwan proved unsuccessful, although revealed deep divisions inside the PIF, which also have direct bearing upon US Island Chain Theory. Taiwan, which hosts a large clandestine US diplomatic presence, marks a central position with the first and second chains, restricting China's ability to openly access and have egress with Oceania. (4) The fact Oceania includes Australia and New Zealand, two member countries of the elite Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, reveals the importance of ICT for the Pentagon's military planning.

Moves by the US to push the Philippines into a central role with hostilities toward China in the South China Seas, likewise, has some direct bearing upon the PIF. (5) About twenty per cent of Palau's tiny population are ethnic Filipinos. (6) Elsewhere, across the PIF member countries, large number of Philippine guest workers provide essential services. All PIF member countries have large Chinese ethnic minorities, some with several centuries of standing; the US-led Cold War has had serious implications for the Pacific.

The 2024 PIF, therefore, has taken place in a regional environment which can best be described as problematic. PIF member countries, for example, acknowledge climate change is an issue of central importance, and the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres attended the forum 'to demand fresh efforts by the world's biggest carbon emitters to phase out fossil fuels … with outcomes including … extreme weather events from raging tropical cyclones to record ocean heat-waves'. (7) Guterres, in fact, used the PIF opening ceremony to propose a ' fossil fuel-free Pacific … as a … blue-print for the world. (8)

A diplomatic statement issued by Fiji in June contained a warning for PIF member countries with 'poly-crisis in which climate change, human security, trans-national crime, and geopolitical competition were reinforcing and exacerbating one another'. (9)  

The US, meanwhile, represented by Kurt Campbell, Deputy Secretary of State and well-known China hawk, did not even bother to openly discuss the PIF diplomatic statements; the US had other agenda considerations, 'as Washington moves to strengthen engagement with Pacific nations'. (10) While the US placed great emphasis upon diplomatic recognition of 'the centrality of the grouping to the region's future in recent AUSMIN talks in Washington'; the US position can hardly be regarded as diplomacy in good faith. (11) It is little other than an attempt by Washington and the Pentagon to maintain the Pacific as a region of 'US interests', marked by political interference and neo-colonial economic relations. The region is rich in natural resources and mineral deposits, including rare earths.

It is, however, the manner in which the US has pushed its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) into the Pacific that has become a major diplomatic issue for PIF member countries. Silence has prevailed. The moves, however, have been accompanied by a massive US-led upgrade and build-up of their presence in northern Australia. 'Australia … it has been officially announced in Washington … has become the central base of operations for America's military … a recently announced boost to US bomber deployments to Australia's Top End bases would enable America to project power across the region'. (12) The moves have also been accompanied by proposals to upgrade US troop rotations in northern Australia from the existing 2,500 a year, to a 'full expeditionary force of 16,000 personnel'. (13)

Marked by the elevation of Japan as a major global US alliance partner, the IPS rests upon the so-called 'Quad', consisting of the US, Japan, Australia and India; China has been effectively hemmed in from all sides. (14) The recent incorporation of the Philippines into the IPS on the basis of a lower-level partner was marked by references to military-to-military engagement and a 'defensive web of partners and allies'. (15)

PIF member countries have been watching these developments with a sense of unease; they stand to be drawn into escalating US-led diplomatic rivalries with China, which remains their largest and most important trading partner.

Recent developments in Palau, for example, reveal just how high the stakes have become for the US in the Pacific.

Palau, with a population of 18,000 spread across five hundred small islands and atolls, is directly linked into US diplomacy through the Compact of Free Association (CFA) together with the Marshal Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. Palau has huge strategic significance for the Philippines, marking the boundaries of the Philippine Sea which are contested by China and patrolled by US marine forces responsible for security provision.

A recent decision by the US to use Palau for an 'over the horizon' radar system designed to be fully operational in 2026, has been accompanied by the upgrading of local airfields across the Pacific. (16) The $120 million system is composed of Receiver and Transmitter terminals, based in the northern part of Palau in Babeldaos and in the south at Angaur, at opposite ends of strategic island chains.(17)

The new Palau radar system also forms part of a matrix linked to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, two hubs for 'US interests'. The former is then linked directly to US intelligence facilities based in Pine Gap, Central Australia which swings on an arc to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean; Guam and Diego Garcia have been upgraded as hubs for military operations, Darwen, in northern Australia, is the support centre. (18)

All US defence and security 'hubs' are correspondingly linked to 'spokes', their formation extending the power of the US deeper into the Pacific and Indian Ocean, enhancing their IPS. (19) There is little ambiguity about the role of the IPS facilities based in Palau; it has already been noted it has been designed to boost the US role in the Pacific. (20)  

While it has been noted there has been political opposition to the new US facilities in Palau, it is also important to note Australia has provided a significant role for the establishment of US-led regionally controlled intelligence facilities, including the IPS:

                                       We need an independent foreign policy!

  

1.     See Website: Pacific Islands Forum, Release: 12 April 2024, Joint Media Release: Tonga, 10 April 2024; and, China proxy pushes Taiwan ban, Australian, 26 August 2024.
2.     See: Pacific Forum, The US Indo-Pacific Strategy, 23 February 2021.
3.     Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
4.     See: Beijing keeps a wary eye on new US Taipei outpost, Australian, 18 June 2018.
5.     South China Sea raises fear of a super-power war, Australian, 21 August 2024.
6.     Philippines vows to resolve maritime dispute with Palau, The Philippine Star, 24 September 2021.
7.     Australian, op.cit., 26 August 2024.
8.     ALP gas plan irks Pacific leaders, Australian, 28 August 2024.
9.     Australian, op.cit., 26 August 2024.
10.   Ibid.
11.   Ibid.
12.   Deterrence starts at the Top (End), The Weekend Australian, 17-18 August 2024.
13.   Call to boost US marines' presence in Top End, Australian, 7 August 2024.
14.   See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
15.   Manila adds to its security network, Australian, 26 July 2024.
16.   See: US missile defence proposal, Reuters, 21 December 2023; and, US plans, RFA., 1 November 2023.
17.   A new radar installation in the Pacific, Popular Science, 5 January 2023; and, RFA., ibid., 1 November 2023.
18.   See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size; and, US intensifies military presence in the Indo-Pacific, The Global Times (Beijing), 24 July 2018.
19.   Palau-based radar, Geo-Indo-Pacific, 27 July 2024.
20.   Reuters, ibid., 21 December 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Turkey: Freedom for the Prisoners of the Kobanê Case!

Written by: Solidarity Initiative for Figen Yüksekdag on 2 September 2024

 

We have been contacted by the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) of Turkey and asked to publicise the case of leaders arrested in 2016 for supporting the Kurdish revolutionary forces in Kobane in neighbouring Syria. 

The HDP is a social democratic party with representation in the Turkish parliament. It is not a revolutionary party but has opposed the reactionary, fascist Erdogan regime.

In 2014, it called for demonstrations in support of Kobane, whose majority Kurdish people were fighting a life and death battle with ISIS.  They were ultimately successful but the region they have liberated in north-east Syria presents a threat to Turkey, which keeps its own Kurds under draconian control, and is today bombing the Syrian Kurds.

We support the right of the HDP to support Kobane and to oppose the Erdogan regime – eds.

.....................

Freedom for the Prisoners of the Kobanê Case! 
 

On May 16, 2024, the protracted “Kobanê Case” in Turkey concluded with an immense verdict of 407 years in prison for former board members and leading figures of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), including former co-chairs Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş, who have been detained since November 4, 2016. Those convicted in this trial stand as symbols of the relentless fight for equality, justice, and freedom in Turkey. 

The resistance of the people of Kobanê against the brutal ISIS attack in October 2014 garnered global sympathy and political and practical support. Thanks to the heroic resistance of the Kurdish freedom fighters and international solidarity, Kobanê did not fall; instead, it marked the beginning of ISIS's defeat. The HDP's solidarity with the people of Kobanê and its call for support for this people is a completely democratic and legitimate right and cannot be used as a pretext for this trial. 

The Kobanê Trial has clearly demonstrated that the judiciary in Turkey is not independent and has become an extension of political power. Ongoing bans against the HDP, arrests and suppression of democratic opposition, restrictions on assembly and demonstration rights, the isolation of prisoners and denial of their medical care, and media censorship are all manifestations of the multifaceted attack on democratic freedoms in Turkey. This is also evident in the non-implementation of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments, such as those in the cases of Yüksekdağ, Demirtaş, and Kavala. 

We view the trials and lengthy sentences against the HDP's leading figures as expressions of the Erdoğan dictatorship's efforts to suppress democratic opposition. We express our solidarity with Figen Yüksekdağ, Selahattin Demirtaş, and all those convicted in this trial, who steadfastly stand against this injustice and for democracy and political freedom. 

We demand the annulment of the sentences for the prisoners of the Kobanê show trial and the immediate release of Figen Yüksekdağ, Selahattin Demirtaş, Alp Altınörs, Ali Ürküt, Aynur Aşan, Bülent Parmaksız, Dilek Yağlı, Günay Kubilay, İsmail Şengül, Nazmi Gür, Pervin Oduncu, and Zeynep Ölbeci. 
............
Who is Figen Yüksekdağ? 

Figen Yüksekdağ is pioneering advocate for freedom and equality and a representative of the socialist movement in Turkey. Born on November 9, 1971, in Adana-Ceyhan, she was introduced to socialist ideals during her school years. Her political activities led her into conflict with the Turkish state at a young age, resulting in arrests and repression. As a student, she was involved in various student associations advocating for democratic and social rights, including the High School Students' Association (LÖB), the Working High School Students' Association, and the Association of Democratic High School Students. 

During her university years, Yüksekdağ founded student unions and later worked as a journalist for various socialist publications such as the youth magazine Özgür Gençlik and the weekly newspaper Atılım. Her commitment to women's rights was evident in her role as editor of the magazine Sosyalist Kadın (Socialist Woman). 

Her political activities intensified in 2002 when she became the spokesperson for the Socialist Platform of the Oppressed. Despite serving a one-year prison sentence in 2006, she continued her work and contributed to the founding of the Working Women's Association. Her participation in the funeral of the socialist intellectual Kutsiye Bozoklar in 2009 led to another arrest. 

In 2010, she played a key role in founding the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and became its chairperson. Amidst a period of global political upheaval, including the Arab uprisings and the Gezi Park uprising in Turkey in 2013, as well as growing social protests against the global economic crisis, she participated in the founding process of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). In June 2014, she was elected as co-chair of the HDP alongside Selahattin Demirtaş. 

As a Member of Parliament for the Kurdish region of Van from 2015 to 2018, Yüksekdağ faced constant attacks and repression from the Turkish government, which viewed her position and the role of the HDP as a threat. On November 4, 2016, she was arrested along with other leading HDP representatives as part of the so-called Kobanê trial. 

Even in prison, Yüksekdağ continued her resistance. Her poetry collection The Walls Will Collapse, written in prison, was banned and confiscated. Yüksekdağ remains a symbolic figure in the fight for women's freedom, the self-determination of peoples, and against exploitation and oppression, both inside and outside the prison walls.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Study of Marxism-Leninism is the key to understanding the role of the ALP and unions

Written by: Nick G on 29 August 2024

 

The magnificent response by construction workers to the attempted destruction of their union has included disgust at the perceived betrayal of workers by the Labor Party. That disgust has extended to all but a few in the leadership of the union movement for failing to show solidarity with, and to support, the CFMEU.

We understand the labelling of Albanese and McManus as class traitors.

People who have to work for a living and who join the ALP believing it will advance their interests are entitled to feel betrayed. Union members who are organised by their union to spend hours door-knocking for Labor in the lead-up to an election, or who loyally stand at polling booths handing out Labor “how-to-vote” cards are entitled to feel betrayed.

It all fits a pattern.

For such people there is hope for parliamentary means of achieving “fairness” through a Labor (or Greens) party. The sentiment behind this hope is quite resilient. 

Despite all the betrayals by Labor governments, some people seem unable to break out of a cycle of hoping for a better deal than they are going to get from the Liberals, and then losing heart every time Labor wins office and backtracks on its promises to the point where it seems indistinguishable from the more open party of big business. We respect this sentiment, but do not share it. We need to break out of its dead-end cycle. 

As a Marxist-Leninist Party, we believe that study of revolutionary theory is the key to really understanding the role of the Labor Party and of unions.

We could (and do) refer interested readers to the writers of the classic texts of this theory.

But at the present time of Labor’s attacks on the CFMEU, and of the failure of most unions to repel those attacks, we strongly recommend two texts that are immersed in the reality of Australian conditions. They are embedded in the reality of the need to understand the Labor Party and of the unions associated with it.

In 1965, one year after the founding of our Party following a split in the original Communist Party of Australia (CPA), our founding Chairperson Ted Hill wrote Looking Backward: Looking Forward (Revolutionary Socialist Politics Against Trade Union and Parliamentary Politics).

Hill disputed the view then dominant in the CPA that the Labor Party was a “two-class” party, that it was simultaneously a party of the working class and a party of the capitalist class.

He examined the circumstances under which unions had created the Labor Party.

It was born from the defeat of the prolonged strikes of the early 1890s when workers looked for other ways to take on the capitalists.

“They wanted to use the bourgeois parliament to enact measures that would satisfy the workers’ demands to improve their own lot.”

There was insufficient experience to understand that the state was an apparatus for the suppression of the working class by the capitalist class, and insufficient experience to understand that parliament was a part of that state apparatus and not a neutral institution independent of the capitalist state.

“Thus, they accepted capitalism in two ways: (1) their demands accepted the social system of capitalism, (2) their methods of achieving them accepted the social institution of capitalism – parliament.”

These acceptances meant that although born from and based in communities of working class people, the character of the Labor Party was not “two-class” but “one class” - that it would be a party of capitalism and would work to make capitalism more acceptable to the working class on one hand, and the working class more acceptable to capitalism on the other hand.

That latter function of the Labor Party is the reason for its attempted destruction of the CFMEU.

The reluctance of unions affiliated to the Labor Party to embarrass it in any way, to endanger its chances of winning office, or, in in office, of retaining it, explain their collusion with a party of capitalism that attacks the working class.

But it is more than that. Unions are required for their legal existence to be tied in a thousand and one ways to industrial rules set up by the capitalist class. And they become part of capitalism through their accumulated assets, including investments and property, all of which they hold on the condition that they do not break the rules, that they accept the decisions of bodies created by the capitalist class to play the role of “independent umpires”. 

All of this is the subject of Looking Backward: Looking Forward.

In October 1974, while the Whitlam government was still in office, and had the task of taking the country out of the stultifying era of conservative party rule, Hill wrote The Labor Party? Dr Evatt – The Petrov Affair – The Whitlam Government. 

It drew on Hill’s collaboration with Evatt as a lawyer representing the Communist Party at the Petrov Royal Commission, and the first years of Whitlam’s government, to make a closer examination of the nature of the ALP as a party of capitalism.

In our introduction to a 2023 pdf of the book, we wrote: “Since this book was written, additional experience has arisen of Labor in office, including its attacks on the workers through the Accord, its pioneering of neo-liberalism under Hawke and Keating, its keeping the unions under control through Fair Work Australia, its further opening of Australian territory to the US military under Gillard, and the continuation of that treachery via AUKUS under Albanese, Wong and Marles. All these later phenomena can be best understood by learning from the example set by Hill in his analysis of the Labor Party.”

For interested readers, Looking Backward: Looking Forward (which we have just republished) is available as a pdf and an e-book here: Books & Pamphlets — E F HILL .

Hill’s The Labor Party? is available as a pdf here:  EFHs+The+Labor+Party+FINAL2.pdf (cpaml.org)

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Attacks on Greens MP reveal ruling class distortions and weakness

Written by: Nick G. on 28 August 2024

 

Yesterday’s massive rallies by construction workers took place under conditions of an ALP and ACTU direction that no unions should attend or otherwise show their support.

With the exception of a few defiant unions including the Maritime Union and the Electrical Trades Union, union leaders complied with the directive. Some organisers from other unions did attend, but were forbidden to carry union flags or wear clothing that identified their union. 

In their place, a few brave politicians did speak. In a previous article we have referred to SA Upper House member Connie Benaros, the first to speak at the Adelaide rally. Also present was Greens upper house member Tammy Franks, a long-time supporter of progressive issues and union rights.

In Brisbane, the Greens federal MP, Max Chandler-Mather, expressed his support for the CFMEU, and said that Labor’s placing of the union under Administration and sacking of 270 officials and delegates was “an attack on every worker in the country”. 

From the ruling class point of view, the Greens MP had broken ranks. He had showed that the allegations of criminals and bikies having infiltrated the union just did not wash. He did not believe that they justified the destruction of the most militant union in the country. 

He had to be punished.

Chandler-Mather was interviewed that night by the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson. There was really no pretence at an interview at all. Ferguson was aggressive, spiteful and concerned only to interrogate Chandler-Mather about why he would share a stage with the CFMEU, allowing him only a few seconds to respond before interrupting him and aggressively repeating the same question over and over. 

(Ferguson: wrong to stand with Aussie workers, but OK to snuggle up to notorious US far-right fascist Steve Bannon) 

Chandler-Mather seemed astounded by the vitriol, but gathered his wits to explain that the Labor government had acted on the basis of unproven allegations that should have been referred to a court of law and not subjected to trial by the media.

He did not apologise for supporting CFMEU members.

But the attack on Chandler-Mather did not stop there.

On this morning’s (Wednesday) AM program on ABC radio, reporter Rachel Mealey returned to Chandler-Mather’s attendance at the Brisbane rally, saying he had accused Labor of “turning its back on all workers by putting the CFMEU into administration”.

She then stated that Workplace Relations minister Murray Watt “says he's appalled the Greens would share a stage with organisers in front of a crowd where nazi symbolism was on display”. 

Then we heard Watt saying it was “very, very disturbing that we saw a Green MP, Max Chandler-Mather, decide to share a stage with the construction union in Brisbane yesterday, despite those placards invoking Nazi references, despite the coffins with the Prime Minister’s face…”

To try and discredit Chandler-Mather in this way shows just how desperate the government is to stop any support being expressed for a union they are hell-bent on destroying in the interests of big foreign and local capital. 

Readers can see the content of the “Nazi symbolism” and “Nazi references” in the photo above.

Even blind Freddie can see that it is anti-Nazi. It is condemning Albanese for setting out to destroy militant unions just as Adolf Hitler did in Nazi Germany.

There is nothing sympathetic towards, or supportive of Nazism. 

In the same photo is a placard depicting ACTU leader Sally McManus as “Sally McThatcher”.

Does that make it an expression of support for the union destroyer Maggie Thatcher?

We applaud Max Chandler-Mather.

As for the placards drawing parallels between Albanese and Hitler, we say the more the better.

As for those gutless union leaders and their leader Sally McThatcher, we remind them to revisit the words of Germany’s Pastor Niemoller, imprisoned by Hitler from 1937 to 1945: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Sacking of CFMEU rank and file reps a wake-up call for all workers

Written by: Ned K. on 28 August 2024

 

(Above: CFMEU members take to the streets in Melbourne)

The new industrial laws enabling the CFMEU to be put in control of an Administrator are a wake-up call for all Unions and all workers.

On the first day of his new job, the Administrator sacked over 200 elected construction worker union representatives, most of whom are workers, not Union Officials.

A few weeks earlier, industrial Awards and the Fair Work Act included Delegate Rights to be inserted in Awards and to apply as a minimum standard in enterprise agreements.

The Delegate Rights were hailed by the federal government as evidence of its support for democracy for workers in their workplaces. They now had the right to elect their workplace Union representative. Many workers support the new Delegate Rights as a step towards organizing in their workplace and across whole industries and sectors of the economy.

Many must now be thinking the new Delegate Rights will be at risk, along with their whole Union, if the employers and their governments think workers' leadership on the job and collective strength is getting too powerful.

Workers are getting the government's message loud and clear - "You can have your Union, but we and the employers hold the upper hand. We can appoint an Administrator and prevent all your active workplace Delegates from being on committees of management or councils of the Union ".

It is true that bosses have always tried to terminate workers' leaders in workplaces who are effective and who cannot be "bought off" or moved out of harm's way to some isolated position in the workplace. However, the new industrial laws aimed initially at construction workers take the armoury of laws and measures aimed at diluting or destroying the collective bourgeois legal rights to another level.

The new laws are showing workers the limitations of official Union organizational structures, even at the workplace level where workers elect their own Delegates. The current situation for CFMEU members is that while they may still have a Delegate in their workplace, the official organization of the Union across worksites and the whole country is now dismantled. 

The rallies held by CFMEU members and supporters on Tuesday 27 August in capital cities showed that construction workers are determined to remain united as CFMEU members. They will find appropriate ways to organize to protect pay and conditions.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

CFMEU members defy threats to defend their union

Written by: Nick G. and others on 27 August 2024

 

Many tens of thousands of construction workers around Australia walked off the job to attend rallies called to fight the attack on their union, the CFMEU. They did so in defiance of Labor Prime Minister Albanese and his Ministers, who had threatened workers with a range of penalties for taking “unprotected” industrial action. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Attack on Construction Workers' Union Is All About Profits and Destroying Workers Collective Power

Written by: Ned K. on 26 August 2024

 

On Friday 23 August CFMEU members experienced the first day of their Union being in the hands of federal government enabled Administrators. As soon as this happened two hundred elected Officials and Councillors of the CFMEU from all over Australia were terminated from their roles by the Administrator.

The day before, Thursday 22 August the big business finance capital mouthpiece Australian Financial Review had front page article with headlines, " Builders act to take on CFMEU".

The article was most informative. It reported that at least some major building companies that had Enterprise Agreements with the CFMEU intended to remove "CFMEU vetoes and other restrictions" which enabled the Union to have some degree of influence on which sub-contractors the primary building company engaged.

One of the builders named is the WeBuild Group who are the principal contractor on the largest infrastructure project in NSW, the Sydney Metro Western Airport line.

The article also quoted the Master Builders Association NSW Executive Director Brian Seidler saying,

"In the last two weeks, there's been a groundswell of contractors that have indicated they've been dissatisfied with their enterprise agreement, not so much with the rates but the imposition of having to consult the union before letting subcontracts on even though they've won the job".

Seidler went on, "This fundamentally gives the union the power of veto and to dictate who is on the job and eventually to control the job. We're already seeing a trend where the union is saying, “You must choose from a list of union EBA subcontractors."

Seidler said builders did not want to be bound to " use union-sanctioned labour."

Initially, construction workers on a large site may maintain their current pay and conditions to give the appearance that the bosses and federal government are not after the workers, just the elected Union reps, from job site Delegate to the Union executive level.

However, the rot is likely to set in earlier for construction workers employed by the subcontractors on a large site or project. Eventually with turnover of labour, the big builders hope to destroy the collective strength of the workers through employment of non-union labour.

Their strategy is bound to fail. The very nature of construction work and the contractors' quest for extracting more surplus value from workers to realise more profit will unite workers and move them to appropriate collective action to protect their own pay and conditions and importantly, health and safety on the job.

The other dilemma for the bosses is that while they dream of having a docile, hardworking workforce, the reality is that they need workers who know what they are doing and thousands of them are CFMEU members and likely to stand by each other no matter what. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

DFLP statement on "educational genocide" in Palestine

Written by: DFLP on 22 August 2024

 

Above: Palestinian school children killed by Israeli bombing of Deir al-Balah

We are making available a statement sent to us by the Foreign Relations Department of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on Israel's deliberate policy of destroying the educational infrastructure and curriculum of Palestinian education. Staff and students are frontline victims of Israel's reduction of schools and universities to rubble - eds.

 

Israel targets all components of education, and we will defend our present and future with all forms of resistance

The term "educational genocide" has been widely used since it was used by a group of United Nations experts in a report published last April. In this report, the experts defined the meaning of this term as "a deliberate effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an act known as educational genocide," which expresses "the systematic erasure of education through the arrest, detention, or killing of teachers, students, and employees, and the destruction of educational infrastructure."

Through the atrocities committed by the fascist occupation army in the Gaza Strip, the scale of the genocide has exceeded in its brutality all the limits of legal and humanitarian descriptions. There is a comprehensive destruction of everything on the land of the Strip, from civilian facilities (more than 150 thousand of housing units were completely destroyed, 200 thousand were partially destroyed, and 80 thousand became uninhabitable), the destruction or damage of 195 heritage sites and hundreds of hospitals and health centers, 227 mosques and 3 churches, the destruction and damage of 13 public libraries, in addition to the destruction of dozens of centers that house displaced persons and UNRWA warehouses, including areas that the occupation army designated as safe, not to mention the destruction of the headquarters of government and media institutions and cutting off water supplies and destroying water wells with the aim of making the war of hunger and thirst declared by the Israeli occupation army a success.

Since 1948, the Zionist gangs, which played a fundamental role in displacing civilians from their cities and villages by force of terror and massacres, have placed education as a direct target, by targeting schools and educational institutions that were spread throughout Palestinian cities and towns, and worked to destroy and loot them and turn some of them into military centers, as happened in the schools of Jaffa, Deir Yassin and Tantura. Which the gangs have taken as military headquarters to carry out their crimes..

At the present time, schools and universities have not been spared from the crimes of the occupation, and the criminal record of the occupation records the storming of hundreds of schools and universities and the arrest of students and members of the teaching staff, not to mention the destruction of some of them and the besieging of others, as happened in 1992 when Al-Najah National University was besieged for 4 days with more than 5,000 students, teachers and workers inside.

The occupation's war on education has increased in intensity since 2011 when it began a process of distorting the Palestinian curricula specially in East Jerusalem, and launched a propaganda campaign against these curricula, claiming that they incite terrorism, violence and hatred. On this basis, the occupation has waged numerous wars in international forums against the Palestinian curricula, and has placed the curricula of the UNRWA in the circle of direct targeting in an incitement campaign that we have never witnessed before, which has led to some countries aligning with false Israeli narratives, and making the matter of funding subject to political conditions that some European Union countries, the United States, Canada and others have begun to set.

During the previous years, the occupation threatened to demolish more than 50 schools, and actually demolished many of them in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Cases of assault on students at checkpoints were recorded, in addition to the occupation army attacking schools, throwing tear gas at them and vandalizing their contents, as well as attacking and storming universities several times, vandalizing student housing, classrooms and student bloc offices, and pursuing students and capturing thousands of them while they were in their homes or on their school benches, most of them without any charges. The occupation also refused to grant permits to renovate schools unless the occupation's official curricula are adopted at all educational levels.

Through the war of extermination that the occupation forces have been waging against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip for (18 years), the occupation is taking education and educational institutions as direct targets, since education poses a threat to its security, as it claims.

 The result is that more than 630,000 students have been deprived of education during the current year (88,000 of whom are university students). The occupation also destroyed more than 400 educational institutions, including schools, universities and institutes in Gaza, using some university buildings as military barracks. More than 400 university professors were martyred (20 of whom held the rank of professor and 59 held doctoral degrees), and nearly ten thousand school and university students were martyred as part of the university genocide war. For the first time since the beginning of secondary school exams in Palestine, Gaza is out of the exams, after the fascist war deprived more than 36 thousand students from taking the secondary school exams that qualify them to enter university.

 According to experts, the educational process in the Gaza Strip will not return to what it was and this requires great efforts, due to the extent of the destruction and sabotage that befell the educational institutions that the occupation intended to sabotage and destroy. A number of experts have described the occupation’s aggression by the United Nations Human Rights Council as “a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the foundations of Palestinian society.” “When schools are destroyed, hopes and dreams are destroyed as well.” Isn’t what is happening in line with the UN’s definition of “educational genocide”? Indeed, what has happened on the ground is almost more widespread than the previous definition.
.
 The systematic aggression and comprehensive war carried out by the Israeli occupation targeting all aspects of life and the future in the Gaza Strip, including education and culture, is something we place first in the hands of international organizations concerned with education, childhood and society issues, and even those concerned with humanitarian issues, and second in the hands of the countries allied with Israel that still claim to defend the human being and his rights, including his right to obtain education.

The "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation and the operations that preceded it and the forms of Palestinian resistance and rejection that will follow it, come within the framework of defending the present and future of the Palestinian people and their right to their land, homes, schools, universities and hospitals.. Their right to resort to all forms of resistance in order to remain free and proud, deciding their future away from occupation, colonialism and dependency. Palestine, which has been free and proud throughout history, will remain struggling for its freedom, rejecting all forms of submission and slavery.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Department of Foreign Affairs -

 

Print Version - new window Email article

US Indo-Pacific Strategy heightens Korean Peninsula tensions

Written by: (Contributed) on 21 August 2024

 

Yoon suk-Yeol at the US Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - Flickr

Relations between the two Koreas have reached their lowest diplomatic point in decades. The escalation of diplomatic tensions on the Korean peninsula, however, are best viewed in the context of the South Korean (ROK) presidential administration of Yoon Suk-yeol locking the country securely within the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). It has led a situation where the northern DPRK has responded by dropping their established doctrine of peaceful re-unification across the peninsula and subsequently increasing the likelihood of even greater hostilities.

In early August the northern DPRK began military initiatives which included the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers near to its border with the southern ROK. (1)

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Vanguard (vanguard-cpaml.blogspot.com) 

 

" property="og:description" />

Statement of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 17 August 2024

 

We have been sent an important statement by the CentralCommittee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.We reproduce below the DFLP's own summary of the statement, the full version of which will appear on our blog: Vanguard (vanguard-cpaml.blogspot.com) 

14 August 2024

"The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine" in a full session of its Central Committee:

• Fieldwork and collaboration with allies to pressure the occupying state into implementing UN Security Council Resolutions 2735 and 2728, ceasing hostilities against our people, and fully withdrawing from Gaza. 

• Immediate efforts to implement the outcomes of the Beijing Declaration, including convening the Temporary Leadership Framework and forming a National Unity Government. 

The Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine held a comprehensive session named after "The Martyr Leaders: Ismail Haniyeh, Talal Abu Zarifa, Fuad Shukr." The session produced a political statement that praised the resilience and sacrifices of our people, united with the valiant resistance in Gaza and the West Bank. The statement emphasized: 

• Collaborating with brothers, friends, and international organizations to enforce Resolutions 2735 and 2728, halt all hostilities, and withdraw from Gaza. Practical steps should include breaking the siege, providing aid, returning displaced persons, rebuilding the health system, and initiating a national reconstruction project. 

• Structuring all forms of struggle to confront the Israeli annexation war in the West Bank, undermining the foundations of the national project through a series of field and "legal" measures that violate international laws and legitimacy, including the Knesset's decision to reject the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to perpetuate administrative autonomy over the people as an alternative solution under occupation. 

• Calling on the political leadership of the Palestinian Authority to abandon the policy of relying on American promises, free itself from the constraints and obligations of the Oslo Accords, and act according to the decisions of the National and Central Councils of the Palestine Liberation Organization by reassessing relations with the occupying state, withdrawing recognition of it, stopping all forms of security coordination with it, and disengaging from the Israeli economy in favor of the national project under a comprehensive national struggle strategy, and to work in the field to structure the struggles of comprehensive popular resistance under a unified national leadership that includes everyone. 

• Rebuilding the Palestinian political system on democratic foundations through general elections based on full proportional representation, with a national solution to the issue of elections in Jerusalem. • Affirming the Democratic Front's initiative from 16/01/2020 as a temporary measure to include all factions in the Central Council until general elections can be held. 

• Continuing efforts to hold Israel accountable through international courts, affirming the illegitimacy of its occupation, and prosecuting Israeli war criminals. 

• Condemning Israeli and American policies targeting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the right of return for refugees to their homes and properties and confronting the policies of demonizing and financially besieging it. 

The Central Committee also sent its revolutionary greetings to the state of South Africa and all the countries participating in its complaint before the International Court of Justice. It also saluted our heroic prisoners, emphasizing the need to internationalize their cause and continue defending their political, social, and human rights in the face of the enemy state's policy of oppression and abuse. 

It also extended its revolutionary greetings to the heroes of the resistance and all the fighters in the field, and to the families of our prisoners and martyrs. By naming its session "The Martyr Leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Talal Abu Zarifa, Fuad Shukr," the Central Committee pays tribute to the martyrs of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and everyone who was martyred on the land of Palestine in the face of the occupation and its settlers.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Attack on CFMEU attacks every Australian worker

Written by: Clarrie Broz on 17 August 2024

 

When examining a media frenzy, it is useful to first investigate who stands to gain from the story presented. Blackrock, the biggest United States investment firm in construction has $8.7 trillion in assets. The second highest US investment firm is Vanguard group who have $8.6 trillion in assets.

These obscene profits and levels of commodity accumulation come largely from the labour of Australian construction workers. This is indisputable – without the workers, the sector stops.  Construction workers have engaged in relentless struggle for union member input on their wages and conditions. It is instructive to quote from Paddy Malone, who was elected as Secretary of the Victorian Builders Labourers’ Federation in 1941, who wrote the following in a letter to construction workers:

“Your day to day struggles referred to are never ending due to the present cruel system of capitalist exploitation. The constant drive for profit by employers and especially by the big monopolies intensifies with each passing month and therefore the living standards of you and your family are continually being depressed.

"Because of this we must continue to build strong organisation on the job so that we can effectively fight to maintain and improve our living standards; but still more important is the need to begin in a more conscious way than ever before to strike blows at the root cause of our day to day problems, and that means to challenge the social system of capitalism itself.       

“Only by doing so and by taking part in the wider working class struggle to establish working class political power shall we be able to have things organised for the benefit of the people and not for a few billionaire organisations.”

The struggle to defend the union of construction workers is deeply tied to opposing the biggest criminals in Australian society – not the small-time alleged bikies, ex-convicts or thugs on construction sites given a trial by media – but the parasites at the top of Blackrock and Vanguard Group who pull the strings behind the scenes.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Instability of Capitalist Economy Is Ever Present

Written by: Ned K. on 17 August 2024

 

Photo: Whyalla Steelworks by Mangrove Rat, Flickr Commons

Australia is a capitalist economy in which capitalists compete with each other for markets and market share to increase profits. Capitalists also look for ways to increase exploitation of workers to increase surplus value produced by workers. The relative strength of the capitalists and workers is uneven across different industries and within an industry.

This situation is even more precarious for workers when their employer is highly dependent on overseas markets to sell their products and realize profits,
The iron ore and steel industry is a current example of how precarious this situation can become.

At the Whyalla Steel Works, the UK based multinational owner, GFC Alliance announced the sacking of 50 workers and blamed "poor conditions in global steel markets". GFC Alliance recently closed one of its steel works in Eastern Europe. At Whyalla, subcontractors report late payments by GFC Alliance.

The main union at the Whyalla Steel Works is fearful that more sackings will come.  The Mayor of Whyalla is talking up GFC Alliance's commitment to the steel plant and its plan to produce high quality "green steel". 

There is some truth in GFC's statement that the conditions in global steel markets are poor.

On the following day of the announcement of the 50 sackings, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) ran an article headed "Iron Ore crash dims budget surplus hopes". Iron ore prices have dropped 30% this year which may lead readers to think that a drop in iron ore prices should be good for steel makers like GFC Alliance in Whyalla by lowering their cost of production. 

However, the reason for the drop in iron ore prices according to the AFR is that the demand for iron ore to Australia's main iron ore export market has declined due to a drop in production of steel by China's massive steel works. The drop in demand for steel in China is due to the collapse of the new housing market in China. 

Australia's capitalist economy in earlier times depended greatly on export of wool to the UK in particular.

Since the mid-20th Century, reliance "on the sheep's back" became "reliance on iron ore". 

For the economy as a whole and the Australian Government's economic plans leading into a federal election year, what happens to the iron ore and steel industry in Australia and indeed in China may be the difference between winning and losing the election.

The AFR article argues that a $US10 a ton drop in (iron ore prices) below what has been forecast inflicts a $2.4 billion hit to revenue in 2024-25 and $4.5 billion over two years." 

The chairperson of China's huge Baowu steel works in Shanghai, Hu Wangming, said the challenge for the iron ore producers could be worse than in 2008 and 2015 when iron ore prices fell below $40 a ton.

US finance capital corporation, Morgans, estimates that iron ore needs to trade at between $80 -$100 a ton for the supplier to break even.

In Australia, the iron ore "suppliers" are multinational corporations like BHP and Rio Tinto. While the iron ore industry is under their control, the job security of both iron ore and steel workers is at risk and the Australian Government budget forecasts are guess work, a wing and a prayer at best.

Workers and their families in towns like Whyalla and their surrounding iron ore mines have a long history of class struggle and they produce some of the highest steel in the world from iron ore mined in Australia.

A progressive Labor Government would nationalize the iron ore and steel industries to eliminate Australia's dependence on iron ore exports and import of inferior quality steel from places like South Korea, Japan and China.

The monopoly capitalists’ economists in Australia keep a close eye on international market trends. They advise governments on what is coming, but they never advise governments to nationalize key industries for the well-being of Australians and the country's economic stability. 

That is why working people and their allies need to fight for an independent, socialist economy for Australia.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Cracks Within ALP Ranks Widen Over AUKUS

Written by: Ned K. on 16 August 2024

 

 

First there was former Treasurer and PM Paul Keating despairing over the ALP leadership's AUKUS "marriage". Now he is joined by former ALP Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans.

An article in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) on Friday 16 August is headed, "Evans torpedoes Marles, Albanese over AUKUS".

 Evans is quoted by the AFR from a talk he gave at a conference on AUKUS held recently in Canberra at the Australian National University.

Evans characterized Richard Marles' "love for the US" as "so dewy-eyed as to defy parody."

As for Albanese, Evans is quoted as saying he "is still preoccupied with avoiding being wedged as weak on security and has never given great attention to the complexities of foreign and defence policy and that seems unlikely to change." 

As for Penny Wong, the current Foreign Minister, Evans generously said that she was "far more beady-eyed, and instinctively wary of overcommitment to America's view of itself". However, according to the AFR article, Evans also said that she had been "unwilling to rock the boat".

It is possible that there are contradictions between Albanese and Marles on the one hand and Penny Wong on the other hand on how they try and "sell" AUKUS to the Australian people. However, they are united in their support for AUKUS and Australia-US Alliance and the growing military presence of the US in Australia, not to mention their siding with the US and Zionist regime in Israel.

Evans clearly distanced himself from all three ALP leaders when he said at the conference, AUKUS would "likely prove one of the worst foreign and defence policy decisions our country has made, not only putting at profound risk our sovereign independence, but generating more risk than reward for the very national security it promises to protect."

Evans and Keating express the views and concerns of many people in Australia, including rank and file members of the ALP in sub-branches and members of a growing number of Unions affiliated to the ALP.

Albanese's family were migrants from Italy. He talks a lot about acting in "the national interest".

How different is his subservience to the modern-day colonial/imperialist powers of the USA and UK compared with another Italian migrant and scholar, Rafaello Carboni, who shouted to the diggers at the Eureka Stockade, Ballarat in reference to British colonialism,

"I hate the oppressor, let him wear a red, blue, white or black coat!" 

Carboni called on the miners at the Eureka Stockade in 1854, irrespective of nationality, religion or colour to salute the Southern Cross flag, the symbol of independence from the then colonial power.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Book Review: The Invisible Doctrine - The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How it Came to Control Your Life)

Written by: Duncan B. on 15 August 2024

 

The Invisible Doctrine. The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came To Control Your Life) by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison is a small book in size and length (162 pages plus endnotes), but it gives an excellent summary of the history of neoliberalism and its origins in the 1930s in the theories of economists such as Friedrich Hayek.

Neoliberalist policies advocate the relaxation of financial controls, privatisation of public services and utilities, reduction in taxes on the wealthy and reduction of social services. Neoliberalism seeks total freedom for capitalists to do whatever they want, free from trade unions, labour laws, environmental regulations or any other restraint on capitalism.

Neoliberalism was quickly accepted by many big corporations such as General Motors, and widely promoted by supposedly independent think tanks. Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK adopted neoliberalism whole-heartedly. Neoliberal policies were carried out to their fullest extent in Chile after Pinochet’s coup in 1973, enforced by Pinochet’s fascist dictatorship. The short time as Prime Minister of the UK by Truss, and Trump’s presidency of the US are modern examples of neoliberalism in action.

The Invisible Doctrine exposes how the promoters of neoliberalism hide their activities behind a smokescreen of conspiracy theories, culture wars and phoney environmental campaigns. We are currently seeing one of these in Australia, being whipped up by the National Party to try to get farmers to oppose wind farms, solar power sites and the transmission lines which they require.

The book’s scope does not cover neoliberalism in Australia, but Australians have suffered from the adoption of neoliberal policies by a succession of both Labor and Liberal governments.

The damage from neoliberalism reached its peak in Victoria under the Kennett Liberal government (1992-1999 ). Victoria suffered from the privatisation of the State Electricity Commission, public transport and other utilities and the forced amalgamation of local councils. Thousands of workers lost their jobs and Victorians continue to experience higher prices and worse levels of service as a result.

The Invisible Doctrine offers a wealth of information about neoliberalism, but offers little in the way of solutions. The authors propose to “enhance democracy” through what they call “deliberative participatory democracy.”   This sees people coming together in community assemblies at the municipal level to make decisions about their communities. These theories of course offer no challenge to capitalism. Only the workers and their allies engaging in revolutionary struggle can overthrow capitalism.

The CPA (M-L) fighting Programme gives us a way forward in uniting the people in opposition to the harmful effects of neoliberal policies on the Australian people.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Bangladesh: Eradicate Hasina-Awami-Indian fascism completely and utterly.

Written by: Proletarian Party of Bangladesh on 13August 2024

 

 

(Photo by Shaharik Istik Raz on Flickr.)

Bangladesh: Eradicate Hasina-Awami-Indian fascism completely and utterly.
Struggle for the Establishment of the Governance of the Struggling Students, Workers, Peasants, Poor, Middle class.

(August 5, 2024. Extended reprint: August 8, 2024)
-

The 15-year Hasina-Awami misrule has finally come to an end. The students have won a great victory in their fearless movement. To achieve this goal, many different political forces and masses have made immense sacrifices and conducted valiant armed and unarmed struggles for the past decade and a half. In this continuation, around 350 lives were lost to achieve this feat at the last minute. Several thousand people were injured. Over five hundred people lost their eyes. Many more have become permanently crippled. 15,000 or more people were taken into custody. In addition to that, thousands of political activists and common people have been killed, and millions of people have suffered oppression and unjust arrests in the past 15 years. False cases have been filed against hundreds of thousands of people.

However, this victory is not the end of the fight, rather it is just the beginning. There is still a long way to go. Because the oppressed cannot be liberated until the power or rule of the bona fide struggling masses is established. That has been experienced many times in the past—in '69, '71, '75, and '90. Even after shaking off the main enemy sitting on the neck, the puppets of the ruling elite bourgeoisie have seized power. To prevent this, the struggling masses must struggle for the right political agenda. Currently, an "interim government" has been formed under the initiative of the military and the bureaucrats. We shall rationally insist that the hopes of the oppressed students for emancipation from fascism be fulfilled. In light of this, we would like to draw attention to a few key points below.

1. To establish a provisional government composed of representatives of all anti-fascist classes, professions, communities, and democratic political forces instead of an externally imposed government led by pro-western ex-military, civilian bureaucrats, bourgeois intellectuals, professionals, and elite bourgeoisie representatives.
- Strongly oppose the imposition of martial law, so-called army-backed governments, or the imposition of a state of emergency.
- Complete repeal of the constitution that allows fascism.
- Promulgation of a new constitution and basic principles of a state system favourable to the democratic system.
- Abolition of the district council, sub-district, and UP formed on the blueprint of fascism.
- Formation of “mass committees” of farmers, workers, labourers, students, youth, middle class, religious and ethnic minorities, progressive and democratic intellectuals at all levels of society starting from village/neighborhood, and having the administrative work done by them. To form an armed “Mass Militia” under them to counter any anti-Mass threat and attack.
- Creating an environment for fair elections based on the elimination of fascism, the development of mass power, and the urgent demands of the anti-fascist democratic forces, especially the workers, peasants, students, and masses.

2. Arresting and punishing all Awami godfathers who are the main pillars of Hasina-India fascists and have dominated all spheres of state and society for the past 15 years.
- Hasina's fascist allies included cabinet members, parliamentarians, powerful bureaucrats, powerful military officers, tyrannical officers of Police-RAB-DB, big businessmen, media magnates, so-called student-youth terrorists, abominable and identified elites among judges, professionals, cultural leaders, etc. Publish a list of names of all these people and arrest them. Disarm them all.
- Immediate release of prisoners in "Aynaghar," a torture prison maintained by the Hasina-loyalist DGFI. Publish a white paper on this.
- Immediate abolition of the murderous RAB force.
- Publishing the list of public enemies involved in murder, disappearance, rape, and money laundering, and prosecuting them under the speedy trial law.
-Banning the Chhatra League, Jubo League, and Hasina-Awami League as terrorist and fascist organizations. Depriving them of their political rights.
- Confiscation of all properties of the above. Confiscation of all agricultural lands, wetlands, residential plots, and commercial plots occupied by Awami fascists. Free distribution of agricultural land to landless-poor farmers. Opening of reservoirs to fishermen.

3. The immediate release of all political leaders and activists of all political parties and struggling people who were tortured and imprisoned during the last 15 years of fascist rule, especially in the last July movement. The withdrawing of all cases brought against them.

4. Opening universities and educational institutions immediately. Lifting the curfew, sending the army back to the barracks. Deploying of BGB immediately to guard the borders. Having the university halls managed by student committees. De-fascistization and reformation of the administration of universities.

5. Publishing the list with the names, addresses, and ages of all those killed during the fascist regime, especially in recent movements. The state should provide compensation to the affected families. All injured should be provided with medical treatment at state’s expense. Those who have already undergone treatment at their own expense should be compensated. A white paper on the injured should be published. Those responsible should be punished severely.
- Listing the general police—Ansar—BGB and army personnel, and common people killed in various anarchic activities that followed the fall of Hasina and honoring them socially.

6. All anti-national agreements and understandings with foreign countries, especially with India, by the Hasina-Awami government in the last 15 years must be cancelled.
- The Rampal Power Plant destroying the Sundarbans should be stopped immediately.
- Immediate cessation of providing India with train and road corridors through Bangladesh, giving them the responsibility for the Teesta project, buying electricity from India at a high price etc.
- Announcing no new agreement or compromise with India until India publicly apologises for supporting Hasina's fascism.
- To be fully alert of subversive or potentially aggressive activities of Indian expansionists. Condemning their harbouring of Hasina/Awami fugitives in India and demanding their handover to Bangladesh.
- Strictly opposing all imperialist meddling and conspiracy, including those of America, China, and Russia, on internal matters of the country.

7. Immediate repeal of all black laws, including the Service Act, Digital Act, and Industrial Police.

8. Accepting the legitimate demands of workers, farmers, fishermen, poor and working urbanites, tenants, students, teachers, and musicians. Implement stringent measures immediately to break up syndicates and regulate commodity pricing. Taking strict measures to stop extortion and bribery by the Hasina-Awami Fascist bureaucrats and police regarding sidewalk traders, hawkers, transport workers, markets, buying and selling land, building houses, getting government jobs, etc. Strictly controlling the change of hands of extortion and of expropriation. Taking strict measures to prevent persecution and attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.

If the interim government is not formed and run in the above way, it will be a imperialist-comprador bourgeois government based on the existing fascist structure, which will not be able to fulfil the aspirations of the struggling masses.

The above demands are not a complete program. Rather, these are only some preliminary outlines for creating an anti-fascist environment and system. Hence many more amendments may be made to it, and specifications have to be made that can be finalised based on the opinion of the serious anti-fascist fighting forces.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our proletarian party has not only fought relentlessly against the recently expelled Hasina fascism but also outlined a genuine revolutionary program for real liberation from all imperialism, including that of America-China-Russia, Indian expansionism, and their crony elite bourgeoisie, semi-feudal exploitation-control. The party is thus conducting a continuous struggle for the real independence of the country and the empowerment of the masses of people, including the workers, peasants, and middle class, and the establishment of a truly democratic society. The ongoing anti-fascist struggle is a part of this. We are working to fight to the end and lead it to victory. The ultimate goal of the fight is to establish a society without exploitation in the country and move towards communism worldwide.

To advance that goal and to achieve a real revolution, the oppressed people must take up arms, build an army of their own, and build a rural-based people's war based on the program of agrarian revolution. All struggles should be conducted based on this aim and work. The advanced section of students and youth must be equipped with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. They should be organized into a revolutionary party. Only then can their today's sacrifice and struggle progress towards success. 

-Central Committee, Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

What do wine industry and early childhood education workers have in common?

Written by: Ned K. on 11 August 2024

 

(Above: Winery workers in the Barossa take action. Source UWU facebook page)

Wine industry workers employed by Pernod Ricard in the Barossa Valley last week escalated industrial action to strike action. They are using the limited rights of workers to take "protected industrial action" during a bargaining period for a new Enterprise Agreement. Their key demands are for above inflation rate pay increases and a three-year Enterprise Agreement. 

In the previous Enterprise Agreement workers accepted wage increases below the inflation rate. Cost of living pressures on wine industry workers are no different from those experienced by any other worker and in their view, Pernod Ricard is a French owned multinational corporation whose profits go into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pernod Ricard want a one-year Agreement so that the sell off of their wineries in the Barossa Valley to Accolade will make it easier for Accolade to force through changes they want to workers’ conditions when they become the workers' employer. Accolade has been owned by the Carlyle Group, an American private equity company, since 2018.

So, the strike by wine industry workers is also very much about job security of conditions they have won over many years of previous struggles. 

The workers have a lot of community support in the Barossa Valley. They also are well organized on the job with good networks of leaders in the wineries, enabling them to make collective decisions on when to intensify their "protected actions" in a way that keeps pressure on the employer to agree to their key demands.

At the same time as wine industry workers took strike action against multinational Pernod Ricard, the Albanese Government finally announced that Early Childhood Education workers would have their wages increased by 15%. Labor had dragged its heels in showing their hand on funding wage increases for Early Childhood sector workers, with this procrastination extending back to the days of Rudd and Gillard Governments.

The 15% increase will be split into a 10% increase from December 2024 and another 5% increase from December 2025. The increases, funded by the federal government, are conditional on Early Childhood Education Centres increasing fees paid by parents to a maximum of 4.4% over the next year. The Centre employers will only be provided with increased funding for the wage increases once they complete Fair Work approved enterprise agreements with their workers and their Union.

Why did the Albanese Government make the announcement for a 15% wage increase to these workers at this time?

Early Childhood Education Centres have become essential for the operation of capitalism in Australia. Employers in all industries require both men and women workers, and parents with young children need Centres to be able to both work. Whether two parent or single parent families, workers need to work to survive and keep up with rising living costs. 

However, the wages in the sector are so low that turnover of labour is high, and attracting new workers to Early Childhood Education has reached an all-time low.

So, the Albanese Government did the sector's employers a favour by raising wages of the workers.

What the Albanese Government announcement of the 15% wage increase did not say was that the Early Childhood workers had forced major private sector employers in the sector to negotiate a multi-employer Enterprise Agreement with a demand for a 25% wage increase. 

Workers elected hundreds of Delegates across Australia to represent them in the negotiations and like the Pernod Ricard Delegates in the wine industry, they and their members were well organized and in a strong enough position to take sector wide strike action ('protected industrial action') if the Government did not announce a substantial funding of wage increases for the sector.

The mainly women workers also knew that the Albanese Government has an election coming up pretty soon. Early Childhood Education workers on the war path at election time would be a headache for any current government.

The actual industrial action by winery workers and the threat of sector wide industrial action by Early Childhood workers show that vastly different sections of the working class relying on the power of the collective are a mighty force.  

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

ICOR statement: Full solidarity with the workers and the broad masses in Kenya!

Written by: ICOR on 11 August 2024

 

(Above: anti-Ruto demonstrators in Nairobi. Photo/Courtesy)

The revolutionary world organisation ICOR declares its full solidarity with the workers, the broad masses and the Communist Party of Kenya (CPK). The CPK's detailed and profound information to all ICOR organisations (printed in full on the ICOR website)  shows how valuable transnational revolutionary cooperation is: The bourgeois media show clashes between the masses and the police at best mention the trigger. But they cover up the deeper connections in the imperialist world system and even more so they conceal the justified demands and the socialist way out of capitalist conditions.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Department of Foreign Affairs department at DFLP: “Targeting Children in Gaza is a crime that requires legal prosecution”

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 10 August 2024

 

(Above: It is hard to believe that descendants of the victims of Nazism could place such statementson Twitter/X)

Since its foundation as a political theory of settler colonialism by Theodor Hertzl in 1896, Zionism has attempted to cloak itself in the religious teachings of Judaism. This has continued to the present time when, in justification for the current war of genocide, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cited Old Testament storied of the destruction of the Amalekites, a people that the Israelites were ordered to wipe out in an act of revenge. The Israelites, according to the Torah, were instructed “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” On October 29 last year, he called on Israelis to “remember what Amalek has done to you”, and added that Israeli soldiers were part of a legacy that goes back 3,000 years. This is the background to Israel’s war against children, referred to in the statement from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine below – eds. 

.......................

 

Department of Foreign Affairs department at DFLP: “Targeting Children in Gaza is a crime that requires legal prosecution”

We call the international organizations to use the weapons of the law to protect childhood and prosecute the leaders and soldiers of the occupation

The number of children martyrs in Gaza has surpassed the number of murdered children on the span of 4 years in all conflicts around the world.

The number of “UNRWA” workers who were martyred in this conflict is the highest ever since the establishment of the United Nations.

During the early days of the genocidal war on the Gaza strip, the prime ministers of the Israeli enemy said: “There will be no civilian authority in the Gaza Strip that teaches its children to hate Israel”. This is a diplomatic statement that aligns with the Israeli saying: “A good Arab is a dead Arab”. It also resonates with historical and religious Jewish myths and with religious edicts that explicitly call for killing of Palestinian children. Numerous Jewish rabbis have previously called for the “killing of Gazan children and women, even if a million or more were killed, because that is in accordance with Jewish teachings.”

Based on this, there is no need to elaborate on the fact that the Zionist project is not merely a colonial, settler, exclusionary, and replacement project but also a genocidal project that originates from the belief that the human factor is the decisive factor in the conflict. Therefore, every opportunity to terrorize non-Jews must be seized. This is what justifies the Israeli army’s insistence on mass killing and targeting of women and children. It is no coincidence that the majority of the martyrs in the Gaza Strip are women and children.

The numerical data confirms that there is a clear targeting not only of children in Gaza specifically and Palestine generally but also of the infrastructure that supports childhood, like the education sector and its facilities, including staff and schools. And according to figures from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees “UNRWA”, “The number of murdered children in Gaza in only 4 months (from November 20, 2023, to February 20,2024) exceeds the number of murdered children in all of the conflicts around the world in the last 4 years.”

To ensure the killing of as many children as possible in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army adopted a scorched-earth policy of mass destruction, including homes, civilian facilities, hospitals, schools, places of worship, refugee camps, international and press offices. This is confirmed by a statement from the commissioner-general of UNRWA, which summarizes Israel’s intent to kill as many Palestinians as possible. The commissioner-general says: “since the start of the war, we lost 202 of our employees in the Gaza strip. These people were teachers, doctors, nurses, relief and social worker, engineers, logistics and support staff, and professional in technology, media, and communication. This number of fatalities is the highest among workers killed in a single conflict since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.”

Throughout the first seven months of the aggression, Israel killed approximately 6649 school students, in addition to the martyrdom of 547 university students, and 334 school teachers and around a 100 university professors. 

According to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 286 public schools, 65 UNRWA schools, and 31 university campuses in the Gaza Strip were destroyed. 57 schools in the west bank were also raided and vandalized. 133 public schools were used as shelters in the Gaza Strip, a huge number of which got bombed with tons of explosives.

Educational Institutions were targeted and destroyed either partially or completely, which resulted in around 630,000 school students and 88,000 university students being deprived of their natural right to education.

These reasons, among others, prompted the UN Secretary General to include Israel on the UN’s “list of shame” for the Israeli army’s violation of children’s rights in the conflict. Especially since there is a strong belief amongst international organizations concerned with education that Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian education sector completely, known as educational genocide. This involves the systemic eradication of education by arresting, detaining, or killing of the students, educators, workers, and destroying educational infrastructure. This constitutes a violation not only of international and humanitarian law, but also of the minimum of ethical and humanitarian standards which have collapsed under the rubble of houses that sheltered children, women, and civilians.

We do not highlight anything new when we shed the light on the occupation’s crime against the Palestinian people in general and against children and childhood in particular. We are confident that the concerned international organizations and institutions possess much more information than mentioned in this brief letter. This is only a simple attempt to awaken some remnants of international conscience and to restore justice and international and humanitarian law that turns a blind eye when it comes to a crime committed by Israel.

On behalf of the “Department of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” we call on the UN Secretary-General and the Commissioner-General of UNRWA to use the weapon of law to protect children and childhood in Palestine by filing lawsuits in international and local courts against occupation soldiers and their leaders, both on the political and military level. We also urge “UNICEF” to continue its work not only in exposing Israel’s practices against childhood and education in Palestine but also in seriously striving to secure a healthy environment that ensures a dignified life for the children of Palestine. This will never happen as long as Zionist fascism, which thrives on criminal and terrorist ideology that fueled by historical and religious myths, persist. Thus, every possible international effort is required to eliminate it now rather than later, given its significant threat not only to Palestinians but to the entire world.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
-Department of Foreign Affairs-
- August 2024 -

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Dreyfus must release Dan Duggan

Written by: Nick G. on 8 August 2024

 

US-born naturalised Australian citizen Dan Duggan was seized by the Australian Federal Police 18 months ago.

He has been held in maximum security solitary confinement ever since whilst the US imperialists seek his extradition to face charges under US law.

The main charges relate to his perfectly legal training of pilots in South Africa, some of whom were Chinese. He had broken no Australian law. 

A secondary law is a trumped-up charge of money laundering, brought against him by the US to prevent his wife selling a property they own to finance his legal costs.

Our Party has provided $500 to assist with those costs. Others who can afford to do so should consider it as part of the fight to defend Australian sovereignty and the rights of our citizens against arbitrary interference by a vengeful US imperialism. 

Rather than explain the politics of this injustice ourselves, we refer readers to this excellent piece on the Sydney Criminal Lawyers website: Dan Duggan: Another Australian Citizen the US Is Questionably Seeking to Extradite (sydneycriminallawyers.com.au)

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Defend Australia from the US!

Written by: Nick G. on 7 August 2924

 

The 2024 AUSMIN (Australia-US Ministerial) Talks have just concluded. Attended by each countries’ Ministers for Defence and Foreign Affairs, what has not concluded is the steady occupation of Australia by US forces readying for war with China.

The two sides announced today a series of joint initiatives including new “operating locations,” more frequent troop rotations, more frequent B-52 nuclear armed bomber rotations, and the formalisation of plans to coproduce two key, long-range missile systems.

Canberra has agreed to “new and longer-term operating locations” for “force posture cooperation,” a senior US Defense official said.

“We’re also expanding our logistics cooperation by assessing places where we could locate an enduring logistics support area in Queensland, Australia,” the official said.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said there would be an increase in rotational forces, to include more maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft and more frequent rotational bomber deployments.

Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said that put together, those kinds of moves are “greatly going to enhance the United States’s ability to operate in Australia.”

Not one of these increases of US military activity in Australia have been discussed with the Australian people.

This betrayal of sovereignty runs through the decision by Menzies to sell pig iron to Japan before WW 2, to his approval for the British to test atomic weapons in Australia, to the CIA setting up its spy base at Pine Gap, to our lap dog obedience to every call by our US masters to follow them into unjust and unwinnable wars, to Gillard’s approval of a “rotational” US marines base outside Darwin.

This betrayal of our sovereignty has only hastened under the AUKUS arrangements.

What sort of thinking is behind the betrayal?

US marine, B-52 bombers and nuclear submarine bases in Australia are the realisation of a proposal by US armaments industry-funded think-tank ASPI. It is an organisation of Australians Serving Predatory Imperialism.

In its analysis of the 2014 “defence” budget, ASPI raised the unlikely prospect of US “disengagement” from the Asia-Pacific and put forward a treacherous and bizarre proposal for turning the whole of our continent into a US base against the peoples of the region.

“Leaders need followers,” argued the paper.

“But there’s also something that Australia can offer the United States which goes to the heart of its economic and security interests - access to 7.7 million square kilometres of terrain stretching from the Pacific to Indian Ocean and from the Great Southern Ocean to the base of the Asian archipelago.

“As the Western pacific becomes more contested, the value of access to Australian ports, airfields and training grounds will surely grow.  It’s arguably the most valuable thing we can offer our ally…a solid strategic base straddling the sea lanes passing from the Indian to Pacific Oceans.”

ASPI, which has an incredibly powerful voice in the media and in government circles, was advocating allowing US imperialism to use Australia as a giant aircraft carrier, all the better with which to project force into Asia, and at China in particular.

That treacherous thinking has been totally embraced by the US loyalist Marles who boasted today that “American force posture now in Australia involves every domain: land, sea, air, cyber and space.”

These are all areas in which Australia has surrendered any capacity for independent judgement and action.

We need an armed people to defend this country, to defend it from the forces of US occupation.

For anti-imperialist independence and socialism!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Imperialist hypocrisy on display

Written by: Nick G. on 6 August 2024

 

We have known all along that imperialism practices rampant hypocrisy. It tramples on people’s rights under the guise of “defending democracy”, and oppresses peoples and nations under the guise of “fighting for freedom”.

These are general manifestations of its hypocrisy.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Makarrata: Bipartisan approach to stop truth-telling commission

Written by: Nick G. on 5 August 2024

 

(Above: from ANTAR Victoria)

Labor’s eternal fear of being wedged on matters of principle by the Opposition was revealed at this weekend’s Garma Festival.

It surprised no-one when the ex-Queensland copper who runs the Opposition came out and said that if elected, there would be no telling the truth, or Makarrata, under his government.  

Dutton thinks he is on a winner by pledging to keep Australians comfortable in the cotton wool wrapping of willful ignorance, allowing them to slumber on under the blanket of denial.

Well, as soon as the dog barks, Albo runs inside.

He disavows a central objective of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, telling ABC interviewer David Speirs that Makarrata simply means “the coming together after a struggle”.

Yes, that is how the word is defined in the Statement, but the action that followed from adoption of the word was: “We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.”

These were the words, and that was the action, promised by Albanese on the last election night. 

He has now broken that promise and has chosen to stand with Dutton against the aspirations of Australian First Peoples, against opening an opportunity for a formal truth-telling about the violence, and threats of violence, by which Australia was seized from its owners.

Albanese says that he will now concentrate on closing the gap between outcomes experienced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, gaps that have kept widening under his government.

The only gap that he has closed is that between himself and the racist Right at the top of the Opposition.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Indo-Pacific: New US Joint Force Command

Written by: (Contributed) on 5 August 2024

 

(Source: US Joint Forces Command powerpoint)

Two seemingly unrelated and carefully worded official Pentagon media releases in Australia have revealed their regional military planning for war with China. The planning has included upgrading the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and using the Philippines as a central consideration as a potential 'theatre of war'. The role of Australia was downplayed.

In late July the Pentagon announced it had established a new Joint Force Command with Japan led by a three-star general with the specific plan to 'co-ordinate military operations with the Japanese, plan joint exercises and participate in the defence of the country if hostilities erupt'. (1) The command system has been placed at the forefront of US-led regional defence and security provision and has a special status with the Indo-Pacific Command based in Hawaii. (2)

Other publications with compliant pro-US journalists elsewhere also covered the upgraded US-Japan alliance. It was noted that 'Tokyo pledge to act as America's global partner … and that … Japan was to have a direct leadership role over American forces … with deeper interoperability … although … US forces in Japan would be reconstituted as a joint force headquarters reporting to the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command'. (3)

The upgrade to the already existing IPS has revealed how far diplomatic tensions have been continually escalating. The IPS consisted of the US-Japan alliance being central to global considerations; resting upon the 'Quad', China was effectively hemmed in from all sides. (4)
Other regional allies including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam and others, were included in the IPS as lower-level partners. (5)

The US is clearly concerned at the changing balance of forces across the Indo-Pacific and the ability of China as a major competitor, backed by strong diplomatic links between Beijing and Moscow. The announcement about the new command, for example, stated that ''the US and Japan also have to contend with increased military co-operation between Russia and China'. (6) It coincided with a major diplomatic statement issued from Vientiane, Laos, that 'Russia and China should join efforts to counter interference from external forces in South-east Asia … as … the strategic partners push for strong co-ordination in the region as a counterweight to the US'. (7) It was also noted that 'the two also discussed implementing a new security architecture in Euro-Asia … and … Beijing was ready to work with Russia to uphold the ASEAN-centred, open and inclusive regional co-operation architecture in the face of external disturbances and obstacles'. (8)  

A few days earlier another Pentagon-issued regional diplomatic statement drew attention to the Philippines signing a new defence security agreement with Singapore, a 'fortnight after finalising a landmark pact with Japan'. (9) The IPS was not referred to, although remains the central framework through which the US conduct their regional planning. The new Philippine-Singapore security agreement was also categorised as going 'beyond broadening military-to-military engagement, the deal adds heft to Manila's strategy of building a defensive web of partners and allies as it contends with growing Chinese hostility in its maritime waters'. (10)

In recent times the Marcos presidential administration has been moved by the US to a central regional consideration; the Marcos grouping are little other than compliant puppets with every US-led move. Almost daily diplomatic hostilities between the Philippines and China are openly applauded by the US, who pull the strings of their puppets.

The fact the Philippines rests upon an arc with Singapore which also swings through the South China Seas, the Straits of Malacca, military facilities in Japan, Guam and sensitive areas of the South Pacific, shows clearly why the US regard a compliant government in the Philippines so highly, and necessary for their regional operations with allies. (11) Australia, for example, has also recently upgraded its military links with Singapore; in June Australian-based facilities were used by the Singapore Air Force for joint training accompanied by an official media release stating it 'represented the close and enduring defence ties between the two countries'. (12)

Singapore has also hosted the sensitive Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) for intelligence-gathering which have AI facilities for using 'data from these different sources … fused … to then be … analysed to produce operations intelligence as the basis for decision-making on response', linked to the Quad. (13)
 
No reference, however, was made in the media release to the role of the Australian-based regional Jindalee (JORN) radar facilities, which include Singapore; they are, at present, subject to a $1.2 billion upgrade to ensure 'Australia remains a world leader in maritime and air defence'. (14) The Philippines, through Singapore, would now appear part of the JORN facilities.

It is interesting to note a significant part of the two Pentagon media releases contained reference to the military-industrial complex: the new US joint force command was diplomatically noted as including 'Japanese efforts to shore up the West's industrial base ... while … Tokyo has agreed to help Manila acquire more coastal ships and radar capacity'. (15) No doubt the shareholders in the Australian defence industries, including Australian universities which provide much of the necessary expertise, are quite content to uphold such developments so long as they are supported by generous state and federal government grants:
                                          We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Pentagon to set up joint HQ in Japan, Australian, 29 July 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     See: In historic move, US to upgrade, The Japan Times, 28 July 2024; and, US to revamp military forces in Japan, CNN., 28 July 2024.
4.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 29 July 2024.
7.     Moscow, Beijing's joint bid to keep US out of Asia, The Weekend Australian, 27/28 July 2024.
8.     Ibid.
9.     Manila adds to its security network, Australian, 26 July 2024.
10.   Ibid.
11.   See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
12.   Singapore deploys combat jets to WA., The Indian Ocean Defence and Security Supplement, Australian, 24 July 2024.
13.   AI revolutionises maritime intelligence, The Indian Ocean Defence and Security Supplement, Australian, 24 July 2024.
14.   See: Wikipedia – Jindalee Operational Radar Network, Footnote reference to 'Rough Seas', ABC World Today, 16 December 2010; and, JORN., BAE Systems.
15.   Ibid., and, Australian, op.cit., 29 July 2024.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Anti-Poverty Activists Rally at Social Services Minister’s office

Written by: Nick G. on 5 August 2024

 

Last Friday, SA Anti-Poverty Network activists living in or near the southern Adelaide electorate of Federal Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth held a short rally outside her electorate office. 

They were there to remind the community, and her, that no one deserves poverty.

But after 2 years in power, Federal Labor, clearly, have left behind people on JobSeeker, the lowest unemployment payment in the developed world, as well as other people living below the poverty-line.

After several speakers, a bundle of hand-written letters from job-seekers, students, and other people on Centrelink payments were taken inside the office and presented to her staff.

They were politely received, and office staff spent several minutes discussing the issues with those present.  While a polite reception is better than rejection, it left the group wondering what needed to be done next so that the Minister and her staff were placed under pressure, rather than being able to politely absorb the issue.

Today, August 5 begins Homelessness Week.  The APN SA is planning to rally outside the electorate office of Premier Malinauskas this coming Friday.

In a media statement released today, the group says that SA government claims to have built 500 affordable homes are a “drop in the ocean” when there are 15,000 people on the public housing waiting list, and over 6000 homeless.

Spokesperson Samantha Skinner said that while the State government could not build thousands of homes overnight, they must raise their level of ambition to meet the unprecedented levels of need. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla (Bangladesh) -statement on current crisis

Written by: Proletarian Party of Bangladesh on 4 August 2024

 

(Above: Protests continue in Bangladesh on August 3.  Photo by Shaharik Istik Raz on Flickr.)

Intro:  We are reprinting this statement from the Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla (PBSP)/Bangladesh. In the two weeks since this statement was released, more killings have occurred as protests continue against the government. We offer the following notes of explanation.

Sheikh Hasina is described by the Economist magazine as “Asia’s Iron Lady”. She was prime minister of Bangladesh from June 1996 to July 2001 and again since January 2009. She heads the Awami League, the oldest existing political party in the country. It played a large role in achieving Bangladeshi independence and relations with India through Awami League. The Awami League has close ties to India’s Modi government.

The quota system of the Bangladesh Civil Service reserves 30% of positions for descendants of the freedom fighters of Bangladesh’s war for independence from Pakistan. They are mainly loyal to the Awami League and students object to the system for denying their opportunity to win jobs on merit.

The Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) is the Awami League’s main rival for office on behalf of the Bangladesh ruling class. To try and discredit the student movement, the government has declared the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and all its affiliates banned for their alleged involvement in this and earlier anti-government movements. 

The Chhatra League is the student wing of the Awami League. It is a violent, fascist supporter of the government.

The 9-point demands are reformist demands advanced by sections of the current anti-government movement – eds.

 

A Call to Struggling Students-Mass People - Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla(PBSP)/Bangladesh

The Quota Reform Movement may have been triumphant, but the blood debt has not been paid.
Fight to overthrow genocidal, murderous Hasina-fascism!

Over the span of five days from July 16 to 20, Hasina-Awami-Indian fascists drowned the student movement, which gradually turned into a mass people's uprising, in an ocean of blood to suppress it. However, they have also been forced to surrender to the fair demands of the students. As a result, a significant triumph has been achieved in this bloody struggle. At the same time, Hasina-fascism has survived, for the time being, due to the limitations of the movement. Thus, the movement failed to achieve real political success.

These fascists have taken nearly two hundred lives in this brief period. More than a thousand students and young people were wounded by bullets fired by the police, BGB, army, and League terrorists. Many of them are dying in hospitals. The killing frenzy is still going strong, involving the Chhatra League, terrorists of the Awami camp, the Police-RAB, and finally the army. The state apparatus has brutally suppressed this movement. The army deployed sound grenades, tear gas, and fired shots from helicopters to put an end to the student protests in the streets for the first time in the history of the country. They opened fire on the processions. Martyr Abu Saeed, who bravely bared his chest in front of the police's raised guns, was fatally shot by direct gunfire in Rangpur.

Fearing the loss of power, Hasina-Awami fascists have confined the movement with a curfew. They have continued their fascist, one-sided propaganda by blocking access to the internet and censoring the news that the media reports. They have tried to disunite the leaders of the movement. They have arrested and abducted the movement’s leaders and tried to repress them through intimidation. They have spoken of the bogeyman of BNP-Jamaat since the beginning. This is how they want to hide their defeat by the bravery and struggle of the students. They are trying to protect their fascist power by any means. Cases and attacks against the protesters have already been initiated. They are arresting any opposition. All these will increase in the future. Large-scale terrorist operations against the protesters have already begun as they attempt to bring the situation under their control.

However, this government is still trembling with the fear of its fall. The babbling of their leaders has decreased. Their mouths are dry. Many of them are keeping the way to escape abroad. Until now, they have maintained their power only with the support of India and the force from the weapons of the army and bureaucrats. But even they might reject Hasina and bring a "Third Power" to the throne if they see too much danger. On the other hand, all opposition political forces and individuals, except the Awami League and their few sycophants, are seeking the downfall of this government. It is evident to all that the hands and feet of this regime are red with the blood of the students and the masses. They are deceivers, hypocrites, and liars. They are enemies of all students and all people.

Why is this fascist government able to survive despite being so hated and excluded? One reason is that they control the state apparatus (the army, BGB, and police) and are directly supported by India's expansionist, Hindutva fascist Modi government, as well as foreign imperialists. Another reason is that the anti-quota movement so far has shown immense valor in the student movement, but it was devoid of any political aims. They themselves called it an “apolitical” movement. A fascist administration such as Hasina's cannot be overthrown by an apolitical movement. As a result, it was largely deprived of the participation of all the struggling classes of society, especially the large urban working class. If the working class of the city had joined the student movement, this government would have been thrown into the dustbin by now. The people would have crushed the barbarous fascist Awami leaders, including Hasina, beneath their feet.

However, the extremely angry students have added a new dimension to this movement. They have ousted the terrorist Chhatra League from many universities, even if temporarily. They have resisted armed attacks by these government-backed thugs and retaliated heavily against them. The Leaguers who carried out armed attacks on the street movement were driven away like dogs by the students. Much-hated leaders were beaten up; the PS of Gazipur's ex-mayor Jahangir, who fired at protestors' marches, was killed and hanged from a tree, and a policeman or two faced the same fate in some places. They attacked a number of police posts and stations and set them on fire. They even broke into the Narsingdi jail, freed all the prisoners, and looted hundreds of weapons from there. Even though there was no organized, centralized leadership behind these events, the entire ruling class was stunned by this spontaneous outburst of public outrage. They were rendered helpless in the face of mob power, albeit very temporarily.

This uprising temporarily immobilized the fascist regime in almost the entire country. This movement has demonstrated how brutally oppressive fascists can be. It was just a very rational, demand-oriented movement of the students. So it is easy to imagine how brutally they can deal with the struggle to overthrow the fascist regime.

The people's power has never been established in this nation's history through a mass movement or mass coup. Sometimes the government is forced to resign, and some of the demands of the people are forced to be accepted, but in the end, others of the ruling class take over, as happened in '69 or '90. The reason for this was that these movements were not equipped with a political program to capture state power by the people. The ruling class has weapons; they have various forces, which these political forces of the people did not have. That is why we from our proletarian party say with the utmost importance that the people must take up arms and build their own forces. This barbarous fascist power and their state apparatus must be defeated by violent means. It is not a crime to bear arms against the arms of the enemies of the people. Destroying the enemy's lair or killing the barbarous scoundrels among them is not something to be frowned upon. But it has to be planned and part of a political agenda. The people have every right to counter the barbaric terror of the ruling fascists with revolutionary terror.

The true freedom of the people lies in the growth of the people's war through rural-based guerilla warfare and the creation of a new democratic state composed of workers, peasants, and middle-class citizens. Mass movement and mass upheaval must be linked with rural-centric mass warfare. Only the urban-centric mass movement and mass upheaval, which will be built based on this people's war, will be able to establish people's power.

But it is a protracted struggle. Therefore, it is not possible to stop various types of mass movements, and neither will they stop. Besides, not only the workers and peasants but also the people of all levels of society and even the bourgeoisie are struggling against fascism. This is seen in this ongoing movement.
As a result, the mass movement that is currently underway needs to continue and be focused on the political goal of toppling fascism. The workers and peasants, especially the working class, must join the urban movement. Programs should be brought forward with the aim of building a real democratic society and state by eliminating fascism. All revolutionary, democratic, leftist, and progressive forces and political parties must unite in that cause today.

We call on the struggling students, the combatants on the front lines, to shake off the confusion of so-called “apolitical” gibberish. Awami fascism will not accept your 9-point demands yet. They have only taken a strategy to secure their throne by retreating a bit through quota reform. They will not spare the vanguard of the movement. They and their terror gang 'Chhatra League' are preparing weapons for revenge. You must also prepare your weapons. That weapon is the political agenda, the target of which now is to oust Hasina-Awami fascism. This is the way to fulfill the 9-point demands. To fulfill the dreams of martyrs. To fulfill your duty to the families of the martyrs.

- Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
- Establish a truly independent and democratic society free from imperialism, India, and foreign exploitation and control!
- Long live the agrarian revolution!
- Long live the People's War!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Israeli murder of Australian aid worker whitewashed

Written by: Nick G. on 2 August 2024

 

The murder of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, including Australian citizen Zomi Frankcom, has been whitewashed in a report by Special Adviser Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin.

At the time of the federal government’s announcement of Binskin to investigate the crime, we warned that his appointment came with a major conflict of interest.

We pointed out that “Binskin is a non-executive director for Defence and National Security Policy of BAE Systems Australia. Its UK parent company is literally making a killing out of Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.”

We added: 

It is not good enough that someone working for genocide profiteer BAE Systems will investigate the World Central Kitchen murders.

If it was thought that someone of his military seniority was required to get past Israeli obstructions, then he should have been appointed as part of a team that included war crimes legal specialists and human rights lawyers. The World Kitchen killings are not an isolated incident and should be investigated as part of the murders of nearly 200 aid workers by the Zionists, of their deliberate starvation of the people of Gaza, attacks on food convoys including the so-called “flour massacre” on 29 February 2024 when at least 118 people were killed and 760 injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks.

Anything less than an investigation on this scale will miss the whole point of the Zionist genocide.

If Binskins returns a report that is in anyway inconclusive, that in anyway refuses to see what even Blind Freddy can plainly see, then it will have no credibility given his conflict of interest.

As it turns out, BAE Systems non-executive director Binskin’s report is worse than “inconclusive”: it actually backs Israel’s account of the killing of the aid workers. The UN now says that over 250 aid workers have been killed by the Israelis in Gaza.

In his report, Binskin said it was his assessment that the Israeli strike on the WCK aid workers was not knowingly or deliberately directed against the WCK.

"It is my assessment that Israel’s acceptance of accountability for the 1 April WCK incident, and investigation, reporting and responding has, to this point, been timely, appropriate and, with some exceptions, sufficient," Binskin's report said.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has accepted Binskin’s report.

Openly fascist Opposition leader Peter Dutton who has all along backed Israeli genocide, said the report should never have been commissioned, saying that the decision was “frankly a disgrace”.  

The real disgrace is that a top official of the Australian Defence Force has stood with BAE Systems and their good customer Israel, to whitewash the murder of an Australian that took place in plain view.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Condemn the murder of Ismail Haniya

Written by: Nick G. on 1 August 2024

 

(Above: Ismail Haniya together with anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews.  Source: Torah Jews on X)

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) unequivocally condemns the murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya on July 31 by the Israeli Zionists.

The assassination, by an Israel air strike in Teheran, Iran, is designed to frustrate moves towards a ceasefire in Gaza. 

Ismail Haniya was instrumental in negotiating the terms of a ceasefire, which the Zionists have opposed. Israel has been increasingly isolated in its opposition to an internationally backed ceasefire proposal for which Hamas had expressed support.

Haniya also encouraged the overcoming of divisions within the Palestinian resistance, and particularly those between Hamas and the West Bank Palestinian Authority led by Fatah.

Just over a week before his assassination, Haniya had encouraged the meeting of representatives of 14 Palestinian organisations in Beijing.

This reconciliation dialogue resulted in a recognition by all participants of the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. 

The declaration also stated that a temporary national reconciliation government will be formed according to the consensus of Palestinian factions and the current Basic Law of the Palestine, to undertake Gaza reconstruction and prepare for general elections as soon as possible in accordance with the adopted electoral law. It endorsed the principle of “Palestinians governing Palestinians”.

For the sake of unity, all representatives endorsed the “two state solution”, also favoured by “honest broker” Beijing. China favours Israel’s continued existence. China has been Israel's third largest trading partner globally; bilateral trade volume increased from $50 million in 1992 to over $10 billion in 2013. Technology and armaments are major components of this trade relationship.

Israel immediately denounced the agreement within the Palestinian resistance, and imperialists led by the US reaffirmed their rejection of any governing body for Gaza which included Hamas. In this way do the great “defenders of democracy” show their contempt for the will of the people.

Israel’s “right to defend itself” has always meant its right to commit aggression against its neighbours, and to conduct targeted assassinations and bombings within their borders.

Within hours of murdering Haniya, Israel launched an airstrike on a southern residential suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut, claiming to have killed a top Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, in retaliation for Hezbollah’s alleged bombing in the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Days War.

Israeli genocide is not limited to the targeted assassination of the leaders of resistance organisations. Whole families are murdered in an attempt to intimidate the leaders and break their will.

In Haniya’s case, fourteen members of his family were killed in an Israeli airstrike on his family home in Gaza City, among them a brother and nephew in retaliation for October 7. In November 2023, a granddaughter of his was reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. Later that month his eldest grandson was killed in an Israeli strike. Three of his sons and three grandchildren were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip on 10 April 2024. On 25 June 2024, ten members of his family, including his 80-year-old sister, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in al-Shati refugee camp.

This terrible price had not intimidated Ismail Haniya, nor broken his will.

And neither will Haniya’s assassination stop the Palestinian people from continuing their fight for freedom. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

We will resist the occupation. We will defend the soil of Kurdistan!

Written by: MLKP on 29 July 2024

 

(Above: MLKP rally Source:MLKP International Bulletin)

We are making avalable to Australian readers this statement from the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Turkey/Northen Kurdistan (MLKP). We support the right of the Kurdish nation to exist within its own borders and condemn the efforts of Erdogan's Turkey to destroy the Kurdish people.  We have added several footnotes for clarity - eds.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference 2024, and AUKUS in Perth

Written by: Allan M. on 29 July 2024

 

 

Between 24-26 July 2024, Perth was host to the Indian Ocean Defence and Security (IODS) Conference. Promoted as the place "where AUKUS meets the Quad", IODS 2024 was a who's who in industrial murder.

Representatives from the governments, militaries, and arms industries of the United States, United Kingdom, India, Japan, and of course Australia, were rushing to applaud the escalating arms race. The focus of IODS 2024 was clearly the AUKUS arrangement and Australia's involvement in the US led 'Quad' military partnership. However, a significant amount of time was made available to speakers from weapons manufacturing companies in order to promote their lethal products.

Perth workers and students rallied in protest against this celebration of killing for profit and were disgusted by the attendance of arms manufacturers, particularly RAFAEL Systems, who produce and sell weapons currently being used to perpetrate the genocide in Gaza. Protests organised by a coalition of unionists, activists, and students were held over the course of the IODS conference to demonstrate Perth's anger at hosting facilitators of crimes against humanity.

On 24 July, Perth workers and students opened their week of action against IODS 24. Standing in the cold and surrounded by police, activists were there to disrupt the arrival of IODS attendees, letting them know their efforts to militarise Australia and continue the murder in Gaza were not welcome. Many IODS attendees scuttled to the conference centre door with their heads down, some sneered and laughed between themselves, and others pretended to not to notice. However, none were able to walk past without hearing from the powerful speakers and the shouts from the angered Perth community. Speakers included Palestinian activists from Friends of Palestine WA, who spoke to the clear connection between Australia's integration in the imperialist military industrial complex and the bombing of civilians in Gaza. Other speakers included WA Greens Senator Dorinda Cox, and union activists who spoke to the building of worker power to end systematised violence for profit and building a more peaceful society.

Protests continued on 25 July to disrupt speakers from RAFAEL Systems, culminating in a march through the city to make it clear that war criminals, and their enablers, are not welcome here. Weekly protests against Australia's complicity in the war in Gaza continue.

AUKUS in Perth

As IODS 2024 was being prepared, the Australian Government announced its plans to house a radioactive waste facility on Garden Island, off the coast of Perth, to store waste from America, British, and eventually Australian nuclear powered submarines. These plans, and its announcement, come in spite of vocal opposition from community members closest to the facility, with Rockingham residents consistently expressing their disapproval of the project.

Defence Industry Minister, Pat Conroy, was quick to dismiss large-scale community concern over this announcement by downplaying the purpose and extent of this facility, and making a deceptive comparison to radioactive waste handled by hospitals. This is a blatant and disrespectful lie from the Defence Industry Minister. Australian hospitals are not powered by nuclear reactors, unlike the American and British submarines that require highly enriched uranium for fuel. The vice-president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War has pointed out that nuclear waste from hospitals, usually generated from medical imagery, are short-lived and usually only need to be stored for 2-3 months, while nuclear waste from submarines will need to be stored for 300 years. The hospital comparison is all the more egregious as these medical facilities are intended to save lives, and are entirely necessary to support the health of our population, while the AUKUS endeavour has been made through the choices of a tiny minority of political elites that are focussed on ending lives in the Pacific.

Rockingham Mayor, Deb Hamblin, was also quick to dismiss her constituents, noting that the safety assessments indicated that in a 'worst case scenario' any radioactive hazards off-site were "negligible". Worst case scenarios were noted as being, among others, bushfires. Mayor Hamblin may have forgotten that we are in a climate crisis, and WA's bushfire season now extends to 8 out of 12 months in a year. She may have also forgotten the recent bushfires in the south of Perth that threatened the homes of thousands of people, or that Garden Island has significant areas of bushland. The residents of Rockingham certainly have a right to feel concerned about the "negligible" radioactive hazards and the presence of nuclear reactors on their doorstep. Unfortunately, their concerns have fallen on deaf ears, with submissions to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) being kept from the public eye. Mayor Hamblin commented on the secretive and limited consultation process, saying she was satisfied with the level of consultation.

Instead of advocating and elevating the concerns of Rockingham residents, the Mayor commented on the numerous benefits that the AUKUS project would bring, including housing (for American and British military personnel), advanced manufacturing, and most bizarrely, tourism. Many Australians may struggle to see how AUKUS would deliver any of those benefits to the residents of Perth, except for the select few who live on Garden Island and work for the AUKUS alliance. Most Australians would probably also struggle to see how those benefits would be realised in the event of a nuclear conflict. Mayor Hamblin has not commented on that point.

Finally, the Mayor commented that Rockingham residents will support the AUKUS announcement as Rockingham has always been a "defence city". This author has been a Western Australian all their life, and has never once known Rockingham as a "defence city". To most Western Australians, Rockingham is known for its beautiful coast, marine environment, and quiet lifestyle. It is also well known for its wealth inequality and socioeconomic disadvantage. The billions of dollars wasted on the AUKUS project would certainly be better spent on fighting against poverty and disadvantage. The residents of Rockingham are continuing to fight for just that, and despite the repeated dismissals and lack of consultation, are still advocating against militarisation on their doorstep.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

People's Struggle in Australia for Palestinians Continues

Written by: Ned K. on 28 July 2024

 

(Above: Adelaide rally 280724  Source: AFOPA on X)

On this latest weekend of 27-28 July 2024, demonstrations in support of Palestinians in Australians were again held, as they have been since Israel's bombardment of Gaza intensified last October.

Numbers of people attending such demonstrations and those able to attend varies from week to week and fortnight to fortnight but their cumulative impact should not be underestimated.

The latest weekend's demonstrations were supplemented by demonstrations outside the NSW state ALP conference and also inside the conference itself. 

In smaller cities like Adelaide and Canberra, the organizers of the demonstrations have been able to provide many different speakers, some with recent first-hand experience of the current situation in Gaza and some Palestinians who lived in Gaza before having to flee for their lives.

In Adelaide this last weekend, the 1500 people at the demonstration listened to a young Palestinian person who fled Palestine with his parents when he was just nine years old. He calmly recalled his memories of what it was like living in the apartheid-like conditions in the West Bank, with endless checkpoints, scarcity of food, electricity, fresh drinking water, destruction of Palestinian homes one by one by Israeli settlers and resulting homelessness. He finished speaking by saying that the Western Governments, not Hamas, were responsible for what happened on 7 October last year, as these governments had supported for decades the colonial invasion of Palestine by Zionist Israeli regimes.

It is the voices of thousands of people in Australia that the Australian Government has been unable to stop. 

Now the Government is fearful of losing Seats in western Sydney due to its pro-Israel position. So, we see Foreign Minister Wong announce last Thursday, three days before the NSW state ALP conference, that the Australian Government was following the USA in placing sanctions against seven Israeli individuals and a youth group, Hilltop Youth, for assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank,

Wong said the sanctions included revoking of visas, travel bans into Australia and seizure of any property or assets held by the individuals or youth group in Australia. 

These measures are like hitting the Israeli Government with a feather duster with three feathers in it!

Wong said the assaults by these Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank "increased tensions and further undermines stability for a two-state solution".

However, she and her Prime Minister Albanese do not support Palestinian statehood and still parrot the USA's line of "Israel has the right to defend itself"!

However, she and the Albanese Government do not support the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against an imperialist backed Zionist invading regime.

This is coming back to bite them, especially as it may contribute to the end of their existence as the executive committee of the imperialists in Australia at the next federal election in 2025!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

“We’re fighting for something that’s so much bigger, so much bigger than any one person.”; Nine workers on five-day strike.

Written by: Ashley C. on 27 July 2024

 

On Friday 26 July, unionised journalists and media workers at Nine newspapers (The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, WAtoday and Brisbane Times) walked off the job and marked the beginning of a five-day strike.

The strike comes after protected action was voted up by 90% of union members following a breakdown in negotiations with management for their next enterprise agreement. Under the banner of their union, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), workers are fighting for salary increases that keep up with inflation and job protections as Nine seeks to cut production costs following the recent termination of an advertising revenue agreement with parasitic US behemoth Meta (Facebook). 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Mirarr people have won their battle against Jabiluka

Written by: Nick G. on 28 July 2024

 

The NT government has refused to extend Energy Resources of Australia’s (ERA) Jabiluka uranium mining lease.

The lease is located within Kakadu on the lands of the Mirarr people.

Mirarr Traditional Owner Corben Mudjandi welcomed the news: “This day will go down in history as the day the Mirarr finally stopped Jabiluka. It is great day for the Mirarr people, for Kakadu, the Northern Territory and for Australia. This proves that people standing strong for Country can win. We look forward to welcoming all Australians to share our cultural heritage for decades to come.”

Kakadu traditional owners have long opposed uranium mining in Kakadu.

In 1969, uranium was discovered at a site that became the Ranger Uranium Mine in 1980.

Uranium was also discovered in 1971 at nearby Jabiluka 1, with a much larger Jabiluka 2 discovered in 1973. At both mines, capitalism’s destructive war on nature and the people was on display.

Kakadu was proclaimed a National Park in several stages between 1979 and 1991. However, the Ranger and Jabiluka mines were excised from the Park so that mining could occur.

Mining ceased at Ranger in 2012 although stockpile processing continued until 2021.

At Jabiluka, preparations for mining were made following the purchase of the mine by ERA, majority owned by the multinational Rio Tinto.

In 1998, Mirarr Senior Traditional Owners Yvonne Margarula and Jacqui Katona called on activists to help blockade the construction of the mine. An eight-month blockade followed as supporters from Australia and around the world came to lend their numbers to the blockade. The machinery of state, owned by the capitalists, was thrown at them and more than 500 were arrested. 

When the current lease expires on August 11, the Mirarr will expect the mine sites to be incorporated by the federal government in the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park, keeping Jabiluka protected from mining.

Mirarr leader Yvonne Margarula said: “We have always said no to this mine. Government and mining companies told us they would mine it but we stayed strong and said no. Today I feel very happy that Jabiluka will be safe forever. Protecting country is very important for my family and for me.”

We understand the politics of traditional owners and conservationists expressing thanks to the NT and federal governments for these decisions, but without the decades-long struggles led by the Mirarr, and supported by Australia and international friends, it is doubtful that the new protections would have emerged.

Labor has had decades to deliver on Ranger and Jabiluka, and sat on its hands until finally forced to act.

Rio Tinto’s ERA must fully rehabilitate the mess that their activities have created on Mirarr Country.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

“It’s an attack on us, our wages, our conditions, our right to organise.”

Written by: Louisa L. on 24 July 2024

 

State and federal governments, courts, cops, media, the ALP and ACTU are backing some of the world’s biggest developers, banks and finance corporations against the CFMEU and its members. 

Right now, building workers say, “It’s an attack on us, our wages, our conditions, our right to organise.” 

It’s an attack on the whole working class.

It comes after multiple deregistrations and royal commissions against the old Builders Labourers Federation and its CFMEU offspring first led in Victoria by the CPA(ML)’s incorruptible comrade John Cummins. Next, workers crushed the 14-year Australian Building and Construction Commission’s attempt to destroy the union by outlawing basic democratic rights for construction workers and their representatives. 

Eyewatering profits

At stake are eyewatering profits to be made from the surplus value created by construction workers. While developers take the least risk and the most money, building companies and subcontractors are squeezed.  

net worth of Meriton’s owner Highrise Harry Triguboff is $23.8 billion. Goodman Group, worth $59.24 billion, is number one of the top ten multi-billion dollar developers on Australia’s stock exchange. 

BlackRock, the biggest US investment firm is one of the biggest security holders in eight of these top developers.  Its CEO and founder Harry Finke has $US8.7 TRILLION in assets. The second biggest US investment firm, The Vanguard Group with $US8.6 trillion assets under management, is one of the top five investors in every single one of the Australian Top 10 listed developers. 

Where does such obscene wealth come from? Plundering nature and exploiting workers’ labour power.

One rule for bosses, another for workers

In the huge MUA-led 1998 waterfront dispute, images of guard dogs and shipyard owner enforcers in balaclavas outraged journalists and public alike. 

Hundreds of thousands joined solidarity actions. 

This time, journalists join the corporate attack, labelling industrial tactics protecting safety in a notoriously dangerous industry ‘criminal’. The best wages and conditions in the country? Also ‘criminal’. 

These journalists have been key in exposing big end and government corruption, like Scott Morrison’s Robodebt that illegally sent debt notices to 443,000 of Australians most vulnerable people, stealing $1.8 billion! No-one charged! 

Or investigating PwC, which designed the Federal Government’s response to minimise tax avoidance and then told corporate clients how to get round them. No one charged! Or KPMG that sent fake invoices to the Defence Department, and was then awarded $70 million contracts in one week! Government contracts despite insider information. No one charged!  

They never mention the good

For decades governments have allowed construction companies to shift money to new companies, and declare the old ones broke – without paying workers entitlements or subcontractors’ bills, then start again with a new company. Zero action for decades!

CFMEU EBAs ensure leave entitlements are paid monthly into industry redundancy trusts and superannuation into industry fund CBUS and, so workers aren’t robbed. Where’s the praise?

As a worker told us, “They never mention all the good the union does.” That good is beyond the seven percent yearly pay rise, double time for all overtime, site, travel and other allowances. It’s beyond the battles that forced governments to outlaw deadly engineered stone, or the NSW mass stopworks after 18-year-old Christopher Cassaniti was crushed to death. 

What about the union’s extensive mental health and suicide prevention work in an industry where excessive hours undermine health? What about its drug and alcohol programs, including residential ones for members and families at Sydney’s Foundation House, and places like it, interstate? 

In the 1950s and early 60s, the Builders Labourers Federation activists overthrew gangster control of the union and industry. 

Living with dignity

Governments, and giant corporations, have been giving contracts to gangsters for decade. Bribes could be paid and received, but it’s impossible for any CFMEU money to be syphoned to them. 

Nationally difficulties arose when the CFMEU made systematic moves into the government run infrastructure sector. An experienced NSW delegate told us, “You can’t pick up a brick or shovel in the civil sector without confronting gangsters and bikies.” Where was the fury while the right-wing ALP Australian Workers Union was covering it all for lousy conditions and pay?

Today construction is the only industry where former prisoners can work and create a new path to controlling their own lives with dignity.

Meanwhile First Peoples, the mentally ill, homeless, those whom an education system divided by wealth has failed, the poor and those who were physically or sexually abused as children are jailed at alarming and escalating rates. In every state, children can be sent to youth prison at 10 years old. But the cabal of super rich and privileged targets an industry and union that might give them a second chance. What’s the real crime here?

The CFMEU works in this whole corrupt system, but unlike the old BLF, never challenged its right to exist. It’s time to build organisation to challenge that system.

Workers should be able to run their own organisations, democratically and fairly.

The CFMEU is one of Australia’s last unions prepared to take unprotected industrial action. If it goes under, it will undermine rising struggles among workers, when membership is at rock bottom and most workers have their backs to the wall. We call for solidarity. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The ABC and Indo-Pacific psychological warfare

Written by: (Contributed) on 23 July 2024

 

(Source: pacificausttv.com )

A major funding boost for the ABC has coincided with Canberra announcing the Pacific AUS TV Initiative designed to provide extensive media coverage across the Pacific, in line with traditional psychological warfare techniques.

Fears have arisen about China having upgraded their regional media coverage in recent years, enabling Beijing to enhance its diplomatic position in a more favourable light.

The Australian initiative, however, is not original and remains remarkably similar to previous initiatives designed to protect the UK Commonwealth and US hegemonic diplomatic positions and 'interests' through compliant Australian involvement.

In mid-July Canberra announced a $40.5 million upgrade with the ABC, Australia's national broadcaster; a total of $28.4 million has already been allocated over the next five years for the Pacific-Aus TV Initiative marked by enhancing ties between Australian and Pacific Islands media outlets to enable 'Pacific Islands people to access Australian content … and … creating additional news content for Pacific audiences'. (1)

The initiative has placed the Pacific region into the larger Indo-Pacific area 'with efforts to bolster Indo-Pacific media capacity and its ties to Australian-based media … the ABC will also provide support for media partners in the Pacific, South-east Asia and South Asia, and boost its radio transmission across the region'. (2)

The initiative has been established following fears arising about China's 'media foot-print in the Indo-Pacific region … and … to fend off growing Chinese cultural influence across the region'. (3) The initiative forms part of a classic psychological warfare technique, designed to shape favourable opinion toward the US and its allies, to the detriment of adversaries. (4)

The initiative, furthermore, fits comfortably and is best assessed in the context of the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) where 'the US, Japan, India, and Australia form the Quad hemming China in from all sides' while other countries allied with US-led diplomacy are included as lower-level partners. (5) Australia, historically, has been a close US ally with strong involvement in surrounding Asia and Pacific countries. As US diplomatic hostilities with China have increased in recent years, Australia's importance has been  elevated.

The Australian initiative, however, is not new; in fact, it is merely a continuation of similar moves by both the US and UK to use Australia as a regional conduit through which hegemonic diplomacy has been conducted. Australia, it should be noted, has historically maintained the diplomatic position of being a sub-imperial power. (6) The AUKUS relationship is best viewed in that light.

Recent research following the declassification of various government documents about the highly secretive Information Research Department (IRD) has revealed how Australia was quietly drawn into the organisation; initially established as Britain's 'covert Cold War propaganda arm between 1948 and 1977 … the IRD covertly collected and disseminated material to the media to discredit human rights figures, undermine political opponents overseas, help overthrow governments, and promote UK influence and commercial interests around the world'. (7)

The IRD also 'maintained a strong relationship with the BBC. It supplied material, 'provided it was neither quoted directly, nor attributed to the government as being official policy. The BBC was an ideal conduit for IRD material because it was … in a class by itself'. (8) The stifling nature of British society with class privilege merging with state power, was also an ideal recruiting ground for spooks whose designated role was to use Commonwealth positions for ulterior motives and spurious agendas; the past Cold War and merged with the present one, as seen with the recent 'Australian' initiative.  

Australia was initially drawn into the IRD network following a visit by Norman Reddaway to Canberra in late 1970 for a Four Power Information Meeting 'on defence and security strategy in the SE Asia, involving Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the US'. (9) Reddaway was an influential British spook: having served in the Second World War he was recruited to the Foreign Office and was influential in the creation of the IRD. (10) During the 1960s he was assigned to Indonesia as 'the co-ordinator of political warfare', designed to overthrow the progressive and pro-Chinese Sukarno presidential administration. (11)

By 1970, Reddaway was increasingly concerned about threats to traditional hegemonic positions in Asia, which had become a theatre of war and Cold War diplomatic tensions. The Vietnam War was, at that time, well under-way and regarded as a component part of the far-right domino theory of spreading influences across the region; Australian military involvement has been well recorded. The political position of the Labor administrations of Gough Whitlam and their troubled diplomatic relationship with their US counterparts  has been well recorded elsewhere.

Following further high-level diplomatic meetings between Australia, the UK and US, a Department of Foreign Affairs official, Ross Smith, was selected as Principal Research officer for the newly established 'secret propaganda unit', in October 1971. (12) Smith, not surprisingly, had been previously employed as the Information Attache in the Australian embassy in Jakarta during 1962-65, 'providing contacts and information to Australian reporters and media outlets. His time there had coincided with the period when the IRD was very active in Indonesia producing propaganda designed to undermine left-leaning President Sukarno'. (13) Gross human rights abuses following the 1965 Suharto military coup did not appear to have caused either Smith, or his Australian employers, any concern whatsoever.

Declassified documents from the Australian national archive have revealed that involvement from Canberra was largely concentrated on the South-west Pacific area where the main IRD lacked contacts. It was noted, however, 'the Australians are working up distribution of their material in South-east Asia, and beginning to cultivate potential recipients in the UK through Australia House, who have sought our advice'. (14)     

Once operational the Australian IRD 'distributed … unattributed research briefs and articles written for newspapers and journals, and the potential recipients would have been co-operative journalists writing on the region'. (15) A declassified document from the period has shown how Australia was supposed to organise 'information operations', spoon-feeding
journalists with material designed to influence events in the Western Pacific and South-east Asia region. (16)

Following the elevation of Smith to the position of Consul-General in Lae, PNG, in October, 1974, shortly before independence, control of the IRD passed through the hands of two further spooks who were both well versed in Indonesian affairs. Richard Butler took immediate control of the unit, having been appointed by Richard Woolcott, who later served as Australian ambassador to Indonesia during the period of the brutal invasion of East Timor. Australian support for the military invasion was well known, and despite over 180,000 East Timorese losing their lives in massacres and genocide, the 'problem' was glossed over and subject to diplomatic silence for decades. Canberra, subsequently, only declassified intelligence documents from the period very reluctantly and has proved hesitant about openly discussing any of the revelations, including those surrounding the deaths of the Balibo Five.

It is interesting to note the main IRD organisation was subsequently closed by then British Foreign Secretary Dr. David Owen, in 1977, due to its 'contacts with right-wing journalists and propagandists who were actively anti-Labour'; those involved in the shadowy, spooky world in which they operated, merely took further, and similar, appointments and moved elsewhere. (17)

Its Australian IRD partner also appears to have ceased operations at the same time. It is important to note the whole period of its existence coincided with the rise and fall of Gough Whitlam and his Labor administrations, together with the unification of Vietnam.

It has now, however, been resurrected; to serve similar objectives. But then, that is what they do.

It is also interesting to note official media releases from Canberra about the Pacific Aus TV Initiative have drawn specific attention to the assessed problem of the Solomon Islands, one of Canberra's favourite countries of interest and obsession. They allege the Solomon Star has been accepting funding from China for favourable coverage. No doubt Solomon Islanders, together with their Pacific Island counterparts, are now eagerly awaiting endless streams of dubious Australian media commentary ...

1.     TV push to combat China play for power, The Weekend Australian, 13-14 July 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     See: The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John D, Marks, (London, 1976), with specific reference to Sub-section Part 2, Number 6, Propaganda and Disinformation, pp. 183-209.
5.     See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
6.     See: Sub-imperial power, Clinton Fernandez, (Victoria, 2022); and, Island off the coast of Asia, Clinton Fernandez, (Victoria, 2018).
7.     Revealed: Australia's Secret Propaganda Unit, John Mcevoy and Peter Cronau, 16 June 2022, website: https://declassifiedaus.org/2022/06/16/revealed-australias-secret-propaganda-unit/
8.     MI6, Stephen Dorril, (London, 2002), page 78.
9.     Revealed, op.cit.
10.   MI6, Dorril, op.cit., which contains numerous references to both Reddaway and the
        IRD.
11.   Revealed, op.cit.
12.   Ibid.
13.   Ibid.
14.   Copy: Australian IRD, Mr Reddaway, Secret, Declassified, ibid., page 7.
15.   Ibid.
16.   See: Secret IRD, 1971, File – FCO168/4481, Reference – 36/11/1 1972,      Declassified.
17.   MI6, Dorril, op.cit., page 80.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

New Delegate Rights Clause in Awards - A Small but Significant Win By Workers

Written by: Ned K. on 22 July 2024

 

 

From 1 July 2024 a standard Delegates Rights clause was included in Awards which provide the minimum wages and conditions for workers in most industries and sectors.

The new clause was one of the changes to the Fair Work Act that workers in unions had demanded the Albanese Government support through legislation prior to its election in 2022.

When the Fair Work Act 2009 replaced the Howard Government's industrial laws, it was called by many workers "Work Choices Lite" as it unsurprisingly still favored the capitalists, not the workers, reflecting the reality of capitalism.

One example of this was that the Gillard and Rudd Government's Fair Work Act did not even mention the word "Delegate" in the whole Act! Yet Gillard said the new Act had "got the balance right" regarding the competing interests of capitalists and workers!

The new clauses in Awards from 1 July 2024 about Delegate Rights provide workers in any workplace or employed by any employer with the entitlement to elect Union Delegates to represent their interests regarding any issues that need to be taken up with the boss.

The wording of the new clause in Awards is such that it enables workers who are members of a Union to elect Delegates provided the Delegate works for the same employer as the Union members. In practice this means that workers who work for one employer but in different locations such as Road Traffic workers or contract cleaners who work in several workplaces in the same day, are still entitled to elect their own Union Delegate. This is important for workers in industries where mobility is par for the course.

In the early to mid-2000s a progressive researcher David Peetz did a study of the impact of the employer and Howard Government attack on workers’ capacity to act collectively in their own interests. He found that where there were active elected Union Delegates representing and uniting workers around issues, the impact of the hostile employer and Government attacks on workers was much less effective.

Peetz found this was even more the case when the Delegates were elected rather than appointed by the (sometimes) more remote Union Organizer or Union Executive or Secretary.

Interestingly, the new Delegate clause in Awards says that a Delegate can be "elected" or "appointed" by higher levels of the Union!

Progressive union leaderships will surely ensure that ALL Delegates are elected by members and endorsed by relevant Councils or Executive Committees of their Union.

The only reason a Delegate elected by members they work with is NOT endorsed by higher bodies of their Union would be that the elected Delegate had a history of behaviour and values unacceptable to members of the Union as a whole. For example, proof of criminal activities, racist towards certain workers, evidence of being a boss's stooge!

Now that the Delegate clauses are law, it raises the question of whether an appointed administrator of a Union by a Government or Fair Work Commission had the capitalist legal system power to declare any Delegate elected by members to no longer be a Delegate!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Labor Minister Confirms “No refund” at NATO Summit

Written by: Nick G. on 19 July 2024

 

Labor’s Assistant Minister for Defence Matt Thistlethwaite has embarrassingly confirmed that the two amounts of $A4.7billion gifted to the US and UK miliary machines in an effort to pump prime the AUKUS arrangements will not be refunded if the arrangements fall apart.

Australia is a partner, not a member of NATO, but the government deemed it important that it strut its stuff at last week’s Washington summit.

While there, Thistlewaite was interviewed by US online Breaking Defence magazine.

Their first question raised the issue that that under a new administration and Congress AUKUS might “lose some steam.”

Thistlewaite referred to” conversations that I’ve had with congressmen and -women yesterday from both sides of the aisle” and believed that regardless of who won the US election, AUKUS’s future was assured.

“They see the strategic importance of it for security and peace in the Indo-Pacific” he said, “but they also see the industrial uplift that will come from Pillar II, and that means jobs in their districts.”

A few questions later, Breaking Defence asked: “There was some question in Parliament recently about the $5 billion payment to the US to bolster the sub industrial base, and what would happen if the AUKUS deal for Virginia-class subs falls apart. What would happen to that money? Is that actually a concern at all?”

Now that matter arose from a Senate Estimates hearing on May 6 when Greens Senator David Shoebridge questioned the Head of the Australian Submarine Agency, Vice-Admiral Jonathan Mead, who refused to answer a series of questions about whether Australia will get its money back if the US fails to transfer Virginia class submarines in the 2030s.

The government has had nearly 3 months to work out how to spin this matter, or if it wanted to, how to reply honestly to the question.

But Thistlewaite seemed clueless in his response, adding nothing to Mead’s earlier unsatisfactory answer.

“There’s been no indication at all to us that the Virginia classes aren’t going to be delivered,” mumbled Thistlewaite. “So we’re working on the assumption that we will acquire that capability from 2027. The planning is in place, including, importantly, the people transfer. So the deployments of US submariners, all that planning is starting to take place already. So there’s been no indication at all that that commitment won’t be met.”

Yes, you idiot, you can assume there are fairies at the bottom of the garden too, but the question was, will we get our money back if the submarines are not delivered. 

The government will still not say either “Yes” or “No”.  Just one of two words, Matt Thistlewaite. We don’t need any more than that.

Comforting for the US submariners who will be rotated through Fleet Base West, WA’s HMAS Stirling, Thistlewaite reported that “We’ve got a body called Defense Housing Australia. They’ve just gone out to the market for a tender to build 550 homes around the base for submariners and their families, and the response to the tender has been great.”

The government was “working at speed” on this and other infrastructure, he said.

It’s a pity the government is not “working at speed” to address the acute housing shortage facing its own people. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Salute the heroic comrades of the Rojava revolution.

Written by: Nick G. on 19 July 2024

 

On  July 19, 2012, armed fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) captured the city of Kobane from government forces in north-east Syria.

Further victories against Syrian government forces and those of ISIS saw the creation of Rojava as an autonomous region in which the cultural, religious and political freedom of all people has been established. Significantly for the region, its Constitution also explicitly states the equal rights and freedom of women and also "mandates public institutions to work towards the elimination of gender discrimination".

In celebration of the 12th anniversary of the Rojava revolution, we encourage our readers to download the book Rojava: People in Arms to gain an understanding of the Kurdish people’s struggle. It can be downloaded at the bottom of this page:  Rojava: Peoples in Arms – #RiseUp4Rojava

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The Bezosmoth

Written by: Humphrey McQueen on 17 July 2024

 

(Above: A 10ft tall Bezos is he target of workers engaged in a March 20, 2021 international day of solidarity with Alabama Amazon workers.  Photo by Joe Piette  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0)

 

This article is republished with the kind permission of the author, Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen.  It first appeared on the Pearls and Irritations website on July 13, 2024-eds.

 

Behold, now behemoth … Behold, he drinketh up a river …
The Book of Job, 40: 15 and 23. 

‘Most of us don’t know 95 percent of what Amazon is doing,’ Amy Webb warns in her The Big Nine (2019). While Amazon Prime is diverting audiences with its rom-com, The Idea of You, the Australian Signals Directorate is paying Amazon Web Services two billion dollars to store secrets in three locations on the Cloud with a golden lining for Amazon which holds the largest slice globally, at around a third. 

(Will the ASD sites need Dutton’s nuclear plants to power them?)

Jeff Bezos began by distributing books in July 1994 to customers with discretionary incomes to build into ‘The Everything Store,’ helping to put 2,500 bookshops out of business. (Brad Stone, The Everything Store, 2013) First called Cadabra, as in the slight-of-hand magic spell ‘abracadabra,’ then rebranded Amazon within a few months to match the mightiest river with its expansive delta. 

The tributaries to Amazon’s reported income of $6.7 billion for 2023 have a common spring in the labours of 1.46 million ‘Amazonians’ employed as wage-slaves in warehouses, on piece-rates for the Mechanical Turk, or as ‘in/dependent’ delivery drivers for Amazon Flex. 

In Management-Speak, Amazon warehouses are ‘fulfillment centers,’ which is true for packages but not for the pickers and packers who endure them as ‘hellscapes.’ Unlike chattel-slaves who could run off into the Amazon delta, wage-slaves have nowhere to hide from the all-seeing-eye of devices which have patrolled ‘Scamazon’ for twenty years. 

The Wall Street Journal parades ‘Besozism’ as an advance on Taylorism and Fordism for its ‘mix of surveillance, measurement, psychological tricks, targets, incentives, sloganeering … and an ever-growing array of clever and often proprietary technologies.’ 

On the frontier of Telematics, Amazon patented a wrist-band which reports hand-movements, before sending vibrations back to nudge the workers into being more productive. 

Along with other distributors, Bezos had rented the first-generation KIVA robots ‘to increase the output capacity of their warehouses; store and ship a wider range of product; shorten the amount of time required to fill an order; and ultimately either lower the cost of their services, increase their profits, or both.’ In 2012, Bezos bought KIVA’s manufacturer for $775m., rebranding it Amazon Robotics. He did not renew its contracts with competitors such as the now bankrupt Toys’R’US, which had to set up its own. One product-line which his ‘Everything Store’ does not sell is its labour-slaving technologies. 

An Amazon recruit takes a couple of days to learn to pull sticky tape at the maximum speed from its dispenser without twisting it. The dispenser is programmed to extrude the exact length but workers out-performed the device at fastening the tape around cartons of multiple shapes and sizes. A novice who does not pick up that knack by the third day is ‘set free.’ The Bezosmoth did not rack up his cool trillion by dispensing with fixed-capital at that rate. Like every agent of capital, he juggles outlays between equipment and wages in pursuit of more than the average rate of profit. 

Workplace-wide sensors track every move of every Amazonian down to the milli-second to determine the floating average ‘rate’ at each warehouse, helping to lift the pick-rate from 100 to 300 per hour per worker. AI devices report in real time the pick-rates around the planet, globalising labour-times. Saving one milli-second is nothing. To do so 1,000 times per second on a 10-hour shift piles up on the bottom line.   

What the Bezosmoth insists on as ‘the rate’ confirms Marx’s recognition that ‘everything that shortens the necessary labour-time required for the reproduction of labour-power, extends the domain of surplus labour’ to realise as profit

Cardinal automatic scanners replaced scanning by hand in 2021. Loaded with Augmented Reality ID vision and AI, they pluck items of up to 22kg., read the labels, place them in the correct bin before they are moved further along the shipping process. Promoted by Amazon as a boon to the ‘pickers’ by reducing repetitive strain, Cardinal is a blessing for a boss suffering workforce churn because of those injuries, or who are burnt out after two weeks of 10-hour days. Gift vouchers cannot retain recruits.

Amazon’s conglomerations of labour rival those at Detroit auto-makers before the 1980s. Once brought together, workers can become ‘dangerous classes’. Bezos’s determination to block unions is more than his ‘trademark hard-charging attitude towards work.’ Even a tame-cat union might negotiate legally-enforceable agreements which hamper Amazon’s redirecting of labour to increase the ‘rate.’ 

Amazon’s acceleration machine does not clock-off at the warehouse gate. Its monopsony clout compels suppliers to drive down the labour-times required for the units that their workers produce. Amazon’s abuse of its labour-force points to how effects from its practices spread back down its supply chains and across to competitors. 

Amazon runs flexibility-scheduling platforms which let its full-time workers choose their shifts. Should they fail to put in thirty hours during the week, they lose one point. Chalk up eight points for a range of faults, and you’re fired: ‘expectation of the sack is pervasive.’ Nothing is ‘flexible’ in that power relationship, any more than there is in ‘the rate’ set in Amazon hellscapes. Nonetheless, ‘the rate’ remains ‘flexible’ in that its victims are pushed to go ever faster. 

These congeries subject ever more full-time permanents to the conditions of a gig economy. Bezosism will not mean that all jobs will become gigs but that they all will be managed as if they were, as David Weil explores in The Fissured Workplace (2014).  

For the 2023 mid-year sales in Australia, Amazon recruited 1,000 drivers with their own vehicles, thereby externalizing fixed-capital costs, as does UBER. Cost-of-living pressures boosted the number of applicants willing to accept low rates of pay since an Amazon gig was not their principal source of earnings but what their recruiters called ‘extra cash,’ and the applicants experienced as desperate measures. 

Low wages at Amazon help to keep them down at DoorDash and Uber, while all three benefit from their employees’ being driven to chase two or three jobs to cobble together a living income.

Next year, will open a four-storey fulfillment centre, the size of the eleven  Melbourne Cricket Grounds, on Macaulay Rd, North Melbourne, while installing robots at both north Melbourne and the Craigieburn site, close by Tullamarine, the better to despatch to regional centers adding a threat to their street-front outlets.

The Bezomoth makes local governments in the U.S. of A. compete with offers of tax concessions and the like for the privilege of having a warehouse built in their district to the detriment of existing distributors and retailers. 

Amazon drops suppliers for ‘no reason’ other than a encourage les autres – thereby reminding all of them that no one of them is indispensable and so they had better cop whatever terms Amazon dishes out. It shifts the costs of holding inventory back to suppliers by making them wait for payment. Amazon’s behaviour is worse than that from Supermarkets here.

Amazon employs 7,000 Australians, 4,000 in the Cloud and 2,000 ‘permanents’ in its six fulfilment centers; 1,300 are body-hire, and 3,000 more in/dependent delivery contractors. To protect their rights at work, how much due diligence did AustralianSuper exercise before its ‘ethical’ investment in Amazon’s robotic fulfillment center at Craigieburn?

In like vein, under which kind of labour relations will the Australian Cloud staff be employed: Bezosism or FairWork? Will the ‘Labor values’ of Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Burke, ensure workers’ rights to unionise and to disconnect?

Gender equity should also be a concern given Kristi Coulter’s 2023 memoir, Exit Interview, that throughout twelve years as an Amazon executive she had been bullied and never given a top job. 

Given how easy it was for PriceWaterhouseCooper to bamboozle Tax Office sleuths, what chance will Defense boffins have in a showdown with the Bezomoth? Hard bargaining assumes that the prospect of post-retirement consultancies for politicians, bureaucrats and top brass does not make them a soft touch. After all, they are safe from another whistle-blower after the jailing of David McBride. 

One certainty is the contract will be another commercial-in-confidence trick. 

He who sups with The Bezosmoth, should have a long spoon. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The Imminent Catastrophes behind Elon Musk’s “Starship”

Written by: Leo A. on 17 July 2024

 

(Above: Elon Musk at the Kennedy Space Centre in 2020 with then President Trump in preparation for the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.  Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/   Public Domain)

An often-overlooked way in which Australia is kept dependent on foreign powers is through access to space. Since this country currently has no orbital launch ability of its own (this could change later this year with Gilmour Space’s Bowen Orbital Spaceport granted Australia’s first orbital launch facility licence), Australian satellites must be launched on foreign soil by foreign, typically American or French, space programs. 

One of these programs, Elon Musk’s American corporation SpaceX, has been regularly making their way into the news headlines. The most recent topic of discussion concerns test flights of the “Starship” launch system, the most recent of which took place on June 6. There are two key causes of concern that should be considered in light of these recent developments. 
 
A New Greenhouse Gas Catastrophe 
 
First, the environmental impact of this new rocket has been mostly overlooked – perhaps due to the assumption that Starship is no more environmentally harmful than similar rocket systems, or perhaps due to the assumption that anything sufficiently “futuristic-looking” can’t possibly have a catastrophic environmental impact. Both of these assumptions are false. 
 
What sets SpaceX’s Starship apart from previous heavy-lift launch vehicles is the chemical reaction used for its propulsion system. All large rockets are powered by a combination of an oxidiser and a fuel. Like similar systems, Starship uses liquid oxygen as its oxidiser, no problem there, but unlike similar systems it uses liquid methane as its fuel (this combination is sometimes referred to as “methalox”). 
 
Methane is an extremely strong greenhouse gas, dozens of times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. While the methane is intended to be burned in the ignition chamber during launch without leaking into the air, there are many steps in the process in which this could happen. Consider all the moments during the production, storage, transportation etc of the methane in which some of it can escape containment. Not to mention how much of it might not even ignite when it’s injected into the chamber and could simply exit the nozzle into the air, or how much of it may be released into the air during an explosive launch or re-entry failure (of which there have already been several). Even for the methane that does ignite as intended, the combustion reaction produces carbon dioxide as an exhaust product, so either way thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases are being released with every launch. Now multiply that by the thousands of launches that are being planned, and a very serious problem begins to emerge. 
 
And why was such a devastating fuel chosen for the Starship programme? This question was answered in detail in a 2016 presentation when the programme was pitched in detail for the first time. Three fuel options were originally considered – kerosene, hydrogen and methane. Kerosene cannot be manufactured using the available resources of any worlds besides Earth, so the choice was primarily between hydrogen and methane. Reasons given in the presentation for choosing methane over hydrogen included several “disadvantages” of hydrogen that have already been resolved across decades of aerospace experience in using hydrogen in rocket propulsion. But one line in the comparison chart sticks out like a sore thumb: “Cost of propellant”. 
 
That’s what it’s really about. Methane was the cheapest of the three rocket fuels to mass-produce. As fancy and “shiny” as Elon Musk’s projects depict themselves, in the end they’re driven by the same motivations as any other bourgeois entity. 
 
The rejected fuel option, hydrogen, may deserve a closer look. At the present time, nearly all of the world's current supply of hydrogen is unsustainably created from fossil fuels, however there are methods of producing it in a clean, renewable manner, and these methods could theoretically be scaled up during a transition away from fossil fuels. It appears doubtful that clean hydrogen could itself become a major energy source, as some capitalists such as Twiggy Forrest claim, however it does not have to be in order to be used for space travel. Unlike methane, hydrogen itself isn’t a greenhouse gas, and in any case doesn’t remain in Earth’s atmosphere for long. And the combustion product of hydrogen and oxygen is water. In other words, the exhaust forms a tiny, temporary artificial cloud during launch. There are other environmentally-friendly methods of reaching space as well, some of which do not involve traditional rockets at all. 
 
American Tools of War 
 
Musk’s venture, like other parts of the space program, is intimately tied to Imperialist warfare - both supporting current wars and preparing for future ones. This has always been true, in fact the American space program began as little more than a military project for developing ICBMs aimed at the Soviet Union, China, and their allies. In the present day, military satellites serve numerous functions in support of the war machine, ranging from long-distance communications to spying on an opponent’s actions. SpaceX already regularly launches military satellites, and isn’t even against repurposing non-military satellites into tools of war. For example, the “Starlink” satellite network, supposedly designed to assist in giving internet access to remote communities, has been used by Ukrainian forces in the ongoing inter-imperialist proxy war so regularly that the one time Musk didn’t allow it’s use became newsworthy. 
 
Unlike any orbital launch vehicle currently in use, Starship has the capability to launch over a hundred tonnes of payload into low earth orbit at once. Such a capability in American hands can, and will, be used for malicious purposes. In the immediate, short-term future, this will play a role in the ongoing campaigns of imperialist aggression around the world. In the more distant, long-term future, the roles of military satellites may expand to encompass, for example, the ability to directly strike targets on the ground from orbit, and this may be seen in the larger conflicts that Australia will likely be dragged into. 
 
Looking deeper into the future 
 
We shouldn’t lose sight of another risk that could emerge if the Starship programme is successful at establishing regular interplanetary travel for profit-oriented purposes. Environmental destruction will follow wherever the interests of capital are given priority, and there’s no reason this trend would not continue offworld. By now lead, microplastics, and other pollutants have been found in every rainforest, glacier and deep-sea trench on Earth. Even Low Earth Orbit has been polluted by the Kessler Effect over the past few decades (and the Starlink project has made this far worse in recent years). Deep Space remains the one place that has yet to be corrupted by capitalism, and it should remain that way. One world has already been devastated by careless exploitation, we should hope that number does not increase. 
 
This does not mean that space travel itself is inherently reactionary or counterrevolutionary. If anything, history shows us the opposite. While many of the Soviet Space Program’s most infamous accomplishments took place during the 1960s, Soviet superiority in space already began before this. For example, in July of 1951, the Soviet Union launched the first mammals to survive a flight into space. Three years later in 1954, a developmental plan was proposed for the world’s first artificial satellite – what we now know as Sputnik 1. The foundations of a powerful space program had already been laid by the time of the revisionist takeover.

We should also remember the PRC’s “two bombs one satellite” programme. As early as 1958 Mao Zedong formally announced the development of a Chinese orbital space program. In April of 1970, China’s first satellite was successfully launched into space, making China the fifth nation to put a spacecraft into orbit using its own rocket. So no, the corruption of space travel by bourgeois interests does not make space travel itself inherently negative. 
 
Nor is the often-discussed ambition of populating other worlds (the term “colonization” is often used but appears unsuitable as this has little in common with the deadly colonialism of the past and present) counterrevolutionary either. In fact, this concept was first seriously promoted by a Soviet rocket scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. A few short years after the establishment of the USSR, he published a plan for the long-term expansion of the human species into space. 
 
And this will likely happen in the future. Other worlds will likely be populated, not as a result of some billionaire’s side-project, but as the result of a socialist endeavour – likely of an international collaboration of socialist states. If the struggles of the present day are eventually won, this will be just one part of the bright future our children and grandchildren can look forward to. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Israel’s Apartheid Practice

Written by: (Contributed) on 17 July 2024

 

Discussions taking place at the highest levels of the Israeli state have revealed planning for prolonged control of Gaza and the West Bank along neo-colonial lines. While various policy options are being considered, none have included any reference to granting recognition of a Palestinian state in accordance with United Nations recommendations decades ago.

In fact, those closely associated with the Netanyahu grouping in the Knesset have already opted for a bantustan-type model for Gaza, based on the former homelands of Apartheid South Africa.

Serious political differences, nevertheless, are emerging inside Israel; some of those which have been not as conspicuous as the mass demonstrations in opposition against Netanyahu, have far-reaching implications for political stability.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected in the US in late July where he is expected to address Congress on 24th about his government plans for the Gaza Strip. Discussions have already started taking place inside the Israeli corridors of power, with various submissions from senior figures. Some of their proposed policy options have already been openly stated: they follow closely the models drawn up by white supremacists in South Africa for containing the black population. (1) With little ambiguity.

The South African homelands, which evolved from the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, became a government priority following the imposition of Apartheid policies in 1950. The white elite sought to permanently remove non-whites from what they regarded as their country. The Bantustans, as they were called, were central to Apartheid policies; they were, furthermore, never intended to be economically sustainable, but dependent upon the white economy with a source of cheap labour for use along lines of a colonial-settler type model.

While differences exist between the Israeli policy options, a common strand running through many of them is a similar preoccupation with 'geographical islands … and … bubbles', designed specifically to atomise the Palestinian community and control the population. (2) Not one proposed policy option has recommended the recognition of a Palestinian state, in line with United Nations recommendations in the late 1980s.

 
While the Bantustan policies never worked effectively in South Africa, there were, nevertheless, forced re-locations of non-whites from numerous areas. Many non-whites, however, managed to stay in predominantly white areas while subject to government classification as 'non-people'. Needless to state, the Apartheid policies were considered by most reasonable people around the world as odious, and led to opposition and a massive reaction and, eventually, the toppling of the whole segregationalist regime in 1994.

The whole issue of Apartheid has remained highly controversial inside the Israeli state, although there were and remain marked similarities; Israel, for example, retained strong diplomatic links with Apartheid South Africa throughout the duration. (3) Trade links were accompanied by defence and security provision. (4) It was noted that 'much of the efficiency of the South African security services must be placed at the door of Israel, for both army experts and specialists in counter-intelligence operations and interrogation from the MOSSAD have been placed in South Africa in a permanent advisory capacity since 1976 … in that year they … agreed on a pooling of intelligence information'. (5)

In fact, studies of the diplomacy have concluded 'the blatant similarities of these two birds of a feather were vividly illustrated by the worlds of Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd – former South African prime minister and architect of 'Grand Apartheid. In 1961, when expressing his deep admiration for Israel's foundation and socio-political architecture – and, more especially for its character as an exclusivist, ethnic state, with special privileges in law for Jews, and the displacement of native Palestinians by foreigners – stated that: The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel like South Africa is an Apartheid State'. (6)

Similar studies, likewise, have also drawn attention to the colonial-settler basis of the Israeli state. (7) The continual expansion of the Israeli settlements across the West Bank is evidence, in itself, of the problem. While the settlements are regarded as illegal by 'much of the international community … Israel has declared control over its single-largest swath of land in the West Bank this year'. (8)

It has also included acts of extreme violence by Israelis toward Palestinian people before the events of 7 October 2023. In April it was officially recorded that 'five Israeli security units committed gross violations of human rights prior to the outbreak of war with Hamas in Gaza … they included … extra-judicial killings, torture and physical abuse'. (9)

One continual problem confronting the Palestinians has been accurately establishing their longer-term planning for their relationship with Israeli motives and designs. Political spin from the Knesset is an everyday occurrence; assessing the Israeli designs, however, would appear a rather different matter. It is not a politically open system, particularly for Palestinian people who are systematically excluded from decision-making processes.

One policy making group, composed of those close to Netanyahu, for example, 'are backing another, security-focussed plan that seeks to slice up Gaza with two corridors running across its width and a fortified perimeter that would allow Israeli's military to mount raids when it deems them necessary'. (10) No reference, however, has been openly given about the massive oil and natural gas reserves off the Gaza Strip and their viability and the geographical significance of the two proposed corridors. The fact that some of the Israeli think tanks are pressing for 'an outright Israeli occupation' of Gaza might best be assessed in that light. (11)
 
Meanwhile, massive demonstrations and protests have taken place across Israel, backed by political opposition to the Netanyahu administration.

Some of those not so conspicuous opposition figures are, however, in pivotal and powerful positions.

Differences of opinion amongst those who have provided assessments for how Israel should deal with Hamas are important to note; Israel's military leadership, apparently, 'wants a ceasefire in Gaza, even if it means leaving Hamas in charge'. (12) The development has shown a widening difference of opinion between those supporting Netanyahu and those siding with the armed forces. Israel's former national security advisor, Eyal Hulatu, has openly supported a hostage deal which has included a ceasefire. (13)

It has been noted, furthermore, that top Israeli military officials and generals 'see a truce as the best way to secure the release of the hostages, even if Israel's war goals are not all met'. (14) While the position has not been accepted by the Netanyahu administration, it has set the military and its reservists and their associates against a political leadership which is far from secure. In fact, the Netanyahu government is increasingly vulnerable and resides in daily fear of collapsing outright, leaving the military poised near the levers of power.

Other regional figures, including King Abdullah II of Jordan have commented that the exclusion of Palestinians by the Israelis 'will not lead to a real peace'. (15) Jordan clearly has a vested interest in pursuing policies of a peaceful settlement with the Palestinian issue; the country hosts an estimated three million Palestinian refugees in various camps across the country, and is virtually dependent upon the US for defence and security provision. Major developments on the West Bank and Gaza Strip inevitably spill over into neighbouring Jordan; it is not politically secure and in a precarious position.

While the killing of innocent Palestinians continues in Gaza, the Israeli leadership have shown little concern about International Court of Justice recommendations about their war crimes and genocide. (16) The US and their allies continue to support Israel and a culture of impunity. (17)

With world opinion polarised over the issue, however, it remains to be seen what reception Netanyahu and his entourage receive in Washington later this month and whether the Pentagon continues to provide sophisticated armaments for use without conditions, against an unarmed civilian population.

1.     See: Israel plans for Gaza 'Day After', Australian, 1 July 2024; and, The Homelands, South African History On-line.
2.     Ibid.
3.     See: The Unnatural Alliance, James Adams, (London, 1884), page 23, pp. 79-80, page 85.
4.     Ibid., page 19, page 23.
5.     Ibid., pp. 86-87.
6.     Israel and South Africa, The Many Faces of Apartheid, (London, 2015); Birds of a Feather: Israel and Apartheid South Africa – Colonialism of a Special Type, Ronnie Kasrils, pp. 23-41.
7.     Ibid., Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
8.     Record West Bank 'seizure' for settlers, Australian, 5 July 2024.
9.     See: US determines five Israeli security units, CNN., 29 April 2024, and, Reuters, 30 April 2024; and, US backs Israel over claims of war crimes,  Australian, 1 May 2024.
10.   Australian, op.cit.
11.   Ibid.
12.   Israeli military calls for ceasefire in Gaza, Australian, 4 July 2024.
13.   Ibid.
14.   Israel evaluating new Hamas 'ideas' on truce, Australian, 5 July 2024.
15.   See: Jordan, MEM., 23 September 2024.
16.   See: Deadly Israeli strikes hit Gaza, Australian, 8 July 2024.
17.   See: Western moral credibility fractured, Pearls and Irritations, 24 May 2024; and,  Adelaide Voices, May-July 2024.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Australian Dairy Industry News

Written by: Duncan B. on 9 July 2024

 

Twenty Australian Manufacturing Workers Union maintenance workers employed at the Burnie (Tasmania) plant of Canadian-owned dairy processor Saputo have been on strike for a month.

They are seeking to be paid the same as Saputo employees doing the same job on the mainland, claiming they are receiving 21% less than their mainland colleagues. They have called for a boycott of Saputo products, which include the Cheer, Devondale, Cracker Barrel, Mersey Valley and several other brands of cheese.

The majority of the Australian dairy processing industry is foreign-owned, with Saputo (Canada), Fonterra (NZ) and Lactalis (France) the main players. Bega is the only major Australian-owned dairy company, along with some smaller companies such as Norco.

The same dairy companies that exploit Australian dairy factory workers also exploit Australian dairy farmers. Recently the processors announced this year’s farm gate price offers to dairy farmers for their milk. The prices offered are actually less than last year’s, being around $7.80 to $8.30 per kilogram of milk solids. 

These prices are around the farmers’ cost of production or even less. It is estimated that dairy farmers will be $200,000 to $300,000 worse off, as they are also being hit by rising costs for water, electricity and all their other inputs. More dairy farmers are expected to leave the industry.

Dairy farm numbers last year were 4163, down from 4420 in 2022, and 6308 in 2014. Australia’s milk pool has shrunk to around eight million litres. It is not surprising that we are seeing a massive increase in the import of dairy products into Australia from Europe, the US and New Zealand. In 2022-23, dairy imports rose from around 293,000 tonnes to around 344,000 tonnes over the previous year. This was an increase in value from $2.1 billion to $2.7 billion.

Farm gate prices paid by processors to dairy farmers in New Zealand are about 30% lower than in Australia, giving New Zealand companies a considerable price advantage over Australian processors, allowing them profit from exports to Australia.  Last year Australia imported 47,500 tonnes of butter, mainly from New Zealand. Much of the imported butter and cheese is being sold by supermarkets under their own house brands. 

In a move which will shake up the dairy industry in Australia, New Zealand-based Fonterra has announced that it will put its Australian operations up for sale. Fonterra employs 1600 people at eight sites in Victoria and Tasmania and processes 1.4 billion litres of milk each year.

The Canadian-owned superannuation fund PSP is deeply involved in Australian dairy farming through its company Aurora Dairies. This company has 450 employees and has 48,000 cows producing 280 million litres of milk on 54 farms in Australia. Aurora’s economies of scale will allow them to make a profit from dairying while small farmers struggle to make a living. It will be interesting to see if PSP makes a bid for Fonterra’s factories. This would give them control over the whole dairy business from cow to consumer. 

Australia’s small farmers and workers have the same enemy. Only unity in struggle will end the exploitation.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Why is it so hard to get by?

Written by: John Gerard on 11 July 2024

 

(Cartoons from TNC Workers Research Brief 13 1986)

 

Why in one of the richest countries in the world do we have to scramble to get by?

People have trouble paying for the roof over their heads, stressed by the costs of putting food on the table, fuel in the car and paying power bills.
Why? 

Why, when Australia is a resource powerhouse, first or second in the world in gas exports, first in coal, huge in iron ore, one of the biggest suppliers of rare earths for the electronic digital world and important in so many others resources?

Why when farmers, working with nature’s bounty, produce more than enough to feed everyone in the country a few times over.  

Who isn’t sick to death of the scramble people are forced into just to get a decent living. 

Discovering that profits come before people won’t win you the Nobel Prize. Its slapping us in the face all the time. 

An old maxim goes: It’s the rich that get the pleasure, and the poor that get the pain. In this system of producing and selling for profit, the super-rich getting richer and richer. The people doing the work struggle. That’s capitalism, the capitalist economic and political system. 

But there’s more to it than a ‘system’. More than some elusive, invisible, shadowy thing we can’t get our hands on.   

There’s capitalists. Real people. Visible, flesh and blood, that run this system, that own it, that prosper from it, that unleash forces to defend it and expand their reach.  We don’t often see them because they don’t do much and most of them don’t want us to know them. 

It’s important to be clear about capitalism and capitalists. It’s not just an abstract haze of a system. 

Capitalists are behind this disastrous system

This is the CAPITALISTS’ SYSTEM. A system of capitalists. There’s people who run the system and that it runs for. 

Be clear about the capitalist system producing our problems, but don’t stop there. Get down to the people behind the system, CAPITALISTS.

Capitalists are more than local people like Gina Rhinehart and Andrew Forrest. We need to look past appearances. Australia Institute research in 2022 found Forrest’s Fortescue Metals was 94% foreign-owned. They also identified the mining industry was 85% foreign-owned. 

Identifying the actual people who are behind the system in Australia needs to be checked out in depth or we’ll be pointing at the wrong people and wasting a lot of effort. 

But let’s get the basics clear about who we’re dealing with.

Blame the capitalists and call them out. That crew of people are what stands between us and decent lives.

They have quite a few people they employ to look after them and their interests. They have governing administrations, the legal systems, CEO’s, police, armies and other institutions lined up looking after their system of capitalism and the pipeline of riches into their hands. 

Those people are agents of the capitalists, not the people owning and driving the system. 

The set up is a lot like in the ‘noble sport’ of horse racing.

The ‘sport’ involves owners, trainers, strappers, jockeys, breeders, and institutions including racing clubs, and has governing bodies and government regulations. Feeding off and sponsoring races are bookmakers and betting corporates, along with media empires. We’ll leave the wider industry aside for this illustration.  

The horse side of the ‘industry’ has lots of people with lots of roles. The hierarchy operating between them mirrors capitalism in some ways. 

At the top of the ‘industry’ are horse owners, and not just any old owners in a syndicate who bought a nag hoping they would get lucky. The industry’s dominated by the super-rich, the business tycoons, emirs, sheiks, kings and the like. Just look at the position of Godolphin Racing owned by Sheik Maktoum .

The horse side of the industry is run for the horse owners.  

They employ or contract trainers, who are their top managers as in a corporate structure. The trainers manage the horses, their feed, exercise, health, well-being and other activity. The big owners employ managers of their racing interests, often across the globe. The managers advise and ensure owners’ decisions and interests are carried out and the trainers and their systems are performing. The big owners also employ or contract horse buyers and breeders, sometimes owning their own breeding studs. 

Trainers employ a lot of people, pre-trainer/horse educators, stable hands and strappers, trackwork riders, stud grooms, office managers, book-keepers, clerks, assistants, farm managers, transport drivers and contract others like vets, construction/maintenance workers, jockeys. Significant numbers of people work in a big stable like those of Chris Waller, the Hayes, Cummings, Waterhouse, or Freedman families. 

Chris Waller directly employs just over 100 people in 4 big stables across the eastern States.  All those people are employees or paid one way or another to work for the trainer or trainer’s business to keep the horses healthy and prepare them to race. 

Jockeys ride horses to trainers’ instructions and their own racing skills to try get the best result out of the horse, when they’re operating honestly (for the owner who gets the prizemoney and some kudos). 

The trainers’ job is to get the best out of the horse for the owner, just like the manager of any business.  So do all the people employed by the trainer.   

The owners do nothing or next to nothing in handling the horse.

But they are the ones calling the shots, picking up the winnings, and who the whole industry rotates around. The talk in the form guides is about the trainers and jockeys, with the owners getting mentioned in passing. 

On race day, sometimes, owners jump into the limelight. Owners of Australia’s major corporate empires hide from the limelight but they call the shots just the same. Their interests drive capitalism in this country.  

Capitalism is not just some system, it’s capitalists exploiting workers 

It’s capitalists who prosper while we struggle. And not just some general amorphous rich faceless mob. They have names. They have businesses. They are actual people whose wealth is gained from our work. 

It’s capitalists behind the laws crushing unions. It’s capitalists getting rich from the minerals dug out of the ground and sold overseas while we do the work. It’s capitalists grabbing the money that could provide housing, healthcare, good education, roads, etc. 

A reduction in the standard of living while production ploughs on increases this or that capitalist’s riches even more. More of what workers produce goes to bloating

capitalist riches, leaving us struggling to get by.  

Think of some tanned tycoon basking on a super yacht in the Bahamas or Monaco while miners dig coal, train drivers haul it to ports, operators scoop it out of piles and others load ships full of coal, one after the other. That’s capitalism in Australia, or one major part of it. 

If we’re going to get rid of capitalism from Australia, we need to be much more aware of the capitalists who are prospering from the value workers produce. 

If we’re going to overthrow capitalism, it means overthrowing the people who rule over us. 

In their 18th century revolts, French peasants got rid of feudalism, and they knew they had to get aristocrats’ necks under the guillotine to do it.  

We also need to know who. Otherwise, we’ll just be striking out blindly, often at the management monkey or the political hack, not the organ-grinding capitalist.

It would be a great use of an academic’s time, to delve deeper into who these capitalists are. Where they come from is covered to an extent in the booklet “Who Owns Australia”  . There’s work to be done on who they are. 

What is clear is that 85% of the mining, oil and gas industries in Australia are foreign-owned, with the biggest portion American. There’s similar levels of foreign-ownership in many major sectors of the economy, banking and finance, chemicals and others. Foreign capitalists are at the heart of capitalist ranks in Australia.

The US stranglehold over the country is apparent in how little tax they pay, in billions devoted to preparations for another war to defend and extend the American empire while people are struggling with bills. It points the way towards hitting foreign capitalists as the first step in giving the system a whack.

Moaning about an abstract system doesn’t cut it.  

It’s not just capitalism, its capitalists. We have to target the actual people and the forces that keep them safe from us.     

Appendix:

Godolphin Racing and its super-rich owner, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

One of the biggest and richest race horse owners here and across the world is Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister ruling over Dubai, with horses racing in the royal blue silks of Godolphin Racing. 

He’s the Chief Executive of Emirates Airlines, Chair of Dubai Real Estate Corporation, with his family owning various tremendously lucrative enterprises. 

Godolphin Racing was set up in 1992. By 2018 they’d won over 5,000 races in 14 countries including Australia, the US, UK, France Germany Japan among others.  

The Sheik has two racing stables in Sydney, one in Melbourne, two in Newmarket, UK, and two in Dubai, as well as horses in training with contracted trainers in the UK, Australia, France, Japan, the United States, and Ireland. James Cummings of the famous family of trainers is Godolphin’s head of operations in Australia. 

The Sheik got into racing through owning horses in the UK in 1977. He set up Darley breeding studs in the UK in 1981, subsequently expanding them to Australia, France, Ireland, Japan, and the United States. He owns Channel 4 racing media in the UK. 

Sheik Al Maktoum’s position at the top of the racing tree involved in setting the rules, is apparent in Maktoum’s Godolphin having representatives on the boards of governing bodies on three continents.

One sits on the board of the Melbourne Cup organisers, the Victoria Racing Club, alongside bankers, media execs, corporate accountants and lawyers. Not a stable hand or trackwork rider in sight. 

A former Godolphin CE sits on the board of the British Horseracing Authority as an owners’ representative. An appointee of Sheik Maktoum’s as General Manager of Emirates Racing Authority, Mohammad Saeed Al Shehhi, has been elevated to vice-chairman of Asian Racing Federation’s Board. The Sheik’s sons serve as Chairs of Dubai’s two horse racing clubs.

Through all the studs and stables, as one racing journalist put it: ‘Each horse has a race path to follow and a commercial purpose to fulfil, from winning prize money to earning a lucrative post-career at stud.’ It’s all about Maktoum’s ‘commercial purpose’ to create value for the Sheik. 

Along the way there’s a dash of horses being this tycoon’s playthings in operation, a display of his wealth delivering prestige among the super-rich while it delivers the money as winners of top races and value as breeding bloodstock. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Important webinars build the movements against imperialism.

Written by: Nick G. on 9 July 2024

 

 

 

Two important webinars, one recently held and the other still to come, are building the people’s movements against imperialism.

On July 4, the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition (AAAC) presented a webinar titled “Independence – Breaking the US Stranglehold in Australia.”

In publicity for the event, the AAAC stated:

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Young ALP Female Senator Stands Strong For Palestinian People and Palestinian State

Written by: Ned K. on 8 July 2024

 

ALP Senator Fatima Payman resigned from the ALP last week after courageously "crossing the floor" of the Senate to support a Greens motion that Australia recognize a state of Palestine. 

Over 100 other countries have already taken this position. The ALP leadership could not bring itself to do so. The Albanese Government was more concerned about not getting out of step with the USA and Zionist Netanyahu Israeli Government.

Senator Payman, only 29 years young, went into the Senate on an ALP ticket with the genuine belief that she could make a difference by being a member of a political party that stood for social justice, for solidarity with oppressed peoples both within Australia and internationally.

She came into the Senate supported by United Workers Union where she was an Organizer and where union members learned through their own experience that there is real strength in diversity.

She must have been bitterly disappointed when she found that the same values were not practiced by the ALP leadership when it came to the issue of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli Government backed by western powers led by the USA.

We do not know exactly what was said to her by Albanese and key Ministers to try and "persuade" her to toe the Party line.

However, they met their match in Senator Payman when she announced her resignation from the ALP, but her continuation in the Senate as an Independent Senator.

When she made this decision, it was easy for her to see who her enemies are and who are her friends. 

The ALP leaders joined the Murdoch Press with the idea that she may be ineligible to be a Senator due to dual citizenship with Afghanistan and Australia. 

Of course, the ALP never thought this when Fatima Payman was put on the ALP Senate ticket. 

At that time, the leaders probably thought it would add to their appearance as supporting diversity in representation in parliament to have a young, female, Muslim woman in ALP Seante ranks "under the wing" of Senators Wong and Farrell.

What a contrast between this barrage of hate against a Senator standing her ground and the hundreds of cheering unionists and diverse communities that greeted Senator Payman when she arrived at Perth airport from Canberra!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Report on Russia by Russian Maoists

Written by: Union of Maoists of the Urals on 7 July 2024

 

Last May we published an analysis of conditions In Russia by our comrades in the Union of Maoists of the Urals. Today, they have sent us the following update which will be of interest to Australian anti-imperialists. Long live the proletarian friendship between the workers of Russia and Australia-eds. 

Hello, dear Australian comrades!

Dear comrades, we would like to inform you about the situation in the economy of our country in order to better show the prospects for the imperialist war waged by Russia and the likelihood of revolutionary changes. 

Until relatively recently, sanctions worked extremely poorly. Everything was on the shelves and regularly arrived at industrial enterprises for various purposes: both civilian and military. In fact, Western products prohibited by sanctions are imported into Russia from Turkey and Kazakhstan. This happens extremely freely and without serious problems. This primarily concerns industrial electronics and a number of food products. What cannot be imported through them is imported from China (cheap industrial goods) or has been replaced by Russian production. However, in recent months, due to the threat of sanctions against Chinese banks, it has become much more difficult for Russian enterprises to purchase products from China. Deliveries of many types of goods from China are severely delayed. However, we cannot yet say that this is somehow affecting Russian industry or consumers, and therefore we cannot assume that this is what will revolutionize Russian society or create a strong crisis in industrial production.

The 2022 mobilization and continuous Nazi pogroms against migrant workers have led to a huge labor shortage in Russia. Highly skilled workers are constantly leaving Russia after the start of the war - we are talking about hundreds of thousands of anti-war Russians. Capitalists don't like this very much. Bourgeois politicians talk about a shortage of 5-10 million workers. Officials regularly discuss programs for the return of specialists with anti-war views, and anti-abortion initiatives are also promoted with the emphasis that there is no one to work in Russia. 

The massive involvement of prisoners in military service also plays a role in the labor shortage. Russian prisons are engaged in industrial production and now there is no one to produce prison products either - mass repressions in Russia do not keep pace with the physical extermination of criminals. 

The labor shortage is leading to rapidly rising wages for Russian workers. We are talking about a doubling of wages over the past year. The growth of the military industry due to the war plays a role. As a result of this, Russian workers are now happy with their situation, they enjoy the fruits of imperialist policies and prosperity from the blood of their more unfortunate dead fellow citizens. They change jobs as soon as necessary, it is common for capitalists to lure workers away from each other, and bonuses for workers bringing new workers to fill vacancies are extremely common. There is no unemployment.

The Russian army is holding on because of the forced involvement of migrant workers in it and because it pays wages 10-15 times higher than in other areas of employment. Huge military spending, a social sector for the military, the growth of the military industry - all this is paid for from a deficit state budget. There are expert estimates that there will be enough money in the budget for a year and a half (including the state reserve accumulated before the war is now being wasted; Russia did not spend it during the Covid epidemic), after which the country, if the war continues, will begin an economic crisis and today’s prosperity will end a very rapid decline in living standards, indignation of the popular masses and the rapid growth of revolutionary sentiments. However, forecasts for the duration of the economic crisis may not take into account Russia's ability to inflate public debt.

In any case, it is extremely dangerous for the Russian imperialists to prolong the war; they need peace on their terms, and therefore they are trying in various ways to push through an agreement to suspend the war until Russia again accumulates reserves. Or they immediately propose recognition of Russia’s military claims in Ukraine and the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from a number of Ukrainian regions, the population of which will then be assimilated by the Russians.
Under these conditions, we are trying to analyze the situation, carry out organizational work among the masses and promote Marxism-Leninism.

With revolutionary proletarian greetings from Russia,

International Department of the Union of Maoists of the Urals

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Kenya - Too Little, Too Late: Ruto Must Resign

Written by: Communist Party of Kenya on 29 June 2024

 

Too Little, Too Late: Ruto Must Resign

Statement by the Central Organizing Committee of the Communist Party of Kenya
27 June 2924

In the wake of intense demonstrations against the Finance Bill 2024 and the consistent, resolute demand for the resignation of President William Ruto, the President has made a belated and insincere about-face, declaring that he shall not consent to the bill and ostensibly acceding to the people's demands. This disingenuous capitulation comes only after Ruto ordered the brutal murder of more than 10 confirmed protesters and unleashed death squads to massacre more innocent lives in Githurai.

We must not allow Ruto to escape accountability for the innocent blood he has shed in the streets. These demonstrations have clear and simple demands that we insist the President comply with. During the post-election protests, Ruto was responsible for the murder of l many innocent souls. It is imperative that the police bosses, all of Ruto’s henchmen, and Ruto himself be held legally accountable for these crimes. 

We also demand restorative justice for the survivors of the avoidable massacres orchestrated by the corrupt Ruto regime. 

Let’s tell Ruto we are aware that the President is legally unable to withdraw a bill that has already matured for assent. His options are limited to returning it to Parliament with a memorandum for the inclusion of his proposed amendments, which, if rejected by a two-thirds majority, would become law. 

Why dupe Kenyans into imagining he can withdraw it in totality? This is a legal conundrum, a deceitful ploy to buy time and distract Kenyans from their urgent demands.

Moreover, this morning Parliament went on recess until June, so how will the bill that has been referred to a Parliament on recess be amended?

We, today, put forth the following ten collective demands to sum up the temporary pause of protests:

1. A total cessation of taxation on basic commodities such as food, healthcare, and education, and the complete rejection of the Finance Bill 2024. We totally reject window dressing paltry amendments that may happen with the bought crowd in parliament 

2. An immediate end to the interference with our national sovereignty by foreign institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, NATO, and their financiers.

3. The provision of decent jobs, sustainable livelihoods, and the implementation of Article 43 within six months.

4. Quality housing and compensation for all those illegally evicted.

5. Free and quality education for all.

6. Free and quality healthcare for all.

7. An immediate end to state violence in the form of abductions, excessive use of force by police during demonstrations, and extrajudicial killings.

8. The return of all stolen public land and a clear plan for food sovereignty.

9. Fair compensation for all workers providing essential services to the country.

10. An immediate end to the privatization of public institutions and state-owned enterprises.

President Ruto, your time is up! The people of Kenya reject your bloodstained hands and your corrupt administration.  

#RutoMustGo! 

No IMF ! No World Bank! 

Signed,

The Central Organizing Committee of the Communist Party of Kenya

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Thailand: Looming political crisis

Written by: (Contributed) on 29 June 2024

 

(Above: The Royal Thai Army suppreesed 2010 "Red Shirt" rallies.  Photo: Flickr Commons)

A brief political assessment about Thailand in the Australian business press has revealed widespread concern about a likely resurgence of opposition forces in one of the most important US-led centres for regional defence and security and trade. Thailand, historically, was and remains a major diplomatic player in South-east Asian affairs, including the ASEAN trade bloc. Any return to previous widespread opposition to the traditional centres of Thai power are likely to cause serious issues for the US and their allies across the wider region.

In mid-June, limited media coverage about Thailand carried an unambiguous warning that 'in reality, the South-east Asian constitutional monarchy is on the brink of another round of convulsive protests by young Thais who have had enough of the cheating and distorting of an ageing establishment that refuses to acknowledge its time may be coming to an end'. (1)

Thailand has maintained a shaky democratic facade for decades under the nominal control of a monarchy although it has also experienced thirteen military coups in the past ninety years.

Previous widespread opposition to the monarchy and political establishment took the form of supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra who wore red-shirts and demonstrated in their millions against perceived corruption and political chicanery. The supporters of the status quo wore yellow-shirts to identify their allegiance to the monarchy. There were violent clashes.

While the political divisions between the red and yellow shirts have officially been regarded as a problem of yesteryear, bitter divisions still exist beneath the surface of Thai political culture. Following the coup of 19 September 2006, which deposed Thaksin Shinawatra, he fled into exile, his political party was outlawed and he was banned from political activity in the country. Remnants of his supporters, nevertheless, re-grouped and continued to operate behind numerous front organisations.

Returning to Thailand on 22 August last year, Thaksin Shinawatra was able to prove he still retained huge popularity with ordinary Thai people. (2) He is now set on a collision course with the Monarchy and political establishment after being 'formally indicted for defaming the Monarchy while the failure of the current Prime Minister and main opposition hang in the balance'. (3)

While the legal status of Thailand's political opposition forces remains under legal consideration following months of court hearings, fears have been raised that a further round of banning opposition 'will not only mark the end of the country's shaky democracy, but trigger more political uncertainty'. (4) The centres of traditional Thai class and state power now appear increasingly vulnerable, being out-manoeuvred by opposition forces.

It has already raised serious concerns for Washington and the Pentagon's Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) whereby Japan has been elevated to the US-led diplomatic position of a global alliance, while other countries including Thailand, are linked as lower-level partners for 'US interests'. (5) Political upheaval in Thailand is, therefore, likely to have far-reaching implications for the IPS; effective intelligence-gathering rests upon political stability.

The US intelligence services regarded Thailand as an asset during the previous Cold War, and there is every reason to believe it continues to be so during the present Cold War; its close proximity with Cambodia and their close diplomatic relations with China is considered by the US as problematic. (6) Thailand also has a large Russian diaspora, most of whom settled in the country after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

The political crisis in Thailand has also come at an unfortunate time for the US and their allies; moves by the US to attract support for their trade war with China have been seen to not be particularly well supported. In fact, while the US seeks to 'isolate Beijing on the global stage', numerous allies have been noticeably reluctant to follow suit. (7)

Meanwhile, China's foreign trade has increasingly focussed upon South-east Asia and elsewhere in the emerging economies, as exports to the US have dropped. (8)

Thailand, historically, has been a major player in traditional US-led hegemonic positions in South-east Asia. A founder member of the ASEAN trade bloc during the previous Cold War,
Thailand hosted one of the largest US diplomatic missions of anywhere in the world in Bangkok. As with other countries in the near region, however, its rapid economic expansion followed the emergence of China as a major diplomatic player. China's GDP, likewise, rose from $397 billion in 1990, to an estimated near $15 trillion by 2020. (9)

During the 2007 to 2014 period, for example, ASEAN nearly doubled its GDP ratings, as a result of closer links with China. (10)

Thailand, however, has entered into a period of economic uncertainty and decline in recent years; in 1960 it had a GDP rate of a little over five per cent, falling to slightly above two per cent during the early 2020's. (11) While its high-spot was the late 1980s, when Thai growth rates rose to over thirteen per cent, massive fluctuations followed together with a general decline to only 1.9 per cent last year, possibly rising to an optimistic projection of 2.2/3.2 for this year. (12) The optimism may sour with a political crisis.

Thailand, nevertheless, has remained a central player inside ASEAN, which collectively has continued to regard little benefit from siding totally with either the US or China. They gain benefits from both, using skilful diplomacy.

The Thai big bourgeoise has also positioned itself to make a killing from neighbouring Burma/Myanmar’s bloody suppression of anti-regime and ethnic liberation struggles. Thai banks have become the main supplier of cross-border financial services for Myanmar’s military government, enabling its purchases of arms and equipment despite sanctions against the regime. (13)

ASEAN, in which Thailand has a major influence also presents the US with a major problem: its status has grown to be a central player in regional diplomacy. Studies have noted the 'ASEAN and Chinese economies are becoming inseparably inter-twined'. (14) And, while ASEAN is navigating an increasingly challenging regional environment … China's surging influence raises concerns, as do US responses, which increase strategic tension and gives short shrift to economics and regional prosperity'. (15)

The extremely limited nature of coverage in pro-US media outlets would tend to indicate the sensitive nature of recent developments in Thailand! More, nevertheless, may follow in due course if the political tensions beneath the surface rise to the fore.

1.     Thailand bonfire waiting for match, Australian, 13 June 2024.
2.     See: Thaksin Shinawatra, BBC News, 22 August 2023.
3.     Political crisis grips Thailand, BBC News, 19 June 2024.
4.     Australian, op.cit., 13 June 2024.
5.     See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
6.     See: From the Shadows – The ultimate insider's story, Robert M. Gates, (New York, 1996), page 312.
7.     US seeks EU's support in trade war, Australian, 22 May 2024; and, Europe takes new strategy to China Shock 2.0, Australian, 25 June 2024.
8.     China's export machine moves on, Australian, 14 June 2024.
9.     AUKUS a strong hand in a region under threat, Australian, 26 June 2024.
10.   What is ASEAN? The World Economic Forum, 9 May 2017.
11.   GDP Growth (annual percentage) Thailand, World Bank Group.
12.   Ibid., and, Executive Summary, Perspectives, Global Inflation Cools, Deloitte.
13.  Thai banks are the top suppliers of financial services to Myanmar’s military, UN expert says, Washington Times, 26 June 2024
14.   Towards an equal partnership, East Asia Forum, Volume 15, Number 3, September 2023, pp. 3.5.
15.   Japan as a diplomatic asset to ASEAN, East Asia Forum, Volume 15, Number 3, September 2023, pp. 6-8.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Kanak independence struggle cannot be defeated

Written by: Nick G. on 29 June 2024

 

(Above: "We are allTein Bichou"  Source; Suport Internacional Kanay on X)

Following French President Macron’s decision to withdraw the “thawing” of citizenship in New Caledonia, the vindictiveness of the French bourgeoisie has only heightened.

The French proposal was to include all French citizens with more than ten year’s residence in New Caledonia as citizens of the French territory, effectively bolstering the votes for opposition to independence.  

It was a clumsy manoeuvre to restrict the growing influence of Chinese and Russian imperialists within New Caledonia.

The Kanaks erupted in defiance and lives were lost.

But French imperialism was not reconciled to its defeat. 

On the morning of June 19 in Nouméa, a raid by the police took place on the premises of the Caledonian Union (UC) in Magenta and the main leaders of the CCAT (Coordination Cell for Field Actions) were arrested on their way to a press conference. A search took place and eleven members of the CCAT, most of whom are also political and trade union leaders, were placed in police custody on several very serious charges, relating to organized crime, for a period of 96 hours (4 days).

On Friday 21 June, Kanaks rallied throughout New Caledonia in support of arrested CCAT leaders, including General Commissioner Bichou Tein. The arrested leaders have been deported to France to stand trial depriving them of the right to defend themselves before a jury of their peers.

This is kidnapping, pure and simple.

Far from taking advantage of Macron’s withdrawal of the citizenship changes to de-escalate tensions in New Caledonia, the French imperialists have only lifted a heavy rock to drop on their own feet.

Already meetings in support of the deported Kanaks have been held in large towns in France.

(Above: Support arrested CCAT leaders, June 21, 2024)

And in New Caledonia Kanak activists have continued to rally and demand the return of their kidnapped comrades.

They will not be intimidated by French colonial troops or pro-French armed militias.

They want all charges dropped against the leaders of the CCAT, and the entire Kanak independence movement.  

Solidarity with the entire Kanak independence movement!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Class struggle at nuclear submarine site

Written by: Ned K. on 26 June 2024

 

(Stopwork at Osborne, June 3, 2024.  Source: CEPU SA Facebook)

For the last few months union members of the AMWU and CEPU have been taking industrial action against the federal government owned Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) at Osborne Naval Base in South Australia.

Members of both unions have been taking short stoppages and work bans. Members are demanding wage parity with ASC workers in WA who are paid 17% higher rates than SA workers for performing same and similar work.

The workers actions are having an impact with ASC forced to make higher wage offers but so far, still short of wage parity.

Now the ASC reactionary management are in a bit of a bind. They need to dry dock a Collins Class submarine which is tied up at the Osborne wharf.

ASC want to proceed with dry dock maintenance of the submarine but the likelihood of work stoppages in the process of moving the submarine to dry dock is a thorn in their side.

AMWU and CEPU workers have a long, proud history of class struggle at the ASC and are sure to win a significant victory in their current struggle for wage parity with WA ASC workers.

How a Labor Government can justify such inequity in wages between workers performing the same work will not come as too much of a surprise to the thousands of privatised workers in both federal and state government services where contractors pay minimum Award rates and sometimes not even the Award minimums.

A win for ASC workers at Osborne will be a win for all workers providing government services

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The wars the US are not winning with China: trade and diplomacy

Written by: (Contributed) on 25 June 2024

 

(Above: Ahmoot Iranian Flickr.com)

 

The recent state visit by China's Prime Minister Li Qiang to Australia took place under intense media scrutiny. The media coverage, nevertheless, was highly misleading, as was intended. The US-led trade war with China, for example, was not openly discussed yet remained the main factor behind the high-level Australia-China diplomacy.

Australia is a sub-imperial power with regional responsibilities thrust upon it by Washington and the Pentagon. The diplomatic relationship has proved problematic: and the US is clearly losing the trade war with China; their aggressive imperial foreign policy has seriously backfired.

In mid-June China's PM, Li Qiang, arrived in Australia, greeted by a nineteen-gun salute and full honour guard. The greeted was not out of place, taking into account the agendas of the high-level diplomacy scheduled to take place. While the contents of the agendas have remained confidential, it is not particularly difficult to establish what was going on behind the pomp and ceremony.

The legacy of the previous Trump presidential administration and its US-led Cold War trade war with China hangs like a millstone around the necks of western political leaders. Like most of the foreign policy of the Trump administration, it was established with an air of buffoonery and difficult to take seriously. And it has not worked; in fact, China's economy has continued to surge ahead, leaving the US and its allies behind and in a quandary.

Longer-term the US GDP growth rates, measured from 1960 to 2022 reveal a general decline, largely as a result of Washington and the Pentagon pursuing endless foreign policy adventures without costing the debacles accurately. Studies of US diplomatic involvement and their general intrusion into the sovereignty of numerous other areas of the world, reveal a general trend:

                                          US GDP GROWTH RATES, 1960-2022
                                                           
                                                           1962     -     6.10 %
                                                           2019     -     2.29 %
                                                           2020     -    -2.77 %
                                                           2021     -     5.95 %
                                                           2022     -     1.94 %     (1)

Studies of US allies, including Australia, reveal similar trends due to accompanying US foreign and diplomatic policies elsewhere, across the globe:

                                                AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY, GDP
                                                          
                                                          1963     -     6.22 %
                                                          2020     -   -.0.33% 

                                                          2021     -     2.11 %

                                                         2022     -     4.2 %     (2)                                                          

                                                          2023     -     1.9 %
                                                          2024     -     1.8 % (projection)     (3)
                               
China's economy, however, has continued to surge ahead; in 2023 China had about 14 per cent of global exports, up 1.3 per cent from 2017, when the US-led trade war began. (4) China's trade surplus, likewise, is estimated at about $823 billion, nearly double the 2017 estimates; trade surplus is defined when exports exceed imports. (5)

In May, as an act of desperation, US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, requested the EU to follow the US-led line of imposing tariffs upon Chinese trade and goods. (6) It was accompanied by an official diplomatic statement from the Biden presidential administration noting, 'Washington … sees European support as a critical way to isolate Beijing on the global stage'. (7) And they have tried very hard to implement the policy.

China, however, in recent years has shifted attention away from advanced, industrial countries toward the Global South. It has become the 'crucial economic partner for many emerging economies' and has been accompanied by numerous diplomatic initiatives. (8)

China's trade with ASEAN, for example, grew 8.1 per cent in the first two months of 2024. (9)

The China-ASEAN economic data also rests upon earlier dynamic trade: using World Bank economic data it can be established that ASEAN member countries have a combined GDP of $3.6 trillion, and that their economies are 'inseparably intertwined' with China. (10) It has also been noted that 'China's surging influence raises concerns, as do US responses, which increase strategic tension and give short shrift to economics and regional prosperity'. (11)

Similar studies have revealed 'China has been selling less to the west and more to South-east Asia and Latin America'. (12) In fact, during the first five months of this year 'China exported seventeen per cent less to the US. In 2023 alone, China's exports to the US dropped fourteen per cent'. (13)

China has also developed trade hubs in recent times, by using countries including Vietnam and Mexico, to reroute trade to include third parties into regions of economic interest. (14)

While US coverage of these developments has been subject to diplomatic silence, due to the sensitivity of the whole matter, forthcoming policies will be interesting to monitor. Under the existing balance of forces, China has successfully challenged the neo-colonial relations between the US and its allies and the emerging economies. The diplomatic implications are far-reaching both in the short and longer-term.

As the US and its allies fail to win the present trade war, military options and real-war scenarios would appear to have become ever more likely.

The high-level diplomacy between Australia and China in June has to be assessed along these lines; the former is a major diplomatic player with the ASEAN and South pacific countries and has therefore been used by Washington to further 'US interests'. There is no reason to think the position allocated to Canberra by the US has changed in any way whatsoever in recent times; the present diplomatic line remains based in damage limitation, with business continuing to be conducted as 'normal'.

It has not been difficult to find examples to support the position: within hours of Li Quiang and his entourage leaving Australia, a Canberra initiative saw an official government delegation including seven senior cabinet ministers conduct high-level diplomatic relations with PNG in Port Moresby. (15) The size and composition of the delegation has shown quite clearly how the US expects Australia to use diplomatic initiatives to serve 'US interests'.

It was accompanied by incoming Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele being invited to Canberra for high-level diplomatic talks following a rushed meeting in Honiara two weeks after their change of government with Australian deputy PM Richard Marles. (16) Manele, however, is already on record publicising his government's 'Look North' policies whereby the economic future of the country 'depends on China, rather than its traditional partners like Australia'. (17) The policy is not ambiguous.  

Coverage of recent regional developments have concluded that 'Australia is at the cross-hairs of this big shift. It is frozen out by Beijing which is also making a power play in Australia's own backyard in the Pacific Islands – that's why the Solomon Islands matters … China has surpassed Australia in terms of two-way trade with Pacific Islands nations'. (18)

In fact, while the recent 'soft diplomacy' between Australia and China has been noted as standing in 'contrast to the deep suspicion in government, and the national security establishment … about China and its long-term threat to Australian interests', it was, in reality, little other than a theatre production designed specifically to serve other earlier agendas in line with 'US interests' in Australia's designated areas of the wider Indo-Pacific region. (19)

                                         We need an independent foreign policy!

   

1.     US GDP Growth Rates, 1960-2022, Macrotrends.
2.     Australian GDP Growth Rates, 1960-2024, Macrotrends.
3.     Wikipedia: Economy of Australia.
4.     Why the US can't win the trade war with China, The Japan Times, 5 June 2024.
5.     Ibid.
6.     US seeks EU's support in trade war, Australian, 23 May 2024.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Four key Take-ways emerging from China's trade data, The Diplomat, 26 March 2024.
9.     Ibid.
10.   Towards and equal partnership, The East Asia Forum, Volume 15, Number 3, September 2023, pp. 3-5.
11.   Japan as a diplomatic asset to ASEAN, ibid., pp. 6-8.
12.   China's export machine moves on, Australian, 14 June 2024.   
13.   Ibid.
14.   Ibid.
15.   Wong takes China fight to PNG, Australian, 20 June 2024.
16.   Solomons PM poised for first visit overseas, Australian, 21 June 2024; and, Marles' diplomatic dash to Solomons, Australian, 21 May 2024.
17.   PM hails new Solomon Islands leader, Australian, 3 May 2024.
18.   As the Solomon Islands heats up, SBS News, 28 November 2021.
19.   Beware the Beijing wolf in panda clothing, PM., Australian, 17 June 2024.   

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Assange: Free at last!

Written by: Nick G. on 25 June 2024

 

(Above: Rally in London in February 2024 demands Assange's release)

Imprisoned Australian journalist Julian Assange is free - bar the formality of an appearance before a US court in the US Marianas Islands tomorrow.

In a plea deal struck with the US authorities, Assange has agreed to plead guilty to one charge under the US Espionage Act. His sentencing is likely to include a jail term which will be subsumed within the time he has already spent in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison.

Assange’s release is a victory for the many people here and abroad who have campaigned for his release and for the dropping of US charges against him.

Though some might see his release as a victory for Albanese and Wong’s “quiet diplomacy”, it rather reflects their abject failure to stand up to the US and secure Assange’s unconditional release.

Worse, by making it a condition of his release by pleading guilty to a crime of which he is innocent, the US imperialists have created a precedent for the citizen of any foreign country to be charged, tried and convicted under US laws. 

This is a threat to political activists and journalists of all countries who use US sources to expose US crimes.

This is not to criticise Assange. He has been held hostage by the British inside a jail designed to house murderers and terrorists, and subjected to inhuman conditions, pending a threatened extradition to the US.

Our Party has supported Assange since he first faced charges.  In 2012, we wrote:

HANDS OFF ASSANGE!

Julian Assange and Wikileaks have performed a huge service to the people of the world by providing a platform for the publication of information that our rulers want kept from us.

Information released to date substantiates US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the existence of death squads and corruption in Kenya, of crony capitalism and speculative manipulation behind the financial collapse of Iceland and of unethical behaviour on the part of Sarah Palin.

Closer to home, Kevin Rudd has been outed as a cheerleader for the use of force by the US against China. In his March 24, 2009 advice to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the then Prime Minister called for a readiness to “deploy force” unless China “integrated itself effectively into the international community”. This is tantamount to declaring that China’s diplomatic pursuit of its own national interests, particularly if they challenge US global leadership, is the action of a rogue state that must be dealt with militarily.

Agents of imperialism

Wikileaks has revealed the existence of senior Labor politicians who report to the US embassy on matters that they are not even prepared to share with the Australian public. It is a master-servant relationship that stinks to high Heaven.

Julia Gillard’s condemnation of Assange represents the sacrificing of yet another Australian civilian to the interests of the US imperialists. 

We remain of the view that Assange has performed a huge service to the people of the world, and that if anyone should be in the dock, then it should be the US imperialist warmongers and assassins and those who collaborate with them.  

It now remains for Albanese and Attorney-General Dreyfus to turn their attention to Dan Duggan, the US-born Australian citizen who has been locked in solitary confinement for 20 months in Australian jails despite facing no charges in Australia while the US attempts to have him extradited to face charges in the US.

Assange is out, now let us get Duggan out. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

India: Hands off Arundhati Roy!

Written by: Nick G. on 19 June 2024

 

Arundhati Roy was the youngest winner of the prestigious Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 for The God of Small Things. Then aged 36, she emerged as an activist campaigning on behalf of India’s poor and marginalised, the same people whose lives she had written about in her novel.

They are also the same people largely responsible for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s humiliating failure to win outright victory in a promised electoral landslide. 

The Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha has 543 seats. Modi, whose BJP party held 303 seats prior to the 2024 general election, boasted that the BJP would break through the 400-seat ceiling and sweep to victory. However, the BJP lost seats, winning only 240 and losing its ability to govern in its own right. It has entered a coalition, but lost face at home and abroad.

The main areas where the BJP lost votes were those populated by the Dalits (Untouchables) and adivasis (tribal peoples who have been the main support base for the people’s war led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist)). 

How better to punish these people than to criminalise their fiercest champion, Arundhati Roy.

So, last week, 14 years after complaints about her references to Kashmir, Delhi's most senior official granted permission for Roy to be prosecuted under India’s stringent anti-terror laws. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) is notorious for making it exceptionally challenging to get bail, often resulting in years of detention until the completion of trial.

Roy was hated by the far-right Hindu nationalists for whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks. She also made an enemy of the revisionist Communist Party of India (Marxist), whose hold on state power in West Bengal and Kerala saw it serving the bourgeoisie and landlords, when she criticised their behaviours and lifestyles in her novel.

She has written one other novel, but mainly she has published collections of political essays and an account of her travels in 2010 through Communist Party of India (Maoist) liberated zones in the forests of Chhattisgarh with fighters of the Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army.

In October, 2010, at a conference in Delhi, organised by the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners, she enraged the far right by declaring that Kashmir “has never been an integral part of India.” Her opponents demanded that she be tried for treason. But she remained defiant.

In 2019 she delivered a lecture to an audience in New York just months after Modi suspended Kashmir’s autonomy and imposed a lockdown on Kashmir that included the withdrawal of mobile phone and internet services, and a curfew that saw thousands imprisoned. She said:

The horror that Kashmiris have endured over the last few months comes on top of the trauma of a thirty-year old armed conflict that has already taken seventy thousand lives and covered their valley with graves. They have held out while everything was thrown at them – war, money, torture, mass disappearance, an army of more than half a million soldiers, and a smear campaign in which an entire population has been portrayed as murderous fundamentalists. 

India is not the model democracy so beloved of people like Albanese and Wong.

Assassinations of Sikh supporters of an independent Khalistan have reached as far as Canada and the United States. Pogroms by right-wing Hindu mobs have seen hundreds of Muslims beaten to death and lynched in the streets. The disgusting caste system remains firmly entrenched.

Indian novelist and journalist Siddhartha Deb, who has also championed India’s poor, place the prosecution of Roy in context. Interviewed on Democracy Now on June 17, he said:

But the point isn’t really about Kashmir. The point is really about the fact that the Hindu right don’t want anyone like Arundhati critiquing the government, critiquing its policies, not just on Kashmir, but that it is completely — it’s a fascist political party. It is against all minorities. It is against women. It is against the poor. And that is what Roy has been speaking up and writing about for over 30 years. And that’s what they’re against. And they want to shut down not just speech. They want to shut down thought. And that’s what this is about.

The CPA (M-L) calls on the Indian government to cease the prosecution of Arundhati Roy.

The CPA (M-L) calls on Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Wong to convey to the Indian Government their support for the human rights of Arundhati Roy.

We encourage people to write to the Indian Embassy and to Albanese and Wong, in support of Arundhati Roy.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Save the nation’s natural resources for the people

Written by: John Gerard on 18 June 2024

 

The national anthem lies about our country. There’s golden soil in Australia but the natural wealth is not for toil.

It’s like there’s two Australias: a corporate wonderland for foreign investors and a labour camp of battling to make ends meet for hard working people in the one nation.

Exports of coal, iron ore, natural gas, and some other resources from Australia are the largest in the world. 

The mining, oil and gas industries produce more than half Australia’s goods exports. The industries’ exports of $455 bn are equivalent to 24% of the country’s economic output. Corporate monopolies plunder the country’s resources.

The mining, oil and gas corporations are making a bundle. Those corporations alone picked up a cool $241.9 bn operating profit before tax in 2022-23. 

Corporate thrive while people struggle

Citizens are told the country is on its knees, in debt and struggling. More and more people are battling with bills, rent or mortgages. The cost of living has gotten away from people. 

In 2022, over three million (3,319,000), of the nation’s 26 million people lived in poverty, including 761,000 children. That’s based on a measure of 50% of median household income, $489 per week for a single person, $1,027 per week for a couple with two children.

More than one in eight people (13.4%) and one in six children (16.6%) lived below the poverty line after taking account of their housing costs. 

That was before the inflation/ interest rate crisis took hold. Things got far worse in the first half of 2024. 

That’s built on top of the situation of the workforce being on the slide since the mid-1970s. Then the labour share of national income was just over 60%. Now its down near 50%. Capital income, the corporations, picked up what people lost and some more, jumping from 23% to 38% of national income. .

We’re told the government is doing what it can. There’s not great comfort in that sales pitch but it’s doing more than the miserable Libs would do. Still its paltry compared to what could be done if our natural resources were used to look after people, not load profits into billionaire corporates. 

There are two Australias. Our country is on its knees but the rich mining, oil and gas corporate monopolies’ country is rolling in billions. 

Aladdin’s Cave of Treasures for the Foreign Corporates

Our nation is the world’s sixth largest in area after Canada, Russia, China, the USA, and Brazil. The economy, at $1,702 billion, is the 13th largest in the world according to the IMF with just 0.33% of the world’s population. Australia ranks around 55th on national population counts internationally. The country is full of natural riches, a capable workforce and lots of modern infrastructure. 

Exports of coal, iron ore, other fossil fuels, gold, copper, aluminium and other minerals amounted to $406 billion in 2023. [Australia’s Top 25 Exports, Goods and Services, DFAT;]

Australia has been the world's largest exporter of iron ore, coal, unwrought lead, 2nd largest exporter of aluminium ores, beef, lentils and cotton, the 4th largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (2017) and 5th largest exporter of wine . 

Since then, Australia overtook Qatar to become the world’s largest exporter of LNG for the first time in November 2018 . Australia now vies with Qatar and the United States as the world's biggest LNG exporter, having boosted export capacity over the past decade, mainly by building three export terminals on the east coast, which use coal-seam gas as a feedstock.

Foreign owners are at the core of the plundering

Contrary to perceptions encouraged by big mining monopolies, major ‘Australian’ mining companies are not Australian owned. They don’t even have large minority Australian-owned shareholdings. An Australia Institute study in 2022 drew the curtain on that nonsense. 

The ‘Big Australian’ BHP Group Ltd with a market capitalisation of $252.81bn is 94.41% foreign-owned. Rio Tinto Ltd’s shares, valued at $182.08 bn, were 95.16% foreign-owned. That mightn’t surprise but even a corporation with a prominent local face, Fortescue Metals Group, much touted as owned by ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, was 89.16% foreign-owned in March 2022 [Foreign Investment in Australia, Australia Institute, revised 10/2023; ]

Across corporations generally, that study found an overall figure of around 30% identifiable Australian ownership of Australian companies, and in turn, around 70% foreign ownership of listed companies in Australia. Even often-touted household shareholdings amount to less than 10% of ownership and have little or no real say. Superfunds investments are only a smidgen more, according to the Australia Institute. And despite making huge profits, 1 in 3 big corporations still pays no tax. 

The mining, oil and gas industries including exploration and support services, employed 220,000 people in June 2023 of the total national workforce of 14,355,100 employed. That’s just 1 employee in each 67 who are employed by the resource plunderers. [Australian Industry, ABS, 31/5/2024; and Labour Force, Australia, ABS 13/6/2024]

There’s more people involved in the supply chains for the mining, oil and gas industries needed to build mines, etc, and get the resources out of the country.  The Minerals Council reckons that all adds up to 1.1 million people. But those numbers are a fair bit of smoke and mirrors. [Mining sustains Australia in uncertain times, Mineral Council of Australia Media release, 9/1/2023]

Mining, Oil and Gas corporates' best interests are to let most people starve

The resource corporates are 85% foreign-owned, and they need just 1 in 67 of us to get the stuff out of the ground and to ports. They make billions from the business. 

Mining, oil and gas corporates don’t have to give a damn about how hard the other 66 workers here are doing in a cost-of-living crisis. And they don’t. 

Look at what they paid in taxes and royalties last year. “The mining and minerals industries paid a record (sic) $74.0 billion to federal, state, and territory governments in taxes and royalties.” Talk about a pathetic record when compared to their exports of $406bn and profits before tax of $242 bn. [Australian Minerals Sector Achieves Record Tax and Royalty Payments, Mineral Council of Australia Media release, 26/5/2024]. The figure paid leaves out the $14 bn of government subsidies paid to the oil and gas monopoly corporates.

In fact, the resources corporates have interests in making sure nothing is done to make things better for people across the country. That would eat into profits the corporate monopolies make from their mining operations here. 

They can keep plundering Australia’s natural resources with the fraction of the local workforce they employ whatever is happening to the rest of us. It makes the mining monopolies among the most reactionary enemies of the working class in this country alongside their finance sector corporate connections. 

Make the rich mining, oil and gas corporates pay for our natural resources. 

For now, the foreign-owned corporate monopolies rule over the people, workers included. They made $242 bn before tax last year. 

Hit them up for half that, $120 bn. They pay out $60bn now. That would add an extra $60 bn to the Federal budget, a big addition to the $698 bn budget this year. It’s a lot of extra government services. 

If workers were in charge, just think about what those billions the corporate mining monopolies would be paying over to help out people in trouble could do; fix up Medicare and the NDIS, free public education, childcare and universities, open up free health clinics all over the country, free up public transport. With the workers supported and freed up from cost of living squeeze to an extent, small and medium consumer businesses could thrive, allying their interests with the workers. 

First Nations communities should have first call on funds for their communities, given their country being exploited was seized from them and never ceded. The harms are graphically revealed in numerous incidents like the Rio Tinto destruction of Juukan Gorge, let alone First Nations people’s conditions of life. 

The Queensland government recently increased coal royalties to 20% to 40% depending on the level of international prices. They promised to invest in hospitals and housing. We’ll see what comes of that but the increase is a first and an overdue change from the Liberal National Party 10-year freeze on coal royalties at piddling 7% to 15% rates.   

The taxes and royalty being paid by mining, oil and gas monopolies are pathetic next to countries like Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and even the UK. 
Saudi Arabia charges royalties on production values at international pricing of 20% of the value of production up to a base level ($70 per barrel for oil), stepped up to 40% for the next portion of higher prices ($30), stepped up to 50% for prices at the next level ($100/barrel). At a 20% rate, the mining, oil and gas exporters in Australia would pay $93 bn in royalties alone.

The UK charges a windfall oil and gas profits tax when prices spike above historic standard rates. The UK Energy Profits Levy is charged at an extra 25 percent on top of the UK headline tax rate of 40% Corporation Tax. The rate of corporate tax on oil and gas enterprises in the UK is 65%. Here its nominally 30% but the tax paid is a small fraction of that. 

Make the rich mining, oil and gas corporate monopolies pay up. 

These monopolies plunder the nation’s natural riches. 

Their interests are currently decisive in the running of the country. They have no interest aligned with the welfare of the country, let alone the people, working people, First Nations, professionals and many small and medium businesses. 

Foreign-owned corporate monopolies have no right of ownership over the natural resources of the nation. 

The call to make them pay and use the funds to benefit the people is the least we can raise.

It has very widespread support, and greater support at a time when many people are doing it so tough. People need these changes. 

The working class can stand together to build working class power here against foreign-corporate monopolies, and bring forward others to join the front against foreign corporates.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Communist Party of the Philippines: Expose and reject US-manufactured anti-Chinese hysteria

Written by: Communist Party of the Philippines on 17 June 2024

 

(Above: image courtesy of CPP website)

We are reproducing a June 15 statement by the Communist Party of the Philippines. The parallels with anti-Chinese hysteria manufactured by US sycophants in Australia are plain to see.  Here, a so-called “former spy for China’s secret police network” alleged on ABC’s Four Corners that there were 1200 Chinese spies targeting Chinese dissidents in Australia. In 2021, Australia's intelligence chief Mike Burgess, without naming India, said his agency had investigated a "nest of spies". Media speculation was allowed to run rampant with China and Russia thought to be responsible. When it turned out to be the Modi government, a key ally of the Australian ruling class, outrage was muted and media comment diluted. 

Like the Communist Party of the Philippines, we oppose Chinese social-imperialism, the imperialism it has projected after restoring capitalism but still claiming to be socialist. We hold both China and the US responsible for ramping up tensions in our region. But the man obstacle to a genuinely Australian independence is US imperialism. The US, not China, is the main source of the danger of war. The US, not China, is trying to drag us into another of its unjust and unwinnable wars. 
 

Let there be no place for attacks on the Australian Chinese community.

No US bases in Australia!

Smash the AUKUS arrangements!

...................

Communist Party of the Philippines: Expose and reject US-manufactured anti-Chinese hysteria

 
Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines
June 15, 2024

Synchronized and bank-rolled by the US State Department and Pentagon, officials and agents of the Marcos government, officers of the military, police and coast guard, senators and congressmen, corporate media, “think tanks,” some “civil society” groups, and social media mercenaries have recently ramped up their campaign to foment anti-Chinese hysteria and Sinophobia among Filipinos.

They fuel speculations and conjure stories of Chinese spies, sleeper cells, infiltration, hacking, and penetration, as part of the so-called Chinese “invasion playbook.” Marcos tops off the hysteria campaign with his “growing external threat” that clearly consider China as a hostile force.

This campaign hypes up valid concerns over overbearing tactics of China with regard Filipino fishermen, as well as criminal operations behind the POGOs (long supported by corrupt government officials of the Duterte and Marcos regimes). But this anti-Chinese hype has also come up with a slew of made up stories.

This campaign to stoke hate against China and the Chinese people is part of the US strategy to use the Philippines to heighten tensions and provoke armed confrontations in the West Philippine Sea. The US imperialists wants the Filipino people to consider China as their enemy, and obscure the fact that US imperialism is the primary national oppressor of the Philippines.

As in all its wars, from the colonial conquest of the Philippines, to its wars of aggression in Korea and Vietnam, to Afghanistan and Ukraine, the US imperialists manipulate public psyche to favor US military intervention and wars. This is pure and simple mass brainwashing.

This campaign to whip-up anti-Chinese hysteria in the Philippines is not new. A recent Reuters investigation exposed how the Filipino public became victims of a US Pentagon-funded campaign on social media to spread misinformation and cast doubts on the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine Sinovac. Hundreds of social media accounts were used by the US to influence Filipinos to favor vaccines made by US companies such as Pfizer and Moderna. This willful campaign of misinformation endangered public health and the lives of Filipinos amid the pandemic.

In the same way, the present campaign to whip up anti-Chinese hysteria is putting at risk the lives of the Filipino people and the country’s security. It is aimed at inflaming disputes between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea and West Philippine Sea, which, in fact, have long existed and managed in a diplomatic way. This information war is being carried out by the US while heightening its military presence in the South China Sea and adjacent regions around China, with the aim of creating conditions for armed hostilities with its imperialist rival.

The Filipino people must repudiate this US-orchestrated anti-Chinese hysteria and reject the scheme to stoke war. They must vigorously demand that diplomacy, legal action and negotiations be carried out more robustly in line with the 2016 arbitral ruling along the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS). They must urgently call for dismantling Chinese military facilities in the West Philippine Sea, the withdrawal of all US naval forces, as well as all US military bases in the Philippines.

The Filipino people’s progressive and patriotic forces must consciously expose and fight the spread of anti-Chinese hysteria and Sinophobia. They need to persevere and be indefatigable as they are up against the disinformation machinery of the biggest imperialist power in the world. They must expose and fight the US-Marcos regime’s war-mongering and its rush to instigate armed hostilities with China, as part of the US imperialist plan to drag the Philippines to its conflict with China.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Chinese presence remans in Solomon Islands despite Marles’ visit

Written by: (Contributed) on 17 June 2024

 

(Above; Marles in Honiara at Australian ad project.  Photo: Richard Marles MP Facebook)

Diplomatic statements invariably reveal far more than they contain; the recent high-level visit by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles to Honiara proved no exception to the general rule. Timed to coincide with the establishment of a new Solomon Island's government, the diplomacy highlighted the strategic significance of the small South Pacific country for Australia's specific Cold War military and security considerations and general 'US interests'. 

Another important factor, however, was not an open agenda item, although it can be regarded as a serious consideration for Australian diplomacy following a recent US global directive to allies when dealing with relations with China.

In late May, Australian deputy-prime minister Richard Marles made a high-level diplomatic visit to the Solomon Islands to meet the incoming prime minister in Honiara, Jeremiah Manele. It was explained in an official media release as 'Australia seizes the opportunity for a relationship reset with the South Pacific's most pro-China nation'. (1) Diplomatic relations between the two countries have proven problematic following a decision by then Solomons' prime minister Manasseh Sogavare to switch from diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to China in 2019.

Subsequent high-level diplomacy between Honiara and Beijing included fears being raised in Canberra of China being able to move at random in the South Pacific country, which has long been used by Australian military planners as a base for projecting influence in the region. Traditional Australia-Solomon Islands diplomacy has been conducted along neo-colonial lines. The challenge presented by China has, therefore, been assessed as a serious problem for Canberra.

A diplomatic statement issued by Canberra noted 'it is a new government that has been formed there. We want to be there very much at the start to talk about how we can take our bilateral relationship to the next step'. (2)

While Canberra openly greeted the demise of the Sogavare administration, little, however, has changed, or will do so. The new Manele government is unlikely to change political course; Sogavare is also the new Finance Minister. A prompt media release from Honiara accompanying the high-level Australian diplomacy noted 'Australia and China as equally important partners for Solomon Islands … its security agreement with Beijing will remain'. (3)  

Elsewhere, however, another statement issued earlier noted the new government and 'its Look North policy, embraced by Manele, says the Solomon Islands' economic future depends upon China, rather than its traditional partners like Australia'. (4) It followed recognition that 'Manele is committed to maintaining his country's China-friendly policies … China is already deeply enmeshed in the country's political fabric'. (5)

The Solomon Islands is a desperately poor country; its 800,000 population live on six major islands, with over nine hundred smaller landmasses. Since achieving independence from the Australian colonial administration in 1976, little meaningful economic development has taken place since that time. Per capita GDP remains at about $600 pa, with more than 75 per cent of the population employed in subsistence agriculture.

The Solomon Islands is dependent upon foreign aid which, invariably, arrives with strings. Some of this is not considered particularly problematic by the Solomon Islands.

Serious studies have concluded 'the neo-liberal framework within which Australia has engaged with the region has not delivered optimal social outcomes. Why would it, given its track records? … Chinese aid is attractive to the Solomon Islands because it largely stays in the Solomon Islands; Australian aid does not … it … is a form of boomerang aid that simply returns to Australia … Australia was the largest direct recipient of its own aid funding'. (6)
   
Australia, therefore, has difficult diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands. In fact, it has been noted that 'Australia is at the cross-hairs of this big shift. It is frozen out by Beijing which is also making a power play in the Pacific islands … that's why the Solomon Islands matters … China has surpassed Australia in terms of two-way trade with Pacific islands nations'. (7)

Accompanying the recent high-level diplomatic visit from Canberra to Honiara, a brief media release was issued from Washington, about US foreign policy initiatives to deal with China. It contained information about the Biden administration raising tariffs on Chinese exports and a request that allies should do likewise to ensure the success of the US-led trade war diplomatic position. (8) Washington has embarked upon classic Cold War diplomatic initiatives 'as a critical way to isolate Beijing on the global stage'. (9)

Due to Australia's close diplomatic links with Washington, it would be almost unthinkable that Canberra would not also follow suit. It is obliged to do so with usual diplomatic protocol. 

The US agenda item did not, however, form part of the stated reason why Australia's diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands were seemingly being re-booted afresh, although would appear the main factor explaining why such a senior government figure travelled to Honiara: Marles, is also Minister for Defence, diplomacy is usually conducted through Foreign Affairs;

                                         We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Marles' diplomatic dash to Solomons, Australian, 21 May 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     PM hails new Solomon Islands leader, Australian, 3 May 2024.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Sub-Imperial Power – Australia in the International Arena, Clinton Fernandes, (Victoria, 2022), pp. 94-97.
7.     As the Solomon Islands heats up, SBS News, 28 November 2021.
8.     US seeks EU support in trade war, Australian, 23 May 2024.
9.     Ibid.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Why we have a beef with capitalism…

Written by: Alan Jackson on 12 June 2024

 

(Above: Meat Industry Employees Union, 2007 Queensland Labour Day March. Photo by  David Jackmanson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

Do you remember the last time you saw the iridescent wings of a Christmas beetle bring in the summer? As much as I try to conjure the image or even the thought of the last time, I fall flat. In the younger years of my life, I remember them flying into my house in abundance. There were so many it was a normalised but appreciated event. 

Now their abundance has turned into its opposite, now I no longer see these harbingers of the summertime. What is the cause of this? Why is it that these beautiful, fluorescent scarabs have stopped showing? 

There’s a multitude of reasons with one root cause being the catalyst. What is this mysterious big bad? Capitalism! More particularly Capitalism and its destructive effects on nature and the exploitative agriculture practises it promotes in its procurement of profit. 

What other social, political and environmental effects does this haemorrhaging cause? 

What is one of the main drivers of deforestation in Australia? 

Looking through a report by Greenpeace, we will see that one of the worst contributors is cattle. Is this to say that cows are prancing on their cloven hooves holding our country at gunpoint? Absolutely not, that would be ridiculous. Although they are ‘cows’, the forces responsible are the multibillionaires and monopolies running this country to ruin for profit. 

Whether this is a conscious decision is irrelevant. The mere fact that they operate and exist in a Capitalist system forces them to exploit both land and people alike. 

Look at the main finds from the Greenpeace report. Some key findings from the get-go are “Australia… is the second largest beef exporter in the world behind Brazil. Beef cattle farming covers about 50% of Australia’s landmass, which explains the disproportionate impact of the industry on Australia’s forests and natural ecosystems.” (1.) 

In addition, “Approximately 30% of Australian beef is consumed domestically”. (2.) 

The report also tells us what companies are the main contributors. Those companies being Retailers – Aldi, Coles, Hungry Jacks, McDonalds, Metcash, Woolworths and Processors - JBS, Teys, Tyson and ComGroup Supplies. 

Those that are foreign multinationals, or tied to foreign capital, include:
Aldi -German
McDonalds – US
JBS – Brazilian (3.)
Tyson- US (4.)
Hungry Jacks – Australian/US (5.)
Teys – Australian/US (6.)

Startlingly put, Australia is undergoing a sustained, mostly hidden deforestation crisis of a globally concerning scale. WWF names eastern Australia among 24 global deforestation fronts, alongside places like the Amazon, the Congo and Borneo. This is because currently an MCG-sized area of forest and bushland is bulldozed every two minutes. This is killing tens of millions of native animals each year, while harming the land, polluting rivers and damaging the Great Barrier Reef. Australian deforestation also contributes considerably to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.” (7.) 

Many operations are centred in Queensland, the state I am from, that faces terrible bushfires yearly with one of the recent most devastating being the fires earlier this year and the bushfires of the 2019-20 black summer. For more see Vanguard Article – ‘For a United Front Against Fossil Fuels and Feral Species.’ (November 2023). 

The last devastating finding I’ll add is “This deforestation is occurring without state or Federal Government controls. In Queensland this is largely, but not exclusively, due to a loophole in the Vegetation Management Act 1999 that makes large areas of land previously cleared as exempt “Category X” land, even if the forest has regenerated to a healthy state and is home to threatened species. Meanwhile researchers have demonstrated that over the course of nearly 20 years the Federal Government has only assessed less than 10% of all deforestation under the national environment law.” (8.) 

Our reliance on the cattle industry results in us producing far more beef than needed for self-sustainability and leads to an overconsumption of beef socially pushed as a result. This puts us into the upper echelons of worldwide heart diseases, cardiac arrests and obesity worldwide. 

With our reliance on the cattle industry the myth of the Australian small farmer is invoked, the masses are appealed to in order to create a fake caricature of a true-blue Aussie farmer struggling on their farm instead of the reality of Corporations paying Migrants peanuts for labour due to their easily exploitable circumstance. 

A recent case was the horrible mistreatment of Chinese meatworkers in Australia’s Visa factories with one specific worker in mind bearing the scars, Wang. “The abattoir clock had ticked into overtime when Chinese meatworker Wang pressed his foot on a button to lower a platform to better cut into a cow carcass. Instead of gliding down, the platform shuddered to a stop and caused a tank of near-boiling water to spill over him. The next day, Wang turned up for work as usual: he did not want to disappoint his employer because soon he would become eligible for permanent residency in Australia. Months later, though, his body still in pain from the workplace accident, Wang found himself without a job anyway, his hope of a better life in Australia in ruins.” (9.) 

If you’re hoping for a happy ending there is none. “Wang is now back in China but is keen to speak out about his experience at Teys Australia’s Biloela abattoir in Queensland. He wants to tell Australians how vulnerable the migrant workers are who come to Australia to do jobs the rest of us shun.” (6.) Wang goes on to say “If you are Australian local people, you don’t have to worry about this. You have equal position with the factory like anyone else. We are poor people. We have no power when we talk with factory.” (10.) Links for more stories on the Migrant Workers plight for the right to work safely in Australia can be found below. (11.)

What stopped the Christmas Beetles? Insecticides, more particularly Imidacloprid and other terrible toxins known to cause ‘Insect Armageddon’ used to protect cotton. Who would’ve thought, inextricably linked to our terrible cattle practices are our cotton practices and with that our agricultural and industrial practices as well. 

This all comes down to Capitalism and its need for profit. With this need for profit, it will put all else before profit even the very thing that is making them profit whether they know it or not. 

Cattle can’t graze a land that is destroyed. The capitalists don’t care. Capitalists only think of profit in the quickest way possible. There is no time to grow trees that our children will see prosper under capitalism. We fell those trees so we can be comfortable, and our children can figure it out for themselves. This is not right. What is needed in Australia is the defeat of Capitalism and Imperialist domination. Economic freedom, self-sustainability, independence and Socialism is the only way we can be free of this turmoil. 

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

European elections and dissolution: the fire of crisis consumes French bourgeois democracy

Written by: La Cause Du Peuple on 12 June 2024

 

Much has been made in the Australian capitalist media of the “swing to the right” in the French elections to the European Parliament.  They concentrate on the votes won by RN, the right wing National Rally, but not on the staggering rejection of the parliamentary charade as witnessed by the number of abstentions from voting. We reprint this translation from the website of La Cause Du Peuple in the interest of a better understanding of French and European sentiment -eds.

European elections and dissolution: the fire of crisis consumes French bourgeois democracy
June 10

The ‘European elections’ circus has played out its final act in France. The results are clear: like all the elections since Macron took over the presidency, the rejection of the electoral system (abstention, blank votes, invalid votes) is the big winner with 25 million votes. This is the historical tendency of the broadest and deepest masses in France: to reject the bourgeois state, its government, its system. That is the main lesson.

Bourgeois commentators dwell on the ‘historic turnout over the last 30 years’. They consciously forget that the European elections in France in 2019, 2014 and the 2000s had a ‘European’ character, i.e. the bourgeoisie incited the masses to go and vote in relation to the ‘European parliament’, this powerless instrument where 705 actors (MEPs) play tasteless parts for the benefit of the struggle and collusion between the imperialist powers of Europe and all the monopolies and their lobbies.

2024 was different: after the election of 2022 and the great year of revolt of 2023, in a situation of economic, social and political crisis, the European elections were used by the bourgeois parties, led by the RN and the presidential party, as a rehearsal for the confrontations to come at national level. That's why Prime Minister Attal debated with the RN. That's why Jordan Bardella, who received 7.7 million votes (15% of the electorate), i.e. 1 million less than Le Pen in 2022, immediately called for the dissolution of the National Assembly.

The results speak for themselves: the RN's victory means that its electoral base voted. It's not a meteoric rise. Bardella's popularity is only high because all the parties around him have collapsed. Macron's party has lost 1.5 million voters compared to 2019.

In 2017, Macron opened a period of political crisis in the French bourgeoisie by consolidating a new bourgeois party on the smoking ruins of the PS (Socialist Party - eds.). In his first five years, through his prime minister Édouard Philippe, he managed to bring LR (Les Republicaines-eds) to its knees. He took the king's share of the spoils and became the ideal standard-bearer for the French imperialist bourgeoisie. In 2022, alone against Le Pen, he was re-elected. Today, he is declaring the dissolution of the National Assembly.

The bourgeoisie as a class fights in parliamentary fractions: the interests of French imperialism are defended in common by the presidential party and the RN. These are two parties of the bourgeoisie. There isn't a fireman on one side and an arsonist on the other: they are both arsonists in the service of a reactionary state.

The bourgeois media and politicians are hungover today: how could Macron dissolve the government? What for? According to them, there is nothing logical about it. For the most Machiavellian, it would be a ‘political stunt’, a ‘risky gamble’. For the naive, Macron has simply ‘put the ball back in the people's court’ after the ‘shock’ of the European elections... which shocked nobody because the polls had said it all before the ballot box!

They ignore the reality of the class struggle in France and the process of reactionarisation of the bourgeois state. The bourgeoisie wants to stave off the crisis at all costs, and is prepared to accept any recomposition, any party in power, any regime, in order to maintain itself as the dominant class in the face of its inevitable decline and overthrow by the proletariat.

So to claim that Macron dissolved the National Assembly, one of the exceptional powers of the French president, ‘lightly’, is an outright lie. The only people who sincerely believe it are the outgoing MPs, from both left and right, who are slapping their legs and blinded by the loss of their privileges.

Le Monde revealed on 10 June that a cell had been working at the Élysée for several months on the dissolution. So it was a prepared plan. In France, the President, even with a minority in the Assembly, retains immense power. That's what the French bourgeoisie decided when it chose De Gaulle in the last century. Macron has thrown out the projects of the end of the five years (such as the thawing of the electorate in Kanaky (New Caledonia), which led to the great revolt of recent weeks, but also the end of life or the plans to reform unemployment) to get to the bottom of the crisis.

The early parliamentary elections he has called are not a campaign: with 20 days to prepare them, he is taking everyone by surprise, even the RN, which was calling for them in its speeches. It's a real electoral farce, pure and simple. After 2 years of circus in the Assembly, where the masses were able to understand what ‘parliamentary cretinism’ actually meant, dissolving it is no loss for Macron. If he wins the election with a coalition, he closes a period of recomposition and opposition and can prepare for 2027, which is the real next deadline. If he loses and the RN gets into government, it will move forward with the same reactionary plans, only more assertive, and it too will fail to avert the crisis: just as Meloni is failing at the moment in Italy. Reactionarisation will progress and the French imperialist bourgeoisie will contemplate, as it already does, its possibilities of stripping bourgeois democracy of its trappings during a crisis of regime.

As for the trumpets and bugles of the Left, they are miserable. They think that an opportunistic, unprincipled electoral alliance will bring the broad masses, the 25 million who have turned their backs on the bourgeois chambers and the polling booths, to vote for them. They want to make these ‘disappointed’ and ‘disinterested’ people feel guilty en masse. It's all a waste. In the decomposition of imperialism in which we live, the proletariat has only one policy: boycott the elections, prepare seriously for revolution.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Can laws control cyber crime and disinformation?

Written by: (Contributed) on 10 June 2024

 

(Above: a screenshot from the home page of Israeli company STOIC,offering to create automated disinformation)

Draft legislation about fraudulent use of the internet and social media due to be introduced into the legislative process in Canberra over the next few weeks is long overdue. Australians have been targeted by on-line criminal elements and their associates for decades.

Other, related fraudulent use of on-line provision, such as Israeli firm STOIC’s work in spreading disinformation through fake social media accounts, has raised serious concerns about security-related matters and general interference inside political systems and espionage.

Draft legislation scheduled to be tabled in Canberra within weeks is set to bring the giants of the internet and social media to account and ensure they are legally liable for fraudulent and criminal activities, with compensation. The binding codes will impose strict obligations upon those who control provision. The draft legislation has followed revelations that Australians lost $2.74 billion last year in various criminal scams. (1) Social media giants including Meta, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will also be required to establish disputes resolution procedures for victims of scams to enable accountability. (2)

The rapid escalation of the problem remains evidence that criminal elements and their associates have been quick to seize upon opportunities opened with on-line provision. In 2020 it was officially reported that Australians had lost an estimated $851 million in scams, rising to $1.8 billion in 2021 and $3.1 billion in 2022. (3)

Australians appear to have been targeted by criminal elements and their associates based off-shore largely in Asia. (4) Recent revelations about sophisticated cyber-crime facilities on the Myanmar-Thai border where computer-based workers were 'being taught about Australian culture and social media uses of Facebook, WhatsApp and dating sites', leave little to the imagination. (5)

Recent disclosures from the German police, however, have shown how Australians have been targeted by other, European criminal groups. One criminal syndicate monitored by the German police found 34,000 Australians had been defrauded more than $200 million; a decision taken by Canberra-based Australian Securities and Investments Commission leaders continued to regard the information as 'for intelligence purposes only'. (6) Victims, therefore, were not officially notified by Australian government departments. Whether the failure to disclose information by ASIC was undertaken to not compromise those 'the regulator was looking at … individuals … based in Australia … who are believed to have assisted the scammers', or for other motives, has not been divulged. (7)

It is, however, the other, related problem of shadowy players accessing personal information for profiling which remains a serious concern.

Revelations the Andrews government in Victoria used vast amounts of personal data to run a secretive program for election purposes has raised a number of concerns with far-reaching implications. (8) The Melbourne-based administration appears to have been extensively involved in intelligence-gathering about voter opinions in the six weeks prior to the November, 2022, state elections. Questions appear to have arisen about the security of large amounts of data collected and whether it could be re-used for other, non-disclosed purposes.

Disclosures surrounding a shadowy, intelligence-type organisation based in Tel Aviv, STOIC, have, however, raised serious concerns about social media being programmed to mould public opinion about the present Israeli-Gaza war. Consisting of more than five hundred Facebook and 32 Instagram accounts in the US and Canada linked to more than two thousand further profiles, the social media facilities were praising 'Israel's military actions and criticism of radical Islam and campus anti-semitism'. (9)

The STOIC organisation appears to have actively targeted political parties, ministries and municipalities together with advocacy groups, public relations campaigns and lobbyists with the specific intention of moulding public opinion in favour of the Israeli government. (10)

While the official media release from Meta regarding their closing of the STOIC websites could find links with the Israeli government, the use of proprietary companies and business fronts is common throughout the so-called 'intelligence-community'. (11) The standard practice is used to distance governments and their intelligence organisations from controversy should embarrassing disclosures occur.

While the subject did receive some limited media coverage in western and Israeli media outlets, there was no official comment from either STOIC or the Netanyahu administration in Tel Aviv; diplomatic silence would appear the order of the day for those concerned.

It was noted, nevertheless, that STOIC was 'a political marketing and business intelligence firm … using their products nefariously to manipulate various political conversations on-line'. (12) It was also noted, furthermore, that the company provided 'models for tasks generating comments, articles, social media profiles, and debugging code for bots and websites … with fears about … covert social media campaigns'. (13) 

STOIC is also believed to have contracted out its services to support the Hindutva fascist BJP party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (14) The US-Canada operation was ordered and financed by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. (15)

Covert operations, invariably, have a long history linked to intelligence agencies and diplomacy; studies of the US intelligence services conducted by former agents concluded, long ago, that, 'the CIA's primary task is not to co-ordinate the efforts of US intelligence or even to produce finished national intelligence for the policy-makers. Its job is, for better or worse, to conduct the government's covert foreign policy'. (16)

 

The use of on-line provision would appear to have broadened the scope of intelligence-gathering for covert foreign policy and provided spooks with the ability to pry into the daily lives of the mass of the world's population. Intelligence agents now how little use for opening and reading correspondence to and from those assessed as 'people of interest'. Technological developments have led to past practices being superseded and others revolutionised with on-line facilities. (17)    

Information emerging from reliable sources has revealed the US National Security Agency (NSA) sought to use the internet from its earliest days of operation and that 'the NSA's attention shifted to finding ways to exploit the global reach of Google, Microsoft, Venizon and other US technical powers … including … monitoring cell-phones'. (18)

The tracking of mobile telephones and interception of calls has become standard practice with Australian government departments. A marathon fraud court-case in the NSW Supreme Court, for example, included 'some 130 hours of conversations between the six accused men, captured during tapped phone calls or by strategically placed listening devices … as part of their national investigation into the alleged payroll fraud'. (19)  

Problems, however, arise with the shadowy links between on-line criminal activity and that of official government departments and their intelligence agencies. They would appear blurred, to state the very least. The genuine concern for defence and security considerations and downright political muck-raking, likewise, is also blurred in the eyes of some actors, whether with officially sanctioned state or non-legitimate non-state categories.

Whether forthcoming legislation to deal with the problem is effective, therefore, remains to be seen.

In light of Australia's alliance with the US and their allies, including Israel, and the Five Eyes, it would appear unlikely, however, that any moves will be taken to disturb or interfere with existing 'US interests' and their intelligence-gathering:

                                          We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     See: Fines over social media scams, The Weekend Australian, 25-26 May 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     AI helping hackers to scam better, Australian, 3 June 2024.
4.     Fighting Asian scammers, Australian, 30 May 2024; and, Billions stolen as Big Tech enables deepfake scams, Editorial, The Weekend Australian, 25-26 May 2024.
5.     Editorial, Weekend Australian, ibid., 25-26 May 2024.
6.     ASIC says hands were tied on scams, Australian, 5 June 2024.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Data security 'assured', Andrews team told, The Weekend Australian, 1-2 June 2024.
9.     Fake accounts of Israel tech firm deleted, Australian, 31 May 2024.
10.   Ibid.
11.   The CIA and the cult of intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John D, Marks, (London, 1976), pp. 162-181.
12.   Meta and AI say they disrupted influence operations linked to Israeli company, NBC News, 31 May 2024.
13.   Open AI says it disrupted covert influence operation by Israeli firm STOIC, The Times of Israel, 4 June 2024.
14.   Who’s behind the Israeli startup blacklisted by Meta and OpenAI?, Calcalist.com June 3, 2024
15.   Israeli influence operation highlights global disinformation industry, Cyberscoop.com, June 5, 2004
16.   The CIA and the cult of intelligence, op.cit., page 132.
17.   Ibid., page 121.
18.   The intelligence coup of the century, The Washington Post, 11 February 2020.
19.   Juror in $13m fraud case arrested, Australian, 6 June 2024.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

PNG: Wealth for Foreign Exploiters – Sweet FA and Destruction for the People

Written by: J. Clarke on 9 Jue 2024

 

Above: Opposition to sea bed mining in PNG. Photo Civicus.org

While the eyes of the world are focussed on the devastating tragedy of the Enga Province landslide in Papua New Guinea (PNG), it is timely to reflect on the environmental and development issues that foreign investment has brought to the country.

PNG is a country abundantly rich in natural resources. The Indigenous people have utilised these resources for their essential needs sustainably since their arrival in ancient times (estimated to be some 50,000 years ago and agricultural practices commencing around 7000BC).

On the other hand, with the arrival of Europeans and the accompanying colonisation, the exploitation of resources for profit rather than needs intensified with little regard to sustainability. In modern times, exploitation has intensified even more dramatically, resulting in severe damage to the environment.

What caused the devastating Enga landslide in which so many lives were lost? There are multiple reasons. Firstly, PNG is located on an earthquake zone, which creates the conditions prerequisite for landslides. In a nutshell the ground is loosened and water penetrates, creating something akin to a massive sponge. A deluge of rain can make the “sponge” release its contents, with devastating consequences for those living nearby.

The other reasons are man-made. You guessed it! - Deforestation by foreign companies acting to extract as much timber as possible in the shortest time for maximal profits, with little or no subsequent remediation work. There is no substantial vegetation remaining to hold the soil in place, so when a landslide occurs, its damaging effects are amplified.

Add to this, the effects of climate change – more storms, more intense rainfall, therefore more frequent and severe landslides.

Not much can be done about the natural causes (earthquakes) however the last two causes are preventable if a sustainable approach is taken. This will never happen under capitalism, but the people of PNG are valiantly opposing the activities of the foreign plunderers.

The volume of logging has consistently exceeded the target limits. The government appears to be doing very little to curb this. The people, with the assistance of NGOs, are putting pressure on the government to act. In response, logging companies threaten activists with litigation. This is despite the activists exposing not only the over-logging, but money laundering practises by the industry as well1.

An appallingly unscrupulous practice used by foreign companies to obtain access to land for logging is to illegally con traditional holders of customary land into handing the land over to them. As a result, a significant percentage of customary land has become permanently inaccessible to the traditional landholders. This land-grabbing is facilitated by corrupt government officials and others in PNG for selfish gains. (Corruption is rife in PNG, and it is estimated that up to 50% of the government annual budget goes missing as a result. Consequently it is a walk in the park for foreign companies to get what they want.) Such lands are then rubber-stamped as “Special Agriculture and Business Leases” under the Land Act. The categorisation as “agriculture and business” is a con in itself. Essentially it means all out logging.

The government copped a lot of flak from traditional landholders about this illegal land-grabbing practice and in 2014 the government promised to return the lands stolen in this way to their original owners. However, there has been limited progress in this direction. Further, compensation to traditional landholders for being deprived of the use of their land and the destruction of forests on these lands is yet to be agreed to.

Here’s another example of ruthless business practices which are enabled by corrupt government officials. A Malaysian company (actually a logging company) applied to set up the “Wasu Cattle Farm Project” and got the nod. Local people report that they have not sighted any cattle but that there is an awful lot of logging going on!

It is not only the forests that are being intensely exploited by foreign companies. PNG is rich in mineral resources and oil and gas – both on land and sea.

A case in point is the proposed Frieda mine project for the extraction of gold and copper. If it goes ahead, it will be the largest mining project in the history of PNG. The project will operate along the mighty Sepik River. The river traverses some 1100km and is one of the few remaining untouched large rivers on the planet. It provides sustenance, both spiritual and material, to the tens of thousands of people who live in traditional communities along its length.

The mine threatens all this and the people know that it will end their traditional way of life. They have seen it in other communities in PNG. Promises of benefits are made (schools, hospitals etc) but they end up losing everything, including their independence, spiritual life, links to their ancestors and sense of belonging.

The people of the Sepik want to avoid another Bougainville, but the communities are not taking this lying down and are currently organising to oppose the mine. Death threats have been received but people have stated that this river is so important to them that they will die for it.

The foreign corporations are not limiting themselves to mining the land, but also have in mind to mine the sea bed for minerals such as gold, copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese. Sea bed mining has not taken place anywhere in the world yet, due to insufficient knowledge of the environmental, social and economic consequences and the lack of laws to govern its practice.

The PNG government has placed a moratorium on sea bed mining until 2029. However, coastal people living in the vicinity of the proposed sea bed mining area have grave concerns that the government will not live up to its promise. The PNG government has its own vested interests in the project proceeding. The people living here practice their traditional way of life and rely on the sea as their main food source. They are already organising against this project2.

The people of PNG face the same enemy as other Indigenous populations the world over, threatening their traditional existence and the destruction of the lands which they have nurtured over the eons.

Whether it is in PNG, West Papua, Palestine or the First Nations people of Australia there is common ground for the struggle against imperialism and colonialism.

Oppressed people of the world unite!

The CPA (ML) supports the struggle of the people of PNG for justice.
The CPA (ML) supports the struggle of the people of West Papua for independence.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Benny Wenda: West Papua’s path to liberation

Written by: Benny Wenda on 7 June 2024

 

(Above: In March 2024, a shocking video emerged of Indonesian soldiers torturing a West Papuan man confined in a barrel of freezing water. He was repeatedly kicked, punched and stabbed. )

Our near neighbours, the heroic and long-suffering peoples of West Papua, are continuing their fight for liberation from the Indonesian colonising regime. Their struggle has our ongoing support. We are posting a statement from May by their leader Benny Wenda – eds.

 

President Wenda: The United Liberation Movement for West Papua Agenda is West Papua’s path to liberation 
May 14, 2024 

On behalf of the ULMWP and the people of West Papua, I call on all our supporters to renew your support for West Papua and stand behind our agenda for independence: 

A) A visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; 

B) ULMWP Full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG);

C) An internationally-supervised self-determination referendum. 

The ULMWP has a clear agenda for liberation, and our solidarity groups have a vital role to play in helping us fulfil it. Our agenda has been democratically endorsed by the people of West Papua through the 2023 ULMWP Congress, the first people’s mandate the ULMWP has ever received. When you fight for our agenda, you are fighting for the West Papuan people.

Our solidarity groups, artists, musicians, filmmakers, journalists, lawyers, rugby players and other sportspeople, NGOs, Churches, academics, individuals and families, can help by rallying their representatives in Parliament to support a visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. As part of our new campaign for a UN visit, we have held meetings in the UK, EU, Dutch and Scottish Parliaments, and launched the Brussels Declaration directly accusing Indonesia of refusing the UN access. The call for a UN visit has gone up across the world, demanded by over 100 UN member states, including all member states of the Pacific Islands Forum, Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States, and the EU Commission.   

Since Indonesia first invited the High Commissioner into West Papua in 2018, over 100,000 Papuan civilians have been displaced by genocidal military operations. At least 1200 Papuans have died, killed by Indonesian soldiers or left to starve in the bush. Many of my people have been tortured or arbitrarily arrested. Indonesia gets away with its crimes with impunity partly because they hide West Papua from the world, banning journalists, NGOs, and international bodies like the UN. To force Indonesia to open West Papua to the world, we need to create even greater public pressure. Solidarity groups can be the voice of the voiceless people. Where we cannot speak, you must speak for us.  

We also need our friends in Melanesia to lobby their leaders and Parliamentarians to do more to support ULMWP full membership of the MSG. The ULMWP gaining full membership is an essential step on the road to peace and justice in the Pacific. Only as full members will we be able to sit across the table from Indonesia and peacefully discuss the status of West Papua on an equal footing. With the war criminal Prabowo Subianto soon to take office as Indonesian President, West Papua needs full membership to defend itself and expose Indonesia’s crimes. Full membership is our guarantee of safety from annihilation. 
Full membership would prove we are a responsible state-in-waiting, ready to manage our own affairs. Like our brothers and sisters in the FLNKS, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), or the Polisario in Western Sahara, we are a political organisation with a cabinet, constitution, and governing structure on the ground. We are ready to take control when our independence arrives.  

The ULMWP is not an NGO: we are not asking Indonesia for internal dialogue, to improve their democracy, or take better care of our forest. West Papua is not an internal matter. We state clearly that all violations of our human rights and environment are rooted in the fundamental and continual violation of our self-determination. Self-determination is the start and the end of our journey. Merdeka is the only answer to our situation.  

To Indonesia, we say that you have nothing to fear from West Papuan independence. We are not fighting to destroy Indonesian sovereignty but simply to reclaim the sovereignty that was stolen in 1961. Our sovereign state was declared that year and recognised by nations including Netherlands, UK, and Australia. It was taken from us and we are fighting to win it back. 

To our people back home, activists, women’s groups, church groups, Indonesian solidarity groups, the Alliance of Papuan Students and KNPB, I ask that you rally behind the ULMWP and the Congress resolutions. We need unity if we are going to defeat our enemy and reclaim our sovereign state. 

Thank you to everyone who has stood behind us in our anti-imperial struggle. Please continue to unite behind us, support our agenda, and support our independence. 

Wa wa wa. Papua Merdeka! 

Benny Wenda
President
ULMWP 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

We swim in a toxic sea of capitalism. But we needn’t drown: Humphrey McQueen’s powerful new pamphlet on Capital launched

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 3 June 2024

 

Marking our party’s 60th anniversary, Vanguard invited Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen to Sydney to lead a discussion of his new pamphlet, on Karl Marx’s ‘Capital’. 

The pamphlet’s cover ‘invites job reps and community activists to share insights from Capital into how we are exploited, how nature is plundered and how to put an end to both.’
Veteran comrade Lindy Nolan introduced the discussion.

We’re on Gadigal land, never surrendered, paying respects to all First Peoples for their sacrifices and ongoing resistance. May they grow in unity and strength.

Humphrey! Humphrey McQueen. I doubt there’s an Australian alive who’s studied Capital more deeply, or given more practical guidance from it. But thanking him means thanking Peter Curtis, for connecting us with this rebel with no phone or internet. Humphrey’s in person, so I’ll be relatively brief.

We swim in a toxic sea of capitalism. But we needn’t drown. 

To chart a way forward, we seek truth from facts, not from wishful thinking.

The struggle for communism in the world – and in Australia – is littered with mistakes, rich with lessons. And with inspiring victories. Vanguard and the CPA(ML) are 60 this year. We’ve just reprinted the party’s first book, also from 1964. 

Hogtied to capitalism

Emerging from the most bitter split in our movement’s history, a split destroying lifelong friendships and even families, EF Hill’s Looking Backward: Looking Forward, Revolutionary Socialist Politics against Trade Union and Parliamentary Politics, analysed collective errors, based on deep study of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao. The key was it analysed Australia. 

Hill proved that, despite working class support, Labor was a capitalist party. The left labelled him “sectarian”. 

Workers rightly hate when the left cannibalises itself.  We were all guilty, for the stakes were high, liberation or exploitation, destruction and endless wars for profit. But real sectarianism is separation from the people.

All of Australia’s left grouplets are growing now, but none of us is capable yet of leading a revolution. 

In 1964, Hill also challenged trade union politics, because while trade unions at their best teach workers that if you don’t fight you’ve already lost, and teach them to organise as a class – touch one, touch all – at best unions only win crumbs from the capitalist feast. Now more than ever, unions are hogtied to capitalism. Dialectically, new laws enforcing permanency, applied to those few unions like the NSW Teacher Federation whose members still elect its organisers and officers, now demand, once elected for over two years, members won’t be able to remove them.

Betraying workers for the new US boss

After WW2, the communist party here was over 20,000 strong.  Hill’s book also showed how the anti-Marxist, class-struggle-denying ideology of US “communist” leader Earl Browder gripped the Australian party, paving the way for our new best buddy to shove British imperialism aside, betraying the workers and allies who could have fought this new master.

We’re now little more than a US imperialist puppet. It holds the commanding heights of our economy, our military is a wing of US forces, its culture poisons Australian minds. 

It dominates through division and conquest, deception and force. What ever-diminishing peoples’ rights we still have, were won and defended in hard struggle.  

In 1964 Hill showed Australia was a capitalist dictatorship, with parliament its “democratic” window-dressing.

Examples are endless. 94% of Australians opposed the war in Iraq. Howard joined the US invasion. This week 30% of the NSW prison population is Aboriginal. If the laws, courts, police, military, jails are independent, above classes, why are the biggest criminals living in unimaginable luxury instead of in jail?

The ruling class chooses violence

Resistance is growing. Palestine opens ever more eyes to reality, of who rules, who benefits. Who in their right minds would choose violence, invasion, destruction of the planet? The capitalist class, over and over again. 

Mao Zedong said communists must be like fish in a sea of people, because it’s the masses who create revolutionary change, not small groups of likeminded people isolated in left blocs. We listen, take the ideas of the masses, collectively concentrate them into theory, take them back to the people to be tested in practice, in an ongoing spiral of learning for revolutionary change. Underpinning this, constantly enriched in struggle, are 170 years of Marxist theory. The voice of peoples’ needs demand action from Humphrey McQueen’s new pamphlet.

Marx said there’s no crisis capitalism can’t recover from, until workers and oppressed peoples organise to defeat it. US imperialism and its hangers on will never willingly surrender. If threatened, they will choose violence. 

Right now we need to listen, to study, to organise, to build the peoples’ forces in struggle, build a party steeped in humility serving them, like fish in as sea of people. Our party strives and organises to be one day worthy of the Australian working class and its allies. 

We’re glad Humphrey is a friend of our party.

Today we’ll listen and ask and collectively learn from each other.

My party had the good fortune to marginally contribute to the first version of this profound pamphlet for workers and community activists, then an extraordinarily skinny summary of Marx’s monumental three volumes.

This second bread and butter version launched today is far richer, collectively created from 14 years of group study in Canberra. Humphrey says The Communist Manifesto is poetry that begs to be read aloud. His new pamphlet is an epic poem, for understanding, for organisation, for liberation, for survival.

As Rosa Luxemburg wrote, the choice is simple socialism or barbarism.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

US company to design Osborne submarine shipyard

Written by: Nick G. on 31 May 2024

 

US company Kellogg Brown Root (KBR) has been selected to provide concept design services for the new nuclear powered submarine construction yard at Osborne in South Australia. 

Profits from the deal will further enrich the pockets of wealthy US shareholders.

KBR has previously won massive US contracts for supporting the US military in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. 

However, its “Controversy” listing on Wikipedia is one of the longest of any multinational company, including price-fixing, bribery, negligence in relation to employee safety, sexual assault and abuse allegations, and a human trafficking lawsuit. 

As recently as September 2022, 800 Filipino workers were stranded at the remote US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean due to an employment dispute with KBR. They alleged it had underpaid wages and denied holiday leave entitlements.

If the old saying is true that you can know a person by the company he or she keeps, we now know a bit more about the Australian ruling class and its subservience to US imperialism.

Withdraw from AUKUS!
Oppose KBR’s contract!

................

Update:  

On Jue 6 2024, it was anounced that KBR had been given an Australian government contract to "monitor space above Australia."

The announcement stated: "KBR’s Iron Stallion technology can find, watch, track and report on the movement of objects in space and now forms an integral component of the Australian government’s space domain awareness. Iron Stallion is a command and control technology that is being used by the Department of Defence to support Australia’s need for advanced space-based surveillance capabilities. It has proved its effectiveness in the US and in the UK."

The militarisation of space is a direct consequence of imperialism's striving for "full spectrum domination".  In the US, the Space Force sits alongside the Army, Navy and Airforce as part of the US military.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Protest Modi government’s genocidal killing of tribal peoples

Written by: Nick G. on 30 May 2024

 

Today, May 30, 2024, is a day of protest in India against the fascist Modi government’s war on tribal communities and fighters of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)’s Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army.

Since 1st January 2024, the Indian state has rapidly mobilised more and more paramilitary personnel into the 6 military camps established in the Abujmarh region of Chhattisgarh, a land-locked state in Central India, under a new Operation Kagar.

This region, home to the Gond, Muria, Abujmarhia and Halbaas tribes also falls in the area which contains 700 million tonnes of India’s iron ore reserves, along with graphite ore, limestone and even uranium deposits. With the onset of Operation Kagar, for every 7 Adivasi persons (members of tribal communities) in Abujmarh, there are now 3 paramilitary personnel in the hills. 

On New Years Day, the security forces attacked Muddum village, near Gangalur, in the Bijapur district, and killed a toddler- Mangli- in the lap of her mother while she was being breastfed. Relentless attacks have been regular, and killings have become routine. On April 2, 13 Maoists were killed in an encounter at Korcholi in Bijapur district. All of them were Adivasis, if not Maoists. Four months into this year, 80 Adivasis and revolutionaries have been shot dead in the name of encounters. Aerial bombing was also carried out for the fifth time on January 13 as a continuation of the aerial attacks carried out by the previous Congress government.

In the last month, three fake encounters have resulted in the deaths of 29 people in Kankar district. On May 10, 2024, 12 tribal farmers were shot dead by the army in Bijapur district. Indian paramilitary forces killed five people from Pedia village and seven from Etawar village in a fake encounter.

The villagers, out to collect 'Tendu' leaves, fled in fear at the sight of the security forces. The forces shot them as they tried to escape. Many villagers were dragged from their homes and shot dead.

This hidden war is a genocide of tribal farmers under the guise of neutralizing Maoists. A wide range of weapons, including airstrikes by Israeli-made drones, have been used in the area. 

Operation Kagar strips away from the “rock star” Modi’s fascist Hindutva government its veneer of “democracy” which is killing the tribal farmers of Bastar district who are protecting their land and water, celebrating harvest and cultivation on their soil, alongside the Maoist revolutionaries fighting against corporates, Brahminical Hindutva fascists, brokers, landlords, and mining mafias. 

The CPA (M-L) voices its solidarity with the protest day movement, and calls on the Indian diaspora in Australia to condemn the killing of tribal farmers labelled as Maoists. We call upon all democratically minded people to unite and condemn this genocide.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

US looks to drag Australia into space preparations for war with China

Written by: Nick G. on 29 May 2024

 

Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, head of US Space Forces, Indo-Pacific, told a conference in Sydney yesterday, that the US is “working very closely with Australia” to develop the ability to crack a Chinese space-based defensive line designed to keep US forces at bay.

The cooperation of Australian military officials and civilian contractors further enmeshes Australia into the military confrontation promoted by the US against China.

Mastalir said that “a formidable new technology — a jam-resistant Link-16 that now extends to and from space” enables radios to operate across all five US military services as well as with NATO and other allies so all users can see the same up-to-the minute intelligence, and automate fire control.

He referred to “kill chains” used by both the US and China to deny each other access to areas in the event of war. The kill chains are based on the so-called “island chain strategy” first conceived by US imperialism’s John Foster Dulles in 1951, during the US war of aggression against Korea.

The first island chain runs through Chinese territorial waters down to and including the nine-dash line in the South China Sea. The second island chain runs from Japan through Guam and Palau to the western end of New Guinea. A third island chain runs from Alaska through the middle of the Pacific to New Zealand.

Mastalir said China’s progress in strengthening its kill chain since 2019, built expressly to keep the United States well outside the second island chain, has been “breathtaking.”

But he said that testing of Link 16’s anti-jamming capability had strengthened the US’s own anti-China kill chain.

Further moves are afoot to prepare for war with China.

Mastalir revealed the military is planning to set up a US Space Forces -Japan based on their work in South Korea, where a component was established in December 2022.

“When we stood up Space Forces Korea, that’s the model that I’m using for Space Force Japan,” he said, without offering a date by which he expected the unit to be stood up. 

And a week ago, so-called “regional experts” issued a call for an Arctic Quad comprising the US, Canada, South Korea and Japan to counter a growing Russian and Chinese presence in the Arctic where there is competition for resources and new trade routes being made possible by climate change.

None of these developments indicate any lessening of tensions in our region. 

Despite the comprador media’s repeated references to Chinas “increasingly assertive and aggressive” presence in the region, it is US imperialism’s preparedness to use war to maintain its declining global dominance that threatens the future well-being of the Australian people.

Breaking news:

The embedding of US military and intelligence agents in the relevant Australian government departments underscores our subservience to the Empire.  So it came as no surprise today (May 29) when Monash University and SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre announced the  appointment of Lieutenant General Larry James, former Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a retired lieutenant general with the US Air Force, to their respective space research offices.

“The opportunities for Australia’s space sector are huge, and I hope to share my experience and knowledge with the talented teams at both institutions," Lt Gen James said. 

"I am also keen to strengthen my connections and share expertise with Defence Space Command and the Australian Space Agency,” he said.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

May Day Talk 2024

Written by: Shirley Winton on 27 May 2024

 

We have had requests for the text of Shirley Winton’s speech at the Melbourne May Day event on May 5.  Shirley was speaking on behalf of No AUKUS Victoria – eds.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

For peace and an end to inter-imperialist wars!

Written by: Nick G. on 26 May 2024

 

It has become a truism in contemporary politics that you cannot believe anything until you’ve heard it denied by a US spokesperson.

A case in point was last week’s denial by US General Stephen Sklenka at the National Press Club that Australia would automatically be dragged into any US war with China over Taiwan.

Sklenka had been questioned about a statement by the director of naval submarine forces for AUKUS in the United States, Dan Packer, that the US Navy would have 440 Australians serving on board 25 American submarines under the first stage of AUKUS.

"We are completely, 100 per cent integrating them into our crew, from a complete and utter perspective – they will do everything that we do," he said.

Packer’s comments come after comments last April by US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell that Australian nuclear-powered submarines acquired under AUKUS could eventually be deployed against China in any military conflict over Taiwan.

The US online magazine, Breaking Defense, sponsored by arms manufacturer Northrop Grumman, said that General Sklenka’s reply was designed to “mollify” Australian critics of AUKUS.

Sklenka said "I think the Australian government, the policymakers in your government will determine whether or not those Australians will participate or not.”

That, of course, is hardly reassuring at all.  The policymakers in our government are empire loyalists and betrayers of our sovereignty and independence.

It was entirely predictable of Prime Ministerial aspirant Peter Dutton, for example, when he said in November 2021, as Defence Minister, “It would be inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the U.S. in an action if the U.S. chose to take that action. And again, I think we should be very frank and honest about that, look at all the facts and circumstances without pre-committing and maybe there are circumstances where we wouldn’t take up that option, but I can’t conceive of those circumstances.”

And cheerleader for US imperialism within the current government, Richard Marles Labor’s Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, said in October 2023, Australia could not be a “passive bystander” in the event of conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

And in any case, when General Sklenka isn’t trying to “mollify” people, he sings a different tune, as he did in Darwin, in August 2022, when he said “We can talk all day long about trade deals and policy deals, but what says a heck of a lot more is who is by your side when you are in a fight. Australia is always on our side when that time comes, and we will always remember that.”

There is no doubt that inter-imperialist rivalry between China and the United States is intensifying. US imperialism is the main danger of war and the main driver of regional tensions driving the push towards war with China. 

Australia must insist on the peaceful resolution of differences with China and pursue an independent and peaceful foreign policy. US imperialism wants war to try to arrest its decline and secure its position as the head of an empire that feeds off the control of the people and resources of other countries, including Australia. Its major industries are addicted to warfare and the profits that come from the sales of arms. 

Australia must withdraw from AUKUS, expel all US military forces from Australia, and close all US military bases in our country. 

Workers must take the lead. They have nothing to gain from empire loyalism and the sale of Australian sovereignty and everything to lose by being dragged into another unpopular and unjust US war.

For socialism and anti-imperialist independence!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Freshwater sawfish: Iconic species threatened by capitalist development

Written by: Nick G. on 23 May 2024

 

Photo credit: Alex Westover

Gina Rinehart should stop obsessing about destroying an unflattering portrait of herself by acclaimed Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira, and concentrate on how to stop destroying the Martuwarra Fitzroy River and the critically endangered freshwater sawfish!

Of seven sawfish species known to exist in the world, four are found in Western Australia. These species – the freshwater, dwarf, narrow and green sawfish – are mainly found in the Kimberley and Pilbara. The freshwater sawfish can grow to 7 metres in length and are thought to live to 30 years or more. Their relatively low rate of reproduction means that sawfish stocks are slow to recover if depleted.

The freshwater sawfish is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is totally protected from recreational and commercial fishing under WA State legislation. In addition, the freshwater sawfish is protected under Federal legislation.

Rinehart

Rinehart, Australia’s richest person with an estimated net worth in excess of A$37 billion, is a mining magnate with extensive pastoral properties.
She has a license to pump water from a tributary of the Martuwarra for her Liveringa Station, a 2,650 square kilometres property with a carrying capacity of over 22,000 head of cattle.
Last November, 17 critically endangered freshwater sawfish died in a dry creek on Liveringa Station. The news has only just been revealed. It is the second mass sawfish kill on the station. Forty sawfish died at the Kimberley pastoral station in December 2018.

Those deaths were initially covered up to protect Hancock. Documents obtained under freedom of information showcased internal government communication, with concerns about a "negative story" and a manager from a government department "trying to prevent the issue getting out to the media".

First Peoples and freshwater sawfish 

The sawfish has cultural significance for First Peoples across northern Australia. 

They are a traditional food source for Aboriginal people living along the Fitzroy River. The species features in stories and beliefs. Bunuba people call freshwater sawfish ‘galwanyi’, the Gooniyandi people call it ‘wirridanyniny’, the Nyikina, ‘pial pial’ and the Walmajarri people, ‘wirrdani’. A traditional way of catching sawfish and other species by the Nyikina and Walmajarri people is to put bark from a freshwater mangrove tree in a waterhole. This removes oxygen from the water, causing the fish to float and become easy to catch. It also makes it vulnerable to declining water quality caused by over-extraction for pastoral and other irrigation purposes.

In early 2017, Gurindji girl Lisa Smiler caught a 2.7metre sawfish in Wattie Creek near Kalkarindji, 800 kilometres south of Darwin. Gurindji elders were surprised that the fish had come so far south, but, known as "kunpulu" in the Gurindji language, it has been documented in the area in Indigenous rock art found on Revolver Creek, a tributary of the Victoria River, near Kalkarindji. The same word is used in languages along the Victoria River.

Manage water for the environment, not Rinehart’s profits
 
The Martuwarra/Fitzroy's massive catchment area spans 40 cattle stations, including Mrs Rinehart's Liveringa, Fossil Downs and Nerrima stations.

Hancock’s company reportedly wants to harvest 325 gigalitres of surface water when the river is in flood to "supercharge" the region's cattle industry.

To put that in perspective, Perth's total overall annual water use is 395GL, according to the WA Department of Water's Water for Growth report.

The Martuwarra’s flow is already impeded by Camballin Barrage, 150 kilometres upstream from the limit of tidal influence. It is thought to obstruct the upstream migration of juvenile freshwater sawfish during much of the year when the river level is below the height of the weir. Originally built to divert water for farming, the weir is now a fishing and tourism spot.

Discussions over the future of water extraction along the river must be separated from capitalist commercial considerations. 

The mighty Martuwarra Fitzroy River is the last stronghold for the sawfish and its last great nursery – which is why protecting the river is crucial for its survival.

This latest fish kill is a sad reminder of why the surface flows of Martuwarra Fitzroy River must be left alone and not put at risk for large-scale development.

Last October, under pressure from campaigners for the Martuwarra, the WA Government announced a commitment for no further surface water take from the Martuwarra Fitzroy River.  This is good, but not enough. The existing water take must be adjusted downwards as the two recent fish kills have occurred under its arrangements.

Local campaigners are determined to stop the Martuwarra becoming another Murray-Darling disaster.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Free Georges Abdallah!

Written by: Campagne Unitaire G Abdallah on 21 May 2024

 

At the request of our French comrades, the CPA (M-L) has signed an appeal for the release of imprisoned Lebanese communist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah (born 2 April 1951), the longest held prisoner in Europe. 

Abdallah was arrested in 1984 by French police and convicted of the killing of a US military attache and an Israeli diplomat in retaliation for the Israeli Zionist regime’s 1982 invasion and occupation of Lebanon.
 

In 1999, Abdallah completed the minimum portion of his life sentence, but several requests for parole were denied. In 2003, the court granted him parole but the US Department of State objected to the court decision. Again, in 2013, Abdallah was granted parole. The US State Department’s Victoria Nuland intervened to stop his release.

The appeal reads:

At a time when the Zionist entity relentlessly pursues its genocidal historical project of annihilation of the Palestinian people from the sea to the Jordan; at a time when Western imperialists are working today as yesterday, and for more than 76 years, to politically and militarily support this entity – their organic arm in the region – and to tirelessly justify the unjustifiable; at a time when the French State is not a mere ‘accomplice’ but a fully involved player in its support for this ethnic cleansing of the land of Palestine; at a time when this same State is using all the means of its liberticidal violence to gag and criminalise any expression of denunciation of this crime against humanity and all forms of solidarity with the Palestinian people; finally, at a time when, in the very camp of this legitimate solidarity with Palestine, some are still hesitating about the form of resistance to support or are censoring themselves, Georges Abdallah - from behind the walls and after 39 years of detention at the hands of the enemy - and with him all the Palestinians involved in or alongside the Resistance are proclaiming forcefully and unambiguously: ‘Gaza will never carry the white flag of surrender! 

Georges Abdallah himself always refused to make this white flag his own, choosing never to leave the camp that was and remains his: that of the ‘historic Resistance’, of all the Resistance, of the ‘promise of the Fedayeen’. It is for this unwavering support for the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people, but also of all peoples who have joined the resistance against oppression and for their emancipation, that Georges Abdallah remains in detention today. It is for this unwavering support, this refusal to give up and this determination to stand firm that Georges Abdallah remains in the hands of the enemy - for the symbol of resistance that he remains in Lebanon but also for the example that he has always been and remains even more so today for all his supporters in France and internationally.

Today, this support is ever more massive, and ever more people are taking action to ensure that any solidarity with Palestine must also include the demand for the release of one of its most loyal fighters. Just as we did so brilliantly at the 14th demonstration in Lannemezan on 6 April in support of our comrade and the prisoners incarcerated with him, we, the signatories of this appeal, pledge once again to coordinate all our forces in support of the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people and of Georges Abdallah during the next international week of action from 8 to 15 June and to mobilise massively for the new national demonstration organised on 15 June in Lyon to support the 10th request for the conditional release of Georges Abdallah and to demand his release.

The aim of this year's demonstration will also be to express our active solidarity with two comrades from the Ligue de la Jeunesse Révolutionnaire who are supporting Georges Abdallah and who will stand trial in Lyon on 18 June for having displayed the Palestinian flag and a T-shirt calling for the release of Georges Abdallah on 7 October 2022 on the pitch of the Olympique Lyonnais stadium during a football match with the Toulouse club, which was interrupted for several minutes and broadcast on every screen. 

‘Gaza will never carry the white flag of surrender... Neither the Zionists nor any criminal force will ever succeed in breaking the will of the Resistance in Gaza’ (Georges Abdallah). 

Neither the French state nor any criminal force will ever succeed in breaking our determination to snatch our comrade from the hands of the enemy. Free them! Let us free him!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Book review: A View from the Horizon, Peter Duncan, Wakefield Press 2024

Written by: Nick G. on 20 May 2024

 

One evening in 1970, a tall, sandy-haired young man came down the stairs to the basement of the Adelaide Revolutionary Socialists building in Dequetteville Terrace, Kent Town.  It was surprising to see him there as he was not a revolutionary but a well-known member of the Labor Party and of the pacifist-aligned Campaign for Peace in Vietnam.

What was more surprising was the handgun he was carrying, which he proceeded to show to his friend Rob Durbridge, leader of Students for Democratic Action at Adelaide University.

Why he had the gun, and what he later did with it, I’ve never known, but it didn’t impede his political career. Three years later, he was elected to the SA Parliament, and two years after that, at age 29, was sworn in as the State's Attorney-General.

Several days ago, I attended the launch of his book of anecdotes and memoires, A View from the Horizon.

Peter Duncan, the author, was later elected to Federal Parliament in the Hawke-Keating era.

He is justifiably proud of his record as a reformist social-democrat although it was never his intention to do away with capitalism: his legislative achievements were all in the area of social policy and did not, nor could have, done away with the economic base of capitalism.

Still, working with a premier who wore pink shorts to Parliament, he was able to achieve the abolition of capital punishment, the abolition of drunkenness in public as a crime, the criminalisation of rape in marriage, the abolition of legal consequences for illegitimacy, recognition of de facto couples, the criminalisation of racial discrimination and drug law reform. But it was his Private Member's Bill, the first in the world, to decriminalise homosexuality and establish equal rights for homosexuals with heterosexuals for which he is best known.

As a reformist social-democrat, Duncan is scathing in his book about the SA Labor governments that came after his and Dunstan's. He writes:

Some people may not be aware of the phrase 'went to water': its origins lie literally in what happens to ice when it melts from a robust solid state to a malleable and wet state. My comrade, Bob Mac, wittily observed that it must have been extremely hot in those Labor Cabinets under Bannon, Rann and Weatherill, because when good people entered those Cabinets, they 'went to water'. Sentiments I endorse entirely.

Later he writes:

Labor government either try to reform society or to manage it. Unfortunately, in the past 40 odd years, the managerialists have held sway. They could just as easily have left it to the Liberals.

It would be unfair to say that these views reflect illusions about capitalism. Both reformism and managerialism accept the permanence of capitalism and the legitimacy of bourgeois parliaments as the sole avenue for both reformism and managerialism. Duncan's post-political forays into business ventures, also examined in the book, illustrate his acceptance of capitalism.

Duncan was one of the few Australian state politicians to successfully move to the federal sphere. He was the federal member for the SA seat of Makin from 1984 to 1996, holding several ministerial positions under Hawke, but having any real influence blocked by the powerful Right and Centre Left factions of the ALP.

One of his first blues with Hawke, a cigar smoker, was over a ban on cigarette smoking on domestic airlines. Duncan gave his Transport ministerial support to a private member's bill introducing the ban. He writes:

…Hawke was furious and carpeted me, to no effect…Hawke’s anger must have been on behalf of the tobacco lobby. Of course, if he had ordered a backdown from what was a very popular initiative, it would have looked as if he was under the thumb of the tobacco lobby, which was the case, since they were significant donors to the ALP at that time. 

In the same year, 1987, he recalls going into Hawke's office as the PM was on a special red phone call to transport boss Sir Peter Abeles, long acknowledged as a personal friend of Hawke. He "told Bob that as one of his ministers, I wouldn't mind having that 'red phone number', to which Hawke replied agitatedly, ‘

'And when you’ve done as much for me as Peter Abeles, you’ll be entitled to it'."

Duncan had been summonsed by Hawke to explain why his department had awarded a contract for northern coastal surveillance, on behalf of Customs, to a small operator, Amann Aviatics. The contract had previously been held by Sky West, but Amann had the superior bid and had won. 

Unknown to Duncan, Sky West had been bought cheaply by Abeles who was furious to have lost the government contract. Hawke and Gareth Evans fabricated a narrative about Amann being unable to fulfil its contract which conflicted with the department's legal advice. According to Duncan, Abeles "lobbied Hawke to get the Amann contract rescinded" and that Hawke "colluded in this perfidy". A subsequent High Court challenge by Amann upheld its right to the contract.

This is not the only example of Hawke using an official position to look after, and curry favour with, influential capitalists. Duncan records that in 1975, when Hawke was still president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, he brokered a deal between Rupert Murdoch and Jimmy Hoffa, notorious boss of the Teamster's Union in the USA, to transport Murdoch's new US newspapers across the USA at a rate which undercut his competitors.

What grease was used to achieve this deal and what benefit Hawke obtained, I have no idea. What is clear that the leader of the ACTU at the time facilitated a deal that cut US workers' income and conditions.

During his book launch, which included a discussion with friend and former SA Premier and Vietnam Moratorium Committee leader Lynn Arnold, Duncan was only once interrupted with spontaneous applause. That was when he volunteered his view that SA’s anti-protest legislation, introduced by the Malinauskas Labor government, was "despicable". It was a strong statement, made in the presence of the current Attorney-General, Kyam Maher, who had overseen the lifting of penalties for "obstruction" from $750 to $50,000 and up to three months' gaol.

Two nights later, on May 16, on the anniversary of the rushed, overnight passage of the anti-protest laws, police arrested eight people who were among hundreds who occupied and held a sit-in at a city intersection to protest the legislation. 

Significantly, and as a measure of popular opposition to the anti-protest laws, the eight were not charged under the new obstruction legislation, and were each fined only $156.

The task of removing the "despicable" legislation still remains. 
 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Albanese Government Facing Charges of "Supporting War Crimes"

Written by: Ned K. on 19 May 2024

 

Last week ALP Senator Fatima Payman broke ranks with the official Party line when she spoke up in the Senate against Israel's acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. She also defended the supporters of Palestinian people's struggle using the chant, "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free."

Albanese and his Cabinet Ministers quickly tried to shut down her comments and isolate her.
However the situation only got worse for the Albanese Government as it tried to shut Senator Payman's comments down.

The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network's AMAN Foundation was endorsed as a deductible gift recipient in the May Budget last Tuesday. A couple of days later AMAN wrote an open letter to the Senate opposing a motion in the Senate which tried to condemn the chant "From the River to the Sea..."

The AMAN letter said " From the River to the Sea is a call for freedom from Palestinians and their allies, fundamentally different from the annexation and colonization promoted by Netanyahu’s ruling Likud under the same phrase." Likud’s founding statement in 1977 said “between the sea and the Jordan river, there will only be Israeli sovereignty”. This expressed Zionist religious exclusiveness and supremacy to be achieved by the extinction of Palestine and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

The AMAN letter was followed by a director of AMAN, Moustafa Kheir leading a legal move to refer the Prime Minister to the International Criminal Court as an accessory to genocide, sending aa 92-page paper explaining the PM's complicity.

The media commentaries that Albanese may go to an early election are not surprising as each day the PM and his Government become more isolated from the people, especially western suburbs of Sydney where support for Palestinians is high.
 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Workers Take Action at Osborne Naval Base in South Australia

Written by: Ned K. on 19 May 2024

 

Above:On May 9, ASC workers picketed the entrance to confront their CEO as he was leaving the base.

AMWU and CEPU members employed by the federal government's Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) have been taking industrial action against ASC to win better pay and conditions.

ASC is the federal government entity which employs highly skilled workers to build submarines and other navy vessels, including the proposed nuclear-powered submarines.

ASC also employs workers at its naval base in WA. 

However workers at ASC's naval base in Osborne are paid 18% less than workers performing the same type of work at the ASC base in WA.

AMWU and CEPU members at Osborne are taking industrial action to win "wage parity" with workers in WA.

For the last three weeks AMWU and CEPU members have held rolling stoppages but ASC has not yet agreed to workers' wage parity demand. Industrial action is sure to escalate until workers win.

ASC has had a contemptuous attitude towards workers for many years resulting in numerous disputes. 

The Australian Government says that the Osborne Naval Base workers and other defence bases are vital to the defence of Australia of Australia. However, their class position as primarily a representative of the interests of big business comes to the surface when one examines how they treat workers. At the Osborne Naval Base, the poor treatment of workers applies to support services workers at the Base as well. Most support services such as ground maintenance, security, catering and cleaning are contract workers on the low Award minimum pay. AMWU and CEPU members have been informed that in some cases the ASC cherry picks to enable contractors to pay wages on the lowest paying Award they can find.

All this is going on while the current and past federal Governments throw billions of dollars towards AUKUS and nuclear submarines designed to support a US war with China, which is little to do with defence of Australia's vast coasts and lands.  

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Ukraine: Comic actor, serious scenarios

Written by: (Contributed) on 17 May 2024

 

Russian military advances in the Ukraine have been viewed with alarm in Kiev and the western backers of the Zelensky presidential administration. Ukraine is faced with a long, drawn out military struggle it is unlikely to win in a straightforward manner. The development has also been accompanied by a classic Cold War spy scandal as Zelensky seeks to consolidate a reliable power-base of support with declining popularity amongst many Ukrainians and little sign of any resolution to the war.

News coverage about Russian military advances in the north-eastern part of the Ukraine around Kharkiv and their seizing of several villages was met with alarm in Kiev; Ukraine is still waiting for further military aid from US-led western supporters of the Zelensky administration. (1) It has been generally acknowledged that Ukraine is confronting a much better equipped Russian military, which has also made recent advances in the east of the country. (2)

A recent announcement from France's President Macron that 'Europe should consider sending troops to help defend Ukraine if Russian forces break through their defence lines', has been taken seriously by European leaders. (3) Increased aid to Ukraine in the form of military personnel would now appear an agenda item for consideration. The move has also been accompanied by European leaders agreeing last week to using billions of Euros seized from Russian central bank assets being allocated for Ukraine for arms sales and post-war reconstruction. (4)  

Macron also provided a bleak analysis of the problems confronting Europe: aggression from Russia in both military and cyber-warfare, it was also falling behind in the economic and technological race between the US and China, the latter being allied with Russia. (5)

Escalating diplomatic tensions between Britain and Russia have also taken place: in early May the British government expelled Moscow's defence attache on allegations of espionage
incompatible with usual diplomatic status and also removing diplomatic status from several Kremlin-owned properties which Whitehall claimed were being used for intelligence-gathering. (6) Discussions appear to have also taken place in Whitehall about confiscating the properties and donating them to the Ukraine.

The British government has apparently been deeply concerned at Russian attempts to 'choke off support for Kyiv … with … hostile state activity in countries including Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland'. (7) The recent official high-level diplomatic meetings in Budapest between China's President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is also likely to be viewed along similar lines, particularly in light of a recent statement from the Hungarian Foreign Minister that the country would not support the proposed $100 bn EU fund for Ukraine. (8) A statement from the Belgian Royal Higher Institute for Defence issued immediately after the diplomatic visit acknowledged 'Hungary as the most likely pawn of Beijing inside the EU'. (9)  

While visiting Hungary President Xi Jinping also used the opportunity to provide a diplomatic position regarding areas of interest: China believes in a multi-polar world, although not all countries have equal status; China should be allowed to be 'a dominant power in Asia, as the US is in the Americas – and as Russia wants to be in Eastern Europe'. (10) It met with complete diplomatic silence from the US and their western allies; there was, undoubtedly, a great deal of discussion behind the scenes inside western corridors of power about the proposed global blue-print!

The present situation in the Ukraine, likewise, is also causing the US and their western allies considerable concern; the announcement that the Ukrainian Security Service had foiled a plot to assassinate Zelensky in early May, has also raised serious issues about the stability of his presidential administration. (11) It was noted 'the involvement of senior officers in the alleged plot highlights the persistent problem of collaborators and moles in Ukraine's security services'. (12) It has been a matter of serious concern that since the beginning of the military hostilities following the Russian invasion, over 2,000 Ukrainians have been found to have committed treason by providing Moscow with co-ordinates for military targets and monitoring the movements of senior government officials in Kyiv. (13) Many of the bombings of infrastructure by Russia would appear not random, but targeted in order to make the Ukraine dysfunctional as a state.

While sacking the head of the security department in mid-May, Zelensky stated one of the two conspirators 'had personally provided rocket rounds, drones and anti-personnel mines for an agent to carry out the attack'. (14) The nature of the military equipment and the ability of the conspirators to access it, raise serious questions about the whole internal security system and accountability of armaments and sensitive equipment.

During the past two years since the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky had apparently survived five or six similar conspiracies aimed at assassinating him. (15)

The developments have also coincided with Zelensky's popularity falling from previous heights of 90 per cent, to around 60 per cent in recent weeks. (16) While he remains the most popular Ukrainian politician, the former comic actor is now facing some serious scenarios, as are the US and their western allies. With US-led military planners and analysts expecting Russia to ramp up offensives during the northern summer aimed at seizing large areas of the eastern Donetsk region, the unresolved issues surrounding the initial invasion in 2022 are now set to become even more problematic and show little sign of any resolution in the foreseeable future.   

1.     Russia opens new front in Ukraine, Australian, 13 May 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     We may have to fight in Ukraine: Macron, The Weekend Australian, 4-5 May 2024.
4.     Europe to buy Kyiv arms with Russian money, Australian, 10 May 2024.
5.     Weekend Australian, op.cit., 4-5 May 2024.
6.     Britain expels Moscow attache, Australian, 10 May 2024.
7.     Ibid.
8.     See: Xi vows help for 'all-weather' friend Hungary, Australian, 13 May 2024.
9.     Orban rolls out red carpet for Xi as the money rolls in, The Weekend Australian, 11/12 May 2024.
10.   Xi vows, Australian, op.cit., 13 May 2024.
11.   Ukraine foils plot to kill Zelensky, Australian, 9 May 2024.
12.   Ibid.
13.   Ibid.
14.   Zelensky fires bodyguard chief after kill plot foiled, The Weekend Australian, 11-12 May 2024.
15.   Ibid.
16.   Australian, op.cit., 9 May 2024.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

For the independence of Kanaky/New Caledonia: no to unfreezing the electorate! no to recolonization!

Written by: Collectif Solidarité Kanaky on 17 May 2024

 

The events in New Caledonia, to which France has just sent some two thousand police, are both a legacy of French colonialism, and an extension of France’s alignment with the US imperialists against the growing influence of China in the region.

The US wants to strengthen France’s capacity to deny independence to the Kanaks, fearing that an independent Kanaky might seek closer ties with China. 

At the same time, French prestige is at stake: France still sees itself as a Pacific power as it did when it used the Pacific as a lake for the testing of nuclear weapons. 

The unfreezing of the electorate by the French National Assembly granting citizenship to French citizens with ten-year’s residence in New Caledonia could increase the anti-independence vote by 15%.

This report is from the French-based Solidarité Kanaky collective, which is supported by ICOR affiliate Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Leniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union). We have translated it from French using online translation services, so the text may not read all that fluently – eds.

For the independence of Kanaky/New Caledonia: no to unfreezing the electorate! no to recolonization!

by UPml May 15, 2024

By Collectif Solidarité Kanaky

The constitutional bill to unfreeze the Caledonian electorate is being debated over the past two days in the National Assembly. This law is understood in New Caledonia as a desire to put an end to the decolonization process initiated by the Nouméa agreement. Result: a rise in tensions, multiple and powerful mobilizations throughout the country, and the threat of a conflagration. The Solidarité Kanaky collective is calling on parliamentarians to withdraw this bill.

Paris on May 13, 2024,

To try to stop this dangerous process for the future of the Kanak people, the elected representatives of the Congress of New Caledonia met this Monday, May 13 and managed to adopt, by a majority, a resolution requesting the withdrawal of this bill. on the electorate. Elected officials remind the State that they are mostly against this bill.

30 years after the Nouméa Accord , as well as the transfer of skills and their rebalancing, inequalities remain very significant, the non-respect of priority to local employment: in many sectors, it is the metropolitans (French citizens – eds.) recently arrived in New Caledonia, due to attractive conditions (salary level and indexation, advantages in terms of housing or installation support), who occupy positions to the detriment of Kanak workers with equal skills. Thus continues a long tradition of privileges offered to French people going to work overseas. 

These are conditions which make it possible to strengthen the settler colony that this Pacific territory has always represented for the French state. This is in total violation of international law. Indeed, Kanaky/New Caledonia remains a non-autonomous territory under international law, as such included on the list of countries to be decolonized according to United Nations resolution 15-14.

The Nouméa Accord is a decolonization agreement. It provided for 3 self-determination referendum consultations. The second referendum showed, in 2020, a surge in pro-independence votes: by only 9,000 votes, the “Yes” to the full sovereignty of New Caledonia was in the majority.

The conditions of the third and final referendum, at the end of 2021, are today still contested by all the independence movements, which had requested following the Covid epidemic and the confinement which prevented any campaign, the postponement of the consultation and the respecting both Édouard Philippe's promise to keep it in 2022 and the Kanak mourning period. This 3rd referendum is not recognized by the separatists who did not participate in the vote. A complaint is planned on this subject to the International Court of Justice.

Today , the French government has decided to use force. It unilaterally presents two draft laws on the institutional future of Kanaky/New Caledonia which put at stake the future of the Kanak people, and the stability of the country. They are aiming for an exit under highly contested and non-consensual conditions from the Nouméa Accord, with the consequence of a considerable worsening of divisions.

The first bill concerning the postponement of provincial elections was adopted last March, the second aims to modify the constitution which is central to the Nouméa Accord; no modification should be made by a unilateral decision of the State, without a global agreement between local political forces.

These bills revive the proven practices of putting the Kanak people in a minority in their own country, for the benefit of a local right which would like to find a majority in its favour by modifying the seats in the Congress of New Caledonia. The State is engaged in a brutal modification of the entire organization of democratic life in New Caledonia. This is a way of promoting the recolonization of the territory and the invisibility of the Kanak people!

In response, in Kanaky/New Caledonia mobilizations are growing against these two bills. More than 80,000 people in the streets on April 13 throughout the country. Historic mobilizations which are driven by the CCAT (Cellule for Coordination of Field Actions), which brings together all the independence currents. The objectives are clear: the request for the withdrawal of the bill on the unfreezing of the electorate, the non-recognition of the 3rd referendum, and the continuation of the decolonization trajectory.

This forceful move by the French state brings back sad memories and promotes an extremely dangerous dynamic of tension. The May 1 mobilization was massive and this year marked politically by this political context. The week of May 4, 2024 until May 13, 2024, was a week of continued mobilizations and actions by the CCAT. Started on May 4, 2024 – for the anniversary of the death of Jean-Marie Tjibaou on May 4, 1989, and the anniversary of the massacre of the 19 of the Ouvéa cave on May 5, 1988 – until the presentation of the text to the National Assembly this May 13, 2024. Rallies in front of all the country's gendarmes on May 5, 2024, marches in different cities every day. Many mines are already blocked, such as in Houailou and Thio. The mobilization is entering its 3rd phase.

On May 13, 2024, the two federations USTKE, THT (Air and Land Transport, Hotels) and Ports & Docks went on strike, followed by 99%.
At the port, only essential goods are released (perishable goods and medicines), all port companies have decided to close at 3 p.m. Slowing economy today. The Wetr chiefdom in Lifou has decided to close the island's airport.

At the Tontouta airport, plane flights were seriously delayed due to employees leaving their posts, disrupting the operation of services at the airport. The CCAT’s mobilizations on road access have also disrupted the country. The country is mobilizing everywhere, with roadblocks.

A mutiny broke out at the East Camp prison, where three guards were taken hostage and the RAID intervened.

Young people clashed with the police and mobile gendarmes, who fired flash-bullets at them, provoking their anger.

The country is experiencing extreme tension as it awaits the vote in the National Assembly.

Furthermore, repression is strong. A number of people prosecuted since the demonstration on 21 February went on trial on 19 April at the Nouméa Court, receiving very heavy sentences. Two demonstrators are being held in the East Camp, while five other demonstrators are free but wearing electronic bracelets. Since then, there have been a number of arrests, some people have been released but are still being prosecuted, while others are being held in pre-trial detention or in police custody. They are political prisoners!

On Monday 13 May 2024, 18 people were due to appear in court, but the trial was postponed, some simply because they were carrying the Kanaky flag! Unheard of!

The Solidarité Kanaky collective, created in 2007, brings together different associative, trade union and political organizations with the objective of organizing solidarity in France with the Kanak people in their trajectory of decolonization. Alongside the various pro-independence currents, we reaffirm our solidarity with the union and political struggles of Kanak and non-Kanak separatists, against the colonial, racist, capitalist and repressive situation of the French State in Kanaky….

This bill must be withdrawn.

Let us demand the release and dropping of charges for those accused of the current mobilizations.

Let's take solidarity actions here in France against the two bills and in solidarity with the current movement in Kanaky.

Solidarity with the CCAT and the mobilized Kanak people!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The legacy of Soviet revisionism: the view from Russia today.

Written by: (Contributed) on 13 May 2024

 

Above: Anti-Putin protester dragged away by Moscow cops. Photo: www.reaction.life 

Our Party has good relations with several groups of comrades in Russia. We won’t identify the source of the following description of conditions in Russia because of the danger its authors are in under the rule of the Russian imperialist bourgeosie and Putin’s government. Unfortunately, there are some on the Left in Australia who praise Putin for his rivalry with US imperialism and the NATO bloc. There are no grounds fordoing so. All imperialism is bad and must be overthrown – eds

The legacy of Soviet revisionism and social-imperialism, which completely permeates society and bourgeois power, causes great harm to party building in our country. On the one hand, this completely discredits the ideas of communism in society, equating them with Soviet capitalism. On the other hand, the bourgeois government and the bourgeois “opposition” demagogically use images of the Soviet past for chauvinist propaganda. 

Many people in our country know about Mao Zedong from the fascist tales that were promoted by Soviet propaganda and which are enshrined in official academic discourse in books and the Internet. All this complicates the work of Marxists-Leninists in Russia. Moreover, after the strengthening of the fascist regime and the start of the genocidal war against the Ukrainian people, great-power chauvinism, racism and spy mania dominate in society. 

There is information that about 116 thousand people were subjected to Putin’s repressions. There are many neo-Nazis in the FSB and the police who torture people, and after a recent terrorist attack, neo-Nazis in police uniform festooned with swastikas publicly cut off the ear of one of the suspects on camera and forced him to eat his ear. 

Instructions from the police and army on how to properly torture people with electric shock are being actively distributed online. 

Police and Nazis organize attacks on migrants in factories and commercial establishments, inducing them to go to war. In this way, the Russian army is replenished and at the same time terror is waged against the non-Russian workers remaining at the enterprises. 

Moreover, after the failure of the military opposition in June 2023 and after Putin’s victory in the elections, the fascist regime began to fight with redoubled force against political opponents. Our organization suffers greatly from these repressions. At the same time, all street protests are now prohibited in our country and any unflattering word about the war and the Russian army faces criminal liability, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly have been destroyed. 

In our country, trade unions are subordinate to the ruling far-right United Russia party, on which President Putin relies. Because of this, the economic struggle in our country is seriously complicated.

The left forces in our country are poisoned by Soviet revisionism. The majority of Russian "communists" support Putin, the fascist war against Ukraine and external expansion into European countries. Chauvinist Russian idealist philosophers and various bourgeois concepts, such as the “civilizational approach” or “world-system analysis,” are highly respected among them. Almost all Russian communists and social democrats are sexists and homophobes, supporters of traditional family values and the death penalty.

At the moment, Russian imperialism is merging in foreign policy with revisionist regimes. First of all, with social-imperialist China and the DPRK, which most pseudo-communists perceive as a socialist turn and “anti-imperialism.”

Russian imperialists are attacking feminism, women's right to abortion, and any protection against domestic violence. We are trying to fight this by developing a feminist movement in Russia. LGBT people in Russia are recognized as terrorists, as are Jehovah's Witnesses and many other religious and social forces. Many oppositionists are labeled as “foreign agents”, after which they are deprived of economic and remaining political rights.

May 2024

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Inflation hits Interest Rate Relief: The Crisis Grows!

Written by: John G. on 13 May 2024

 

Fruit & Veg prices not rewarding farmers. Source: publicdomainpictures.net CCO

 

Price inflation increased from October to March by 1.6% . That was after a drop in the previous 6 months which had government ministers and economists cheering and carrying on about a series of interest rate cuts coming right up. 

On 7 May, the Reserve Bank swept those hopes aside and locked in the current rate, way higher interest rates than any in the last decade. Now talk is of a possible interest rate increase. 

Price inflation increases have killed off hopes about imminent interest rate cuts and cast a shadow after over the whole country’s economic prospects.

Economists have commented how disastrous it is to have unemployment low at 3.8% while price inflation kicks up. 

For them, “restoring economic activity” relies on unemployment being pushed up to 5%. That’s an extra 200,000 plus people thrown out of work. 

They are disappointed just 7,000 more people were without work in March. In that month, total hours worked across the nation increased by as much as it had over the previous 11 months. 

With price inflation growing and people not being put out of work in large numbers, capitalists and their top managers, top bureaucrats, bankers and government administrators set out for people to suffer much more misery. 

Policy tensions reflect different corporate monopolies interests 

There are tensions within corporate monopolies’ ranks between their economic needs and their political needs, as well as conflicts between different sectional interests. 

The economic needs are for people to be put through hardships, businesses closing, bankruptcies, people unable to get what we want to live, being paid less and consuming less. The political needs are what people will tolerate without a significant turn against the corporate monopolies rule. 

All sorts of differences flare up between financial corporations and bankers, consumer goods suppliers, mining monopolies, industrial manufacturers supplying different industries, and small and medium hospitality businesses. The businesses selling to consumers tend to support consumers being supported to keep business sales up. Others insulated from the consumer market like the mining monopolies and foreign bankers back severe cutbacks. 

 Different corporate approaches expressed in the parliamentary slanging match over spending. 

Labor has been spreading a range of support around: electricity bill reductions, heavily subsidised childcare, increases to wages in aged care, providing free Vocational education for some careers , tax cuts extended to the poorer paid, childcare subsidies, rent assistance and payments that cut energy bills before they went to households, increases to bulk billing rebates, reduced costs of pharmacy scripts, an increase in jobseeker payments , rent assistance up 15%, increased single parent payment and expanded eligibility, opening up restrictions on wage struggles for a few workers, and more. It’s a significant spending program on services and support for people in difficulty.

It is nowhere near dealing with economic problems people face. Labor’s balancing act tries to smooth out some of the harsher effects of the crisis, and stave of tendencies for the troubles to break people’s acceptance of capitalism. They work on the monopolies’ economic needs while paying attention to political needs. Hardship, but trying to hold it to a level where lots of people won’t be rethinking the need to rebel and try to make the rich corporate monopolies pay.  

Chalmers dubs his a ‘no scorched earth austerity’ policy. He presents himself ‘dealing with inflation’ while ‘supporting the economy’. Labor’s juggling defends the corporate monopolies by letting people’s consumption drop and hardships stalk the workers, making people pay to get out of the corporates’ inflation crisis while doing a bit to mitigate the worst effects.

Liberals ‘Cut Government spending policy’ for mining, finance and other corporates 

The Liberals carry on about ending the ‘spend-a-thon’. They say they would ‘contain the growth in spending’ … to ‘take pressure off this homegrown inflation’ as Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor put it after the recent Reserve Bank meeting put interest rates on hold. 

Taylor nominated cutting $209 billion he reckoned was increased spending since Labor’s election. While the Liberals are coy about details of what they would do, they are calling for cuts in spending programs on a variety of government services and support for people. 

It’s the severe policy of the corporates of mining, banking and finance; increasing the harshness of the squeeze on people. It’s not quite the ‘scorched earth’ criticized by Chalmers, but it is policy for a disaster to be imposed on people doing it hard now, more out of work, holding back wage rises, while slashing services and supports Labor has put in place easing the harshest troubles hitting people.  

Liberal’s approach: Devil Take the Hindmost

The Liberal’s and monopolies’ make a cynical and brutal calculation. They reckon better off sections of workers can tighten the belt for a while They work for the better off to turn a blind eye to the plight of poorer workers and non-monopoly business people most affected by recession, loss of consumer markets, government supports and services. The Libs work to bring workers and professionals in industries like mining, shipping and transport, banking and finance in support of the reactionary corporate monopolies’ approach. 

The Liberals try to drag working people in mortgage trouble into the reactionary corporates’ orbit too. They push harsher measures as the path to reduce the time high interest rates torment mortgage holders in trouble. They try to use it as an appeal to outer suburban workers and tradies to back mining, finance and wider foreign monopoly corporates’ interests rather than stand for the workers’ own interests in a better life. 

Insecure, casual and ABN employees cop the brunt of unemployment and hardships. The bottom 25% are crushed. The young are particularly affected by insecure work, shift cuts, high rents and interest rates. Small and medium businesses providing people’s goods and services and subbies in all sorts of industries lose customers and work. People with mortgages and renting cop even higher rates.   

For the bulk of people, the Liberals promise a hell of a lot less ‘economic activity’, a brutal devastation of many people’s lives and the futures of today’s generation of students in their later years looking to get into good paying jobs. 

The Greens perform around the edges of government administration, raising banners for more housing, caps on rents and interest rates. They float various schemes. They perform and act to advocate for Labor to improve its game. Labor does fall short and bumbles on various fronts. The Greens aren’t going to have a decisive say in parliament any time soon. Their policies attach themselves to consumer market interests. They stand against the reactionary corporate interests of mining monopolies, finance and banking corporates. 

Labor and Liberal are wrangling about which way to make capitalism work and get back to profitability, while keeping corporate monopoly rule over the country secure. That’s no real use to workers. 

This system is failing us. It can’t keep going without periodic crashes where the corporate monopolies make working people and small business suffer to prop up their system and get it back to turning over. 

Now is a time to get serious about getting organised to get rid of the dominating US corporate monopolies’ rule over the nation and free the nation and the working class. Standing out as some initial steps to defend poor workers and start to develop organisation for workers to take command: 

First: Organise poorer workers and younger people to stand against severe policies to make poor workers pay for the corporate monopolies’ crisis. Better pay, cheaper rent, lower interest rates, better government support and services, tax the corporate monopolies to relieve peoples’ hardships. 

Second: Win better-off workers, professionals and small business people to stand with poorer workers against policies of leaving people subject to severe hardship.

Third: Reject Liberal/Coalition policies to stop spending to relieve people of some effects of price inflation and high interest rates, while they also work to impose real wage cuts and much higher unemployment. No severe economic shock to get big monopolies out of trouble.   

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Rival imperialists and their Ukraine agendas

Written by: (Contributed) on 11 May 2024

 

A huge US-led military assistance package for the Ukraine has left little ambiguity in what the Pentagon appears to have assessed as a viable option for prolonging hostilities. 

The Pentagon appears to have drawn up military planning to last several years with the full support of the military industrial-complex. It remains, therefore, to be seen just how long the US-proxy war is kept running and to what cost, financially, and in terms of casualties.

A US-led military intelligence assessment from a senior NATO official about the prevailing balance of forces between the Russian Federation and Europe is best viewed in the context of recent increased western support for the Ukraine. Fears have arisen about western vulnerability to military incursion, particularly in Germany. Some recent developments in Germany have also revealed new Cold War dramas being played out, as a re-run of a previous age.

Toward the end of April an announcement about a previously delayed US$95 billion military package of which two-thirds was destined for the Ukraine, was noted as 'big business for the US defence industry for years to come'. (1) The news was greeted with optimism from Kiev as 'US military jets started flying fresh supplies from Pentagon stocks to Ukraine' the following day. (2) It was noted Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies) were the largest beneficiaries of the already outstanding US$30 billion in federal contracts to supply Ukraine. (3)

The UK military assistance to Ukraine also rests upon previously awarded US$44 billion during the past two years. (4)

The time line of the Pentagon military planning, nevertheless, is particularly revealing; an official media release 'detailed a $66 billion package of new weapons, training and spare parts that will be sent to Ukraine over the next several years … and … Frank St. John, Lockheed's chief operating officer, said the extra funding approved last week would sustain factories for years to come'. (5) No doubt the shareholders are rubbing their hands in glee.

The US economy, it should be noted, is not in a particularly strong position and the failure of Ukraine's armed forces to dislodge areas of the country which are Russian-speaking, has revealed their inability to deal with Moscow's territorial claims. 

The announcement was also accompanied by further military support for Ukraine from US allies: Australia pledged a new A$100 million package of new drones and air defence systems, Canada has allocated $6.154 billion and Japan, $8 billion. (6) Washington appears to have issued directives for their allies to follow.

The developments are best viewed in the context of disclosures from Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank, Commander of NATO's military logistics centre in Germany, who stated 'NATO leaders have suggested the alliance has as little as perhaps three years to consolidate its defences against a possible Russian offensive'. (7) The open source intelligence assessment has placed Germany in the forefront of possible further Russian military incursion.

Elsewhere, similar concerns have also been raised about Russia possibly acquiring basing facilities in Eastern Libya for their nuclear submarines, 'boosting its influence in the central Mediterranean and placing nuclear weapons on Europe's southern flank'. (8) It was also noted, furthermore, that 'Libya is a perfect stepping stone for Russia in Africa as it looks to supply its military presence in Mali, and perhaps Niger, Chad and Burkino Faso'. (9) In recent years imperialist Russia has emerged as a serious challenger to western neo-colonial power in numerous African countries.

While the open source intelligence assessment was linked to interoperability of military equipment and logistics, it noted 'another significant headache for NATO planners is the tangle of regulations restricting the exchange and transport of military equipment'. (10) The Pentagon regarded itself as hindered by numerous political and other obstacles to its military interoperability with different governments in Europe. The implications created by the outcome of the Brexit poll, were not pursued in the intelligence assessment although they clearly remain problematic for the tendering, transportation and logistics of sensitive military equipment.

A recent statement from President Macron has clarified the position of his administration although it had also shown some of the political obstacles: in offering to share France's 'nuclear umbrella to the continent … opposition groups have … voiced outrage at … putting France's nuclear arsenal, consisting of 300 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles, at the service of European neighbours'. (11)

French and German diplomacy was never been particularly straightforward: while France has long treasured a status as a relatively independent military power, Germany has fallen under strict US-led NATO defence and security provision. Similar diplomatic positions exist elsewhere in Europe, as a legacy of the previous Cold War and more recent Brexit.

Moves, for example, by Britain, which have included high-level diplomatic meetings with Germany and increased defence expenditure, were accompanied with the statement 'they were to announce plans for a joint endeavour to develop artillery systems' (12) The stated agenda is one thing, the hidden agenda quite different; the sabre-rattling is intended to prop up the present Conservative administration in Westminster, which has declining support in election year along with Britain not being diplomatically part of Europe for trade, transportation and logistics. Placing sensitive military equipment on the back of a truck destined to Germany, is not as straightforward as the Pentagon would wish.

It is also what has not been openly revealed about Germany's perceived vulnerability which, nevertheless, remains highly relevant; the resurgence of the far-right in the eastern part of Germany and the former GDR, has clearly proved problematic. Forthcoming elections in Germany for the European Parliament are likely to see the far-right Afd being able to create a substantial political power-bloc. In recent years the Putin administration in Moscow has developed strong political links with far-right groups as a means of extending their influence into Europe and elsewhere.

It has been officially noted, for example, that Australia 'is becoming a growing hotbed for far-right extremism given the rapid proliferation of far-right groups and mainstreaming of extremist thought'; many of the groups are openly pro-Russian and have created a huge case-load for the security services. (13)  

Cold War dramas, the logical outcome, are also being played out on the daily basis.

Russian diplomacy toward far-right political groups has also coincided with the discovery of four spies, including one allegedly Chinese agent, working as a parliamentary assistant to Maximilian Krah, a member of the European far-right inside the European Parliament. (14) European countries, in the grip of Cold War paranoia, fear the emergence of a fifth column inside their political systems, particularly lurking under the guise of pro-Russian allies and their Chinese counterparts.

The recent increased US-led military budget for Ukraine would appear aimed at locking Russia into a longer-term war as a means of draining their economy, while deflecting their
attention away from further possible planned incursions elsewhere in Europe and Scandinavia. The US-led military planning might, however, backfire in a spectacular fashion, pushing Russia diplomatically closer to China and draining the US and western economies.

1.     Ukraine aid lifts defence firms amid profit, Australian, 30 April 2024.   
2.     Ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Marles' $100m aid for Ukraine, Australian, 29 April 2024; and, Ukraine deserves more support, Editorial, Australian, 29 April 2024.
7.     NATO must prepare for Russian attack on Europe, generals warn, Australian, 30 January 2024.
8.     Russia eyes nuclear subs base at Tobruk, Australian, 1 February 2024.
9.     Ibid.
10.   NATO, Australian, op.cit., 30 January 2024.
11.   We can share nuclear arms with Europe, says Macron, Australian, 30 April 2024.
12.   Britain to raise military spending, Australian, 25 April 2024.
13.   See: ASIO reveals up to 40% of its counter-terrorism cases involve far-right extremism, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 22 September 2022; and, The shape of far-right extremism in Australia, The Strategist, ASPI., 21 March 2019; and, Scott Morrison signs on with global political network home to 'intolerant far right', The New Daily, 14 September, 2022.
14.   Berlin detains fourth 'China spy', Australian, 25 April 2024.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

What is this economic crisis?

Written by: John G. on 11 May 2024

 

Free Food Pantries have sprung up across cities and towns

The capitalist economic system and US imperialist domination of Australia is very destructive for this country and the working class. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Free Palestine rally leads Melbourne May Day march

Written by: Bill F. on 6 May 2024

 

Highlight of this year’s May Day in Melbourne was the extended march through the city streets led by Free Palestine supporters who had already marched up to Trades Hall from the usual Sunday rally at the State Library.

This more than doubled the numbers who had earlier turned out for the annual May Day rally, this year falling on May 5th. At least 2000 at a guess.

Prior to this, the May Day event attracted a number of trade union members and activists from Construction unions, Plumbers, Maritime workers, Rail Tram and Bus, Nurses and Midwifes, student unions and individual unionists.  

Various radical, revolutionary and environmental groups set up stalls and handed out literature, while banners and placards supported the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Zionism and condemned US imperialism and its criminal AUKUS war pact.

The popular Trades Hall Choir delivered its usual stirring songs of struggle, and a guest speaker from the Construction union deplored the falling living standards faced by working people whose wages and conditions were being whittled away in the face of ever rising costs and lack of social services. Housing, decent education and accessible and affordable healthcare were all getting further out of reach for many families. He called for workers to take action, to increase the level of struggle and not let the bosses get away with it any longer.

The second guest speaker exposed the rotten AUKUS agreement embraced by the Albanese Labor government. Her powerful speech pointed out that it was a war pact designed to tie Australia into a US instigated war with China rather than anything to do with the defence of Australia. She pointed to the sinister role of the US controlled Pine Gap spy base in supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the danger of this being a nuclear target in any war with China. “The only imminent threats to the Australian people’s safety and security come from the aggressive AUKUS war alliance, the US military bases across the country, the secretive US controlled Pine Gap spy base, the nuclear weapons carrying US bombers and warships in our ports and airfields, the AUKUS nuclear powered submarines in our ports, the deadly nuclear waste stored on the lands of the First Nations people, the US-Australia Alliance and the devastation of climate crisis. These are the real threats to our safety and sovereignty.”

She continued, “The Palestinian struggle for liberation is setting the world on fire, exposing the face of imperialism behind the wars of aggression, invasions, military occupations, political and military coups and foreign interferences in countries.”

When the Free Palestine rally marched up, they were given a warm welcome as they joined in the May Day crowd, livening things with drums and music. This continued as the whole combined rally marched through the city and then returned to Trades Hall, chanting “Free, free Palestine!”, “The workers united, will never be defeated!”

On the return to Trades Hall, two Palestinian speakers addressed the crowd, expressing the determination of the Palestinian people to win their liberation in facing the genocide and expressing respect for the solidarity shown to them by people across the world, including many Jewish supporters.

The final speaker was the Chairperson of the Melbourne May Day Committee, Len Cooper. He also denounced the role of US imperialism in financing and arming Israel’s aggression and racist genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Melbourne May Day rally ended with the ceremonial burning of a US effigy and flag, which delighted the crowd and was a fitting recognition of the main enemy of the oppressed people of the world.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Free Palestine Rally Puts University of Adelaide in Spotlight

Written by: Ned K. on 7 May 2024

 

On Sunday, 5 May, supporters of Palestinian peoples struggle against Zionist Israeli government and its imperialist backers once again rallied on steps of Parliament House in Adelaide.

The speakers at the rally included students from University of Adelaide who joined students from campuses throughout USA and other countries and set up a camp on the University grounds.

The speakers let people know that the University of Adelaide was up to its eyeballs in actively seeking more and more involvement of US military companies like Raytheon and Boeing on campus, with the University facilitating research for new weapons of destruction to be used by the USA and Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The students vowed to continue their campus occupation until the University broke all ties with these corporate merchants of death and destruction.

Following the student speeches the MC of the rally advised that the usual route of the demonstration that followed the Sunday rally would divert to the grounds of the University to join the student occupation.

However the police advised that if the march was going to end at the University grounds,  marchers would be banned from taking to the streets and had to walk to the University via the footpaths!

This was not received well by those at the rally!

In response people took to the street and there were so many people who did so that the police backed off and people marched on the streets as they had done every second Sunday for the last seven months in support of Palestinians.

It seemed like the exposure of the University’s deep involvement with the military corporations has hit a vulnerable spot in the image the University and indeed state and federal governments like to build of the University of Adelaide.

The University is on the verge of a merger with the University of SA which is being portrayed as a great opportunity for young people of South Australia to learn in a world class University!

Students want to learn subjects that benefit humanity and the planet. As expressed by them today, they do not want to be researching new weapons for mass destruction.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

How the Australian state machine breeds terrorism

Written by: Louisa L. on 6 May 2024

 

Anti-Vietnam War demonstration outside Phillip Street Court, Sydney. Wiki Commons Image courtesy of the SEARCH Foundation, from the collections of the State Library of New South Wales

In 2003, when Australia joined the US invasion of Iraq, Coalition politicians were obsessed with terrorist threats. 

They ignored the fact that imperialist war is terrorism at its worst. They ignored that Sadam Hussein was an enemy of Al Qaeda. They knew Iraq would become another wartime training ground for terrorists to overflow from the US war on Afghanistan declared just two years earlier, after 9/11.

Yet for years there was only one terrorist attack here, at Sydney’s Lindt Café. The perpetrator was on bail for 43 sexual assaults, and organising his wife’s murder. Not terrorism?

But what has shifted in 20 years since then, for seven teens, at least one with mental illness and disability, to be charged with terrorism? With their right to silence and independent lawyers denied, much reduced levels of evidence needed, and presumption of innocence reversed, not guilty verdicts are unlikely. 
But surely, even with churchgoers quickly defending their priest, a trained terrorist had time to inflict a fatal blow.

US imperialism and traitors like John Howard

People capitalism calls terrorist usually take individual action because they feel powerless against injustice. They don’t understand real change comes from mass action. 

In 2003, at one southwestern Sydney school with a high Muslim enrolment, every staff member, from teachers to cleaners, wore purple ribbons against the war. When students walked out statewide, the school was almost empty of older students of all backgrounds. At a peace assembly, the principal told the whole school, “We should not go to war with Iraq. If we don’t stop the war, at least we will have tried.”

He knew 94 percent of Australians supported his stand. The Muslim community knew their enemies were US imperialism and traitors like John Howard, not our peoples.

And now? At the same school, students have been suspended for refusing to remove the keffiyeh. They’ve been hauled to the principal and berated for drawing Palestine flags on their hands, or wearing Palestine bracelets. 

Teachers at some schools refused orders by principals to remove keffiyehs. Those principals mostly backed down, knowing they risked community backlash.

Staff and students have been told not to discuss Palestine at all. Repeat that at schools across the region. It’s statewide department policy, backed by the government. To their credit, some principals refuse to cave in to this abusive, US imperialist-driven policy.

So, troubled young people without guidance went underground to seek answers.

Funding cuts bite

The NSW Teachers Federation took a good stand on Palestine, much to the fury of Zionists. It has supported staff. But it’s nowhere near as strong as it once was. Funding cuts have savaged the state system. 

State schools enrol the vast majority of students with disabilities, especially the most complex and serious ones. In April, the Australian Education Union revealed, each state school student eligible for Commonwealth disability payments, on average, receive $2,941 while private school students get $10,000. 
The parents of the teenager charged over the stabbing said their son had severe behaviour issues at home and at school. Did that teenager get the help he needed?

Did the school he attended have teachers to staff each class? For two decades, the union repeatedly warned governments of predicted teacher shortages. Ignored! Last year shortages hit with a vengeance. Especially in poorer areas, students frequently had no teachers. Parents who could, turned to private schools. State school enrolments plummeted.

 Instead of tackling the problem, the government squeezed teachers. It demanded deputies and assistant principals head back to classrooms. It didn’t know that in primary schools they’d never left!

For years, elitist private schools with higher wages, better conditions and fewer discipline problems (because any student with problematic behaviours would never be enrolled) lured teachers into their system. 

Collective antidote

Meanwhile, an epidemic of teacher-sackings plagues the state system. It takes just three months to sack a teacher. 

There are still many strong principals who support staff. But authoritarian behaviour and culture is rewarded with promotion. Secretive “Teacher Improvement Programs”, TIPs, are largely a tick-box affair for supervisors. Now union reps are being sacked, or pressured to resign beforehand.

All unions have been systematically disempowered by repressive industrial policies of successive Labor and Coalition governments since the mid-1980s. There’s an old union saying, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’. Even unions that lead successful wages’ strikes can’t survive if they can’t protect their members. 

In 1970, unionists round the country were strong enough ‘to stop work to stop the Vietnam War’. Despite being bigger than the three 1970s anti-war protests, in 2003 the working class didn’t go on strike against Australian war against Iraq. Unions were no longer strong enough.  

Both war and terrorism arise naturally from capitalism. Collectivism, embodied in the working class, is its antidote. It’s time to do much more, learn much more, build organisation and strength. Capitalism is the problem. It has to go!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

May Day rally in Adelaide – strength in diversity in action.

Written by: Ned K. on 5 May 2024

 

On Saturday 4 May, about 2000 people rallied at Tarntanya Warma (Elder Park) and in high spirits marched to Tarntanyangga (Victoria Square)

The rally and march was a "sea" of flags of different colours from the Aboriginal flag to many union flags to Palestinian flags, carried by unionists in their equally colourful union t-shirts.

The rally started with a Welcome to Country from Kaurna woman Rosalind Coleman.

She emphasized the importance to Kaurna people of the starting point of the rally and said that the name of Tarntanyangga, where the march was to end, referred to the red kangaroo and kangaroos only move forward and that was a timely message in itself for a May Day celebration.

The main speaker at the rally was a United Workers Union member who worked in Early Childhood Education. She said that Early Childhood Education workers were one of the first sections of the working class to put the Albanese Government's multi-employer bargaining laws to the test. Thousands of low paid almost entirely women workers in the sector were ready to take industrial action against private for-profit corporate childcare centre owners if they did not agree to at least 25% wage increases as a first step towards valuing the work performed by mainly women workers in what was now an essential service.

A representative of the ACTU spoke about the declining real living standards in Australia manifested in rising prices of food and household goods and the crisis of lack of affordable housing.

The welcomed historic presence of Palestinian flags and members from Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) was a reflection of the ACTU's expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people and their recent demand that the Australian Government end all military trade with Israel. 

The combination of Kauna leader Rosalind Coleman's Welcome to Country, the diversity of unions represented at the rally and the presence of Palestinian flags and AFOPA was a timely reminder that for May Day 2024, the call - "WORKERS AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF THE WORKD UNITE" is as powerful and relevant as ever.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

" property="og:description" />

Australia and Imperialism in the 21st Century

Written by: on

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Organisation is the central aspect of the revolutionary question of arming the masses

Written by: Adam K, on 3 May 2024

 

There has been recent media coverage of the creation of a National Firearms Register with accompanying images of the destruction of firearms surrendered under the Permanent National Firearms Amnesty which began on 1 July 2022. Nearly 30,000 firearms and other weapons have been surrendered under the Amnesty. When these measures were first suggested, in 2018, we discussed the issue in the following article, which we thought it timely to reproduce – eds.

 

Guns and gun control laws are once again a topic for discussion following the news of yet another mass shooting in the United States, this time at a high school in the state of Florida. It is a topic that sparks a wide range of responses from various perspectives.

For Marxist-Leninists it is imperative to understand that the most basic element of a correct revolutionary approach to the gun question is that of organisation.
 
Marxism recognises that fundamentally the State is the instrument for the rule of one class over another. In capitalist society that means the rule of the capitalist class (or bourgeoisie) over the working class (or proletariat). In a superficial democracy, like Australia, the ruling class may first try to maintain its rule through deception via institutions like parliament, but ultimately this rule of the bourgeoisie rests on force and violence. It relies on the police, the law, the courts and the jails. Always backing up this force and violence in case it isn’t enough is the central component of state power: the army. The armed force of the capitalist class can only be overthrown by the armed force of the ideologically and organisationally prepared working class. This is a historically proven universal truth and a basic principle of Marxism-Leninism.
 
This is one reason why some communists and revolutionaries often argue against the call for legislation to prohibit and restrict the ability of ordinary civilians to acquire firearms. In short, they argue it renders the working class unarmed and leaves the state and its agents with a monopoly on armed force. While this is partially true, it still neglects the most decisive factor in the question of armed struggle between the classes; the ideological and political preparation and organisation of the working class into a fighting force under the leadership of the Communist Party.
 
Failure to understand and give this most decisive factor its due importance often means falling in to the trap of bourgeois legalism and overemphasising the importance of this or that particular legal reform in order to defend the working class. From a revolutionary perspective, the legality of the working class owning guns is largely irrelevant. The arming of the organised working class in a revolution will not be dependent on any legal right to do so and acquiring arms will mean doing so by any means available. Sufficient preparation and organisation, as well as correct leadership from the proletarian party, will solve these problems at the appropriate time. 

Marx on arming the proletariat

There is a quote by Marx that is often used by those who argue against the introduction of laws to restrict the sale of firearms to ordinary people to give their argument a ‘Marxist’ justification.
 
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.” – Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, March 1850
 
This cherry-picked quote taken out its historical context, and indeed the context of the surrounding text, seems to justify the arming of the working class under any pretext.

 In 1850, the working class of Europe had already experienced two years of revolutionary upheaval against the remnants of feudalism. In France, the revolutionaries were successful in abolishing the monarchy, but in Germany the revolution was mostly defeated. By 1850, the seizure of power by the petty bourgeois democrats in Germany was imminent, and Marx foresaw that they would turn on the workers’ movement the moment they achieved power. Marx was calling for the workers’ party to “go into battle with the maximum degree of organization, unity and independence, so that it is not exploited and taken in tow by the bourgeoisie as in 1848.”

He was not arguing for the spontaneous and haphazard arming of the working class masses regardless of historical context, or arguing in defence of any existing bourgeois legality to keep and bear arms, but was calling for the maximum organisation of the working class to defend its own independent agenda in a volatile revolutionary situation.
 
The centrality of the element of organisation to Marx’s argument is clear if we read the quote in full.
 
“To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party , whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.”
 
Armed struggle and Australia’s revolution
 
The debate over gun control laws has largely been settled in Australia for the time being, and there is little desire among the Australian people to see the sort of lax gun laws or gun culture that exists in the US.
 
Although notable exceptions exist such as the war of resistance by First Nations people to British colonisation (known as the Frontier Wars) and the Eureka Stockade, historically speaking armed struggle has not been a major form of struggle in Australia. One of the main reasons for this has been the strong hold of the illusions of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and the faith of the people in the forces of social democracy and the trade unions which have time after time been used to defuse and funnel the anger of the people back into the peaceful and legal struggle of the ballot box.
Despite this, the people’s movement is continuously met with the force and violence of the state. We see examples of this with draconian legislation against civil liberties, police assaults, the increasing militarisation of the police force, and the deployment of increasing numbers of riot police and their willingness to deploy non-lethal chemical weapons at otherwise peaceful rallies and protests.

Sooner or later, the people will need to confront this state violence. The fact remains that the highest form of revolution is the seizure of political power by armed force. This is a truth and Australia is no exception. 
 
Following our theory of a two-stage continuous revolution, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) analyses the current stage of Australia’s revolution to be the anti-imperialist universal struggle for independence under the leadership of the working class as the first stage on the road to socialism.
 
To overthrow imperialist domination will require intense revolutionary struggle by Australia’s working class and its allies, and will inevitably be met by the counter-revolutionary force and violence of the reactionary ruling class. To defend against this counter-revolutionary violence the Australian people will need to be well organised for armed struggle.
 
The question of arming the anti-imperialist forces will inevitably arise as the cause of anti-imperialist independence and revolution becomes a mass question. Firstly, this requires the Australian people to be convinced by their own experiences that such a revolution is necessary. But it also requires the Party to be organised deep in the heart of the working class and among other progressive strata of the people, learning from them and in turn teaching them, step-by-step raising their ideological and political understanding. It means building organisations and institutions that can serve their immediate needs and further their struggles, directing them against the main enemy of imperialism in Australia.
 
It is with this spirit of serving the people that our Party and its members approach the revolutionary tasks that lay before us.   

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

May Day Solidarity - Victory for Palestine!

Written by: Alice M. on 30 April 2024

 

Palestinian Resistance Isolates Zionism and US imperialism

By Alice M.
Palestine’s fight for liberation is turning the US imperialist dominated world upside down.

Seven months of relentless Israeli slaughter of the people of Gaza and the West Bank has only spread the flames of Palestinian resistance and the solidarity of the great majority of peoples of the world.

Zionist Israel and its US-led imperialist backers stand isolated and exposed in their massacre of 34,000 Palestinians, nearly half of whom are children. Thousands more are still buried in mass graves under the rubble when Israel bombed countless homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, child care centres, kindergartens and a university.

Not satisfied, Israel is now intent on starving the remaining Palestinian population of Gaza.

Heroic resistance
Yet, Israel, the world’s bloodiest military after the US, armed to the teeth with the most advanced high tech and intelligence weaponry, militarily and politically supported and funded in trillions of dollars by US imperialism, has failed to extinguish the 76 years of the Palestinian  resistance to Zionist Israel’s brutal occupation and oppression.

The seven months of Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank to wipe out the existence of Palestinians, has only strengthened the unity and determination of the 5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to resist and fight for their liberation.

Their steadfast fight against the brutal colonial occupation by the fascist Israeli state is an inspiration and a beacon for millions around the world oppressed by colonialism, capitalism and imperialism.

Israel’s genocide and the heroic Palestinian resistance is mobilising millions around the world in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Millions across the world support Palestine’s struggle for liberation. Palestinians are showing that peoples of the world have the absolute right, and duty, to resist oppression, exploitation and fight for national liberation and freedom.

Seven months into Israel’s invasion and genocide in Gaza and mass rallies of hundreds of thousands across the world in solidarity are growing in numbers and influence.  The Zionist Israeli state and US imperialism are exposed and isolated. 

People’s mass organisations and actions against Israel’s genocide and complicity by imperialist powers and their lackeys, like Australia, have spontaneously sprung up in all corners of the world. People of the world are demanding Israel be boycotted, charged with genocide, and prosecuted before the International Court of Justice for its genocidal war crimes.

US and its lackeys condemned 
The Palestinian struggle has widened the gulf between the people and ruling classes of the capitalist world, sharpening contradictions between the exploited and their exploiters.

Capitalist and imperialist drive for control of the world’s resources, markets and bigger profits are behind Israel’s colonial occupation and genocide. Palestinian liberation is sharpening struggles between the governments of capitalist and imperialist countries and the people.  Palestinian resistance is exposing the leading role of US imperialism and its military industrial complex as accomplices in the genocide.

People power from below is demanding the ruling classes and their governments condemn Israel, stop exporting weapons and aid to Israel.  Dock workers are striking, refusing to handle weapons bound for Israel, banning Israeli shipping lines and blockading international ports.   

Across the world communities are blockading multinational weapons manufacturers’ factories. Students are occupying their universities, demanding multinational weapons corporations are kicked out of universities.  Tens of thousands protesting against Israel and the US are being arrested in the US and Israel.   

Since the start of Zionist Israel genocide in October 2023 in Gaza, growing numbers of Jewish people are condemning Zionism and protesting against Israeli genocide and the 76 years of Zionist occupation of Palestine.  Jewish Anti-Zionist organisations and groups have been formed across the world.

In Australia, Jews Against Zionism, Jews Against the 1948 Occupation, Loud Jew Collective and the reconstituted progressive Jewish Council of Australia are active in the Palestine solidarity movement. The anti-zionist Jewish Council of Australia has commended the university protests and rejected claims that they are antisemitic. https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/media/university-encampments-are-no-threat

In the US, ruling class support for the Zionist Israel genocide is deepening contradictions between the people and monopoly capital, exposing the US hypocrisy. Democrats are losing their supporters as Biden desperately tries to win them back for the next election, crying crocodile tears, asking Israel nicely not to kill “civilians”, and in the same breath sending $26 billion in military aid to assist Israel in its genocide.

The complicity of US-led imperialist powers in the genocide of Palestinian people is exposing the reality of US global “rules-based order”, hastening its political demise. No longer can US imperialism and its lackeys, like Australia, hide their support and complicity in genocide. 

Australia – puppet of US imperialism
As in everything, the puppet Labor government is dancing to the tune of US imperialism, unwilling to veer one small step away from supporting US world domination and colonial Zionist Israel.  In the UN it loyally follows the US and rubber stamps every move to protect Israel’s brutal occupation and genocide.
Meanwhile, US imperialism uses its Pine Gap spy base to provide military intelligence and co-ordinates to assist the murderous Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Australian people are disgusted with the Labor government’s complicity in Israel’s and US massacres. In the middle of Israel’s killings of 34,000 Gazans the Australian government signed a $917 million contract with Elbit, Israel’s biggest developer and manufacturer of weapons.  That’s $1billion gifted to one of the world’s biggest perpetrators of war crimes. 

Zionist Israel in crisis
Israel itself is deeply divided, beginning to implode and on the brink of open fascism.

Fault lines and conflict of interests and strategies are opening up between Israel and the US, its biggest and most important sponsor without whose support Zionist Israel would not have survived as long as it has. Israel is a crucial base for the US economic, political and military dominance in the region.  Palestinian resistance is uniting and mobilising the masses of the Middle East against US imperialism.

Israel’s genocide is showing the world the reality of 76 years brutal colonial occupation. The world is learning about Nakba, about Gaza as a concentration camp created by Israel. About violent and armed Zionist settlers, supported by the Zionist state and Israeli army, stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank and brutally evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.

The world is learning about Israel stealing water and destroying Palestinian farms and olive groves in the West Bank, deliberately making life unbearable for Palestinians to force them to leave or die.  

The world is learning about the thousands of Palestinian prisoners as young as 10 or 12 rotting for years in Israeli gaols for merely throwing a rock at an Israeli Occupying Force (IOF) soldier, for flying a Palestinian flag.  The world is witnessing Israel’s horrific apartheid.

But the Palestinian struggle is turning the tide and shifting the ground for all the oppressed peoples of the world.

As long as the Palestinian people control their own destiny, they will surely be victorious.

Close Pine Gap!
Kick Elbit out of Australia!
Ban Zim and all Israeli shipping companies from entering Australian Ports!
Impose BDS against Israel!
Support Palestine Liberation!
Independence for Australia from all super powers!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

May Day – unite to lift the level of struggle

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 1 May 2024

 

We are reprinting the font page of the paper Vanguard to be distributed free of charge at May Day rallies. The entire paper can be downloaded by clicking the link "Latest Publications" on the left hand side of our homepage. Our Party's statement follows:

 

May Day 2024 sees Australian workers and their communities gripped in a major cost of living crisis. 

Aid agencies and food distribution centres report that it is no longer the unemployed and homeless seeking their support: people in low-paid jobs, people struggling to pay escalating rents and those with mortgages caught out by rising interest rates show that the virus of economic crisis is spreading through the wider community.

No real relief is in sight.

It's called imperialism

At the same time, there are now more billionaires in our country, and their wealth has increased. According to Forbes magazine, Australia’s 50 richest tycoons are collectively better off from a year ago. They added $9 billion or around 4% to take their combined wealth to $222 billion.

On the global stage imperialism continues to wreak havoc. The division of the world into rich and poor nations is backed by oppressive state machines and military pacts. In addition to those serving the needs of US imperialism, there are those of its rivals, Russian imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism. They franticly compete to develop new killing machines and new areas of control. 

Artificial intelligence is identifying people to kill without the need for human oversight. It is being used in Gaza where the Zionists say that it is acceptable to kill 100 citizens using AI “identification” in order to take out one alleged Hamas operative by drone attacks.

In flagrant violation of UN treaties on Outer Space, US imperialism has created the Space Force to ensure US military control of the Space domain.

Australia has agreed to pay the fantastic sum of $368 billion to surrender its sovereignty to US imperialism through the AUKUS arrangements. US spokespersons have confirmed that they expect “our” submarines to take part in any conflict with China over Taiwan. They will determine whether we go to war with our major trading partner.

What does all this mean for May Day in Australia?

May Day is the day of international working class struggle and solidarity for a world free of exploitation, imperialist wars and repression. 

On May Day we express our solidarity with the struggles of the working people of all countries, and send our warmest greetings to the courageous comrades in revolutionary parties and organisations around the world. 

May Day belongs to the working class 

For as long as there are workers determined to fight for the interests of the working class and all oppressed people, no-one can take May Day from us, stamp it out, buy it off, commercialise it or make it acceptable to capitalism. 

It’s a day when workers proudly proclaim their confidence in the future. 

They acknowledge the sacrifices that have been, and will be, made and declare that they will not be deterred by the deceptions and violence of the reactionaries.

Today, the urgent demand is for the defeat of Israeli Zionist genocide and an end to their ethnic cleansing of the homelands of the Palestinian people.

Behind the Zionists stand the US imperialists and their lackeys in various countries.

And beyond the urgency of the defeat of the Israeli aggressors are yet other struggles on every continent against feudalism, capitalism and imperialism and for the rights of working people.

In our country, the best elements of the working class embrace and support the struggles of First Nations peoples, of women and youth, of environmental campaigns, and of struggling rural communities.

The ruling classes use the tactics of racism and religious fundamentalism to try and divide the working class; they prepare war and fascism to try and solve the economic and political crises besetting their system. 

For an independent working class agenda! 

An independent working class agenda, an independent set of demands backed by unity of action in achieving, them are urgently needed. 

That agenda is embedded in struggles against fascism, war and environmental destruction.

We call on Australian workers to strive to lift the level of struggle for the achievement of the people’s demands.

For anti-imperialist independence and socialism!
Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

ICOR May Day statement

Written by: ICOR on 30 April 2024

 

Our Party is an affiliate of the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR). The ICOR May Day statement was drafted by us and based onour own May Day statement which is the lead article on the hard copy of Vanguard which will be distributed at May Day rallies. We will post our statement tomorrow - eds.

 

To all ICOR members 

May Day call of ICOR on initiative of CPA(M-L) Australia: 

May Day – let us unite and develop our struggles! 

26 April 2024 

May Day is the day of international working class struggle and solidarity for a world free of exploitation, imperialist wars, environmental destruction and repression. 

On May Day we in ICOR express our solidarity with the struggles of the working people of all countries, and send our warmest greetings to the courageous comrades in revolutionary parties and organisations around the world. We are united in the struggle for socialism all over the world. 

May Day belongs to the working class 

For as long as there are workers determined to fight for their own class interests and those of all oppressed peoples, no-one can take May Day from us, stamp it out, buy it off, commercialise it or make it acceptable to capitalism. 

It’s a day when workers proudly proclaim their confidence in the future. 

They acknowledge the sacrifices that have been, and will be, made and declare that they will not be deterred by the deceptions and violence of the reactionaries. 

Today, unjust, imperialist wars are flaring up in various hot spots around the world. The Israeli Zionist genocide and ethnic cleansing of the homelands of the Palestinian people must be stopped immediately. Behind the Zionists stand the US imperialists and their lackeys and accomplices in various countries. So it is urgently necessary to defeat the Israeli Zionist aggressors. Beyond that there are other struggles on every continent against feudalism, capitalism and imperialism and for the rights of working people. 

The need for mutual support and proletarian internationalist unity of all progressive forces is more evident than ever. Thus the fight to defeat the Russian imperialist invasion of Ukraine and against US and NATO expansion in Eastern Europe; to defend Rojava against fascist Turkey’s attacks; to end conflicts in Sudan and the Congo; to prevent aggression against Yemen; against US-China rivalry in the Indo-Pacific; against Indian encroachment on Nepal; on the fight for West Papuan independence from Indonesia. 

Working people around the world are under immense and fierce attack from the imperialists and corporate ruling classes. The decaying system of capitalism is in economic and political crisis. Millions of people are struggling to make ends meet, more are thrown into poverty. At the same time, billions in profits, created by the labour of workers, are taken by the parasitic ruling class. Capital’s war on the working class and nature is relentless and escalating. Fight to improve the social situation of the broad masses! Fight to protect the natural environment, the basis of our life! 

The ruling classes use the tactics of racism and religious fundamentalism to divide the working class; they prepare war and fascism to try and solve the economic and political crises besetting their system.

But around the world the masses are rising up, especially against fascism and in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. The international working class is speaking out, with a 6-week strike by automobile workers of several monopolies together in the USA and fearless struggles by textile workers in Bangladesh for higher wages.

For an independent working class agenda! 

An independent working class agenda, class demands, and unity of action to achieve the demands of the working class are urgently needed. 

That work is embedded in the agenda of the anti-imperialist united front against fascism, Zionism, war and environmental destruction.

ICOR calls on all revolutionary parties and organisations to strive to lift the level of struggle for the achievement of the people’s demands.

Long live May Day - long live socialism! 

Signatories (as of 29 April 2024)
1. PCPCI Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast) 
2. UPC-Manidem Union des Populations du Cameroun - Manifeste National pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie (Union of Populations of Cameroon - National Manifesto for the Establishment of Democracy) 
3. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist) 
4. PCT Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo) 
5. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia 
6. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh 
7. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal 
8. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) 
9. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina) 
10.MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany) 
11.UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France 
12.KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg) 
13.RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands 
14.UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union) 
15.RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party) 
16.MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)
 17.KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine 
18.UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia
19.OAPCM Organización Apoyante del Partido Comunista de México (Supporting Organization of the Communist Party of Mexico) 
20.PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent)) 
21.PPP Partido Proletario del Perú (Proletarian Party of Peru) 
22.PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic 
23.APR Ação Popular Revolucionária (People’s Revolutionary Action), Brazil 
24.CPPD Chinese People's Party for the Defense of Mao Zedong
Additional signatories (Non-ICOR): 
SUCI (C) Socialist Union Center of India (Communist)

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

   May Day 2024

" property="og:description" />

May Day 2024

Written by: on

 

   May Day 2024

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Civil defence and the imperialist agenda

Written by: (Contributed) on 28 April 2024

 

The release of a report from a right-wing defence and security lobby organisation with strong links to the military-industrial complex was timed to coincide with the release of the government’s 2024 National Defence Strategy in Canberra. Military planners appear to be considering a return to civil defence provision along similar lines to that used in the previous Cold War. Sensitive military documents from the period, which were subsequently declassified, have revealed some areas of serious concern; the same problems are now set to reappear in contemporary Australia.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Congratulating the DFLP on the success of its eighth national conference

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 28 April 2024

 

We recently received the good news from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) about the successful conclusion of their eighth national conference. We immediately sent them the following congratulatory message for which Comrade Fouad Baker at the DFLP's Foreign Office has thanked us. A message of congratulations to the DFLP was also sent by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine  - eds

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

A workers’ party of a new type

Written by: Ned K. on 25 April 2024

 

If you ask people what comes to mind when you ask them the question "what political party, if any, do you support?" many people will say the Liberal Party or Nationals or Labor Party or the Greens or even "the Teals". An increasing number of people will say " None, they're all the same!"

What all these parties have in common is that they equate a political party with parliament and the people's involvement being the one day of the year every three or four years when elections are held.

Within official trade union circles, most are affiliated to the ALP and their leaderships urge their members to vote Labor because they are "better than the Liberals". If members ask for more information, they may get told that both the Unions and the Labor Party are part of the " labour movement".

So many workers especially, generation after generation, have voted for the Labor Party in the hope of significant changes to their working, family and community lives. More and more workers question what type of "labour movement" the Labor Party leaders are talking about. The decline of the Labor primary vote at elections is an indication of this disillusionment with the Labor Party as the working people's political party. 

Kevin Rudd, the former Labor Party leader and Prime Minister, gave an insight in to what the ALP's "labour movement " means in his first parliamentary speech in December 2006 when he said,

"Our movement for a century fought against Marxism, if you bother to read your history. We have had nothing to do with Marxism and madness. We have always seen our role as what we can do to civilize the market. That is where we come from as a tradition...So when it comes to our Labor values of equity, sustainability and compassion, we do not just believe that these, in themselves, are self-sufficient and worthy of being pursued. We also hold that they are values necessary to enhance the market itself."

Yet it is the volatility of the so-called "free market" of the system Rudd talked about that led to hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs as one manufacturing industry after another moved overseas because the "free market" was more profitable for the capitalists. 

The Labor Party and all parliamentary parties and even the ACTU leaders were powerless to stop it at best and at worst supported this "free market" destructive impact on working people's lives.

Workers Party of a New Type

One day about twenty years ago in Melbourne, I was at a union and community meeting about what needed to be done for workers to break out of the cycle of hope and disappointments experienced with Labor in parliamentary office, I heard a woman who identified as Dulcie (above) start talking about how workers needed a Party of a new type. Someone asked her what she meant by a "Party of a new type".

She replied with words to the effect that parliamentary politics and their parties were a very limited form of democracy which was outside of the involvement and control of the people who put them into parliament on election day. 

She said that people sensed this, and this is why workers and community struggles and issue-based organizations arise on all sorts of issues.
She said in all these struggles, leaders arise at the grass roots level. Some of these leaders were invited to channel struggles into parliamentary channels, but not many. Most remained leaders among the people involved in their particular struggle and community.

Dulcie said that what was needed in her view was a political Party that linked all the leaders within the myriad of people's struggles into an unbreakable network across the whole country. Such an organization would unite people for fundamental change of society away from capitalism's "free market" economy. 

Someone asked Dulcie why she thought this would happen. She replied that through exchange of views between grass roots leaders and exploring ideas and social theories that served working people and their communities rather the free market and profit motive, a people's movement would develop so powerful that the parliament and the small minority of corporations would be overcome and a new society of socialism serving people not profit would emerge. She said the big money people and those with privileges in parliament would not give up without a fight, but "we are many, they are few" 

She said that was what the CPA (ML), of which she was a member, was striving to become: a Party of a new type, but that it was the working people themselves who would determine if it "made the grade".

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Before Sydney stabbings, capitalism’s cupboard was bare for mental health

Written by: Louisa L. on 24 April 2024

 

(Above: Outside Bondi Westfields where seven people died on April 13)

The tattered remnants of public mental health care in NSW are held together by family members and volunteers. 

The week before six people were fatally stabbed in Bondi, and a mentally ill 16-year-old stabbed a priest, two Uniting Church psychiatric hospitals were closed in Sydney, because they were losing money.

When six strangers in a crowded public place are killed, grief and shock is inevitable. The media fans it to fever pitch. But people are frequently “murdered” by family members suffering psychotic episodes. And police too often shoot mentally ill people who ought to have been in hospital or long-term residential rehabilitation. 

Instead of suggesting triple zero and an ambulance, when “you or someone you know” is mentally ill, the media choruses Lifeline and Beyond Blue. A young friend frequently uses Lifeline’s skilled volunteer services.  Being alone and suicidal is not enough to be admitted to hospital – unless she’s taken an overdose.

On a pension she pays private health cover, so she can have occasional and much needed treatment in an expensive private hospital.

After the ambulance left 

The mental health system is designed to stop people being hospitalised, unless they have money to pay, and they are well enough to understand they need help. 

Last winter, under a suburban Sydney neighbourhood centre awning in pouring rain, a close friend, a mother and two adult daughters, waited for police and an ambulance.

It had taken hard arguing to convince my friend that police be called after her 16-year-old son threatened them, so he could be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. A centre worker did unpaid overtime while they talked. 

What happened? The son, who had previously assaulted his mother, sister and brother, assured the ambulance officers and police he wouldn’t harm himself or anyone else. Imagine the family’s vulnerability when the police and ambulance officers left. Instead of a dangerously ill young person receiving necessary treatment, the three women each found separate accommodation. An uncle and a youth worker checked on my friend’s son the next day, but he lived alone for over two weeks until his still fearful mother returned.

Desolation and grief

But his family’s grief is nothing compared to the desolation of the Bondi attacker’s parents whose son endured a living nightmare, denied desperately-needed health care, his life ended in such terrible circumstances. Nor does my friend’s ongoing worry compare to the grief of the families of those killed in that suburban shopping centre, or the family of the 16-year old on terrorism charges.

The media babbles about “people falling through the cracks in the mental health system”. What system? It’s not cracked. It’s been dismantled brick by brick because the mentally ill and their families are weak and unable to defend themselves. They are the bottom of capitalism’s heap. Their treatment is expensive, not privately profitable. They are disposable.

Mentally ill people are disproportionately part of the homelessness epidemic. Alongside First Peoples, alongside the poor and illiterate, mentally ill people fill our jails. Because under capitalism there’s always money for jails to mop up its normal functioning.

NSW Premier Minns announced an $18 million inquiry into what went wrong in the lead-up to the Bondi stabbings. Unless it’s accompanied by struggle to reinstate public mental health care at all levels, it will be just another whitewash. We know the state government funding cupboard is bare, after decades of corporate plunder and privatisations. 

For mental health, it’s been empty for decades. More deaths, more suffering – that’s capitalism’s promise to profoundly ill people and their families. Seven more dead and a 16-year-old charged with terrorism? Collateral damage. Nothing $18 million, plus media evasions and a lot of sorry talk, can’t sweep from sight. 

We need a new system. We need a revolution.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Productivity Commission wonks still pushing discredited economic rationalism

Written by: (Contributed) on 24 April 2024

 

(Above: The designers of this Mambo t-shirt understood the link)

Commentary from right-wing economic figures about the failure of globalisation to provide sustainable growth have revealed their sense of denial about the main cause of the problem. 

Their failure to also provide a satisfactory explanation for the increasingly dysfunctional state of economic affairs has provided further insights into their peculiar mind-sets.

A serious of pronouncements from two right-wing figures with links to the Productivity Commission have revealed just how out-of-step they are with reliable economic criteria; their continued pushing of an economic rationalist agenda has been shown to not produce sustainability or growth. In fact, a recent IMF report has shown the advanced economies hover at below two per cent growth rates, with little sign of an upturn. (1)

Longer term projections have also shown a steady decline of GDP from the time of the global financial crisis in 2008 to a projection it will sink to zero toward the end of the present decade. (2)

It is, however, the pronouncements of those guiding or commenting of government policy which require scrutiny.

Michael Brennan, former head of the Productivity Commission, for example, has drawn attention to 'three decades of uninterrupted growth which followed the early 1990s recession'; it is not supported with reliable economic criteria or statistics. (3) The Commission is an official Australian government body, nevertheless, with extensive glitzy websites which have advisory capacities. It would appear to be truly stacked with right-wing coalition supporters and others of a similar ilk.   

The present economic debate has become increasingly focussed upon levels of government intervention to provide stable growth and a political division between those who continue to support economic rationalism and those who question its prolonged use.

The general implementation of economic rationalism grew out of right-wing think-tanks during the early 1980s which influenced international financial institutions controlled by the US and Wall Street. Earlier, the Chilean military coup in 1973, had established a test-tube for those linked to the Chicago School of Economics which had quietly pushed economic rationalism for decades, behind the scenes inside the corridors of power.

Economic rationalism was, however, only part of a much bigger picture to place the US at the centre of the global economy.

Submitting as report to US Congress on 21 July 1994 about the so-called New World Order, then President Clinton defined the three main elements of security policy: to enhance security by maintaining a strong defence capability and promoting co-operative security measures; to open foreign markets and spur economic growth; and to promote US-style democracy overseas.

The outcome was the wholesale implementation of economic rationalist policies which included three elements: de-regulation, privatisation, liberalisation.

Economic rationalism has been economic vogue thinking for nearly half a century; the present state of affairs has been the readily observable outcome. The floods of finance capital flung to the four corners of the globe has produced dysfunctional economies often leading to political instability and crisis. The vision of those in control of international financial institutions was akin to that of a casino, where risk-taking was commonplace. It also created the conditions for a drastically reduced manufacturing base in Australia, which subsequently led to revised GDP totals in an ever downward spiral.

An eighteen-month study conducted by the US National Security Council using independent economists found it unlikely globalisation 'would lead to general well-being … because the gap between rich and poor – both between countries and within them – is growing'. (4) The study, conducted around the start of the present century, was subsequently leaked to a Spanish language media outlet, although never publicised in English language outlets and was allowed to remain relatively hidden, for obvious reasons.

The distribution of income from globalisation remains noteworthy; in fact, it can be successfully argued economic rationalism was never intended to provide a sustainable model, only to enrich the already rich and powerful. It was a means to reduce the bargaining power of labour and hinder their political opposition in favour of the business-classes and their cronies overseas, thereby strengthening traditional class and state power.

Early studies of the model showed the income of the advanced countries rose from eleven times greater than the developing world, to 23 times larger by 2000. (5) Economic rationalism can therefore best be viewed as a form of neo-colonialism. Within countries the rapid emergence of billionaires has been well recorded. (6) The manner in which such people flout their wealth on the Forbes websites while paying their workforces well below CPI and inflation rates reveal a great deal about their mind-sets and limited vision of the world. They reside in a parallel world, devoid of the working-class. The fact the latter produce the wealth and the former acquire it, is an issue they never address.

Recent studies of the Australian economy have revealed massive differences between rich and poor. Average wealth of the top ten per cent of the population have recorded faster growth rates than the lowest sixty per cent since 2003. (7) The wealth of the top ten per cent also soared 84 per cent, from $2.8 million to $5.2 million, whereas the lowest sixty per cent only rose 55 per cent, from $220,000 to $343,000. (8) The poorest twenty per cent of Australians had a recorded average wealth of just $41,000, which is only seventeen per cent higher than it was in 2003. (9)

It was noted from a study conducted by the University of NSW and the Australian Council of Social Service that the average housing wealth for those in the lowest twenty per cent of the Australian population was zero. (10)

The wealth gap, for those under 35 years of age, is even more startling; it recorded the lowest sixty per cent accruing an increase in their wealth rising by only 39 per cent, from $68,000 in 2003 to $80,000 in 2022, while the highest ten per cent rose 126 per cent in the same period, from $928,000 to $2 million. (11)  

Despite the spurious motives for retaining economic rationalism, it can clearly be established to not have produced sustainable growth anywhere, or a betterment of life-styles
for the vast majority of people.

When challenged, however, right-wing economists continue to defend the model although they are inclined to offer furphies as additional factors. Those linked to the Productivity Commission, for example, have drawn attention to the failure of Australian entrepreneurs to register patents. Stating Australia is 'among the least innovative economies in the world', a report has recorded under ten per cent of registered patents are Australian-based as opposed to the US where more than seventy per cent are used by US businesses. (12)

The report does not refer to the fact that Australia only contributes 1.67 per cent of global GDP, whereas the US has a 25.3 per cent standing. (13)

Criticism from the Productivity Commission about recent government grants to support Australian manufacturing, likewise, has been revealing, with statements issued which have included reference to 'a return to old think industry protectionism', and not establishing a revival of a strong manufacturing base. (14)

The fact their economic model of choice has proved dysfunctional and created a state of affairs whereby an IMF projection for Australia's GDP being only 1.5 per cent this year, possibly increasing to two per cent in 2025, has, likewise, been conveniently ignored.   

The Productivity Commission and those linked to the organisation can best be regarded as benefiting from economic rationalism and therefore have no reason to change the model; they are quite content to languish in economic mediocrity.

1.     IMF warns on 'stalling' progress to reduce inflation, Australian, 17 April 2024.
2.     Economic decline, 'Goodbye good times, hello reality', Australian, 11 April 2024.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Hunger does not subside and slavery returns, Granma International (Havana), 24 June 2001.
5.     How globalisation fuels poverty, Socialist Campaign Group News (Westminster, London), July 2005.
6.     See: Survival of the Richest, OXFAM Report, 2000.
7.     'Disturbing' gap between haves and have nots, The New Daily, 18 April 2024.
8.     Ibid.
9.     Australian, op.cit., 11 April 2024.
10    Bonanza for rich leaves poor in their wake, Australian, 18 April 2024.
11.   Ibid.
12.   Ibid.
13.   World GDP, World Bank, 25 July 2023.
14.   Australian, op.cit., 11 April.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Honour the Past, Fight for the Future

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 24 April 2024

 

With May Day fast approaching, we reprint the editorial from the 8-page Vanguard newspaper that will be distributed at rallies and marches. It is free of charge, so look out for our distributors and take your own copy – eds.

On May Day, class conscious workers come together to express solidarity with comrades across the world in their struggles for liberation, peace, justice and a decent life.

Only the working class has these deep feelings of international class solidarity, based on their recognition that they are all victims of the class system, all subject to exploitation, abuse, deceit, and all threatened by the murderous war policies of imperialism.

At gatherings, The Internationale rings out, “Arise ye workers from your slumbers, arise ye prisoners of want…” calling on the class to take up its historic mission of leading the masses through fundamental social change that eventually wipes out the class system altogether.

In places, The Red Flag is also sung, recalling the bitter struggles and sacrifices the working class has endured. It pays tribute to the heroes and martyrs that resisted the violence of the state, the hired thugs and fascists. “The workers’ flag is deepest red, it shrouded oft our martyred dead, and ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.”

In spite of defeats, oppression and betrayals, the working class never gives up, has no choice other than to struggle for survival and a better life, as the chorus rings out “Then raise the scarlet banner high, beneath its shade we’ll live or die, though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the red flag flying here.”

Australia’s working class 
Workers in this country have won many hard-fought battles against local and foreign capitalists and multinational corporations. In the post-war years they achieved improving living standards and some progressive social benefits through union action and solidarity.

But, ever since the days of the Accord under the Hawke government, union membership has fallen away in many trades and professions, with most of the remaining unions falling in behind the parliamentary Labor Party and only mobilising members at election time.

Consequently, there is little strike action, little ACTU activity outside of the courthouse, and practically no solidarity actions which are now illegal.

Result – falling wages, unemployment, rampant cost of living increases, housing and rental crisis, small businesses going broke, banks and supermarkets screwing their customers ever harder.

Capitalism reasserts itself as always. The lesson for workers is that whatever is won by struggle will always be challenged and whittled away, and this cycle can only be finished when capitalism is replaced by socialism. 

Imperialism and the globalised economy 
But that is only part of the story. At the same time, this “restructuring” of the economy encouraged further multinational investment and eventual control of key sections of Australian industries.

Obscene profits and rampant speculation followed, as the rich get even richer while the workers go backwards.

The political influence of US imperialism has now become dominant, reflected in the operational control of Pine Gap, the AUKUS deal and the growing intrusion into Australian military bases and airfields by the US military, aided and abetted by the sucking up antics of the current and previous Labor and Liberal governments.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Swissport CEO shows contempt for workers

Written by: Duncan B. on 22 April 2024

 

Recently, Australia was graced by a visit from Warwick Brady, who is the President and CEO of Swissport, which is a giant Zurich-based airline ground handling company.

Swissport controls 45% of the Australian market, and 15% world-wide. It is looking to expand its cargo and airport lounge interests. 

This company is the one to which Qantas outsourced its baggage handling operations in 2020, with the loss of 1700 jobs at ten airports in Australia. The Transport Workers’ Union took Qantas to the Federal Court, which found that Qantas acted illegally, and could not prove that its decision to outsource its baggage handling was not motivated by a desire to avoid industrial action from airport unions.

Brady defended the outsourcing of ground handling by airlines, claiming that this allowed for lower airfares for passengers. Commenting on the Qantas court case he is quoted as saying, “For Qantas, the economic benefits plus the service benefits are still better for the outsourcing.” He went on to say, “In the end, if you’ve got a workforce that costs you a lot of money, your passengers are going to pay more.”

He is also quoted as saying, “unions sometimes get in the way of market dynamics.”

If workers fighting against employers for their rights and for better pay and conditions is “getting in the way of market dynamics,” we are all in favour of workers’ struggle!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Book Review: SLOW DOWN

Written by: Duncan B. on 20 April 2024

 

Slow Down. How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth, by Kohei Saito is the second recently-released book which we are reviewing. Kohei Saito is a Marxist scholar and an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. He is a member of the MEGA project which aims to publish the complete works of Marx and Engels, including many works never previously published. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Book Review: VULTURE CAPITALISM

Written by: Duncan B. on 20 April 2024

 

Vulture Capitalism. Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom by Grace Blakeley is the first of two recently-released books which we will be reviewing. Grace Blakely is a staff writer at the English magazine Tribune, and is a political and economic commentator for the BBC.

The book is based around the idea of planning under capitalism. We are led to believe that capitalism is based on the free market, and planning is something that happened in places like the former Soviet Union. However there is a very large element of planning under capitalism.

It is the author’s aim to show how capitalist planning works and how we can start to resist it. She aims to discuss what capitalism is, how it has changed over time, while centralised planning has remained constant. Major institutions capable of planning within capitalist societies: firms, financial institutions, states and empires are examined.  On p13 the author says, “Finally I’ll outline how we can start to replace the current system of oligarchic capitalist planning with democratic socialist planning.”

Vulture Capitalism begins by exposing some of the many scandals surrounding big companies such as Boeing’s sales of faulty aircraft, Henry Ford’s relations with Nazi Germany, the collapse of companies such as Enron and the financial crisis of 2008.

In a chapter titled "Disaster Capitalism" the author exposes how many companies benefitted during the COVID pandemic, receiving large handouts and lucrative government contracts. She shows how companies are benefitting from the climate change emergency and the rise in energy costs arising from the war in Ukraine.

Vulture Capitalism exposes how big corporations, financial institutions such as banks and governments unite to bail out failing companies, including those which really should be allowed to collapse, but which have friends in the right places.

The author refers to initiatives being taken in various countries to base planning at the community level where local people and community organisations are planning for the needs of their communities in areas such as health, education and infrastructure. She sees initiatives like these as a way forward.

However she does recognise that the capitalist state does use violence when challenged. Her analysis of the destruction of the Allende government in Chile makes this clear. She says (p269), “Socialists must struggle within and outside all social institutions - including those of the state - to shift the balance of power within society in favour of workers.”

Vulture Capitalism gives the reader much useful information about the workings of capitalism. A positive feature of Vulture Capitalism is that the author refers regularly to Marx and other Marxist writers in explaining the operation of capitalism and in developing her arguments against it, showing that Marx’s theories are as relevant today as they ever were.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

ADSTAR: Info-wars and the military, Canberra, 2024

Written by: (Contributed) on 23 April 2024

 

The organisers of the Australian Defence Science, Technology and Research (ADSTAR) summit in Canberra in September have already publicised their provisional agenda. Representatives of key US allies and defence and security partners are already registered to attend. One of the listed items has far-reaching implications for Cold War Australia; it is doubtful, however, that conference delegates will be discussing the item in the context of a recent US legal decision about non-legitimate intelligence-gathering techniques.

The main agenda for the forthcoming ADSTAR summit has six listed items: hypersonic missiles, directed energy, trusted autonomy, quantum technologies, information warfare, long-range fires. (1) Organisers of the summit are expecting in excess of 1,700 delegates, 'including a line-up of international luminaries' to attend the event, which will provide the military-industrial complex with bigger defence budgets and increased likelihood of 'real-war scenarios', more likely than not, in the Indo-Pacific region.

It has already been publicised the summit will include defence leaders being part of panel-led discussions to prioritise what they regard as 'opportunities across the military realm', from India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, the UK and US together with Australia. (2) It has been noted that Heidi Shyu, US Under-Secretary of research and engineering at the Department of Defence will deliver the keynote speech, while no Australian figures have so far been named as participating at that level.

War, and the preparations for war, are, quite clearly, big business. And ADSTAR figures are, no doubt, rubbing their hands with glee. With western defence budgets set to increase over the next decade, the ADSTAR summit would appear a central consideration for the pushing of military agendas.

It is, however, the fifth listed agenda item which is the most revealing for contemporary Australia; information warfare and countering disinformation campaigns have become a major problem in recent years and has become a major pre-occupation with law enforcement agencies. (3) While it has generally been accepted that social media has enabled disgruntled and disaffected users to gravitate toward conspiratorial far-right political organisations, which then espouse anti-science disinformation and distrust in government, it is also the ability of the state to harvest vast troves of personal information with intelligence-gathering techniques which raise alarm.

A recent legal decision in the US has revealed how Google had tracked users without their knowledge. The outcome of a class-action lodged in a San Francisco federal court, has led Google to plan to destroy a vast trove of data collected from millions of people about their web-browsing histories. (4) It was noted by a lawyer who represented consumers that, 'the settlement required Google to delete and remediate in unprecedented scope and scale the data it improperly collected'. (5)

The legal decision did not, however, note how Google was party to the improper methods of intelligence-gathering from its earliest beginnings. Revelations emerging about US-led intelligence-gathering during the previous Cold War by using Crypton AG equipment also provided information about their later use of the internet; it was noted, for example, that the US National Security Agency's attention eventually 'shifted to finding ways to exploit the global reach of Google, Microsoft, Verizon and other US technical powers'. (6) Such state-controlled intelligence-gathering techniques remain outside usual legal jurisdiction; there is little, if any, accountability.

As attendees of the forthcoming ADSTAR summit participate in the part of the conference dealing with information warfare and countering disinformation, it is extremely unlikely any consideration will be given to the role of their intelligence services trawling daily through confidential communications between internet users. The fact the information accessed by the state is frequently used for profiling purposes was also not addressed in the recent US legal decision; or whether Google had already passed such information onto interested third parties for a whole variety of motives.

1.     Strategic advantage key to ADSTAR conference, Defence Science and Technology supplement, Australian, 3 April 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     See: Australia's far right gets COVID anti-lockdown protest booster, Aljazeera, 5 October 2021.
4.     Google to destroy its 'Incognito' data, Australian, 3 April 2024.
5.     Ibid.
6.     The intelligence coup of the century, The Washington Post, 11 February 2020; and, Compromised encryption machines, The Washington Post, 17 February 2020; and, Operation Condor: The CIA is not innocent, The Guardian (U.K.), 23 February 2020.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

ACOSS survey and the need for a revolutionary class analysis

Written by: Alan Jackson on 23 April 2024

 

Above: Anti-poverty activists in 2021

Everyday life is getting harder for the average person. This is disproportionately the case for First Nations people, Immigrants, Precarious workers and Pensioners, who are being impacted the hardest in these hard times. 

History continues to show us that under capitalism the poor stay poor while the rich get richer. Time and time again history continues to show us this fact. The fundamental issue in this is Class. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Rail workers strike for a living wage

Written by: Ned K.. on 20 April 2024

 

(Above: RTBU organiser Hayden Boyle)

Rail workers including suburban train drivers in Adelaide are taking strike action to win a 20% pay rise over four years. 

In their way stands multinational corporation Keolis Downer who operates the suburban train services under contract to the SA Government.

A 20% pay rise over 4 years is by no means an exorbitant wage claim when inflation rates and increases in cost-of-living increases in real terms are arguably higher than 5% per year.

Keolis Downer's current wage offer is 14.7% over 4 years.

The Rail, Tram and Buses Union (RTBU) members have taken strike action of 4 hour to 5-hour periods of time a couple of times a week over the last two weeks.  They have timed the stoppages to escalate the impact of the action which has included overtime bans.

On Friday 19 April, the RTBU members telegraphed to Keolis Downer and the SA Government that they would strike for 24 hours on Thursday 2 May if Keolis Downer did not agree to members’ claims.

Thursday 2 May is the same day that the two SA based AFL teams Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide play their first of two annual "showdown" games. With no trains running on that day, the SA Government will have to organize extra buses to provide alternative public transport to and from the Adelaide Oval. Thousands of fans travel by train to the games and businesses will be pressuring Keolis Downer and the SA Government to "resolve the dispute" before Thursday 2 May.

Bread and Circuses

A big part of the Malinauskas Government's strategy is to keep the people happy by feeding them one "circus" after another in one form or another. The showdown football matches between Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide are two of the annual "circuses",

The potential 24-hour strike action on 2 May will disrupt the showdown "circus " but the SA Government also knows that workers like the RTBU need more than the cost of "bread" being offered by Keolis Downer. 

Publicly the Government is saying that the dispute is an industrial matter between the employer Keolis Downer and its employees represented by the RTBU. Behind the scenes though, bet London to a brick that the Government is in earnest talks with both Downer and RTBU. An added concern for the SA Government is that the higher wages rail workers win, the more likely that other public sector workers will want to match it in their Enterprise Agreements where the SA Government is their employer and the harder it will be for private capitalist businesses to keep wages as low as possible. 

The Malinauskas Labor Government is finding out that it is no easy task to make capitalism acceptable to workers and at the same time be viewed favourably by capitalists!

Suburban trains were outsourced to Keolis Downer by the previous Liberal Government. The Malinauskas led Labor Government won the last state election in March 2022 vowing to reverse the outsourcing of train services if it won the election. 

In 2023 it announced that it would phase out Keolis Downer's contract over four years with train drivers the first to once again be directly employed by the SA Government in late 2025 and other Keolis Downer employees becoming government employees by the end of 2027.

How seriously will the SA Government be looking at introducing an automated rail transport system with no train drivers?  

They would be aware this has occurred in a limited way in NSW. 

Another aspect of the dispute is that the RTBU is a relatively small union. In the age of big unions covering many different industries, the RTBU has maintained its identity and independence and a high level of member engagement in the running of the dispute and solidarity between members.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Communist Party of the Philippines: Persist in armed struggle, frustrate US war plans

Written by: Communist Party of the Philippines on 17 April 2024

 

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CCP) has issued an important statement calling on its New People’s Army (NPA) to continue the armed struggle against the oppression of the Filipino people. It has also called on the Filipino people to reject US plans to turn the Philippines into a base for war against its imperialist rival, China. We salute the CCP and the NPA and call on Australians to oppose Australian military ties with the US-Marcos regime – eds.

 

The NPA must fight more to defend oppressed Filipinos, and to stop US from dragging PH in war against China
 Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines
March 31, 2024

1.The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA) and all revolutionary forces roundly reject Gen. Romeo Brawner call for Red fighters to abandon the armed struggle. The need to wage armed struggle is now greater than ever before amid the worsening socioeconomic conditions and oppression of the Filipino people and threats to the country’s sovereignty.

For the broad masses of peasants, workers, and other toiling people suffering from land grabbing, economic dispossession, low wages, joblessness, and other forms of gross social injustice, waging armed struggle now is ever more just and necessary. The US-Marcos regime has aggravated the situation of the people by serving the interests of foreign capitalists to the detriment of the Filipino people’s welfare and rights.

Under Marcos, the fascist reactionary armed forces has become even more aggressive and brutal in driving the peasant masses and indigenous minorities from their land to allow mining companies, plantations, real estate, energy and other infrastructure projects to expand their environmentally-destructive business operations.

Only by having the New People’s Army can the peasant masses effectively fight back against the onslaught of foreign and big business economic aggressors. In the interest of the broad toiling masses, the armed struggle can never be abandoned. To fight with arms is the only way for the oppressed to defend their life and dignity and fight for a better future.

2. In the face of increasing danger of the Philippines being dragged by the US military to its conflict with China, there is even greater need for the NPA to fight vigorously. The NPA must further intensify the armed struggle to help prevent US plans to fully utilize the country as a springboard for its acts of aggression. The US imperialists want to see an end to the NPA’s armed struggle so it can fully utilize the AFP as a pawn in its plans of aggression and hegemonic expansion.

General Brawner is a remorseless US mouthpiece when he declared in his statement that “external forces”, clearly referring to China, “undermine Philippine sovereignty and challenge our rights.” Brawner is utterly hypocritical to claim defending the country’s freedom against external forces when as chief of the armed forces, he has opened a number of Armed Forcesof the Philippines (AFP) camps to give foreign military forces from the US extraterritorial rights to station its troops and military equipment, and turn the country’s land and water as their playground.

The US military forces in the Philippines have been using the AFP and the Philippine Coast Guard to raise the temperatures of military conflict in the West Philippine Sea through joint patrols, as well as US-backed “supply missions.” These operations are succeeding in pushing back against China’s incursions into Philippine maritime territory, but are being done at the expense of allowing US and its NATO allies to position their naval forces in Philippine waters.

The US plans to turn Marcos into a new Zelensky–a shameless beggar of military and economic aid from the US and NATO. They want to portray Marcos as a defender of Philippine freedom against the “empire”, while actually turning the Philippines into a protectorate of US-led Western imperialist powers, against their imperialist rival China.

Over the next few days or weeks, the Marcos regime is set to receive a major shipment or deployment of US military equipment for use of the AFP to turn it into a more aggressive force against China. This is timed with US plans to hold the Balikatan exercises in April as cover to deploy more of its troops in the country’s outlying islands, from the northernmost tip of Batanes, to the westernmost tip of Palawan. Even now, the US has already deployed Special Operations Forces in the Kinmen Island in the Taiwan Strait, a mere five kilometers off the eastern coast of Xiamen, China.

The Filipino people reject claims of the US imperialists of being “friends, allies, and partners” of the Philippines. It is utterly repugnant at all levels for the Marcos regime to ally itself to the number one terrorist who has connived with the Zionists in Israel in raining bombs and missiles on the civilian population of Palestine in Gaza, killing more than 32,000, more than half of whom are children. The US and Israel has also been supplying bombs to the AFP to carry out the same terrorist act in the Philippine countryside. The same imperialist US is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos during the US war of occupation of the Philippines, and the subsequent plunder of the country’s economic and human resources.

All the patriotic and revolutionary forces of the Filipino people must heighten their struggle for national freedom and draw inspiration from their long history of resistance to US military intervention and war–from the anti-colonial war of the early 1900s, to the mass protests leading to the eviction of US military bases and American troops in 1991.

Presently, they must vigorously resist US schemes and resist the plans to drag the country into US war provocations against China. Such a scenario will endanger the lives of the Filipino people and further place the country’s fate in the hands of the US imperialists.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Madeleine King: Helping the Pentagon to our nickel

Written by: Nick G. on 17 April 2024

 

(Above:original photo WA Today Nathan Hondros) 

Resources Minister Madeleine King has approved the use of government funds to ensure the US military has access to Australian nickel.

She met with the US Under Secretary of Defence for Acquisition and Sustainment William La Plant at the Pentagon on March 8 to evaluate available options amid weakening nickel prices that led to several operating Australian nickel facilities either announcing a reduction in operations or going into care and maintenance.

“I think it’s fair to say they are keen to work with us to make sure we’re able to have a nickel industry that survives,” King said.

Nickel is known for its resistance to corrosion, and was a popular metal for coins. The US 5 cent coin was made from nickel and known as a “nickel”.

Nickel is one of eight critical minerals for military purposes.

The US National Mining Association says “Nickel can be used in steel, and this has been used for armor plating in tanks and anti-aircraft firearms. In addition, nickel is used in military batteries for propulsion and storage…A shortage of nickel would hurt goals in both the transportation and defense sectors.”

It is an essential component of high-temperature alloys used in aerospace, and essential to US imperialism’s plans to be the dominant military power in Outer Space.

Nickel (Ni) has long been widely used in batteries, most commonly in nickel cadmium (NiCd) and in the longer-lasting nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries, which came to the fore in the 1980s.

It is also a major component of the lithium-ion batteries used to run electronic vehicles.

The United States is not a major source of nickel. It has only one operating nickel mine which is planned to close in 2026. Last September, the US Department of Defense provided Talon Metals, a Rio Tinto subsidiary, with $26 million to support prospecting work in Michigan and Minnesota.

Taking a leaf out of the US corporate charity book, King, prior to her trip to the Pentagon, placed nickel on the Critical Minerals List, giving nickel companies opportunity to access up to $4 billion dollars in Commonwealth funding.

Australia is one of the world’s largest producers of nickel. 

There are more than 186 nickel mines in operation globally, of which 127 are in Australia.

The five largest nickel mines here are owned by Swiss multinational Glencore, Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, Australian IGO (which is also invested in a lithium focused joint venture with Chinese partner, Tianqi Lithium Corporation, which comprises a 51% stake in the Greenbushes Lithium Mine and 100% interest in a downstream processing refinery at Kwinana producing battery grade lithium hydroxide), and two by BHP (more than 70% US-owned).

It is anyone’s guess how much of the billions of Australian taxpayers’ dollars King is prepared to splash around will go to foreign-owned miners, but she has made it perfectly clear that this is to support a supply chain directly into the murderous US military.

None of this would happen if we were a genuinely independent and anti-imperialist country.
 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Profits before People

Written by: Jed J. on 16 April 2024

 

In the age we live in gas and electricity are necessities. They are not commodities which we can choose to buy or not buy. 

Yet in the capitalist system the supply of these essential needs is in the hands of private companies whose main aim is to maximise profits.

The supply of gas and electricity should be, as they once were, controlled by government Utilities to ensure they are available and affordable for all.

Since these utilities were privatised, many working people are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for these basic necessities. 

There is a cost of living crisis today and energy costs are contributing to it. 

Australian gas is being sold overseas in quantities that allow people in foreign countries to pay less for gas than in the country of its origin.

To maintain their profit levels private energy companies are resorting to large increases in their supply costs.

Many Australian workers, as a result, are finding it increasingly difficult to pay their energy bills while the suppliers make increasing levels of profit.

So what is the government planning to do? Are they planning to introduce price controls? Are they planning to limit export of our natural resources? Are they planning to de-privatise the supply of energy and put it under the control of government controlled Utilities?

No. They are talking about another round of handouts to vulnerable sections of the people, supposedly to help them cope with the price rises.

Actually the public funds used to do this will help guarantee that the energy companies will not miss out on the profits they make selling gas and electricity to these vulnerable people.

The profiteers will be the main beneficiaries of the government’s largesse. Public funds will be used to bolster private profit. 
If the government is serious about helping people cope better in this present cost of living crisis they would de-privatise the energy companies and place them in the hands of government controlled Utilities.

That would be the best way to reverse the present trend and put people before profits. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Israel gets a taste of its own medicine

Written by: Nick G on 14 April 2024

 

Image: www.hiiraanweyn.net

Iran’s retaliatory missile attacks on the Zionist Israeli regime are a necessary and justified response to Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria two weeks ago, which killed 18 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

We know that the Iranian state authorities are reactionaries and that the Iranian people have waged courageous struggles for democratic rights and the liberation of women.

That does not change our opinion towards the justness of their response to the consulate attack.

By way of contrast, the Zionist-supporting Australian government has condemned the retaliation in which more than a hundred drones, dozens of cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles were sent to specific targets in Israel.

For too long, Israel has arrogantly chosen targets in Lebanon and Syria and carried out targeted assassinations with seeming impunity. The assassinations include those of five Iranian nuclear scientists for which Israel has never been held to account.

Its attack on the Iranian consulate was typical of that arrogance. 

It followed reports by Western analysts that Iran was not seeking to escalate regional tensions. That remains Iran’s position, its spokesperson saying after its retaliation that the "matter can be deemed concluded". 

Iran’s retaliation punctures the arrogance of the Zionists and will boost morale among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  

It comes three days after Israeli PM Netanyahu boasted “We have determined a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we will harm them.”

Netanyahu is now getting a taste of his own medicine.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Museum workers lead action to save SA Museum

Written by: Ned K. on 14 April 2024

 

On Saturday 13 April about 2,000 people held a rally outside Parliament House on busy North Terrace Adelaide to protest about proposed cuts to jobs and research at the South Australian Museum. 

The rally was organized by the Museum workers and their union the Public Service Association and concerned members of the SA community who had made donations, both large and small to the Museum.

In the week leading up to the rally, concerned supporters of, and donors to, the Museum paid for a full page advertisement in the local Adelaide Advertiser headed "An Open Letter: The Future of SA's Museum Is At Risk"

The letter started,

"Dear Premier Malinauskas,

Capturing 165 years of continuous research and tens of thousands of years of First Nations’ cultural knowledge, the collections housed at the South Australian Museum are not only one of the most significant cultural assets in SA, they are among the most significant in the world".

A newly appointed head of the Museum, CEO David Gaimster, and the Museum Executive and Board decided to ram through a "restructure" of the Museum at the expense of research carried out by highly skilled scientists and researchers in the natural sciences including zoology, mineralogy and palaeontology and natural history generally.

Over the last three decades of economic rationalism, the Museum staff had been reduced to just 73 people and the SA Museum, a state government Statutory Authority, was trying to get rid of the top 27 research positions.

During this period, the SA Museum and other SA Government icons next to the Museum, (Library and Art Gallery) had experienced outsourcing of support services such as cleaning, catering, security, maintenance and research assistants. In some areas of the Museum, scientists and researchers relied on the goodwill of volunteers to complete their work.
 
One speaker at the rally said that the loss of the 27 individual research staff equated to the loss of 474 years of expertise and knowledge.

Research into and management of biodiversity is threatened with cuts to scientific staff. Since British colonial invasion, more than 300 species have been lost. Studies of collections as to Museum assists in species adaption and survival.

Speakers at the rally included Ngarrindjeri/Kaurna Elder Major "Moogy" Sumner who expressed concern that the cuts to research would be a loss for First Nations communities. With only one position in the restructure reserved for Indigenous expertise, it was possible that the cultural knowledge of First Nations women could be lost. Lack of funding would bring an end to the repatriation of the thousands of First Peoples’ remains from collections from the UK and other European countries and the USA. 

The SA Museum Act 1976 states that a core function of the Museum is " to carry out, promote, research into matters of science and historical interest, and to accumulate objects and specimens of scientific or historical interest".

One of the placards at the rally summed up just how the proposed restructure by calling the Museum ATM standing for "Automatic Tellya Museum 

Key In Pin
Select Research
Press Enter
Insufficient Funds"

with a picture of a small child trying to make sense of it all. 

The Public Service Association Secretary spoke on behalf of all unionists employed at the Museum and informed the rally participants that the Museum had not even complied with its own Enterprise Agreement in trying to ram through cutbacks to staff at a time when what was actually needed was an increase in funding of both Museum staff and resources.

The SA Government has been caught out. There is plenty of money for supporting the US war machine and football events and stadiums, all at the expense of areas of society that the Government thinks will not get it re-elected for another 4-year term of office. Adelaide Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith, a former Chair of the SA Museum Board and Minister of Education in the Rann Labor Government, said that multiple State government had stagnated funding of the museum. She said there had been no real funding for over 20 years. Cultural institutions, she said, had been neglected by a bread and circuses culture.

More broadly, the struggle of the Museum workers is another example of how most of the surplus value created by the working class as a whole ends up in the hands of the ruling capitalist class rather than being used for the benefit of the working class and those unable to work, such as children, unemployed, and the aged.
 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

CPI (Maoist) announces the immortalization of 50 people's fighters

Written by: Communist Party of India (Maoist) on 11 April 2024

 

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) has issued a statement commemorating the deaths of 50of the fighters of People’s Liberation Guerilla Army. The Maoists and other progressive forces are subjected to brutal attempts at elimination by the Modi saffron fascist regime. We salute their sacrifices-eds. 

....................

April 9, 2024

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) issued a statement announcing the death of 50 guerrillas from January 1 and calling on the people to protest the massacres.

"WE TRUST THE POWER OF THE MASSES"

In its statement, the CPI (Maoist) said, "For the last 50 years, a revolutionary movement has been going on in our country under the leadership of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) with incredible sacrifices. The ruling classes are constantly conducting military operations to stop India's revolutionary movement at its very inception. The Government of India, which has declared our party as the only major threat to the internal security of the country, has been carrying out large-scale, long-term military pressure operations for the last 20 years," he said, noting that at least five thousand CPI (Maoist) guerrillas and people have been killed in 20 years.

"Despite this, our revolutionary movement for the democratization of the people in our country continues on its way with great devotion, determination in the face of many tides, with the support of fraternal movements, and by relying on the organized power of the broad masses," the statement continued.

"50 OF OUR COMRADES WERE MARTYRED"

From January 1, 2024, the reactionary Indian state has launched a new military operation called "Operation KAGAR". In a statement, the CPI (Maoist) announced that nearly 50 of its comrades were immortalized within the scope of this operation and summarized the details of the operations as follows:

"Six people were massacred in Chipurbatti, 13 in Korcheli, 3 in Pujari Kanker and 2 in Kerajhiri Dabri. We condemn these murders and commemorate all our heroic martyrs with respect. We will pledge to build a gender-equality, secular and democratic system without exploitation and caste for their unfulfilled dreams.

"For the past two decades, conflict zones across the country have been constantly populated by central and state armed governments, as well as police forces. Unprecedented military repression is being exerted in the conflict zones of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Maharashtra states of the Central Region, Chhattisgarh and Chhattisgarh, which are the battlegrounds of Bihar-Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Assam states in the Eastern Region, which have been identified by the predatory ruling classes as powerful states for the Maoist movement.

"Only modern weapons, anti-mine vehicles, drones and helicopters fly and shoot in the sky. Police are conducting a search operation in thousands of forests. They attack villages and kill people, especially young people, without even seeing the distinction between men and women and the elderly. They chase the revolutionaries, shoot bullets. In fact, seeing all this reminds us that a war is going on in enemy territory. The Indian government is waging a civil war against the citizens of India. The government's war against the people of India must be stopped immediately."

PRESSURE ON THE PUBLIC IS INCREASING

In the continuation of the statement, it was explained that the people were attacked in order to destroy the Maoists and information about these attacks was given: "The reactionary forces have decided to end the Maoist movement throughout the country in the next three years. They target all those who oppose their exploitative policies, anti-people governments, and divisive policies among the people in the country and carry out different kinds of attacks on them. All kinds of activities of citizens are monitored. Modern industry keeps an eye on this. For the last 10 years, the Hindutva dictatorship of the RSS-BJP forces has been going on in the country. By doing many things and abusing power to put a mask of parliamentary democracy on their administration, the 18th century, they hold their Lok Sabha elections.

"The entire village of Prabal is being crushed under the boots of the murderous police. Due to the constant intensive search operations of the police, the chances of survival of people in villages and forests are getting worse and worse. Today, in the forests, there is no guarantee of the safety of life and property of the tribal people, respect for women, protection of children and youth. The police brutally murder those caught in forests and villages, calling them Maoists and fabricating false and fabricated stories about the seizure of weapons and ammunition from them."

BANDH CALLED

The statement concluded: "Fraternal movements must be built in favour of the peoples who are struggling wherever possible for the survival of the Indigenous people against the fascist regime and to stand against the ongoing arbitrary attacks against them.

"Students, intellectuals, human rights activists, social workers, journalists and friends of the media, writers, artists and lawyers are working to establish peace in the forests. People in the Central Region (Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh), especially Indigenous people, protested against the harsh conditions faced by Indigenous people and condemned the ongoing attacks against them and demanded an immediate halt to the attacks."

The CPI (Maoist) called on the people to carry out propaganda and demonstrations from 13 to 15 p.m. and bandh on April 15.

(A bandh is a 24-hour strike)

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Ants and Elephants: Middle Class relations with the Imperialist Bourgeoisie and the Working class

Written by: John G. on 11 April 2024

 

Australia is a capitalist country. 

Big corporates rule the economy, their key owners are overseas capitalists with American moneybags top of the heap. British bosses are next in line with Japanese, German, French and other European capitalists being joined by latecomer Chinese owners.

Their involvement in the country is to make profits, either directly here or by securing resources for profit-making elsewhere, or both.  

Workers

Among Australians, the working class, the people who have to work for a living selling themselves to a boss, is the largest class. 

There’s a section who sell themselves at very generous premiums, doing very well out of looking after capitalists’ interests; managers, top bureaucrats, people doing the dirty work of policing workers in commissions like Fair Work, police and judges and the like. Many are paid handsomely to keep other workers in line and the capitalists on top. 

Still, there’s 3/4s of the population who work for a living in the grind of capitalist exploitation. 

Our interest in having comfortable lives, good education, good accessible healthcare, a good living, stand in conflict with capitalists making the best profit they can get. Working class interests are the mainstay of the opposition to capitalists plundering the country, its people, its resources and its environment. 

However, working class organisation and capacity to stand up for itself is at a low point. Unionism overall is below 10%. In the public sector, it’s higher but still under 20%. In the private sector unionism is in the lower part of single digit percentages. 

Union coverage varies hugely between industries, between industry sectors, and between sections of the workforce within an industry or industry sector. In construction, unionism is higher on major city jobs and tiny in housing construction. Among government school teachers, unionism is very high while it’s much lower in the private sector . In hospitals, unionism among nurses runs well over 70% while among hospital administrative and support staff it’s below 30%. 

Overall, there is weakness in the working class but there are some areas of strength.

 In the confrontation over capitalist profit-chasing at the cost of working-class living standards, the capitalists’ interest dominate, living standards lose out and down we go. 

Middle Classes

Classes other than the working-class superhero and the capitalist supervillain, are wedged between the two. 

Middle classes of small and medium businesses, self-employed professionals and the like, vary between those reliant for their social position on the big corporate capitalists and those screwed down by the system of finance and markets monopolised by big corporates. Sometimes they are in both situations simultaneously.

With the working class relatively quiet, the smaller classes and sections pull their heads in and try to do the best they can in circumstances dominated by big corporate monopolies led by US and British imperial capitalists. Those that get desperate, facing imminent ruin or losing out big time, pop up from time to time and squeal, but generally they hunker down. Some take advantage of workers’ support for local production and use the space that affords them to promote locally-owned businesses and locally-produced products, with the success available. 

In the building industry, there is experience of subbies and smaller builders supporting workers, some providing jobs when the big builders have blacklisted militants. At the same time they are capitalists, making profits from exploiting workers. Working with and struggling against, is just how it works sometimes.  

The main point however is that generally small businesses can’t afford to put a target on their back when the working class is weak, disorganised, lacking direction and fight for its own well-being and freedom and for the nation’s liberty from the plunder of foreign corporate giants.  

Workers' relations with Middle classes

When the working class is not able to impose its overall strength on the imperialists, our strategy has to be defensive. 

Within that defensive position, sections burst out on tactical offensives. Many public sector workers leapt into strike and protest campaigns in a few states last year. Workers’ sufferings grew as their locked down wages left them open to hardships as inflation raged. That wave of struggle gained concessions and has eased now. 

Wollongong Nurses and Midwives in struggle for ratios last year

While workers are on the defensive and under the boss’s thumb, the opportunity to call for middle classes to back the struggle against imperialist rule and get useful responses is limited. It should be carefully considered until workers are on the move. 

If the workers are weak at the moment, those middle classes are pretty hopeless. The limits on anti-imperialist struggle among them reflects the reality of class relations today. There’s a tendency to engage with limited reformism and use what influence they have to hold back the working class from confrontation with imperialism. 

The old African proverb “When elephants fight, ants get trampled” applies to middle classes keeping their distance in our current situation. 

Judgement of the relations of middle classes to the two giant class forces in Australian society and the anti-imperialist struggle won’t really be able to be made until workers are able to take the initiative in offensives against imperialism. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Binskin appointment comes with a conflict of interest

Written by: Nick G. on 10 April 2024

 

Photo credit: militaryleak.com 

The Australian government’s appointment of Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin (Rtd) to serve as Special Adviser to the Australian Government on Israel's response to the Israel Defense Forces strikes which killed Zomi Frankcom, and six of her World Central Kitchen colleagues, comes with a major conflict of interest.

Binskin is a non-executive director for Defence and National Security Policy of BAE Systems Australia. Its UK parent company is literally making a killing out of Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.

A non-executive director of a company is usually not an employee, but advises the company in return for fees, equity (shares) and cash payments. 
Binskin’s ties with the commercial life of BAE Systems began in 2018. He was Chief of the Defence Force when BAE Systems Australia was awarded the $35 billion Future Frigate contract, the largest surface warship program in Australia’s history. 

The following month Binskin retired. The contract for the $1.2 billion upgrade of the Jindalee Operational Radar Network was also awarded to BAE in the final months of Binskin’s tenure.

In July 2019, one year later, the minimum timeframe permitted, Binskin joined BAE Systems, a position he still holds.

BAE and Israel

BAE Systems, headquartered in London, supplies the Israeli military with a wide variety of weapons, including components for combat aircraft, munitions, missile launching kits, and armoured vehicles. BAE technologies are also integrated into Israel's main weapon systems, including fighter jets, drones, and warships.

BAE Systems provides weapon systems and components to the Israeli Air Force's fleet of F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter jets.
In 2018, BAE was contracted to manufacture $20.4 million worth of transmitters for Israel's F-35s through the U.S. government's Foreign Military Sales program. Even before October 7, the Israeli Air Force has used the F-35 to launch airstrikes in and around Gaza. BAE in the U.K. produces 15% of the components for these F-35 jets.

Additionally, BAE has provided the Israeli military with electronic missile launching kits and gunsight technology for F-16 aircraft. Israel's use of these weapons against civilians in Gaza is killing Palestinians in their thousands.

BAE partnered with Israeli state-owned weapon manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to upgrade Rafael's MK-38 Typhoon gun system, a remotely controlled naval weapon system installed on the Israeli military's unmanned Protector drone. The drone has been used to enforce Israel's illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. Gazan fishermen, who are restricted by Israel to severely limited fishing areas, have reported being fired at by the Israeli Navy on an almost-daily basis.

In 2015, in close collaboration with the Israeli military, BAE developed the Rokar Silver Bullet, a precision guidance kit used to transform large-caliber projectiles, fired, for example, by tanks and warships, into highly accurate munitions. BAE has supplied Israeli weapon manufacturer IMI Systems (owned by Elbit Systems since 2018) with its Silver Bullet for integration into M401 155mm cannon artillery.

Israel has routinely fired 155mm heavy artillery into residential areas of Gaza City long before the resistance breakout on October 7.

Mark Binskins

It is not good enough that someone working for genocide profiteer BAE Systems will investigate the World Central Kitchen murders.

If it was thought that someone of his military seniority was required to get past Israeli obstructions, then he should have been appointed as part of a team that included war crimes legal specialists and human rights lawyers. The World Kitchen killings are not an isolated incident and should be investigated as part of the murders of nearly 200 aid workers by the Zionists, of their deliberate starvation of the people of Gaza, attacks on food convoys including the so-called “flour massacre” on 29 February 2024 when at least 118 people were killed and 760 injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks. Anything less than an investigation on this scale will miss the whole point of the Zionist genocide.

If Binskins returns a report that is in anyway inconclusive, that in anyway refuses to see what even Blind Freddy can plainly see, then it will have no credibility given his conflict of interest.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Adelaide People Gather Round For Palestinians

Written by: Ned K. on 9 April 2024

 

Sunday 7 April, marked 6 months of fortnightly rallies and demonstrations in Adelaide in support of Palestinian people oppressed by Zionist Israel regime and its imperialist backers, particularly the USA.

The rally on steps of Parliament House gathered around guest speaker Nasser Mashni (above),  President of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN).

Nasser is a Palestinian Australian and despite the devastation and loss of over 30,000 Palestinian lives including over 13,000 children, he was full of optimism about the heroic struggles of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Many passers-by on their way to AFL Gather Round game at Adelaide Oval that afternoon stopped to hear what Nasser had to say. There were Hawthorn and Collingwood scarves and jumpers among those at the rally.

Nasser said that the bombing of aid worker vehicles and the killing of aid workers was a tragedy but it was no accident. Nasser explained that it was part of a familiar Israeli Defence Force (IDF) playbook. He said that the main purpose for the bombing of the aid workers and their vehicles was because one element of the Zionist regime strategy is to use starvation to add to Palestinian deaths, as part of their overall strategy to eliminate Palestinians from Palestinian land altogether.

Nasser said that soon after the bombing of the aid workers, a ship containing food supplies and other aid that was headed for Gaza turned around. The bombing of aid workers also took the spotlight off the slaughter of Palestinian health workers and patients in the largest hospital in Gaza.

Nasser said that finally Albanese and Wong showed some anger towards the IDF and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. However Albanese and Wong and their Government still supported Israel as a “democracy”.  They failed miserably by siding with colonial oppressor rather than with the indigenous Palestinian people. Nasser said there was a lot in common between the struggles of the Indigenous people of Australia and Palestinians.

Nasser gave the example of the recent multi-million dollar contract the Albanese government signed with an Israeli owned defence company, Elbit Systems.

Before people at the rally commenced their street demonstration, Nasser urged Palestinians living in Australia to hold their heads high as they had the support of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world, including non-Palestinians living in Australia.

Nasser also noted the presence of Unions at rallies across Australia he had been part of.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

“Grey-Zone” intelligence assessments and real-war scenarios

Written by: (Contributed) on 8 April 2024

 

The US diplomatic response to credible competition from China in the Western Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific region has taken the form of an intensification of Cold War hostilities using grey zone-type intelligence assessments. They rest upon their desperate attempt to reassert traditional hegemonic positions, although remain fraught with dangers of real war scenarios for the US and their allies upon which they are increasingly dependent.

The recent high-level diplomatic visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Philippines was accompanied with a brief media release high-lighting the perceived threat of China's 'grey-zone strategy' which had been assessed as a threat to 'US interests'; it included reference to 'a constant ratcheting up' of China's diplomatic brinkmanship. (1)

Grey-zone conflict in military jargon has been usually associated with subversion and has included: destablisation, weakening or undermining traditional structures, in order to systematically weaken an adversary. It has become the face of the new Cold War which exists in the murky area in-between 'between peace and conflict'. (2)

It is, however, accompanied by grey-zone conflict in political circles which has far-reaching implications for civil society and contemporary Australia. It has taken Australian society into the darkest depths of Cold War positions whereby anything linked to China is regarded as suspicious in classic 'reds under the beds' scenarios. (3)

A typical example of the crude conspiracy theories entering into mainstream Australia has been the claim by the so-called US Centre for Strategic and International Studies that China's Qinling base on Antarctica 'was perfectly located … to spy on Australia and New Zealand particularly the satellite launch location in the Northern Territory'. (4) More sensible commentary, however, has noted 'many South-east Asian and Pacific countries are closer, and some would be more hospitable hosts. The growing number of Chinese satellites going over Australia could also do the job'. (5)

It is important to note the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies is a Washington-based 'think tank' with tentacles reaching deeply into Australian academia through seemingly harmless associates; to the contrary, it is an arm of the massive military-industrial complex designed specifically to serve 'US interests'. War, and preparation for war, is big business.

The US-led diplomatic position and controversy about the Qinling base has rested on  two significant points: the decision by the Pentagon to transform their Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) early in the last decade to provide as many as 1,600 newly recruited intelligence-gathers 'into a spy service focused on emerging threats'; a highly controversial study conducted in Washington which found 'the US is no longer the dominant power in the Western Pacific and would struggle to win a conflict against China'. (6)

The former has included extensive use of open-source intelligence (OSINT) with intelligence assessments based on information already in the public domain, raising problems that anything even remotely linked to China or Chinese endeavour can be spied upon and subject to surveillance as being regarded as suspicious. Intelligence-gatherers now also lurk on-line or in university libraries accessing post-graduate research documents while Defence publications openly flout links between universities as centres of learning with military-based programs. The position actively promotes the worst aspects of the previous Cold War now being played-out in the present one; publications from the past have revealed the extent of contemporary class, state paranoia and hysterical mind-sets. (7)  

Within those hysterical circles of Cold War fanatics, those who pay the piper, invariably call the tune; the Pentagon remains closely linked with the US military-industrial complex which thrives on increased defence budgets and arms sales. The US defence budget for the last year amounted to $816.7 billion. (8) Vast amounts of US defence spending support the corporate sector and research and development programs, often directly linked into universities which have become dependent upon the hand which feeds them. China, by contrast, had defence spending at only $224.79 billion. (9)

The US imperialists, nevertheless, are relentless and seek to increase their defence budgets on the annual basis in order to reassert traditional hegemonic positions. They fear any competition from China, whether it originates from economic considerations and trade, or defence and security concerns.
 
The increased US defence budgets, however, have not made the world a safer place. In fact, to the contrary, we live in a world of seemingly endless US-led sabre-rattling and escalating diplomatic tensions. Australia is clearly drifting toward a US-led confrontation with China, and successive governments in Canberra have done little to stand-up for national interests; Australia, furthermore, is increasingly out-of-step with regional neighbours.

The recent ASEAN Special Summit in Melbourne in early March, for example, saw Australia assume the role of the sub-imperial power, although it failed to achieve the Cold War US-led consensus it sought. It took place at a pivotal time. The ASEAN countries have a total population of about 600 million and have become China's largest export market with $790 billion in trade, pushing the US into second place. ASEAN member countries, furthermore, see little benefit in choosing sides between the US and China; they have little to gain from side-lining China.

Some ASEAN political leaders were also forthright in their chosen diplomatic position: Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, for example, used his visit to Australia to push for countries in the region to remain neutral and non-aligned, with foreign policies decided upon by their sovereign governments, not foisted upon them by Washington and the Pentagon.

In conclusion, the US-led 'grey-zone' assessments of China have taken the region into a dangerous diplomatic position whereby even Washington has acknowledged the strategy is 'on track to create a serious regional crisis and probably armed conflict'. (10)

                                         We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Grey-zone response a way to call China's brinkmanship bluff, Australian, 22 March 2024.
2.     Today's wars are fought in the 'grey zone', Atlantic Council, 23 February 2023.
3.     See: Labor's national security kowtow a win for the CCP., Australian, 26 March 2024.
4.     China's Antarctica moves should be a cause for concern, Australian, 4 April 2024.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012; and,
        Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
7.     See: None dare call it treason, John A. Stormer, (Missouri, 1964), which was distributed across Australia by the far-right Australian League of Rights. The book was first published in 1964 and was subsequently re-printed twenty times in-between February and October of that year.
8.     Website: US Department of Defence, Biden Signs, 23 December 2022.
9.     See: China to increase defence spending, CNN., 7 March 2023; and, China's 2023 defence spending, Jamestown Foundation, 14 April 2023.
10.   Australian, op.cit., 22 March 2024.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

As Australia aids Israeli genocide, Elders say it’s time to target Pine Gap.

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 8 April 2024

 

Above: Peltherre Chris Tomlins at the Frontier Wars protests in Canberra on 25 April, 2018. Mr Tomlins has opposed Pine Gap for decades and is a staunch anti-Zionist. Last month he stepped down as Greens' candidate for the seat of Araluen in NT, after being falsely accused of anti-semitism.

While Palestinians are deliberately murdered and starved, Australia aids Israeli genocide, through Pine Gap near Mparntwe Alice Springs. 

At a recent online forum on Pine Gap and Palestine, Professor Richard Tranter from Nautilus Institute made clear Pine Gap is Australia’s biggest contribution to US and Israeli wars.

In 2003 John Howard declared war against Iraq, against the wishes of 94 percent of our people. Back then, Pine Gap guided missiles to strike Iraq. Now its surveillance and targeting means Australia is at war with Palestine, without declaring it.

First Peoples know undeclared wars are as deadly as any other. The Frontier Wars are proof.

Forum speaker, Aunty Barbara Flick called for a protest at Pine Gap near Mparntwe Alice Springs, like the huge mobilisation she joined in the 1980s. Such a protest would bring allies to Mparntwe when its First Peoples’ communities and their young people most need it. 

Parallel surveillance, parallel genocide
Associate Professor Kathryn Gilbey, an Alyawarre woman, spoke of the two-week Mparntwe curfew, exposing a parallel to Pine Gap’s mass surveillance systems targeting Palestinians with the escalating surveillance of First Peoples, since the 2007 NT Intervention. Its fifteen-year genocide, particularly of children, went almost unreported in mainstream media.

She mentioned the lies against Palestine and lies triggering the Intervention. The key trigger was on ABC’s Lateline where an “Uluru youth worker” falsely alleging “paedophile rings run by Elders”, actually worked for Howard’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister. Truth uncovered didn’t stop further lies. “The little children are sacred” report is still frequently cited as the Intervention’s cause. Yet both report authors vehemently opposed the Intervention.

The “Emergency” legislation to “save children” didn’t mention the words ‘child’, ‘children’, ‘young’ or ‘youth’. It was full of map coordinates. Entry permits were removed and white businesses replaced successful Aboriginal-run projects in communities and towns. Mining and gas corporations were given land rights with no custodian vetoes. 

Young Aboriginal Peoples were swept from the safety of now defunded and disempowered homeland communities, where elders and culture had been strong, into crowded and unsupported regional centres.  

Children of the Intervention
Last year Vanguard said of a Saturday Paper expose, “In Children of the Intervention, Gurnaikurnai Wotjobaluk journalist Ben Abbatangelo gives voice to those central desert Peoples who have yet again been blamed. “He writes, ‘This desert town has been depicted as a war zone and its people as alien-like problems that need to be solved.’

“Of the so-called out-of-control young people, Abbatangelo says, ‘Dispossession and displacement lives within each of these kids. Most adolescents at the centre of the firestorm are also the grandchildren of the Stolen Generations and the great-grandchildren of those who were herded onto missions or massacred.’

“Aranda woman and Ntaria/Hermannsburg community organiser Que Nakamarra Kenny told him, ‘What’s clear is that no one cares more about Aboriginal people than Aboriginal people themselves. We’re at the tail end of the Northern Territory Intervention and these children are a product of that. They are the children of the Intervention who have grown up watching their parents be demonised and rejected.’”

Making clear links
For fifteen years, Elders like Aunty Elaine Kngwarraye Peckham and the late Harry Jakamarra Nelson, and younger leaders like Aunty Barbara Shaw trekked thousands of kilometres from Mparntwe and elsewhere to tell Intervention stories. They did this, even as they lived under the daily brutality of its regime, tried to support their people, especially their children. 

Right now, when genocide in Palestine is mirrored by ongoing genocide against First Peoples, it’s time to make links clear, and return some immediate support and truth telling for those parallel sacrifices. 

It’s time to create to hope through another convergence of allies at Mparntwe, and at the murderous US war base at Pine Gap. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Developers’ divisive dream: First Peoples’ lands to feed real estate bubble

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 6 April 2024

 

(Above:  Collage of demolition of Redfern's Block, which began in 2011. All of the original buildings including the flag mural have been removed. Wiki Commons)

Capitalism must constantly expand. Government decisions on when, where and how to develop Australia have always served it.

Brilliant new research, Unshackled, reminds us how 160,000 convicts created colonies and wealth here for British capitalists. On stolen lands. 

Two centuries later, NSW governments led and fed the current residential real estate explosion. To link distant potential housing estates, they sold public assets to fund a spaghetti of tollways under and over the Sydney basin, and freeways on its north and south coasts.

Transurban, which grew from Macquarie Bank, purchased the government-subsided tollways with guarantees of ongoing mega profits. Transurban’s top security holder is Unisuper Ltd, but combined its three bigger US-owned runners up – State Street Corporation, Blackrock Group and The Vanguard Group – could easily outvote it.

This expansion is underpinned by high immigration. While governments locked up or locked out desperate refugees, and living costs soared, immigration also drove up rents and house prices. A review means soon only skilled migrants, earning $135,000 per year, will get visas (or afford housing).  

Last December ABC’s Nassim Khadem wrote Australian residential real estate value “has hit $10.3 trillion”, around three times bigger than superannuation holdings ($3.5 trillion) or listed stocks ($2.8 trillion). It’s a bubble. 

The cry is now ‘More LAND for housing!’ Ten per cent of NSW, including national parks, will soon be transferred to local Aboriginal lands councils. Corporations aim to grab it.

Land is wealth

In 2017, my Driving Disunity, the Business Council against Aboriginal Community revealed the Business Council’s crowned Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council as custodians because it was prepared to sell sacred lands for real estate. It met fierce collective resistance led by First Peoples who came from that land.

Westpac had trained Darkinjung to claim protected environmental land on the NSW Central Coast. It then sold what’s now a massive coastal resort and suburb, Magenta Shores, to BCA member Mirvac, despite huge local resistance. For all this, plus two other developments where 208 lots were sold, just 30 Aboriginal homes (including mobile ones) were built.

Darkunjung now has 1000 potential land claims, but other big coastal and Hawkesbury River headwater developments have already started. Meanwhile, First Peoples and allies mobilise to defend sacred lands.

Westpac shared its template for removing environmental land caveats to 119 other NSW lands councils and claims are multiplying across the state. On Botany Bay, for example, Mirvac has been in talks with La Perouse custodians.

Separate to this, in Sydney Harbour, Goat Island was given to Sydney Metropolitan Lands Council, initially excluding local custodians, who protested. Future plans for Cockatoo Island with First Peoples’ involvement include a  hotel.

Likewise, the Block in Redfern was a famed 1970s Aboriginal public housing project. Despite a 29-month Tent Embassy occupation, it was redeveloped for the Aboriginal Housing Authority for 24 storeys of fee-paying overseas’ student accommodation. The Embassy won 62 affordable housing apartments for First Peoples including families, at 80 per cent of market rent. It excludes those displaced.

'The wealth is in the land’

This story told about NSW flowed on, though with some differences, nationwide.

Native title is not land rights. While its punishing process can provide benefits to individual First Peoples, successful applicants can’t veto mining and gas projects.

On other projects including real estate, proving custodian heritage can be extremely difficult without research skills and ongoing funding. With corporate backing, such problems dissolve, leaving greater division and dispossession, as the BCA-Darkingjung “partnership” shows.

The famed IATSIS map of Aboriginal Australia is based on public sources up till 1994. It shows what it calls ‘Darkinung’ lands in NSW to the west of coastal Awabakal and Kuring-gai lands of the Central Coast. While, among other things, the map emphasises it’s “not suitable for native title and other land claims”, the shift which eliminated Kuring-Gai claims is telling.

Some First Peoples who have faith in corporations will try to share benefits. But, once some environmental land is sold, pressure will be on to sell the rest. Capitalism will pave the world without remorse.

As Kuku Yalanji man John Hartley points out, “The wealth is in the land. Once it’s sold, it’s gone.”

When the bubble bursts, Australian governments will prop up profits not our peoples’ needs.

Unshackled reveals how often convicts rebelled. So too today. First Peoples and their allies will not give up. Our joint enemies become clearer day by day. As strong as they seem, their foundations are starting to crumble. Injustice breeds resistance.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Haiti: for thousands of new Louvetures

Written by: Alan Jackson on 4 April 2024

 

Above: Portrait of  Toussaint Louverture -artist unknown    Wikimedia Commons

Haiti is a country that has a rich history in revolution and has been an inspiration to revolutionaries across the world ever since the Haitian revolution in 1791, that roared until 1804 when Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared independence of Haiti. 

Deeply inspired by the French revolution, in a French colony once called Saint-Domingue, the enslaved masses stood up and crushed their slave masters. Haiti’s revolution is far more significant today considering this was a slave revolution and Frances’s revolution was a bourgeois revolution.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

On the introduction of supermarket security checkpoints

Written by: Comrade Swanston on 3 April 2024

 

First introduced in mid-2023 to combat the rising number of incidents concerning shoplifting and what the talking-heads of the bourgeoisie have declared to be a sudden and unprovoked “rise in aggression” against their employees in Australian supermarkets, Coles’ and Woolworths’ anti-shoplifting programs demonstrate plainly the bloated and disconnected hubris of the bourgeoisie. 

These programs demonstrate a ruling class that is becoming more severed from the lived experiences of the working-class and working-poor with each passing day. It demonstrates a class with such little awareness of its conditions that it ignorantly believes that its own lies it tells to cheat us will simply be taken as fact: by both employee and customer alike. By those it exploits through undercutting wages, and by those it endlessly price gouges out of every dollar. 

Yet this lie that they repeat, this lie that they are introducing these means to protect some of Australia’s most vulnerable workers, is acknowledged by all those who toil day to day for what it is! As a sham! As a maliciously crafted excuse which has but one true purpose: to protect capital, From South Melbourne to Carrum Downs, from street to street this is acknowledged earnestly by all people. 

One emergency service worker recalled to me that Woolworth CEO Brad Banducci’s panopticon makes them feel as if “everyone is presumed to be a criminal”, and a young single mother told me that ever since those gates first came up in South Melbourne (along Clarendon Street) that she has only seen one thing change. That those “blackshirts” as she calls them, the corporate security of these shopping-centres, have only become ever more energised to brutalise and abuse those they deem “to look too poor” to shop. 

To hide behind excuses of fighting crime and to force people to come behind cameras and into that dreaded back room. To come into that back room and face the consequences of surviving and being able to live another day. This is the reality of these programs. This is the reality of the class conflict. 

Such measures such as the introduction of so called smart gates, of anti-theft fog and security databases, such measures such as the expansion of security teams and of the trolley-lock system only harm those within working-class suburbs. They do not even affect the wealthy and well-off, the bosses, nor the bureaucrat. 

This is even evident in where they place these measures. For what connects South Melbourne to Carrum Downs, what connects my own suburb to all the suburbs chosen for this program is that they are predominantly and historically working-class and host a large population who sit underneath the poverty line. A large population which relies on welfare payments and who reside in public housing. A large population who has long been exploited and shamed by the capitalist system and its supporters.

Like all things in the class conflict, this issue has not remained stagnant over the course of a few months. For it must be acknowledged that this attack has not been one that has been strictly led against consumers, but as ever has been expanded against these corporations’ hard-working employees. 

For as reported by several worker-representatives of the Retail and Fast-Food Worker Union, Coles has further expanded this campaign upon its own workers. That is, Coles now again will harass and coerce its employees alongside customers with their “blackshirts”, who will gleefully collaborate and undoubtedly restrain their hardworking and underpaid retail-clerks for but a suspicion of theft. Likely with threats of reporting them to management if they do not comply. With threats of loss of job and livelihood! 

These scenes though will be ironic to those who know of Coles’ long history of blatant wage theft. For Coles and Woolworths: the happy hypocrites who cry ‘thief!’ as they rob their workers of their rightful wages have always with a crocodile’s smile attempted to cast blame on others. 

They would not dare admit that their employees are being unpaid and should have the ability to shop where they work! They would not admit that the statement from the Retail and Fast-Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) could be true. That as Josh Cullinan, Secretary of RAFFWU puts it, that “the reason they’re bag checking is because they know that their own workers are forced to think about stealing because they can’t afford food”. 

For these corporations and their bosses would rather sit lying between their teeth with yearly salaries so high (collected from all their robbery) that the average person could not achieve such in a lifetime.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Philippines Constitutional change: lingering spirits and the ghosts of the past

Written by: (Contributed) on 29 March 2024

 

Above: Filipinos rallying in February 2024 against Changes (“Cha”) to the Constitutional Charter (“Cha”)

 

Claims by political opposition figures in the Philippines that the presidential administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. is conspiring to make changes to the constitution in order to enable the president to serve longer terms of office, are an indication of US foreign policy complicity inside the Philippine political system. 

The Philippines has long been considered a vital strategic part of US regional defence and security provision with the Marcos oligarchy widely regarded as puppets with Washington and the Pentagon pulling the strings.

The US is still haunted, even in the aftermath of the previous Duterte presidential administration, from when the Philippines democratically distanced itself from the US and sought a more stable diplomatic position toward China; the US do not want a re-run of the problem in any forthcoming elections. Philippine democracy is seen as an obstacle.

On the 18th and 19th March, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken visited Manila for high-level diplomatic talks with the presidential administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. It was Blinken's second such visit to Manila, highlighting the move by the US to push the Philippines into the front-line of US-led regional foreign policy and diplomatic hostilities with China. 

The diplomatic talks were accompanied with officially prepared media releases which contained no ambiguity. It was officially announced, for example, the diplomatic visit was 'to strengthen the US-Philippine alliance in pursuit of common interests ... with … Marcos' desire to be closer to Washington'. (1) The announcement that 'the deepening of Washington and Manila ties had also led to expanding cooperation with neighbours in the Indo-Pacific', was also acknowledgement the Philippines was officially linked into the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). (2)

The US-led IPS is based on the US-Japan alliance as a global strategy, resting upon the so-called 'Quad' of the US, Japan, India and Australia, effectively hemming in China on four sides. (3) It is, therefore, not coincidental to note forthcoming high-level diplomatic relations scheduled in Washington next month include those between Blinken, Marcos and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishada. (4) 

Surprise agendas are unlikely. The IPS has evolved from a previous hardening of US-led attitudes toward China; over a decade ago Japanese diplomatic officials who actually spoke Chinese and had direct contact with counterparts in China were 'removed from the front-line of diplomacy', laying the basis for the present Cold War position. (5)

Two serious considerations have arisen: claims by Philippine opposition figures that the Marcos administration is planning to alter the constitution to extend single six-year presidential terms of office; an official acknowledgement that Blinken's second visit to Manila took place to track 'a serious regional crisis and probably armed conflict'. (6)

The former is a particularly sensitive issue for most Filipinos; the 1987 constitution was designed to deal with the legacy created by Marcos' father who governed the country by dictatorship and repression. For many, the move to alter the constitution remains reminiscent of the 1973 move by Ferdinand Marcos Snr. 'that indefinitely extended his term of office, leading to rampant corruption, human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings'. (7)
The US, nevertheless, would clearly like the present presidential administration to continue to remain in office for as long as possible, in the name of 'US interests'. (8)

One of the most vocal of the critics of Marcos Jnr. has been former president Duterte, who pursued a more independent foreign policy toward China. His presidential administration was subsequently regarded as problematic for both Washington and the Pentagon, and they were glad to see his demise and the rise of Marcos as more in line with traditional regional hegemonic diplomatic positions.

President Marcos Jnr. has already proposed a referendum to take place alongside mid-term elections next year about the proposed constitutional changes which he announced 'was not written for the globalised world … to enable … greater foreign investment'. (9) Foreign investment into the Philippine economy is at present limited to forty per cent of ownership, and the US is only too pleased to further increase their foothold into the political system; the moves can best be viewed as diplomatic manoeuvres akin to a puppet and puppet-masters. The present Marcos presidential administration, for example, has already been noted as 'the new darling of the West because of its principled and robust stance it has taken on China and its expanding security cooperation with western partners and allies'. (10)  

The latter is a problem which has emerged following flawed intelligence assessments that China, the main imperialist rival to the US, has systematically embarked upon 'grey-zone activities in the South China Seas', and been pursuing unclear political and military agendas. (11) In recent years, using the Marcos Jnr. presidential administration, the US has extended its military presence in the Philippines from five to nine bases, including some in the northern part of the country facing Taiwan which they regard as a potential 'theatre of war'.

The US has been concerned about the growing imbalance of power across the Taiwan Straits for over a decade, and a recent announcement that the US were training Taiwanese troops on 'outlying islands that would be on the front lines of a conflict with its neighbour', has coincided with recent developments. (12) One of the islands concerned, Kinmen (Jinmen in Mandarin, meaning “Golden Gate”), has military facilities for amphibious soldiers; it is only ten kms from the Chinese city of Xiamen in Fujian Province, while being 187 kms from Taiwan. Kinmen's beaches have been noted as having numerous anti-invasion spikes, military posts and bomb shelters. (13) The fact US troops are officially based so close to China must be regarded by Beijing as extremely provocative. Moves by many Kinmen residents to push for a de-militarised zone and peace island, with a bridge constructed to link the island with mainland China, has been ignored by the ruling DPP presidential administrations in Taipei, revealing their intention of following Cold War US regional foreign policy. (14)

These are worrying developments, increasing the likelihood of real-war scenarios
in the Indo-Pacific region, with serious implications for Australia:

                                           We need an independent foreign policy!

(Important extra reading -  a statement by Compatriots of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.)  

1.     Blinken's second Manila visit, The Philippine Star, 15 March 2024.
2.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Philippine Star, op.cit., 15 March 2024.
5.     Choppy weather in the China Seas, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2012.
6.     Marcos accused of grab for power, Australian, 19 March 2024; and, Grey-zone response a way to call China's brinkmanship bluff, Australian, 22 March 2024.
7.     Australian, op.cit., 19 March 2024.
8.     See: The Objectives of the US., The Guardian, 6 August 2003.
9.     Australian, op.cit., 19 March 2024.
10.   Ibid.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 22 March 2024; and, See: Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012.
12.  US trains Taiwanese troops on islands, Australian, 21 March 2024.
13.   A China-Taiwan DMZ., CNN., 1 June 2023.
14.   Ibid.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

MUA HERE TO STAY - supporting their members and the Palestinian people

Written by: Ned K. on 27 March 2024

 

 

Above: NSW MUA Branch Secretary Paul Keating was one of 17 arrested at the ZIM blockade.   Photo: UnionistsforPalestine

The members and the leaders of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) are leading the way in working class action in support of the Palestinian people in their struggle against imperialist backed Israeli Zionist regime.

Last Sunday, there was a demonstration against the unloading of an Israeli ship at Port Botany in NSW. Fifteen people including the MUA NSW Secretary, an MUA Organizer and MUA rank and file Delegates were among those arrested on the usual "nonpolitical" charges of obstruction of vehicles and failing to comply with police directives to move off roadways and the like. 

The hundreds of people at the demonstration peacefully assembled at the Patrick Terminal at Port Botany.

They demanded that federal and state governments ban Israeli ships owned by Israeli shipping company Zim from all ports in Australia.

They also demanded the federal government action broader sanctions against the Israeli Zionist government.

The MUA is leading by example in support of the Palestinian people. It is far in advance of many official union leaderships who remain silent, presumably because they do not want to go public against the ALP government. History will not judge their silence well. They will fade away as irrelevant while unions that take a stand against oppression will be like the MUA - HERE TO STAY!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

US submarine visits not welcome and will never be “normal”

Written by: Nick G. on 25 March 2024

 

On Sunday March 10, the US Los Angeles class submarine, the USS Annapolis, arrived at the Stirling Naval Base in WA from its home base in Guam.  The date signified the first anniversary of the signing of the AUKUS arrangements. Rallies in Australia cities were held to oppose AUKUS.

The visit was primarily a propaganda exercise designed to normalize the presence of foreign submarines in Australian waters. The propaganda exercise included a “gridiron friendly” between the US submariners and a WA state team. 

Under the AUKUS Optimal Pathway program, up to 4 U.S. Virginia-class submarines and one United Kingdom Astute-class submarine will use HMAS Stirling as a rotational base. The Submarine Rotational Force – West (SRF-West) will operate on the same principles as the US marine rotational base near Darwin, and see more than 700 American personnel at the WA base to support the submarine presence.

The Australian government has announced expenditure of $8 billion to upgrade Stirling’s facilities. According to a March 21 report in the US online Breaking Defense Indo-Pacific, Stirling “needs to be enlarged to cope with larger Virginia-class sub visits and must be secured to meet US and UK standards for protecting nuclear secrets and equipment.”

The $8 billion is on top of the $9.4 billion already gifted to US and UK companies in preparation for building nuclear-powered submarines that will be an Australian appendage to the US Navy as it sits off the coast of China and threatens war with that country.

The US lackey and Prime Minister of Australia, Albanese, claims that once the AUKUS submarines are in operation they will fly the Australia flag and be under Australian sovereignty.

That is not how the US sees it. Former independent SA Senator and submariner Rex Patrick tweeted the text of the conditions under which the US sale of Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines will take place.

They require their use to be “consistent with United States foreign policy and national security interests.” In other words, not the coastal defence of Australia, but deployment off the coast of China.

And, as is now widely known, the sale is provisional on the US having enough submarines for its own imperialist military requirements. Having enough for itself to release second-hand Virginias to Australia requires an annual US production of 2.3 submarines a year.

But the US has just reduced its submarine production to 1 submarine per year, much to the embarrassment of Albanese and Marles.

Hopefully, the program will collapse under the weight of its own stupidity. 

But much more likely is that it will need to be swept away by continuing people’s actions.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

A tale of two payments…

Written by: Nick G. on 24 March 2024

 

In the same week that the government gifted $4.7 billion to Rolls Royce in Britain to help them build submarine nuclear reactors, which we will then have to buy from them, the automatic CPI-based indexation of welfare payments will see the unemployed get an extra 97 cents a day.

The JobSeeker Payment, Parenting Payment Partnered and Special Benefit rates are usually adjusted on 20 March and 20 September each year in line with CPI movements over the preceding six month period.

“This increase – not even a dollar a day – is barely enough to cover a packet of pasta, and will not be noticed by people who are still copping heartbreaking rent rises of $30, $40, $50 dollars, or more, as well as contending with rises in food, medical, utility, and other basic expenses”, Anti-Poverty Network SA spokesperson, Jasmin Witham said.

Ms Witham said: “Almost two years ago, the Albanese government was elected on a promise to ‘Leave No One Behind’, but people on JobSeeker have been largely forgotten. Last year’s Federal Budget saw an insulting and miserable $2.86-a-day rise to JobSeeker. With this latest indexation, JobSeeker will still be $34-a-day – $238-a-week – below the Henderson poverty-line of $88-a-day.

Unlike the Australian unemployed, Rolls Royce must be rubbing its hands in glee.

The $4.7 billion gift from the Australia taxpayer matches exactly the same amount gifted to US shipyards struggling to build one Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine a year.

The government will argue that the $9.4 billion to be shared between US and UK masters of war will be spread over ten years, but so what?

There are currently 565,000 unemployed people in Australia. Shared between them $9.4 billion would mean $16,370,000 per person over ten years, or $1,637,000 per year for a decade.

Instead, they are offered 97 cents a day.

For the sake of selling out our sovereignty, and making it impossible for us to back out of any war the US imperialists wish to drag us into, we are robbing Australians of a decent way of life.

There is no difference between Labor and Liberal in terms of their blind obedience to their US masters.

The waste of money on AUKUS must be stopped.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

AUKUS: Jobs diversion scheme

Written by: Nick G. on 22 March 2024

 

Above: For the broader implications of AUKUS, see our  AUKUS video.  

 

The $368 billion (and counting) cost of the AUKUS nuclear-powered subs folly was promised by Labor to create a 20,000 jobs bonanza. Looked a rationally, however, it is a massive jobs diversion scheme and a huge wasted opportunity for working Australians.

Having already committed to transferring $4.6 billion to pump prime the struggling US shipyards, Labor announced today an equivalent $4.6 billion transfer to the struggling British shipyards.(1)

That’s 9,200 million dollars that we will not see in Australian jobs creation, jobs that could substantially ease the ramping crisis in our hospitals, improve rural roads, assist in lifting public schools to the same funding level as the privates, or reduce the gap in Indigenous disparities.

And that’s only 1/40th of the total spend on AUKUS subs.

The $368 billion is said to be the largest transfer of wealth outside of Australia.

And we are promised 20,000 jobs spread over 30 years for that! And only 8,700 of those jobs will actually be on submarine construction itself.

Economist John Quiggin at the University of Queensland pointed out in May last year that the cost of the AUKUS jobs “bonanza” worked out at $18 million per job.

How many teachers, paramedics, road workers or engineers cost $18 million a piece to train and employ?

In 2015, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) reported that automation could replace an estimated 40 percent of Australia’s workforce within the next 20 years. That’s approximately five million jobs that could be replaced by robots.

The World Economic Forum in its Future of Jobs Report estimated that as many jobs will be created through AI - notably machine learning engineers, robotics engineers and data scientists – as will be destroyed. Even if this is true – and not a case of putting lipstick on a pig- there will be a huge mismatch between the skill sets of those who lose their jobs through automation and those required in the new areas of employment. There will be no large-scale employment transfer opportunity. 

While each of the jobs to be created though AUKUS will be welcomed by those who can access them, there are so few spread over such a long time that the promised jobs “bonanza” is in reality a massive jobs inadequacy.

The cost of AUKUS is a diversion of much-needed government funding away from real widespread employment creation.

Imperialism dictates that the public bear the cost of US preparations for dragging Australia into another of its wars.

AUKUS must be stopped.

The movement for an independent and peaceful Australia must be strengthened.

Only a socialist Australia will make it possible to use government funds for socially useful purposes and real jobs creation.

(1)  It has now been revealed by UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps that the Australian gift to the Rolls Royce plant at Derby where nuclear reactors for submarines are built. Shapp was over the moon, saying it would double the size of the Derby site, allowing it to create 1,170 skilled jobs. That's at a cost to Australia of $4 million per UK job.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Transparency: who will the Australian Government listen to?

Written by: Nick G. on 21 March 2024

 

Original photo: Chris Shannen   Flickr Commons

Will a US arms manufacturer have more luck than Australian citizens in getting some transparency from the Australian government? 

Frustration at the lack of transparency surrounding decisions of the government is growing.

At the head of the list is self-styled “Transparency Warrior” and former independent SA Senator Rex Patrick. He has bombarded various government departments including Environment, Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence with Freedom of Information requests that are more often than not denied. The former submariner and AUKUS opponent’s X (Twitter) account regularly updates readers with the lack of government transparency.

The Department of Defence is one of the least transparent, with many in the so-called defence community railing against the closed-doorism of the department. They include editor of the online Asia Pacific Defence Reporter Kym Bergmann, who has often complained about the lack of transparency in Defence. He said in a podcast last October that “the cult of secrecy – particularly surrounding anything to do with Defence and national security - is having such a corrosive effect.”

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties recently condemned the government for its lack of transparency surrounding the cancellation of visas for Palestinians escaping the Gazan genocide.

“There has not been any transparency from the government regarding their visa cancellations,” wrote Council President Lydia Shelly in an open letter to the Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil.

Peak legal body, the Australian Law Council, began the year with a call for more transparency in government policy decisions, saying the government had been much more closed off to policy discussions in the wake of the PwC tax leak scandal.

The views above represent a very broad cross-section of the Australian public, yet the government continues to have its ears in its pockets.
However, that may soon change.

US arms manufacturer Northrop Grumman “is readying itself for what it hopes will be a steady stream of business as part of the AUKUS submarine plan for Australia, two company executives” said in Canberra on March 19.

According to a report in the US online Breaking Defense platform, the company was hoping to win contracts for repair and maintenance work on the AUKUS submarines, and was also looking for “small to medium enterprises here that can provide components to the US for the US production”. 

In order to position itself to profit from the AUKUS arrangements, Northrop Grumman told the government it needed to help them by being more transparent.

Northrop Grumman executive Tom Wears called on the government to “Provide transparency on what the path ahead is. You know, what are the ultimate objectives? What’s the timeline? What are the milestones along the way so that all industry can be ready to engage at the right time to bring the information that they need to put the plan together… one thing I would encourage the government to do, is be transparent as possible on what the plans ahead are so industry can respond and be ready.”

There is no doubt that two executives of a major US imperialist weapons manufacturer will get their way where Australia citizens cannot.

This is the outcome of the sale of our national sovereignty to US imperialism and the control of our economy by US capital.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

North American Indigenous people support Palestinians

Written by: Assiniboine Nation on 21 March 2024

 

In Australia, the carrying of the Aboriginal and Palestinian flags side by side has been a feature of many of the rallies against the Gazan genocide.

Many Australian First Peoples instinctively recognise the parallels between the struggles of both peoples against settler colonialism’s ethnic cleansing and genocide.

We reproduce here a statement from the Assiniboine Nation of Montana, USA, one of the Indigenous peoples of North America, and their reasons for supporting the Palestinian people. 

The capitalist press seeks to disunite the people, and will never promote the mutual understanding and support between Indigenous peoples. 

We will.
…………….
As “Maka Yuchanch,” “Shakes the Ground,” Lance FourStar of the Red Bottom Clan of the Assiniboine Nation in Northeastern Montana, speaking on behalf of a tribe which faces similar struggles against political and economic manipulation and suppression perpetrated by occupying forces, we recognize and stand in compassionate solidarity with the Palestinian people.

We acknowledge that the United States government's deliberate actions to prevent Indigenous tribes from exercising their right to self-determination, dissent, and cultural healing mirror the oppression faced by Palestinians. We acknowledge that just as our Assiniboine tribe experienced starvation at the hands of an occupying force, so do Palestinian civilians suffer under siege tactics aimed at exerting unearned authority over indigenous populations previously thriving on their own land.

We urgently appeal to the federal government to fully restore autonomy and the right to self-determination to Indigenous tribes, to honor the treaties that have been abandoned, to return rightful control over ancestral lands and provide meaningful support to tribes whose territories have been occupied for centuries, to end the cycle of exploitation and suppression, and urge an effort to embrace a new tradition of genuine partnership and respect for Indigenous sovereignty.

Likewise and in complete solidarity with a similarly oppressed Indigenous people, we call for a bilateral ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the siege, the blockade, and all actions against the civilian population of Palestine that prevent its Indigenous population from thriving. We call on Hamas to release all remaining hostages, and on Israel to release all prisoners currently held without trial.

Make no mistake, it does not escape us that so many of the dead and wounded children in Gaza look like they could be our siblings, our children, our grandchildren. It does not escape us that the Assiniboine people can look out our windows and see the graves of victims of intentional starvation by our own colonizers, just as the Palestinian people can see mass graves holding the bodies of their similarly martyred loved ones. It does not escape us, and we will not forget.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Poverty in Australia: more entrenched than ever

Written by: (Contributed) on 19 March 2024

 

Original photo by Fernando Goncalves

Some recent studies have revealed just how much the Australian working-class have lost in the past few years with rampant inflation which has undermined living standards. Lower socio-economic groups have been particularly hard-hit. While economists continue to discuss the likely causes of the problem, the seriously dysfunctional nature of the Australian capitalist economy would appear the likely outcome of being part of the imperialist globalised economy.

 

A recent study conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has found 970,000 Australian workers were employed in multiple jobs, up by 13,600 compared to the previous quarter ending last December. (1) Many Australian workers find it difficult, if not impossible, to retain their living standards with one job. Australia, in recent years, has been hard-hit with soaring price/profit inflation levels which have reduced spending power by as much as 20 per cent to 25 per cent.

Australian workers have experienced a drastic wage-cut.

While Australia has a total workforce of 14,201,300, the participation rate has remained relatively constant at 66.8 per cent. In reality, therefore, the workforce is only 9,486,468. (2)
Using the official government statistics as the benchmark, therefore, a total of 10.23 per cent of the Australian working class cannot financially survive with only one job.

The what extent the second jobs remain outside the usual structured and policed economy with recorded wages and entitlements together with income tax and super being paid and non-official work with payment in the form of cash-in-hand is difficult to accurately establish. The latter, nevertheless, is a factor which has to be taken into account together with the problem of wage-theft.

A further problem workers experience when employed in more than one job is that entitlements for injuries are affected; income protection insurance for main employment, for example, does not apply usually apply if a worker is injured in a second job. If the second job is in the informal economic system, serious legal and liability issues automatically arise during the subsequent investigation.

The official statistics are all the more appalling when taking other criteria into account.

Those employed on the casual basis or precarious levels of employment, while sometimes earning high wages, usually lack credit ratings to raise a mortgage to buy their own homes. They are, subsequently, frequently found in rental accommodation. A recent study conducted by PropTrack has established rental affordability is now at the worse levels since records began. (3) While the average national median household income has increased 19 per cent during the 2019-24 period, rents have increased by 38 per cent during the same period. (4) Last year an ABS study found city rents across Australia increased by an average of 7.3 per cent. (5)

Soaring interest rates have also exacerbated the problem, with the age of cheap credit well past. Many Australians with credit card debts now experience serious financial difficulties.

While economists continue to argue about the causes of the price/profit inflation, a common theory is that it has been the natural outcome of a financial stimulus by the then Trump administration in Washington, designed to ease the problems caused by the COVID pandemic. It was noted 'every year from 2017 when Trump took over from Obama, his administration increased the federal deficit significantly, ultimately adding more to US debt than all former US presidents combined'. (6)

Due to the globalised economy, the problem quickly spread through financial and banking systems to those countries such as Australia which remain strongly linked to the US.  

At the top-end-of-town, however, unequal distribution of wealth has continued to be a serious problem. The rich and wealthy continue to expand their portfolios well above levels of inflation while giving their workers wage increases below half that of existing inflation rates! (7) There is no sign the problem of price/profit inflation will end in the near future.

  

1.     Multi-job record a sign of bad times, The Weekend Australian, 9-10 March 2024.
2.     ABS: Australian Workforce, January 2024.
3.     Rental crisis worst on record, The Weekend Australian, 9-10 March 2024.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Quoted: Prefabricated and build-to-rent houses, The Conversation, 12 March 2024.
6.     Trump or Biden? It won't matter to the US economy, Australian, 14 March 2024.
7.     Website: Forbes List, where the rich openly flout their wealth and gloat over their ill-gotten gains; information about what they pay their workforces can be accessed through the ABS and trade-unions.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Farewell Judy Henstock Murupaenga

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 18 March 2024

 

Judy Henstock (Huri Murupaenga)
1943-2005

When Sydney journalist Judy Henstock Murupaenga died in November last year New Zealand, her birthplace, and Australia lost a passionate advocate for human rights and equality. For those who knew and loved her, there was tremendous sadness in her passing, but also gratitude for a precious legacy. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Jack Shapiro: A star shining in our sky

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 18 March 2024

 

Jack Shapiro, “Our British Correspondent”  died on 29th January, 2010 at the age of 93. Through several generations and many decades his comradeship with our party was both deeply political and deeply personal. How lucky we are to have been his comrade! Our ideas were shaped through his articles, through conversations and letters. No book written by Comrade Ted Hill was published without Jack's clear analysis and criticism. He stood shoulder to shoulder with our party in the struggle against the revisionism that tried to take the revolutionary heart from Marxism-Leninism.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Farewell Marie Shapiro, comrade and internationalist

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 18 March 2024

 

In December, 2008, the working class of the world, but particularly of Great Britain and Australia, lost a comrade who had spent her life in their service. Though few would know her name, Marie Shapiro made an enormous contribution to the cause of communism. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The return of the Philippines puppet Mark 2

Written by: (Contributed) on 16 March 2024

 

The recent visit of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. to Australia for high-level diplomatic talks marks a return to the days of the previous Cold War now being played-out with the present one against China.

Taking place on the eve of the ASEAN Summit in Melbourne, the Marcos address to parliamentarians in Canberra was designed to act as a rallying-cry for a further escalation of diplomatic hostilities between US-led positions and China inside the regional trade body.

The Philippines has had a long history of political leaders who acted as puppets for US-led regional diplomacy; the present President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. is no exception to the general rule. Historically, US military strategists have used the Philippines as the centre of an arc which swings to the more economically developed countries of northern Asia and the under-developed yet resource rich countries of South-east Asia. (1) Operations have followed the regional planning.

An arc from sensitive US intelligence facilities based at Pine Gap, Central Australia, likewise, swings to counterparts on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Guam in the Pacific which have been upgraded as hubs for regional operations. (2) The arc also cuts across the Philippines where the US now has access to nine military bases in strategic areas of the country based on the defence and security of 'US interests' in Taiwan and sensitive island chains used to restrict access and egress across the region. (3)

While great play was made of the Philippines closing some of the huge US military bases in the 1990s with the end of the previous Cold War, the Pentagon soon returned by stealth; emphasis was placed upon re-opening former military facilities then hosted by the Philippine government, partnered to enable US troop rotations with 'permission to operate from the old installations as guests, mostly on the temporary basis'. (4) The moves in the Philippines were also accompanied by similar diplomacy across the region; high-level diplomacy conducted by then President Obama toward traditional allies included numerous agreements about increasing the US military presence without too much publicity about longer-term implications. (5)

The relationship between US-led regional foreign policy and the Philippines, nevertheless, soured considerably with the election of President Rodrigo Duterte whose administration pursued a popularist and pragmatic line; Duterte, politically, came from outside the traditional ruling oligarchies imposed on the Philippines by the Spanish colonial administrations. Instead of, therefore, pursuing the US-led policies of confrontation with China, the Duterte administration stated that it 'will not take sides with any parties contesting China's move to set up a missile base on some of the islands in the South China Seas … this is to avoid the Philippines being dragged into a conflict between superpowers'. (6) The political and diplomatic position was quite clear. It included reference to 'it is not in our national interest … to … be involved in any armed confrontation between China and the US … an independent foreign policy is the best position to take … everything will be resolved in peaceful and diplomatic means'. (7)

The position of the Duterte administration also included their questioning and possible termination of a 1998 agreement with joint US-Philippine military exercises, which set alarm bells ringing frantically in the Pentagon. (8) It effectively threatened to push the US into a front-line position as opposed to lurking behind regional partners and allies. When then President Obama addressed a graduation of US military cadets at West Point, New York, in 2014, for example, he stated 'it was possible for the US to lead through example and by creating international alliances … and … the promise of a less aggressive American foreign policy', was subsequently used for the later Indo-Pacific Strategy. (9)

With the demise of the Duterte administration and election of Marcos Jnr. the US gave a sign of relief; the oligarchies were back in control, with the Marcos oligarchy holding presidential power. Washington and the Pentagon were subsequently able to return to the traditional hegemonic and diplomatic positions of the previous Cold War, now played-out in the present one against China.

It was, therefore, no surprise to observe President Marcos Jnr. being given a big welcome in Canberra; Australia is a regional hub for 'US interests', with defence and security considerations resting partly on the Philippines. In fact, the US regard the Philippines as the front-line with its diplomatic hostilities toward China, with 'Australia the main rear for US military forces'. (10) The diplomatic positions include preparations for 'real-war scenarios'. In recent times, for example, Australian military facilities have been upgraded specifically for this purpose, coinciding with the formal Visiting Forces Agreements between the Philippines, Australia and the US leaving little to the imagination about longer-term implications.

Marcos, furthermore, used his visit to Canberra and address in Parliament House, on the eve of the ASEAN Summit in Melbourne, to state the Philippines 'is prepared to choose a side', namely the US against China. (11) Most ASEAN member countries, however, prefer to not take sides between the US or China; they benefit from diplomacy with both sides. (12)

No doubt the US is, therefore, pleased with their Marcos Mark 2 puppet in Manila, who is serving 'US interests' well, as his father did before him, together with the sowing of seeds of doubt and division inside ASEAN, the premier Asian trade bloc:

                                      We also need an independent foreign policy!

  
1.     The objectives of the US, The Guardian, 6 August 2003.
2.     See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
3.     US plans to expand its military presence in the Philippines to counter threats against Taiwan, USA Today, 2 February 2023.
4.     US eyes return to south-east Asian bases, The Guardian, 29 June 2012.
5.     US signs defence deal in Asia, The Guardian, 2 May 2014.
6.     Duterte won't antagonise China over missile system, The Philippine Star, 9 May 2018.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Philippines rethinks defence deal with the US, Australian, 4 June 2020.
9.     US signals foreign policy shift away from military might, The Guardian, 6 June 2014, and; The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
10.   Guardian, op.cit., 6 August 2003.
11.   Bongbong knows he needs friends, Australian, 1 March 2024.
12.   See: Tapping in to ASEAN needs, Australian, 7 March 2024, with reference to the 'China plus one' strategy of ASEAN member countries.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Aged Care Workers Win Higher Wages and Some Respect

Written by: Ned K. on 15 March 2024

 

Source: United Workers Union, X

On Friday 15 March 2024 the Fair Work Commission handed down its second Decision on wage increases for aged care workers. In 2022 the Commission handed down a Decision increasing nurses and personal care workers and chefs in aged care facilities a 15% wage increase.

The principal unions with membership in the aged care sector (Nurses Union, Health Services Union and United Workers Union) initial case was for a 25% wage increase for all occupations in the aged care sector. 

The second Decision of the Commission handed down on Friday 15 March 2024 increased the wage increase (inclusive of the 15%) to up to 28.5% for nurses and personal care workers and a 6.8% wage increase to support service aged care workers such as cleaners, laundry workers and food preparation workers assisting the chefs.

Although aged care workers did not take industrial action to win increases in pay, they raised their voices in unity exposing to Royal Commissions, politicians and the media the impact that low pay had not just on their own personal lives but on the quality of care of elderly people dependent on aged care. It has been their stories that demanded the Fair Work Commission and the federal government ensure that aged care workers be paid wages that reflect the skill and complexity of the work they perform.

Aged care workers’ wages are paid from money allocated to the aged care employers who own and dominate the aged care sector, both residential and home care.

Many aged care sector employers, even the so-called not for profit operators, have a history of mis-allocating federal government money provided to pay workers.

Sometimes this has been done by outright underpayment (wage theft) of workers and sometimes by "creative rostering" and not replacing staff absent from work. 

With the increase in wages to aged care workers, the temptation to continue bad practices will no doubt continue. 

However, through the workers’ campaign for higher wages and respect for the work they do, they have become more united and organized with thousands joining their appropriate union for the first time. Many are migrant workers who are standing up for their rights and the rights of residents like never before.

The next big battle for the aged care workers and indeed communities is to tackle the question of ownership and control of the sector.

Is it in the interests of aged care residents, workers and communities as a whole that aged care is dominated by private for-profit operators, many of them large overseas owned conglomerates?
 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Party Anniversary and Congress

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 15 March 2024

 

Today, March 15, 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of our Party’s founding.

To mark the occasion, we are announcing today that we will be holding our 16th Congress this year.

Congress is taking place at a time of intensifying inter-imperialist rivalries and continuing crisis of global monopoly capital.  Although US imperialism is still strong, especially militarily, it is more widely exposed and isolated. The gulf between the ruling classes of monopoly capital and the masses is widening globally.  Conditions for expanding anti-US imperialist forces are strengthening, not least in Australia. Economic and living conditions of the people are worsening.  Climate crisis is rallying the people against monopoly capitalism.  Nevertheless, we need to take account of uneven conditions and developments. 

The heroic Palestinian resistance is isolating reactionary and imperialist forces, inspiring and mobilising the oppressed and progressive forces. The overwhelming international solidarity for Palestinians is an antidote to the ruling class’s push towards fascism.   

The inter-imperialist rivalries between the US bloc and China/Russia bloc are intensifying, threatening imperialist war, giving rise to anti-war and independence movements.   

Congress consultations offer excellent opportunities to examine Australia’s and international conditions, class struggle, the people’s and revolutionary movements, enabling the party to set the direction for our work and study in the next 4-5 years.

Central Committee
CPA (M-L) 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Australia surrenders sovereignty again: integrates with US-UK military exports and RnD

Written by: Nick G. on 13 March 2024

 

A new set of policies on Australian exports introduced last November has been designed to make local research and development interoperable with that of our AUKUS “partners”, the US and UK imperialists.

Hugh Jeffrey, Australia’s Deputy Secretary of Strategy, Policy, and Industry made the announcement during a Canberra speech sponsored by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

Hugh Jeffrey has had 4 overseas postings, including as Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC and to NATO in Afghanistan, where he was Senior Adviser to the International Security Assistance Force Commander and the NATO Ambassador.

Jeffrey said that the changes will mean “a net decrease in regulatory compliance costs, and actually expand the amount of research that can occur internationally without a permit”.

“…with the national exemption for export permits from the US and UK, (the changes will) remove regulation from $5 billion of almost $9 billion in annual Australian defence exports.”

That will please not just the American and British, but also our good friends in the Zionist genocidal army to which we are exporting arms and technology.

But local researchers outside the US loyalists in the Australian military, public service and government, are worried about the implications. 

The president of the Australian Academy of Sciences, Chennupati Jagadish, was concerned about the prospect of a brain drain towards the military. “My ability to attract the best and brightest in the world, wherever they are, will diminish,” he said. “It’s timely to ask what Australia is really seeking to secure if we are restricting the development of technologies that are critical for the future of our country?” 

Even people in the US close to their military are surprised at the gullibility of their Australian servants.

Bill Greenwalt, who as a staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote many of the US export control rules, said he thought “Australia just gave up its sovereignty and got nothing for it.” 

Greenwalt, also a former US deputy undersecretary of Defense for industrial policy, warned that incorporating many of the principles of the International Trafficking in Arms Exports (ITAR) regulations to gain access to US nuclear submarine technology would set Australia back 50 years. 

The changes are designed to more closely bind Australia to the United States and Britain in return for access to the technology and intellectual property that comes with the primary goal of the AUKUS agreement — buying and building nuclear-powered attack submarines.

The gullibility extends to a promised gift to the US of A$4.7 million to pump prime their submarine production at a time when there is no guarantee of that happening. A matching contribution of US$3 billion has yet to pass Congress, held up by the same Republicans who are hoping for a Trump return to the Presidency.

Editor of the online Australia Pacific Defence Reporter, Kym Bergmann, commented yesterday: “In the US the return of Donald Trump to the Presidency is suddenly looking more likely – and if he scraps AUKUS it might do us all a favour by bowing to the inevitable.”

Commenting on US-Australia relations, former Senator and submariner Rex Patrick wrote yesterday that “There are no guarantee the US will actually deliver. US national interests will always take precedence.”

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also said yesterday that under AUKUS, Australia has ‘lost all sovereignty, all agency’.

Australia will never have the capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy so long as our economy is dominated by the US, and our ruling circles are blindly loyal to US imperialism.

Related reading: Client State: Australia the "51st state of the US" for deadly weapons destruction by Farah Abdurahman

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

WOMAD: Marley to perform, Palestinian musicians banned

Written by: Nick G. on 9 March 2024

 

Photo: Asbjorn Kanck

Yesterday, members and supporters of the Australia Friends of Palestine Association picketed the entrance to the popular WOMAD music festival calling on audiences to boycott the performance by Ziggy Marley, son of the famous Rastafarian Bob Marley.

Their very vocal calls of "cease fire NOW" and "stop the genocide" rang out during the one and a half hour-long rally. Drivers of passing cars honked their horns in support. 

The AFOPA bookshop in Adelaide said that many with tickets to WOMAD had called at their shop to purchase pro-Palestinian t-shirts to wear to WOMAD.

Excuse to test new anti-protest laws.

The head of security bloke was in civvies walking around outside the entrance talking to people. He was hired direct by Womad whereas the security guards were contract security guards employed by SRS.

He said he had a specific contract with Womad and that the police were running the security show and applying/testing those new security laws that the Malinauskas Government rushed through after an Extinction Rebellion protest last year. The new Bill increased the financial penalties for obstruction of a public place 66 times, to a new fine of $50,000, and introduced a three month’s jail time. 

At one stage a police officer spoke to a Palestinian demonstrator who was walking on the pedestrian side of the two lane pathway on Frome Road. The other lane was for bicycles.

The Palestinian bloke had a placard about boycotting Ziggy Marley as he walked towards the city facing the Womad patrons who were coming from the city.

The Palestinian guy was told by the police he was obstructing the public.

The organisers of the protest AFOPA met with police prior to the protest and under some new law they were told they had to have no placards or flags within 50 metres of the entrance to the event. The police did not enforce this strictly as even the largest gathering of protesters on the western side of Frome Road were less than 50 metres from the entrance.

Why Marley?

Calls on WOMAD organisers to drop Marley from the program owing to his support for Israel and its armed forces, calls rejected by the organisers, had fuel added to the fire when the same organisers, at the last moment, withdrew their invitation for Jordanian-based Palestinian group 47SOUL.

Marley’s wife Orly Agai, is an Israeli of Iranian-Jewish descent. In Israel in 2011 for two concerts, Marley told the Zionist Israeli news agency Ynet: "The history of our connection to the roots of Israel, to David, Solomon, goes way before I met my wife. My father, my Rastafari culture, has a tight link to the Jewish culture. We have a strong connection from when I was a young boy and read the Bible, the Old Testament.” He told the agency that he “felt very close to Israel”.

In November 2018, Marley displayed that closeness when he joined US rapper Pharrel Williams on stage at the annual Friends of the Israel Defence Forces gala which raised US$60 million for the genocidal army.

Their audience included Israeli soldiers in uniform.

Although he claims his music sends a “message of justice, love, and peace for all people,” on October 20, 2023 Marley posted a picture of a raised hand, along with the words, “You know wha! There must be a better way. Free Gaza from Hamas.”

He also signed an open letter affirming his support of Israel amid the war with Hamas. 

The letter instructs Hollywood “to speak out forcefully against Hamas, to support Israel, to refrain from sharing misinformation about the war, and do whatever is in their power to urge the terrorist organisation to return the innocent hostages to their families”.

WOMAD director Ian Scobie tried to defend his decision to allow Marley to perform, saying that it was a lie that he had performed for the IDF and only promoted harmony in his songs. 

47SOUL a no-go

47SOUL, which had twice before performed at WOMAD, were to be banned, he said, because of the way feelings were running in the community at the moment, and his inability under those circumstances to be able to guarantee their safety. He added that they could perform in 2025 if they wanted to. This was a bullshit excuse, because anyone can see how feelings are running in the community at the moment.

47SOUL issued a statement on the withdrawal of their invitation to play:

"Having initially accepted the invitation, we were later informed that WOMADelaide took the decision to rescind 47SOUL's invite, citing doubts at being unable to present a 'suitably safe environment' for the artists and audiences at the festival due to community protests taking place in Australia," it said.

"We find this line of reasoning deeply problematic and disheartening as it feeds into the narrative of Palestinians being an inherent source of danger to others.

"At this critical time, the message of multiculturalism that WOMAD seeks to espouse, and its specific relevance to the events we are witnessing, could not be of greater importance."

British-Lebanese multi-genre music producer and DJ Saliah withdrew from WOMAD in protest, saying “I am of British-Lebanese heritage. Members of my family are currently suffering daily bombardment by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Force)  in Lebanon….WOMADelaide…refuses to provide a ‘safe’ platform for Palestinian artists and their allies at a time when amplifying our voices could not be more critical.”

Australian singer-songwriter Jen Cloher, who is part of Sunday’s WOMADelaide program and has vowed to donate any profits from that performance to 47SOUL and the Palestinian cause, lashed out at organisers’ claims the decision was based on safety.

Tunisian performer, Emel Mathlouthi performed last night, waving a Palestinian flag for a supportive audience.

Writers Week encourages discussion of Gaza conflict

In contrast to the deplorable decisions that have mired WOMAD in controversy, peaceful audiences of many hundreds of people listened with great interest to speakers on Palestinian and Israeli issues at the previous week’s Adelaide Writers Festival.

Avi Shlaim, whose Arab-Jewish family fled their Iraqi homeland after the First Arab-Israel War in 1948, described the discrimination his family faced from the   Ashkenazi Jews who had come to Israel from Europe. He had researched the circumstances of the large-scale migration of Jews from Iraq to Israel at that time, and had discovered “incontrovertible proof” that three of the five terrorist bombs directed at Iraq’s Jewish community had been planted by the Israelis themselves to induce a state of panic, forcing Iraq’s Jews to seek refuge in Israel. He explained why he rejected the “two-state solution” and now sought a singular secular and democratic state of Palestine. His book is Three Worlds: Memoirs of an  Arab-Jew.

Tareq Baconi serves as the president of the board of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. He was listened to without interruption by more than 2,000 people at 8am as he outlined the origins of Hamas, its political ambitions and the reasons why it has the support of the people of Gaza. His book is Hamas Contained. 

Several hours later, another huge audience heard Israeli-born Ilan Pappé address the question of Israel and Palestine more broadly. The author of several books on the topic, he is best-known for his detailed study of the Zionist crime of ethnic cleansing that both pre-dated and continued through the Naqba. It was “a crime that needs to be confronted politically as well as morally”, he wrote in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. 

As a tale of two decisions, Adelaide Writers Week and WOMAD could not be further apart.

Further protests are planned at the latter.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Written by: Ned K. on 8 March 2024

 

Above: Early Childhood Workers at a rally in 2022.

The dust has settled on the federal government's changes in the Fair Work Act in relation to enterprise bargaining. Workers and their Unions are looking to see where the changes can be used to advantage workers and what are the traps to look for.

The employers said the sky would fall in if the federal parliament approved widening the opportunities for multi-employer bargaining. So far that has not proven to be the case. One of the few sectors where the new multi-employer laws have been applied is the Early Childhood Education sector. The sector is now dominated by private equity companies and other private for profit operators while the wages paid to workers are highly dependent on federal government funding.

The Early Childhood Education workers (predominantly women) and their Union, United Workers Union, initiated multi-employer bargaining and utilised the new provision in the Fair Work Act regarding relevant funding third parties being involved . The third party involved was the federal government as it funded the wages in the sector. While the federal government said it as sympathetic towards the low pay and poor conditions of workers in the sector it dragged its heels on committing to fund wage increases. 

Consequently the sector owners stalled the bargaining process.

The workers and their Union responded in February this year by giving notice of a strike on Internatinal Women's Day, 8 March.

About a week before the intended sector wide strike, the federal government announced it would fund a substantial increase in wages. Union members' Delegates agreed in consultation with members to postpone the strike action and possibly withdraw it altogether once they knew the exact amount that the federal government was going to agree to fund in the form of wage increases and over what time frame.

Delegates thought it best to keep the powder dry as they realised that their members may only get one clean shot of strike action as under the new laws the employers and fderal government had plenty of legal options to try and block on-going industrial action.

The threat of industrial action definitely moved the federal government's position on funding wage increases in the sector.

From the workers' perspective, their Union had utilized changes in the new laws to apply the "rising tide (of struggle) to lift all boats(multiple private for-profit Early Childhood Education Centre owners)".

On International Women's Day, thousands of women workers in the sector will be keeping a close eye on developments and waiting to see the dollar signs from the federal government.

In a completely different sector of the economy, the stevedoring and maritime sector, there is a history of protracted enterprise bargaining disputes between the Maritime Union members and a single employer. The new laws in relation to enterprise bargaining have strengthened the powers of the Fair Work Commission to arbitrate when an employer or group of employers argues that workers and their Union are being "unreasonable" if they have not accepted an employer offer after 9 months of bargaining. The new provisions come under an Intractable Bargaining section of the Act. 

This new provision of the Act went through without headlines in the daily press and for good reason. The big corporations and no doubt both Labor and Liberal governments want to limit the power of the workers in key areas of the international economy such as shipping trade and turn around time of containers on and off ships.

So whatever the laws of capitalism regarding the class struggle within workplaces, workers and their Unions learn how to both use the laws to their advantage and how to avoid the worst aspect of the laws to further the interests of the working class as a whole to maximize the opportunity of a rising tide lifting many, if not all boats!
  

 

Print Version - new window Email article

International Women's Day and Palestinians' Struggle

Written by: Ned K. on 8 March 2024

 

In Adelaide, celebration of International Women's Day starts early with the now traditional International Women's Day Breakfast at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

Each year thousands of women arrive at the Convention Centre from about 6.30am for a 7am start.

Many school children also attend the Breakfast and there are women from many different backgrounds and occupations in attendance.

This year the guest speaker was Annabelle Crabb and as in previous years, the Breakfast was attended by politicians including Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong who hosted the Breakfast.

Nothing different about that.

The difference this year was that as women approached the Convention Centre from north Terrace's footpath they saw police paddy wagons. Once up the escalator and on the plaza they would have seen more paddy wagons and a large contingent of uniformed police spread across the plaza in a straight line.

Were they there to protect the people entering the Breakfast? Possibly.

Or were they there to keep an eye on the small group of mainly women carrying large Palestinian banners standing behind a blockade especially placed to separate them from people entering the Breakfast, especially Penny Wong, the Foreign Affairs Minister so supportive of Zionist Israel?

Many women entering the event would have put two and two together to see the Palestinian flags behind barriers, a row of police nd Penny Wong being the host of the Breakfast.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

International Women’s Day lifts struggle for liberation of women and socialism!

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 8 March 2024

 

All power to women of Palestine resisting the occupation!

On 8 March, International Working Working Women’s Day, women all around the world demonstrate their determination to struggle for the liberation of women and humankind from the shackles of colonialism, capitalism, imperialism and its wars.  Women resolutely oppose fascism in all its disguises.

• Equal pay for equal work and work of equal value
• Lift wages of all workers
• Bring child care into public hands – make it affordable
• More public and affordable housing
• Increase Single Parents’ Benefits
• Implement and enforce anti-discrimination legislation across society
• Ban commercial profit-driven culture that commodifies women as sex objects
• Oppose involvement in imperialist wars

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Tuvalu’s Taiwan ties remain, but seeks to regain sovereignty from Australian security pact

Written by: (Contributed) on 7 March 2024

 

Above: People of Tuvalu protest Australia's indifference to global warming in 2019

Concerns arising about the new government of Tuvalu led by incoming Prime Minister Feleti Teo switching diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China appear to have been resolved, at least for the time being. A diplomatic note from Taiwan's ambassador to Tuvalu stated he had assurance ties with Taipei would be maintained in line with existing defence and security provision. While Tuvalu is a tiny Pacific Island country, it has important geo-strategic significance for US-led regional diplomacy and Taiwan.

In late February the Taiwanese Ambassador to Tuvalu issued a brief diplomatic statement that the incoming government of Prime Minister Feleti Teo in Funafuti would continue to maintain existing links with Taiwan. Concerns had arisen about a possible diplomatic switch to China, following a statement from former Finance Minister, Seve Paeniu, that 'Tuvalu's new government … would review … its Taiwan ties'. (1)

Tuvalu, a small country strategically placed in the Pacific has, historically, maintained full diplomatic ties with Taipei in return for a 'large assistance program'. (2)

Tuvalu achieved independence in the mid-1970s and although it has low levels of economic development, its membership of the British Commonwealth, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), together with a treaty of friendship with the US, nevertheless, have shown its vital strategic importance for regional western military and security provision. 

Its security pact with Australia, likewise, has revealed its continued significance for Canberra. (3) The Falepili Union, signed last year, allowed for increased migration to Australia, while surrendering veto power over Tuvalu's security arrangements to Canberra. Tuvalu still broadly supports the deal but wants to make changes it says will make the arrangement more "workable" and will safeguard the "integrity of the sovereignty" of the country. Its decision to revisit the pact has dealt a blow to Australia's signature foreign policy initiative in the Pacific. (4)

A major issue arising during recent election campaigning during the New Year was climate change and the very real fear Tuvalu could eventually submerge with rising sea-levels in a few decades. The offer by China, therefore, to create artificial island projects to protect Tuvalu from submerging was taken very seriously by the peoples of Tuvalu. (5) While China's offer was eventually not accepted, the problem, nevertheless, remains unresolved.  

In fact, informed opinion has already noted it was too early to expect the Teo administration to categorically maintain its ties with Taiwan, thereby creating continued disquiet amongst those linked to US-led militaryand security provision. (6)

Studies of Tuvalu reveal little about the role of US-led regional diplomacy, which in itself may be an indication of its highly sensitive nature. The US Department of State, however, acknowledge Tuvalu is part of its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). (7) The IPS is based on the global alliance established between the US and Japan, which, in turn, rests upon the Quad. (8) Tuvalu is situated approximately in the centre of the Quad and also strategically-placed at the inter-section of the equator and International Time/Date line. (9)

As Tuvalu also rests on an arc from sensitive signals facilities in Queensland, it would appear an important part of US-led regional military and security provision, particularly for the South and Western Pacific.

The Quad is also composed of numerous lower-level partners inside the main alliance, and Tuvalu would appear part of the regional IPS provision. Part of the US-led IPS strategy has been to build an anti-China missile network along sensitive island chains, used to restrict access and egress of adversaries across the vast region. (10) The geographical, political and diplomatic position of Taiwan is, furthermore, central to the US-led Island Chain Theory.

1.     Tuvalu PM 'rock solid with Taiwan', Australian, 27 February 2024.  
2.     Tuvalu, GlobalSecurity.org – March 2024.
3.     Pact with Tuvalu in the balance, Editorial, Australian, 30 January 2024.
4.     Tuvalu's new prime minister indicates he will revisit deal…, ABC News, 28 February, 2024
5.     See: Fears of Tuvalu turn to China, The Weekend Australian, 20-21 January 2024.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 27 February 2024.
7.     US Relations with Tuvalu, Website: US Department of State, 23 June 2023.
8.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
9.     Ibid., and, See: Peter Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
10.     See: US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei, 5 March 2021; and, US Indo-Pacific Command proposes new missile capabilities to deter China,        RFA., 5 March 2021.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

ICOR Call for International Women’s Day

Written by: ICOR on 7 March 2024

 

 

Above: Fighters of the Women's Protection Unit, Rojava are in the front lines of women's emancipation

Today we publish a statement from ICOR on International Women's Day. Tomorrow, on International Women's Day we will publish our own statement - eds.

********************

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Indonesia: Shadowy hands, shady dealings

Written by: (Contributed) on 6 March 2024

 

A carefully worded high-level diplomatic statement recently released from Canberra regarding regional trade organisation has revealed how Australia has followed US-led initiatives to undermine ASEAN in favour of the OECD.

Fears exist that ASEAN has proved ineffective at confronting China's regional influence.

The statement appears to show how US-led regional diplomacy has pushed hard against the BRICs, with other considerations played down to avoid unnecessary publicity and controversy.

The announcement that the OECD has been willing to accept Indonesia as a full member was greeted with enthusiasm from Canberra. (1) The sprawling 38 member countries, largely from the advanced, industrial west, appeared to accept Indonesia on the basis that it was an emerging economy destined to become 'an advanced economy by 2045'. (2) While the country has had involvement with the OECD from 2007, the move toward full membership has important implications. The fact that China has remained Indonesia's largest trading partner has not caused undue concern, at the present time.

Behind the scenes, however, the shadowy hands of those well-placed in Canberra has been duly noted.

The present OECD secretary-general, Mathias Cormann, has remained a well-placed Australian Liberal Party member from the National Right faction; a former senator from 2007-20, he was also finance minister, spanning the three successive administrations of Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison in Canberra. (3) In fact, it was Morrison who actually nominated Cormann for the elite OECD position in lavish display of patronage. (4)

The patronage chain linked to Morrison has also included his membership of the board of the so-called International Democrat Union (IDU), which has been aligned with the 'intolerant far right', linked to pro-Trump political groups in the US. (5) The IDU has had a long-time involvement with the Australian Liberal Party and their coalition 'friends'; John Howard was chair of the organisation for more than a decade, while serving as Australian Prime Minister. (6) The period was marked by a particular sycophancy toward the US with his nearly every political move.

In recent times a major push has taken place from Canberra to establish more amenable diplomatic relations with Indonesia, largely due to its geo-strategic position in the neighbouring region. Allegations of war-crimes by leading Indonesian political and military figures, particularly in East Timor and West Papua, have been played down.

Indonesia, historically, has also been more closely associated with ASEAN, an important regional trade body composed of neighbouring countries. In recent times, however, concern has been raised about the continued usefulness of ASEAN for US-led regional diplomacy. Its member countries all retain important trade links with China, and they have little time for choosing either side in the rising diplomatic hostilities between the US and China. They have vested interests in maintaining the present diplomatic status quo.

Indonesia, therefore, has been taken by the OECD as a test-case; it is an important part of Australia's defence and security concerns and Canberra has noted 'it will also have a ripple effect through other countries across South-east Asia in terms of encouraging a greater alignment to OECD standards at a time when China seeks to assert its influence throughout the region'. (7)

Indonesia has also chosen not to apply for membership of the BRICS trade body last year, which came with a sigh of relief from Canberra. The BRICS, composed of China, Russia, and other strategically-placed countries has in recent years dramatically expanded its diplomatic influence across emerging economies. At its Pretoria Summit last year, the BRICS began high-level diplomatic discussions with the Palestinians and called for a State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as the capital. (8) Australia clearly did not want a BRICs member country geographically close in the neighbouring region.

While the BRICs initiative enhanced the diplomatic standing of the Palestinians, it met with complete silence from the West. There was no official media coverage, which was duly noted with interest.

It is, therefore, revealing to also note the recent Canberra diplomatic statement included three references to Israel, and concerns raised by Tel Aviv about Indonesia's support for the Palestinian people. The OECD leadership, nevertheless, appear to have provided encouragement for Indonesia to join the trade body. It was noted, for example, that Cormann was the 'driving force behind getting the other 38 OECD member nations on board. This wasn't easy. Israel was staunchly opposed'. (9)    

What relevance this political chicanery has in connection with developments which took place on 7 October and afterwards has yet to be accurately clarified and established.

1.     See: Jakarta in a nickle pickle amid its bid for OECD membership, and, Talks signal a key shift towards the West, Australian, 22 February 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     Wikipedia: Mathias Cormann.
4.     Ibid.
5.     See: Scott Morrison signs on, The New Daily, 14 September 2022.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Australian, op.cit., 22 February 2024.
8.     BRICS Summit, Pretoria, WAFA News Agency, 20 July 2023.  
9.     Australian, op.cit., 22 February 2024.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

We support the international campaign to free Ecevit Piroğlu

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 5 March 2024

 

At the request of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) Turkey/Kurdistan, we have petitioned the Serbian Ambassador to Australia for the release of Kurdish prisoner Ecevit Piroğlu. Our letter follows:

H.E. Ambassador Mr. Rade Stefanovic
Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Canberra

Your Excellency,

On June 4, 2022 I wrote to you in relation to the Turkish national Ecevit Piroğlu who is currently facing an extradition request by Turkey for his return to that country from Serbia.

Since 1 June 2022, Kurdish political activist Ecevit Piroğlu has been in detention in Serbia following an extradition request from Turkey. He was denied his legitimate right to asylum. Last year, he went on a 136-day hunger strike in protest. An international campaign stopped his extradition.

On 12 January 2024, Ecevit Piroğlu was released, but the Serbian immigration police were already waiting outside the prison to unlawfully arrest him again and take him to another extradition camp. Piroğlu, who does not accept these unlawful practices, has since gone on another hunger strike for his freedom. 

This illegitimate action by the Serbian judiciary, which indicates close cooperation with Ankara, has been going on for 32 months. Turkey is known for systematic human rights violations and attacks on democratic institutions and organisations. The extradition of Ecevit Piroğlu to Turkey would jeopardise his life. With great concern the democratic world public is following the illegality of the Serbian state and is calling for immediate compliance with international and Serbian law. Lawyers from all over the world are informing themselves about the situation and condemning the arbitrariness of the Serbian judiciary.

We protest in the strongest possible terms against these actions of the Serbian state, which violate all human rights. Extradition to Turkey would be a serious violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."  This means that extradition to a country such as Turkey, where there is a risk of such treatment, is prohibited. The imprisonment of Ecevit Piroglu is therefore already a gross violation of the law.

We respectfully request that Ecevit Piroğlu be allowed to seek asylum in Serbia and that the extradition order made on behalf of Turkey be quashed.

Nick G.
Chairperson,
Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
5 March 2024

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Condemn the Israeli bloodlust!

Written by: ICOR on 2 March 2024

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

US imperialism has no friends, only ‘interests’

Written by: (Contributed) on 28 February 2024

 

Above - Island chain theory - see reference in article

Those observing the dysfunctional nature of US politics may have overlooked one of the serious side-effects of the irrational behaviour. Three Pacific countries which remain dependent upon US foreign aid, have been kept waiting for financial support to materialise with no sign it will take place at some future date. It has been noted from more sensible quarters the three countries, at present diplomatically linked to Taiwan, are, in effect, being pushed closer to switching to China, and thereby, creating greater problems for US regional foreign policy and foisting likely military options upon their allies

Decision-maskers in Washington, supposedly operating in line with Pentagon military planning, can hardly be described as behaving in a rational manner and pursuing a straightforward agenda; they are pushing policies which are clearly counter-productive. Other countries, also dependent upon US foreign policy, including Australia, should perhaps take notice of the highly questionable political and diplomatic behaviour, and evaluate it accordingly. The US budget impasse has thrown elements of AUKUS planning into doubt, according to some in the Australian military community.

With US presidential elections looming later this year the spectacle of an ageing president with cognitive problems being confronted by a far-right buffoon backed by red-necks and gun clubs has become a daily event. It is hardly worth speculating their next move; in fact, it is difficult to take the spectacle seriously.

The latest political chicanery has included pro-Trump supporters wanting to re-introduce an amendment about funding for security on the US border with Mexico into the budget; they have actively campaigned for building a wall to prevent asylum-seekers from Central America as a central part of their increasingly racist and nationalistic political agendas.

Behind the scenes, however, they are pursuing a peculiar and devious agenda, which contributes to undermining US leadership positions in the Pacific; the region is a centre of geo-political battles between the US and China. The US budget impasse has hindered US foreign policy toward Palau, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, effectively cutting their financial support. Dependent upon US foreign aid, the three countries have been kept waiting for months for vital foreign aid. (1) There is no sign the budget impasse will be resolved in the near future.

In fact, reliable observations about the debacle have noted the three Pacific countries signed a twenty-year agreement last October with the US which cost Washington $7.1 billion, designed to safeguard sensitive shipping lanes in competition with China; the cost of replacing the agreement with military options has been estimated to cost $100 billion. (2)  

Most of the Pacific islands had neo-colonial economic relations foisted upon them with independence; their economies have never been sustainable without foreign aid. The mass of the populations live subsistence lifestyles. Essential services are usually provided by foreign aid.

Elsewhere in the region, countries such as the Solomon Islands which made the diplomatic switch in 2019, were rewarded with extensive support from China. Beijing, historically, has been generous with its regional aid programs. It has, therefore, been noted by the President of Palau, Surangel Whipps Jnr., that he was 'coming under domestic political pressure to shift his country's allegiance from the US to China, dropping support for Taiwan'. (3) He further noted that 'every day … the US budget is not approved … plays into the hands of China'. (4)

Similar concerns have also been raised in neighbouring Tuvalu following recent presidential elections where the pro-Taiwan leader lost his seat. Nauru, likewise, made the diplomatic switch from Taiwan to China following recent presidential election last month.

The three Pacific countries, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, also form a strategic component part of Taiwan's New Southbound Policy, based on forging closer links with countries in the region and using their diplomatic links to gain access to regional dialogues and trade organisations. (5)

Taiwan, however, has become increasingly diplomatically isolated with a declining number of countries supporting Taipei, none of the remaining countries can be regarded as diplomatically significant. In fact, Taiwan stands the very real risk of total diplomatic isolation as countries switch allegiance to China. In practical terms, as the number of countries diplomatically recognising Taiwan dwindles, decision-makers in Taipei have fewer supporters to assist them at UN level.

Taiwan, however, is diplomatically important for Washington and the Pentagon, marking the centre of Island Chain Theory, used for regional foreign policy with tiny Pacific countries having huge significance by providing strategic access and egress across the vast waterways. (see diagram) Each diplomatic switch from Taiwan to China also enables Beijing to gain access to exclusive economic zones, rich in minerals and natural resources. (6)

Other regional defence and security considerations include the Pentagon planning to build a radar base on Palau and the Marshall Islands hosting the Space Fence, a sensitive space surveillance system. (7)

Returning to the budget impasse in Washington, it is perhaps appropriate to see the whole spectacle as a collapse of political will at the imperial centre being played-out inside a constitution which one side does not even regard as legitimate; it has far-reaching implications for Australia and other US allies.

The US appear to be abandoning Taiwan, if not in word, then by their actions; both Washington and the Pentagon, it should be noted, appear to expect their allies within the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) to take greater responsibility for regional operations. (8)

Bound ever closer to the US through the 'alliance' and numerous military agreements, Canberra, for example, has been forced to accept greater responsibility for regional 'US interests'; the defence and security of strategic Pacific countries, therefore, is a major concern foisted upon Australia. The recently published list of military acquisitions reveals longer distance deployments outside of Australia's usual areas of concern, already been planned by the Pentagon.

In order to increase US production of nuclear-powered submarines and thus have several to pass onto Australia, both countries agreed to provide US$3.3 billion – or A$4.6 billion from our side – but the US payment has been delayed by Congress.  Editor of the online Asia Pacific Defence Reporter Kim Bergmann commented: ‘So while Australia remains on the hook for a contribution of $4.6 billion – which neither the government nor the RAN can justify – the Americans refuse to spend their own money to speed up submarine production. What an ally! Unless Virginia class submarines are being built at a rate of 2.33 per year, Australia will receive nothing.’

The vast Australian defence budget is also set to increase dramatically, lifting spending from 2.05 per cent of present GDP to 2.3 per cent by the end of the decade. Much of the increased expenditure is based on military systems and equipment with designed interoperability with the US under their command; little thought or consideration has been given to the defence and security of Australia itself. (9)

The IPS, likewise, has established an agenda to only serve 'US interests', not those of its allies:  

We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     See: US budget impasse driving Palau into arms of China, Australian, 21 February 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Ibid.
5.     See: Beijing keeps a wary eye on new Taipei outpost, Australian, 18 June 2018.
6.     US v. China, Japan Forward: Politics and Security, Dr. Rieko Hayakawa and Jennifer L. Anson, 14 February 2020.
7.     Ibid., and, Australian, op.cit., 21 February 2024.
8.     See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019, with details about the US regional policy for allies taking responsibility for US-led operations.
9. Introductory remarks to APDR Podcast no. 37

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Cancel the Elbit contract!

Written by: Nick G. on 28 February 2024

 

Above - the Hanwha Redback   PHOTO Andrew Green via Australian Ministry of Defence

Israel’s Elbit Systems announced yesterday that it had been awarded a US$600 million - A$917  million -  contract by the Australian Department of Defence for the supply of systems to South Korean company Hanwha. 

Hanwha is to produce 129 Redback Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) for the DoD at Geelong. 

Hanwha and Elbit last year signed an agreement to cooperate on the manufacture of the IFVs which already include the Redback Turret, which is based on the latest generation of Elbit’s 30 mm manned turret with the COAPS gunner sight, additional electro-optic systems, Iron Fist active protection system, Elbit's Iron-Vision advanced situational awareness head mounted display system, and Elbit's ELAWS laser warning system.

The contract for the IFVs is worth $7 billion AUD ($4.6 billion USD), of which will go to Elbit, in addition to the additional $917 million. 

All of this was negotiated by the DoD last year after the Zionist army attacked Gaza, and is a totally unwarranted reward for Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.

The significance of the contract was omitted from today’s online Australian Defence Magazine’s announcement, but was prominent in yesterday’s US online Breaking Defense report.

The US report said that the contract ‘expands Elbit’s role in Australia. It is also the largest contract announced by the Israeli firm since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.’

The Australian report did not say why we needed the IFVs, but the US report was less coy, quoting the DoD as saying that ‘The acquisition of these infantry fighting vehicles is part of the Government’s drive to modernise the Australian Army to ensure it can respond to the most demanding land challenges in our region.’

What ‘land challenges’ there might be ‘in our region’ were not specified, although it strongly suggests preparation on the part of the DoD for military action in other people’s countries in the South Pacific.

This contract must be cancelled. There should be no purchases of military equipment from the genocidal Zionists, nor should there be any arms sales to them.
By way of a postscript, the Wikipedia page on Elbit documents other countries that have taken a moral stand against dealing with the company.

Ethical concerns and divestment

A number of financial and investment organizations have divested their interests in Elbit.

On September 3, 2009, the Government Pension Fund of Norway's ethical council decided to sell the fund's stocks in Elbit due to the company's supply of surveillance systems for the Israeli West Bank barrier. At a press conference to announce the decision, Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen said "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law". The Norwegian Ambassador to Israel, Hans Jacob Biørn Lian, was called to a meeting at the Israeli Foreign Ministry where the decision was protested.

In January 2010, Danske Bank added Elbit to the list of companies that fail its Socially Responsible Investment policy. A bank spokesman noted that it was acting in the interests of its customers by not "placing their money in companies that violate international standards". The Danish financial watchdog DanWatch placed Elbit on its ethical blacklist in 2011. In 2014, one of Denmark's largest pension fund administrators PKA Ltd announced it will no longer consider investing in Elbit, stating "The ICJ stated that the barrier only serves military purposes and violates Palestinian human rights. Therefore we have looked at whether companies produce custom-designed products to the wall and thus has a particular involvement in repressive activities."

In March 2010, a Swedish pension fund, not wanting to be associated with companies violating international treaties, boycotted Elbit Systems for its involvement in the construction of Israel's West Bank barrier wall.

In December 2018, HSBC divested from Elbit following Elbit's acquisition of IMI Systems. HSBC cited IMI's manufacturing of cluster bombs, which violated the bank's ethics policy of not investing in companies linked to the manufacturing or marketing of cluster munition.

In 2019, Axa partially disinvested from Elbit Systems following pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The move followed several years of campaigning by NGOs, including an April 2018 petition launched by SumOfUs that received 140,000 signatures. Axa "quietly reduce" its investments in Elbit and Israeli banks. Axa remains indirectly invested in Elbit and Israeli banks through a non-controlling interest in its former subsidiary Alliance Bernstein.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Aaron Bushnell – rest in power…

Written by: Nick G. on 28 February 2024

 

The self-immolation of an American serviceman in protest against US support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, has gone largely unreported in the Australian media.

The event is a major embarrassment for the US and for supporters of Zionism.

The 25-year old US Air Force senior airman set himself alight outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on February 25.

As he collapsed to the ground in flames, one security guard pulled a gun and pointed it at him. Another, with a fire extinguisher, remonstrated with his colleague, yelling "I don't need guns! I need fire extinguishers!"

As he approached the embassy, Bushnell declared: "I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine it is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

As flame engulfed his body, he kept shouting ‘Free Palestine’.

Hamas released the following statement on Bushnell’s death:

The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, extends our heartfelt condolences and unwavering support to the loved ones of American pilot Aaron Bushnell. His name will forever be remembered as a champion of human rights and a staunch opponent of the oppression faced by the Palestinian people at the hands of the American government and its unjust policies. 

We also honor the memory of American activist Rachel Corrie, who tragically lost her life in 2003 while standing up against Zionist aggression in Rafah. 
The responsibility for Aaron Bushnell's untimely death lies squarely with the Biden administration, which has continuously supported the brutal actions of the Zionist regime against our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Bushnell made the ultimate sacrifice in an effort to bring attention to the genocide committed by the Israeli military in Gaza. 

Aaron Bushnell's bravery will forever be etched in the hearts of the Palestinian people and all those around the world who stand in solidarity with our just cause. His tragic passing serves as a stark reminder of the growing discontent among the American populace towards their government's complicity in the suffering of our people. 

We call on the global community to join us in condemning the actions of the American government and demanding justice for the Palestinian people. The legacy of Aaron Bushnell will serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration in our continued struggle for freedom and justice.

It gives us no joy to report this young man’s death. 

However, the murderous Israeli security agency, Mossad, was jubilant. On its Twitter page on February 26, it gleefully declared ‘Our enemies kill themselves’.

 

It took the post down the nest day, prompting one of it supporters to ask: ‘You posted yesterday that our enemies are killing themselves and you deleted a post. (Referring to the soldier Bbq'ing himself). Do you consider the US an enemy?’ Mossad replied, ‘the post was deleted because it came across that way. The US is an ally and a friend. Individuals don't change it, not even a president,’ which was hardly a retraction at all.

The people of Gaza do not need more guns, tanks, planes, bombs, drones sent to Israel from the US, Australia, and others in the imperialist bloc.

They need the very real fire extinguisher of the defeat for all time of Zionist expansion, aggression and genocide.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

" property="og:description" />

Explaining China: How a socialist country took the capitalist road to social-imperialism (Italian)

Written by: on

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Greetings to DFLP on its 55th anniversary

Written by: DFLP and CPA (M-L) on 21 February 2024

 

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine is one of the constituent bodies in the Palestinian resistance. Tomorrow marks the 55th anniversary of the founding of the DFLP. We received a message from them and have sent a reply. They are both below.

Dear comrades,

On the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the founding and launch of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) on February 22, 1969, and in light of the Israeli genocidal crimes committed against the Palestinian people that have continued for more than 75 years, the DFLP continues its struggle and resistance in order to end the Israeli occupation of its lands and establish the independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the return of refugees to their homes, and self-determination of the Palestinian people.

DFLP has sacrificed a large number of martyrs in the face of the Israeli occupation and its crimes against the Palestinian people, including members of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau, and it is still defending its Marxist-Leninist ideas in order to implement its political program.

Based on the extent of the real suffering and tragedy that the Palestinian people are experiencing in the Gaza Strip, DFLP will suspend its celebrations on the 55th anniversary of its launch, and activities will be limited to support the resistance and struggle of the Palestinian people.
……………..
Our reply reads:

On the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) expresses its solidarity with, and support for, the heroic and long-suffering Palestinian people.

The Australian people have been shocked by the genocidal slaughter imposed on Gaza by the Zionist regime. In their hundreds of thousands they continue to rally and march for the right of Palestinians to exist peacefully in their homeland from the river to the sea. 

The bloodlust of Netanyahu, and his determination to eliminate Palestinians from the last of their territory, will bring thousands more into the movement, including those Australian Jews who refuse to allow Netanyahu to speak in their names.

Comrades, your adherence to, and defence of, Marxism-Leninism in the context of the need to maintain the broadest united front against Zionist aggression, is an inspiration to Communists everywhere.

Long live the Palestinian resistance!

Smash Zionism and its imperialist backers!

For Marxism-Leninism, the ideology of successful revolutionary struggle!

The Central Committee
Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The Solomon Islands and the 'Look North' policy.

Written by: (Contributed) on 20 February 2024

 

Above - Sogavare and Xi Jinping establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership July 10, 2023.  Photo China Daily

The Solomon Islands goes to the polls on 16 April with the present government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare expected to retain power. The ruling Sogavare administration remains popular with Solomon Islanders although it has been demonised in recent years by right-wing defence and security hawks in Canberra, backed by the US. An assessment from the right-wing Lowy Institute, influential in the corridors of power in Canberra, therefore, has provided an interesting insight into the nature of Australia-Solomons Islands diplomacy.

With electioneering taking place in the Solomon Islands, the present government of Prime Minister Sogavare has announced its five key policy priorities if returned to office; the priorities are all linked to China and its active diplomatic involvement since the Solomon Islands switched to Beijing from Taipei in 2019. They include a national broadband project by Huawei, closer involvement with the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese police training their Solomons' counterparts, with closer security co-operation with China together with strengthening existing relations with China. (1)

The new Look North policy of the government has also been strengthened with the formation of a ruling political organisation, the Ownership, Unity and Responsibility (OUR) Party.

Politics in the Solomon Islands, like much of the vast Pacific region, has traditionally been based on strongly localised leaders representing a multitude of different ethnic groups. The new OUR Party, however, is based at the national level and has over-ridden many of the ethnic problems which have plagued the Solomon Islands for decades, hindering economic development of one of the poorest countries in the region.

The problem was also exacerbated by diplomatic links between the Solomon Islands and Taiwan; Taiwanese aid programs were channelled through provincial government administrations, the outcome favouring some ethnic groups over others. The decision by the Sogavare government in 2019, to switch diplomatic links to China was regarded by many Solomon Islanders as a good move, although those ethnic groups which lost their aid provision on Malaita Island subsequently marched on the capital Honiara and attacked businesses regarded as owned or controlled by China. Direct involvement from Canberra for law enforcement was necessary to restore political stability.

The Solomon Islands, as part of the South Pacific sub-region, has always been regarded as an important addition to Australia's defence and security in conjunction with neighbouring Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. It is, therefore, in keeping with the relationship for the arc from Australian military signals intelligence facilities in Queensland to swing through the capital cities of all three Melanesian countries. (2)

While the three countries have their own defence and security provision, established when they achieved independence, they have historically been over-ridden by Australia as the former colonial power. Australia retained the status of the Mother Country afte independence. The defence and security facilities, however, are also further over-ridden by the US, with its global intelligence system at Pine Gap, Central Australia. The US, nevertheless, has usually relied upon Australia for localised operations in line with Five Eyes provision; the 'alliance' always has been the dominant force in US-Australian diplomacy as part of the elite Five Eyes intelligence facilities.

From the early 1970s the US National Security Agency (NSA) together with the British GCHQ starting sharing intelligence work with other members of the Five Eyes. (3) It has now evolved into a highly sophisticated defence and security-based relationship. The origins, however, were not coincidental. In 1973 the US opened sensitive intelligence facilities on Diego Garcia in the Indian ocean which operated in conjunction with Pine Gap.

The opening of the US intelligence facilities included counterparts at Silvermine, near Cape Town, in South Africa, likewise, became operational at the same time. The stated range of the South African intelligence facilities reached from Argentina to Bangladesh, and from north Africa to the South Pole, providing defence and security provision for the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions. (4) The South African facilities maintained direct contact with both the US and UK, as dominant within the Five Eyes. (5)   

As the present Cold War position taken by the US toward China has escalated, regional defence and security provision has become increasingly important for the Pentagon and its military planners. A quick study of the US regional military involvement has revealed endless obsession and preoccupation with the maintenance of traditional hegemonic positions in the face of increasing competition from China.

The US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), for example, has included Japan being elevated into a global alliance with the US for regional operations, resting on the so-called 'quad' designed to hem in China on all sides. (6) The 'quad' is linked to lower-level partners. (7)

Elsewhere, the Pentagon has re-opened a multitude of military facilities across the vast Indo-Pacific region. (8) The US-led regional foreign policy has included re-using Island Chain Theory (ICT), largely discredited during the previous Cold War, and using it to host numerous missile networks. (9) The ICT is, at present, being upgraded to include the Indian Ocean. (10)

It is, therefore, hardly surprising to find the Sogavare administration has been increasingly demonised by right-wing defence and security hawks in Canberra eagerly pursing the US line; it cannot be trusted to follow their diplomatic positions. A recent assessment from the Lowy Institute, for example, included reference to 'the wide array of China-backed policies that will continue to cause Canberra unease if Mr Sogavare is returned after the April election, as is expected by many analysts … he fully intends to pursue closer ties with China'. (11) No recognition was provided in the assessment for Melanesian traditional diplomacy conducted along lines of the peoples of the sub-region being 'friends to all and enemies to none'. (12)

In conclusion, the diplomatic position of Canberra toward the Solomon Islands remains one based in neo-colonial attitudes based on wanton speculation. 

At this stage, Australian and US fears that China plans to establish a military base in the Solomons appear unfounded, but China is pursuing its own imperialism – with Chinese characteristics – and must be watched if countries are to maintain their independence.

                                         Every country needs an independent foreign policy!

1.     Solomons PM vows: 'I'll look to China', Australian, 14 February 2024.
2.     See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
3.     Spyworld, Mike Frost, (Canada, 1995), page 40.
4.     'Maritime Operational Communications HQ', The Star (South Africa), 10 March 1973; and, Security in the Mountain, The Star (South Africa), 17 March 1973.
5.     Ibid.
6.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
7.     Ibid.
8.     US eyes return to south-east Asian bases, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 29 June 2012; and, The Guardian Weekly, (U.K.), 2 May 2014.
9.     US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei Asia, 5 March 2021.
10.   Wikipedia: Island Chain Theory.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 14 February 2024.
12.   Ibid.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Workers’ power and closing the loopholes industrial laws

Written by: Ned K. on 18 February 2024

 

Above - the Perfection Press women, as part of their campaign, released a CD available here.

The federal Labor Government has succeeded in having its Closing the Loopholes industrial laws passed through both Houses of Parliament.

The new laws will find their way into the Fair Work Act and become operational over the next 6 to 12 months.

The new laws make some attempt to regulate working conditions for gig economy workers and owner drivers in the transport industry. They also provide a more detailed definition of casual employment which may assist some casuals to be recognised as permanent workers with at least minimum paid sick leave and annual leave.

David Peetz, a researcher well-respected by workers and their unions, recently wrote an article online in the Pearls and Irritations website about the recent changes.

Peetz's most astute observation about the "rough and tumble" in parliament by Dutton and his cronies about the new laws is that possibly the most important change of all the laws went through "under the radar", so to speak.

Peetz was referring to the changes to the Fair Work Act arising from the Closing the Loopholes Bills that for the first time since the early 1990s see the term Union Delegate and rights of Delegates included in the industrial relations Act of the day.

The Fair Work Act will now require the rights of Delegates in workplaces to be included in Awards and Enterprise Agreements.

Peetz has done very detailed research of the impact on workers’ collective strength in workplaces of the decline in Union Delegate numbers in Australia during the period from early 1990s to about 2015.

His research showed a direct correlation between decline in union membership in workplaces and the decline and/or complete absence of Union Delegates in workplaces.

His research also showed the relationship between strong Delegate networks and stronger industrial outcomes in wages and conditions, respect of workers by bosses and better job security and control of casualization of the workforces, even during the onslaught of Workchoices and the (Un)Fair Work Act years.

Peetz's research findings are backed up by two recent disputes that have been prominent in the media in the last few weeks.

The dispute between stevedore multinational DP World and the MUA and their members saw these maritime workers take industrial action in various forms over a number of weeks against DP world in order to win wage increases and better conditions.

Why were the MUA members able to maintain their struggle for a considerable period of time and win?

One important factor was that throughout all the attacks on the MUA since at least the 1930s, their members have maintained organization and elected Union Delegates across the whole maritime industry.

The second dispute that made headlines was the shocking and utterly disgraceful exploitation and sexual harassment of migrant women farm workers at the biggest tomato producer in Australia, Perfection Fresh.
Twelve courageous women farm workers with the strong support of their Union, United Workers Union, have taken Perfection Fresh to the Federal Court after being sexually harassed by labour hire male workers in positions of power over them.

One important reason these women workers have been able to take this action is because the hundreds of mainly migrant workers in their workplace at Virginia, north of Adelaide, have courageously organized themselves (supported by their Organizer) and elected their own leaders including Union Delegates. Without that level of collective Strength within the tomato glasshouses of Perfection Fresh, the twelve women's decision to take action would have been much more difficult.

As David Peetz correctly points out, even with the new laws giving formal recognition to the rights of Delegates in workplaces, it is up to union leaderships to ensure that workers are given full support and opportunity for development when they step up as Union Delegates in their workplace.

Workers will soon notice which Unions want to organize the unorganized and further develop the already organized.

If David Peetz's research is still valid today, when workers unite and organize, bosses will tremble.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

ADF in trouble as personnel leave in droves

Written by: (Contributed) on 12 February 2024

 

The ADF beset with recruitment and retention problems    PHOTO: defenceconnect.com.au 

Cold War US-led diplomatic hostilities and sabre-rattling continue to escalate across the Indo-Pacific region on the daily basis. An official statement from Duntroon has, therefore, proved particularly revealing when placed in the context of developments in the Western Pacific. While the statement was primarily concerned with training provision and serious shortages of personnel, it revealed the sense of urgency taking place within military planning circles inside the corridors of power, for Australia to be prepared for 'real-war scenarios' at the behest of the US in the next few years.

In early February the Royal Military Training College at Duntroon issued an official media release announcing the beginning of a two-year trial for army officer training provision whereby their standard 18-month courses would be shortened to 12-months. (1) While the stated reason for the shortening of the training provision was 'recruiting and retention problems', a sense of urgency would appear to have taken priority. (2) The present course structure of six separate modules has also been altered to enable students to take each stage separately and not in the usual sequence. The statement also quoted a Lieutenant General Stuart noting that 'officer cadets were keen to get out there and apply what they have learned'. (3)  

During the next two years Duntroon will be providing training provision for between 500-600 military officers who, after graduation, will then form part of the command led by the Pentagon for largely regional defence and security provision and military operations.

Following the re-organisation of the elite US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) over a decade ago, the Pentagon now receives a regular stream of regional military assessments from various locations in the Indo-Pacific; the region has seen the US experience a serious challenge to traditional hegemonic positions with the rise of China and is regarded as a potential theatre of war. (4)

The US military assessments have already provided the Pentagon with what they regard as a serious problem.

Serious problems face US imperialism

Assessments of the Western Pacific region, for example, have revealed the US is no longer the dominant power. (5) The recent attempt by China to win over the government of Nauru for diplomatic recognition away from Taiwan has heightened tensions still further; it has been noted that 'Nauru could not have been unaware how the timing of its announcement would put the region again on the geo-political frontline'. (6)  

Taiwanese diplomatic recognition elsewhere in the region is also under threat with serious concerns about Tuvalu and Palau, the last two countries in Micronesia which support Taipei.  (7)

A major US concern is that China has been able to win support from Pacific island countries enabling them to gain access to their huge exclusive economic zones (EEZs); some of the EEZs are used by the US to host sensitive military and intelligence facilities. (8)

North of the Marshall Islands, for example, the small US territory of Wake Island together with the Japanese territory of Minami-Torishima both host highly sensitive facilities for US-led military facilities. (9)

Many of the small Pacific islands also mark sensitive areas of the US-led Island Chain Theory, used for demarcation of the region; they have already been used to host defence and security provision against China. (10)

ADF to recruit footsloggers and commanders from the Pacific

The changes to training procedures reflect government and ADF concern about the numbers of people leaving the ADF. The military recorded a separation rate of 11.2% in 2022/23, falling short of its retention targets. For several years, the right-wing ASPI and similar groups have called for a relaxation of ADF screening of recruits, believing too may are turned away.

In early January, then-acting Defence Minister Keogh announced the ADF was looking to island nations in the Pacific for recruits. At the same time, Pacific military leaders are being given command positions in the ADF.  In a first for the ADF, Colonel Boniface Aruma from Papua New Guinea and Fiji's Colonel Penioni Naliva have been appointed deputy commanders of Australian Defence Force brigades. In Naliva’s case, the screening could not have been that thorough – Amnesty International wants him investigated for human rights abuses following the 2006 coup in Fiji. 

What seems to have been more important to the government and the ADF is the way the appointments would be perceived: “…as strategic responses to China's increasing influence in the Pacific…This region is traditionally considered within the sphere of influence of Australia and the United States. The ripple effect of these appointments is expected to have vast geopolitical implications, altering the balance of power in the Pacific region.”

Black Hawks darken our skies…

What is also particularly significant about the recent statement issued by Duntroon is their emphasis upon helicopters, in fact about half of the statement was focussed upon the US providing Australia with Black Hawk utility helicopters following the phasing out of existing Taipans together with provision of a Black Hawk training simulator. (See our recent comment Heads must roll to clear Defence of US loyalists).

It was noted Australia will eventually be acquiring forty Black Hawks together with a further 29 AH-64E combat helicopters. (11)

Helicopters have traditionally been associated with rapid deployment in and out of difficult terrain. Small and remote landmasses are, no doubt, already in mind!

The new helicopters have been accompanied by upgrades to sensitive military facilities in Queensland, facing the western Pacific.

The time-line from defence and security provision into likely military operations, therefore, would appear to be shortening:

                                         We need an independent foreign policy!

 

1.     Army officers on fast track to command, Australian, 7 February 2024.
2..     Ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012.
5.     See: Study – US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Paul D. Shinkman, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.  
6.     Island recruits a win-win solution for ADF shortfall, Australian, 18 January 2024.
7.     Pact with Tuvalu in the balance, Editorial, Australian, 30 January 2024; and,
        Tuvalu security pact in jeopardy, Australian, 29 January 2024.
8.     See: US v. China, Japan Forward, Politics and Security, Dr. Rieko Hayakawa and Jennifer L. Anson, 14 February 2020.
9.     Ibid.
10.   See: US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei, 5 March 2021; and, US Indo-Pacific Command proposes new missile capabilities to deter China, RFA., 5 March 2021.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 7 February 2024.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Current trends in Australian agriculture

Written by: Duncan B. on 10 February 2024

 

Australian agriculture in 2024 sees the continuation of the trends we have regularly reported on in previous years. Foreign-owned companies continue to buy up big, with more Australian farms and agribusinesses entering foreign hands.

Canadian and US pension funds, particularly the Canadian fund PSP continue to make big purchases of agribusinesses and farmland for cropping, grazing, wine production, nuts and horticulture. Properties with water rights are especially sought after.

Other foreign buyers are active as well. For example, Australia’s largest fruit and vegetable wholesaler Costa Group will be taken over by a consortium comprising US equity firm Paine Schwartz and other partners in a $1.5 billion deal. French agribusiness giant Louis Dreyfus has bought Namoi Cotton Limited in a $104 million takeover.

Interestingly, according to the latest Foreign Investment Review Board figures, the amount of Australian farm land controlled by overseas interests has declined slightly, down from 53 million hectares, (14.1%), to 47.7 million hectares, (12.3%.) 

Chinese investors control 2% of Australian farm land, (7.8 million hectares), although only 750,000 hectares of this is freehold land, the remainder being leasehold land.  

There have been some recent purchases of Australian cotton, wine and wool properties by Chinese companies, apparently seeking security of supply of these commodities. There have also been a lot of sell-offs by Chinese investors. This is due to them seeking investments in Africa and South America. No doubt the hostile atmosphere towards China by the Liberal Government was also a factor in the sell-offs.

We are seeing the emergence of a comprador class in Australian agriculture, with Australian individuals and companies entering into partnerships with foreign buyers of Australian farms and agribusinesses. Mao Zedong defined compradors as “a class which directly serves the capitalists of the imperialist countries and is nurtured by them.” (Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society)

Australian collaborators with overseas companies include Lawson Grain which is backed by the Canadian Alberta Investment Management Corporation. Recently Lawson has been making multimillion dollar purchases of cropping and grazing farms in various areas.

There are many others serving foreign masters. PSP also regularly seeks out Australian farm operators as partners in their conquest of Australian agriculture. They look for top-tier farm owner operators, preferably families already running successful businesses, but who lack the capital to expand their operations. The owners of these companies have become keen advocates for foreign investment in Australia.

All of this puts further pressure on the small and medium farmers who struggle to survive against floods, cyclones, droughts and ever-increasing costs of fuel fertiliser, electricity, insurance and all their other inputs.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Heads must roll to clear Defence of US loyalists

Written by: Nick G. on 9 February 2024

 

 

Senior figures within the Australian Department of Defence are agents of influence for US imperialism and must be removed if we are ever to have the capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Iran, Iraq and the isolation of US imperialism in the Middle East

Written by: (Contributed) on 7 February 2024

 

Above - Iraqis call for removal of US troops in 2020 following US assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani 
Image: Thaier Al-Sudani/REUTERS

 

High-level diplomatic talks between the Iraqi and US governments about a US military withdrawal from the country reveal the changing balance of forces across the region has had its effect upon the ruling presidential administration of Abdul Latif Rashid in Baghdad. US policy against the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and since has rebounded; the Middle East has responded, effectively challenging traditional hegemonic positions, and pushing Iran into a regional leadership position. Despite huge financial budgets for their military incursions into the Middle East, the US have not achieved either their initial objectives or any realistic lasting presence in the region.

When the masses in Iran rose up in 1979 and ousted the Shah and established and Islamic Government under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the US lost one of its most loyal allies in the Middle East. The Shah was a US puppet - he 'remained the lynchpin of America's anti-Soviet efforts in the Middle East'. (1) In fact, he had been installed 'with the assistance of the CIA and Britain's SIS in 1953 in a coup organised against the left-leaning government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq'. (2) The motive left little to the imagination; US interests were the order of the day. It was noted that 'the catalyst for this action was Mossadeq's imminent nationalisation of western interests in Iran's oil industry … the … CIA subsequently provided organisational and training assistance for the establishment of an intelligence organisation for the Shah … and was placed … under the guidance of US and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957'. (3)

Five decades later the US has been left with the legacy of their interference in Iranian affairs; while creating a Cold War diplomatic position toward the Islamic Republic in 1979, the US has not achieved its objectives. In fact, they have proved counter-productive.  

It has given rise to three significant developments:

Firstly, a changing strategic relationship between Iran and its Arab neighbours, linked to the uncertainty about the future of the US role in the region. (4) Iran's initial relationship with its closest neighbours, for example, was strained; while the country was regarded as the centre of Islam, Iranian involvement with US interests was problematic. Slowly, however, the US Cold War position pushed Iran into a leadership role against US interests across the region.

The establishment of a Revolutionary Guard in Iran under a decree issued by Khomeini on 5 May 1979 with 'the ultimate responsibility of guarding the revolution itself', saw Iranian operatives form links with like-minded groups and organisations. (5) Its tentacles now spread across the wider region and into a multitude of armed and opposition groups.

It is, therefore, not surprising to observe Hamas in Gaza, establishing links with Iran. While differences exist between different strands of Islam, the common goal of ridding the region of US interests can be regarded as a binding force.

Secondly, Iran's growing capabilities for asymmetric warfare can be regarded as a serious challenge for US interests. (6) While maintaining a large standing army of regular forces, Iran has also forces trained in unconventional warfare: guerilla tactics, insurgency, rebellion, terrorism. Their influence has grown with the changing balance of forces following the failure of western backing of anti-Assad groups in Syria and the growing influence of Russia, Syria and Turkey, across the Middle East; US backing for anti-government forces and the so-called Arab Spring, was a serious mistake. It has rebounded upon Washington and the Pentagon; their initial intelligence assessments were clearly flawed.

Finally, Iran's success in creating more effective air-defence systems including drones, can be regarded as a serious challenge to US-led military hegemony across the wider region. (7)

The recent attack of a US military facility in Jordan and high-level diplomatic talks between Baghdad and Washington have to be assessed in that context.

The attack, by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, on a secret US Tower 22 military facility in Jordan, close to the borders with Iraq and Syria, took the US by complete surprise. The pro-Iranian militia used a drone to attack residential quarters, killing three service personnel and injuring many others. (8) It was part of a program which has included at least 165 similar attacks on US interests across the region since last October, with serious implications. (9) A pro-Israeli intelligence source, for example, has noted that as 'the war in Gaza heads into its fifth month … it has brought … the region to the brink of full-blown conflict'. (10)  

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohamed Shia al-Sudani’s call for a withdrawal of US troops from the country has also led to high-level diplomatic talks; Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh recently issued a statement noting 'the US footprint in Iraq will certainly be part of the conversations as it goes forward, indicating that Baghdad's desire for a reduction in these forces was on the table'. (11) A statement from Baghdad, however, revealed that the Iraqi government was attempting to 'ease pressure  … from … militia groups to oust US forces'. (12) There is no wish to prolong the US presence.

The US, at present, has 2,500 military personnel in Iraq together with 900 based in Syria, and a further 900 deployed elsewhere. (13) Their longer term future is questionable. It is unlikely they will have a lasting presence, as the balance of forces continues to slowly swing away from previous US hegemonic positions. A recent statement issued by Hamas, for example, noted 'the continuation of the American-Zionist aggression on Gaza risks a regional explosion'. (14)

It should be noted, furthermore, that during the 2001 to 2019 period, the US Department of Defence has estimated regional operations had been costed at between $2,002.4 to $2,106.2 billion. (15) There has been comparatively little gained for the massive financial costs, and the position of the US, in general, would now appear precarious.

1.     US foreign policy and the Iranian Revolution, Christian Emery, (London, 2012), page 2; see also, Project Dark Gene / Project Ibex, www.spyflight.co.uk / dark gene.htm; and, Iran / RSA, Le Monde Diplomatique, December, 1976; and, Project Dark Gene and Project Ibex, Tom Cooper and Art Kremzel, www.acig.org
2.     Espionage, Spies and Secrets, Richard M. Bennett, (London, 2002), pp. 142-46.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Iran and the changing military balance in the Gulf, CSIS., 20 March 2020.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Three US troops killed and 34 hurt, The Sun, 28 January 2024.
9.     Drone mix-up blamed for deaths, Australian, 31 January 2024.
10.   US pushes for deal to end war, Australian, 2 February 2024.
11.   America, Iraq to hold talks on troops, The Weekend Australian, 27-28 January 2024.
12.   Militia to suspend attacks on US, Australian, 1 February 2024.
13.   Australian, op.cit., 31 January 2024.
14.   President vows revenge for dead troops, Australian, 30 January 2024.
15.   CSIS., op.cit., 20 March 2020.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Hobsons Bay community rally for Palestine

Written by: Shirley Winton on 7 February 2024

 

On Friday 2 February, 200 residents of Hobsons Bay community, western suburbs of Melbourne/Naarm, gathered outside the electorate office of our local member and Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Tim Watts.

The rally, organised by Hobsons Bay Community 4 Palestine demanded Tim Watts and the Labor government stop supporting the genocide in Gaza, called for immediate and lasting ceasefire, and for the immediate resumption of  the desperately needed humanitarian aid to UNRWA.   Speakers included Palestinians and First Nations People.

Many passing cars honked in support of the rally with drivers shouting solidarity messages and waving.

At the end of the speeches the 200 protestors spilled on to the busy Melbourne Road in a short march to “unveil” a newly painted mural (below) on a large wall near Tim Watts' electorate office, and next to the busy Newport Railway station.  After unveiling the mural, the organisers treated the protestors to numerous large slices of watermelon, symbolising the banned Palestinian flag and the determination of the Palestinian people’s struggle for justice and self-determination.

The rally called on the local Hobsons Bay Council to pass a community resolution condemning the genocide in Gaza and Australia's complicity, and supporting the Palestinian people."

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Barngarla join fight to reposition Pt. Lincoln desal plant

Written by: Nick G. on 2 February 2024

 

Above - a 2021 rally in Pt Lincoln against the desal plant   Photo by ABC Eyre Peninsula: Jodie Hamilton

The Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation, which led the successful fight to block the proposed nuclear waste dump at Kimba on Eyre Peninsula, has joined Pt. Lincoln aquaculture companies to oppose a $313 million 3.5 gigalitre desalination plant at Billy Light’s Point about 1km across the water from the local marina.

Oceanographer Professor Jochen Kaempf and Dr Paul McShane, a highly experienced marine biologist, have criticised the selection of Billy Light’s Point because its waters are part of Boston Bay, which has poor flushing characteristics within the bay and poor water circulation.

Desalination plants remove salt from seawater to produce freshwater. In doing so, they produce hyper-saline effluent (at least twice the concentration of normal seawater) which is discharged into coastal waters. Because of the potentially harmful effects of their effluent, desalination plants are recommended to be situated on high energy coastlines where wave action and ocean currents can disperse effluent to harmless levels.

In fact, SA Water first identified three sites in the Sleaford Bay, 25km south of Pt Lincoln as an area for a desalination plant for Eyre Peninsula in 2009. Sleaford Bay is on the southern side of the Lincoln National Park and faces the deep open waters of the Great Australian Bight, whereas Billy Light’s Point is on the northern side of the Park, and sheltered by it from the currents of the open coastline.

Aquaculture in Boston Bay includes the growing of mussels and industry leaders say their industry would be threatened by a desal plant’s hypersaline discharges. Five local councils around Pt. Lincoln oppose Billy Light’s Point as the site for the desal plant.

When a Billy Light’s Point site was announced it sparked community protest in November 2021 with a rally of about 350 people and a flotilla of fishing vessels under the banner Hands Off Boston Bay

The Barngala people regard the Billy Light’s Point waters as a site of cultural and heritage significance. 

Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation deputy chairman Jason Bilney said Billy Light’s Point had some of the last pre-colonial fish traps in the Port Lincoln area and echoed community concerns about environmental damage to the lucrative aquaculture industry.  The Barngarla were ignored when the marina was developed and lost heritage fish traps to the development.

The South Australian government, which is currently calling for nominations from SA First Peoples for elections to the Voice to the SA Parliament, faces a real test of its commitment to listen to First Peoples.

It can either listen to the Barngarla and relocate the desal plant to Sleaford Bay, or it can follow the dictates of capitalism’s destructive war on nature. 
The indications so far are that the economics of the capitalist path represent the government’s preferred option.

Climate, Environment and Water Minister Susan Close, deputy premier and a leader of the so-called “Left” faction of the ALP in SA, has said that the Sleaford West site would cost $150 million more than the Billy Lights Point proposition.

"Billy Light’s is the one that stacks up. It stacks up because it is the cheapest," Dr Close said.

Eyre Peninsula needs a desal plant. Its 35,000 customers currently use the local Uley Basin water supply, but require a further 1.7 gigalitres pumped annually all the way from the Murray River.

Surely the cost of a 25km pipeline from Sleaford Bay is worth saving the aquaculture industry of Boston Bay and the Barngarla’s heritage fish trap sites.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Nauru’s diplomatic switch to China is a setback for US imperialism

Written by: (Contributed) on 30 January 2024

 

Above; Chinese Embassy opening, Nauru, January 2024    Photo Xinhua

A brief, short diplomatic statement from the government of Nauru, that it had decided to switch diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China, was largely overlooked by western media outlets. It was not expected and obscured by the Taiwanese general elections only two days earlier. The timing of the diplomatic switch together with the terse nature of the statement, however, would tend to reveal a major diplomatic stand-off has taken place; it has, furthermore, been a major setback for US-led regional foreign policy.

On 13 January the people of Taiwan returned a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government for a third term of office with president-elect Lai Ching-te. It is, however, a minority government with 51 MPs as opposed to the Kuomingtang (KMT) with 52 seats. The small Taiwan Peoples Party (TPP) had eight MPs elected, ensuring that it holds the balance of power. The election results, nevertheless, were given high-profile through US-led media outlets, stressing the 'democratic' nature of Taiwan's political system.

Quite unexpectedly, only two days later, the government of Nauru announced it was switching diplomatic allegiance immediately from Taiwan to China. The diplomatic statement included that Nauru would 'no longer recognise Taiwan as a separate country but rather as an inalienable part of China's territory …. and ... Nauru said it would sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan immediately and no longer develop any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan'. (1)

No official explanation was provided about the diplomatic switch although a statement from Taiwanese deputy foreign minister, Tien Chung-kwang, said 'the government was ending diplomatic relations with Nauru to safeguard our national dignity'. (2) It was accompanied with an official statement from the Biden administration in the White House, that 'criticised the micro-state's distorted rationale'. (3)

Political intrigue inside the corridors of power in Nauru would appear to have taken place in secret. Following the elections in Taiwan on Saturday, Nauru was the first country to congratulate Taipei on the success of the elections the following day, while on Monday morning the diplomatic switch took place! (4) The timing was also particularly embarrassing for the Biden administration which had sent a senior US delegation to Taipei including former national security adviser Stephen Hadley, to assist president-elect Lai for what has been regarded as a 'tense five-month period before his inauguration'. (5)

The US is quite clearly concerned about Taiwan: last October, for example, Nauru president Russ Joseph Kun was given what was regarded as a hero’s welcome in high-level diplomacy with Taiwan; on returning home he was ousted with a no-confidence vote led by David Adeang who was responsible for the sudden announcement about the diplomatic switch to China. (6)

The diplomatic switch has been a further addition to the failed DPP New Southbound foreign policy which is now left in tatters; attempts to foster stronger diplomatic ties across the Indo-Pacific region have seriously backfired. Nauru is the tenth country which has cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan since the DPP took office in 2016, with President Tsai Ing-wen. Taiwan now only has official diplomatic links with twelve countries, none of which are major players in global diplomacy. A recent statement from a former senior Taiwanese foreign ministry figure, likewise, has also caused concern by suggesting 'another one or two of Taiwan's allies … could … be poached by China in coming months'. (7) More to come?  

While it is difficult to generalise about China's ability to marginalise Taiwanese diplomacy research conducted by AidData, based at the William and Mary University in the US, has established Chinese diplomacy remains strongly based in economic and financial criteria; Beijing is not reluctant to offer developing countries meaningful aid packages in return for mutually beneficial diplomatic ties. China's aid packages in the Pacific region have been particularly generous over the past two decades. (8)

It has been strongly speculated that Nauru's diplomatic switch away from Taiwan to China was caused by the Australian government winding down aid packages for its off-shore asylum-seeker facilities on the islands causing a shortfall with their budget. (9)

While Taiwanese officials have been invited to regional dialogues and forums, China has effectively forced them out, emphasising the One China policy. (10) Taiwan, nevertheless, maintains 112 representative missions in over seventy countries; in less than sixty years it has been transformed from a rural backwater to a highly developed economy and part of global supply chains for semi-conductors. (11) Its diplomatic future now, however, is beginning to look increasingly vulnerable and precarious, with dwindling diplomatic recognition.

The developments have been particularly problematic for the US; it is not difficult to track US-led regional miitary and security concerns and their inability to maintain traditional hegemonic positions in the face of competition from a strongly assertive China. The Nauru diplomatic switch is all the more acute for the US due to local politician, Barron Waqa, soon to become the next secretary-general of the highly influential Pacific Islands Forum. China, potentially, will be able to use its newly established diplomatic links with Nauru to present a favourable image to a wider regional audience. (12)

Taiwan is a component part of the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy and its diplomatic links are also used for intelligence-gathering. The increasing diplomatic isolation of Taiwan, therefore, rebounds strongly inside the Pentagon and also the 'Quad', used to contain and encircle China. (13) Countries switching diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China are regarded as problematic: Nauru, for example, has a relatively central position in the Pacific, the arc to US military facilities based in Guam also swings through sensitive Australian military signals facilities based in Queensland. (14)

Secondly, Taiwan is the vital component part at the head of US-led Island Chain Theory (above); small Pacific countries, such as Nauru, have huge strategic significance for access and egress across the wider region. 

Demands, from inside the ruling DPP presidential administration for eventual full independence, have a huge significance for the US and its allies, including Australia!
 

1.     Nauru switches diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing, Australian, 16 January 2024.
2.     Ibid.
3.     US says Nauru switching ties from Taiwan to China 'disappointing', The New India Express, 16 January 2024.
4.     China advances into Indo-Pacific, Editorial, Australian, 17 January 2024.
5.     Beijing warns of 'harsh punishment', Australian, 16 January 2024.
6.     Editorial, Australian, op.cit., 17 January 2024.
7.     Beijing 'buying up' allies in Pacific, The Weekend Australian, 20-21 January 2024.
8.     China's billions make new allies, Australian, 8 November 2023.
9.     Editorial, Australian, op.cit., 17 January 2024.
10.   See: Beijing keeps a wary eye on new US Taipei outpost, Australian, 18 June 2018.
11.   See: Democratic Taiwan proud to stand with regional partners, Editorial, Australian, 15 January 2024.
12.   Nauru gave Australia advanced warning of decision, SBS., 16 January 2024.
13.   See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
14.   See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Book Review: THE NEW CHINA PLAYBOOK

Written by: Duncan B. on 30 January 2024

 

Nearly every day there are articles in the newspapers about China’s economy. These are some recent examples from the Melbourne Age.

Fading giant: Why China is facing a difficult future. (Nov 9); Weakened China badly needs a truce with the West (Nov 10); China’s tech billionaires bleed as Biden inflicts pain (Nov 22); China’s green surge could be watershed for the world (Nov 23); China’s financial cancer spreads and sounds alarm bells (Nov 28); Stay of execution for Chinese property giant (Dec 6); China put on notice as it tries to repair its economic mess (Dec 7); The Chinese tians making a killing, but far from home (Dec 20); Beijing shifts gears to avoid fate that trapped Japan (Jan 16); China hits it growth target, but no one’s impressed with data (Jan 19); Red Sea crisis is a serious risk to Beijing’s economic interests (Jan 20); China’s $9 trillion problem won’t be solved by quick fix (Jan25); Warning for investors over China’s market woes (Jan 27).

How do we work through this overload of sometimes contradictory information about China?

The New China Playbook  by Keyu Jin may help. The author is an associate professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was born in China and educated in China and abroad.

Keyu Jin was born in 1982, making her a member of the first generation of Chinese born in the era of Deng Xiao Ping’s economic reforms which started in 1978. She writes, (p23), “I was born into this era of China’s modern economic transformation and experienced its life-changing effects firsthand.”

On page 283 she writes, “The miracle of China over the past four decades is not the nation’s record-breaking span of dizzying GDP growth, but the unimaginable transformation that has taken place for hundreds of millions of Chinese and their children within a single lifetime. This was true for my family and for most families we knew.”

In The New China Playbook Keyu Jin traces the development of China’s economy and the transformation of Chinese society from 1978 when Deng Xiao Ping’s reforms started, to the present day. There have been many negative features accompanying this transformation such as environmental degradation and pollution, massive waste of resources, extremes of income differences, property speculation and corruption. (Of course these were a feature of the development of capitalism in England and the USA in the nineteenth century.)

On the positive side there has been a large growth in GDP, the considerable improvements in the Chinese peoples’ lives as described by the author and the incredible growth in technology in China. Keyu Jin is a supporter of the current state of affairs in China, to the point of being coming across as an apologist for the Chinese government and its policies. 

While The New China Playbook is useful to help us understand what is happening in China, as Marxist-Leninists, we must be aware of our Party’s position on China. In 1978, Deng Xiao Ping steered China onto the capitalist road, ultimately leading to the imperialist power that we know today.

The CPA (M-L) position on China is explained in the booklet Explaining China. How a Socialist Country Took the Capitalist Road to Social-Imperialism, and other publications such as the Australian Communist.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Reverse the decision to suspend funding to UNWRA

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 28 January 2024

 

The anti-Palestinian Australian government has acted speedily to suspend promised allocations of recently announced funding to the United Nations Relief and Works for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

This was announced by Foreign Minister Penny Wong immediately following allegations by Israel that some UNRWA staff members had participated in the October 7 Hamas actions.

UNRWA has suspended those against whom the allegations have been made. Their involvement has not been proven, and UNWRA is investigating the Israeli claims.

It is significant that Israel’s claims have been made straight after the International Court of Justice decided to proceed with South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide. The ICJ accepted that there was a case to answer and issued provisional rulings ordering that Israel take all measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, prevent and punish direct incitement to genocide in Gaza, and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel is not only continuing with its genocidal war – it has now manufactured the cessation of humanitarian aid.

Even if the actions on October 7 of a handful of the courageous and selfless UNWRA workers are proven, it is entirely wrong for the whole organisation, and the millions of desperate Palestinians who are dependent upon it for food and other supplies, to be punished by the withholding of funds.

Below, we publish a statement from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). 

We fully support its call for governments that are punishing UNWRA at the behest of the genocidal Zionist regime to restore funding to UNWRA as a matter of urgency – Eds.

………………………

A message from the “Foreign affairs Department at DFLP” to the world’s parties and societal frameworks: A new Israeli lie followed by Imperialist countries... and the victim this time is the UN Relief and Palestinian Refugees Agency.

Once again, it is confirmed that the Israeli plan goes beyond the aggression on the Gaza Strip to affect all aspects of the Palestinian issue, in an attempt by Israel to benefit as much as possible from the support provided by the Western coalition to it, and this time the goal is the Relief Agency and millions of Palestinian refugees. 

If the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip was based on the lie of killing children, burning civilians, and beheading, then some Western countries followed it and built on it their political positions and practices towards the Palestinian people, even though the White House confirmed that it has no tangible evidence to confirm the allegations of killing and burning, and that what the American President spoke about this matter was inspired by a phone call with “Stinky Yahoo” and from Israeli reports that were proven to be incorrect even by the Israeli police, who were unable to prove a single piece of information from the dozens of lies spread by Zionist propaganda in the first days of the aggression. 

A new Israeli-American project directly targets Palestinian refugees and their right to return, after Israel announced that 12 employees working for the relief agency in the Gaza Strip participated in the October 7 operation, which resulted in a number of Western countries announcing that they would cut their financial contributions to the agency. United Nations Relief and Works for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which is considered the primary source in providing educational, health and relief services to millions of refugees who are spread in: Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

As a result, Israel quickly picked up on these positions and announced publicly and explicitly: that the UNRWA will not be part of the day after the Gaza Strip, which confirms that there is a real plan being worked on between a group of countries that targets the UNRWA and its future under the pretext of the participation of some of its employees in the October 7 operation. 

Although the Commissioner-General of UNRWA announced the dismissal of a number of employees pending the results of the investigation, which is a surprising and unacceptable measure, a number of Western countries (the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, Finland, and Italy) anticipated the results of the investigation and suddenly announced the cessation of financial support for UNRWA, under Israeli pressure. Which accuses the UNRWA of corruption and subjugation, despite the United Nations confirming that it conducted a number of investigations, all of which confirmed the UNRWA’s commitment to the values and principles of the United Nations, and therefore the Israeli allegations are incorrect.

We in the “Foreign affairs Department of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine” cannot understand the Western positions regarding the UNRWA except that it is a cheap blackmail tool that some countries have resorted to in the context of continuing the war they are waging against the Palestinian people, and these are measures that can only be explained as a war of starvation. Collectively against millions of refugees in the context of exploiting the current conditions to eliminate the refugee issue and the right of return by targeting the UNRWA, as it is one of the basic foundations on which the right of return is based. 

We call on the parties of the world, especially in the countries concerned that support the Israeli aggression, to raise their voices in rejection of these measures that directly respond to the positions adopted by the Israeli government, which has been inciting for years against the UNRWA and its services, and we affirm that new attempts to target UNRWA on the financial level will be doomed to failure given Because the reasons relied upon are false and misleading and lack accuracy and objectivity in all their details. 

While we hold the concerned countries responsible for the repercussions of their positions and policies towards the Palestinian refugees who will defend their right to education, health and a decent life free from oppression and aggression. we reaffirm our right to return to our homes and properties from which we were displaced in 1948 by the force of murder and terrorism committed by Zionist terrorist groups with direct support from The British Mandate, which abused the trust of its mandate over Palestine and colluded with the Zionist movement in implementing its historical project of occupying Palestine and displacing its people.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Locally, and internationally, support for Palestine continues

Written by: Rete dei Comunisti (Italy) on 27 January 2024

 

(Invasion Day 2024   Photo Twitter/X)

At yesterday’s (January 26) Invasion Day rallies, many tens of thousands of Australians marched to demand that the date of Australia Day be changed so that it no longer commemorates the violent seizure of the lands of Australian First Peoples by British colonialism.

At these rallies, it was not uncommon to see Palestinian Australians carrying the Palestinian flag in support of the Australian First Peoples’ struggles, nor to hear First Peoples expressing their solidarity with Palestine.

Both peoples have experienced and are experiencing colonial settler racism and know what each other is going through.

We reprint below a statement from Italy where the fascist government has tried to prevent pro-Palestine demonstrations today (January 27) which, in Italy, is observed as a remembrance day for the Nazi Holocaust of World War 2.

The statement reminds us that reaction everywhere opposes the progressive demands of the people.

The movement against Zionist genocide is world-wide and cannot be suppressed – Eds.
...............
Against the submission of the Italian government to the state of Israel
For the continuity of the internationalist political initiative

A Public Security notice sent to the Questors on the territory orders the postponement of demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine for this weekend.

“As is well known, 27th January is the Remembrance Day, on the occasion of which initiatives, ceremonies and meetings will be held, in observance of Article 2 of the Law of 20 July 2000, No. 211, in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and of those who, at the risk of their lives, opposed the project of persecution and extermination. For the same date”, underlines the circular, “in some provinces, initiatives in favour of the Palestinian cause have been announced in connection with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and it is likely that further events with similar aims may be organised on the national territory for the same day”.

The demonstrations referred to in the circular are those that have been held for months all over the world to condemn the Israeli retaliation and collective punishment after the October 7th Operation Deluge of Al Aqsa, and to promote the ceasefire that would bring an end to the Palestinian genocide by Israel.

These mobilisations, initiatives, and direct actions in some countries, including the United States, see the prominence of an important part of the Jewish community.

An important part of world public opinion, starting with that of countries whose governments are accomplices of Israel in the massacre being perpetrated in Gaza and the West Bank, continues to speak out, flanked by a number of states that have supported the South African government’s political-legal action at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to prevent what South African lawyers rightly judge to be – both from the point of view of the subjective will of the Israeli political-military establishment and the incontrovertible objective data – a veritable genocide.

This would theoretically nail the UN international community to prevent this from happening by taking a whole range of appropriate measures from arms embargoes to sanctions to diplomatic isolation.

The popular mobilisations, which are accompanied by an effective worldwide boycott campaign against Israel, in fact take up the ‘spirit’ of those political campaigns that contributed to the fall of apartheid in South Africa, isolating at the time the segregationist regime in Pretoria that was then only supported by Israel and Taiwan.

In this context, under a pretext – apparently at the input of the Jewish communities of Milan and Rome, but clearly on the diktat of Tel Aviv – they want to prevent it from taking place on the very day on which the 17 judges of the United Nations International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled on the transitional measures with respect to the genocide being perpetrated.

The Court rejected the Israeli, and strongly supported by the United States, request to dismiss the case, and although it will take years for a legal judgement on Israel’s actions, the right of the Palestinians to be protected from acts of genocide was recognised.

The court also ruled that Israel must return in a month to report on what it is doing to uphold the order to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza, a ruling that creates international legal obligations for Israel.

Returning to the directive of the Ministry of the Interior, this one, with a mix of creativity and bureaucratic nit-picking states, with respect to the mobilisations: “if carried out in conjunction with the aforementioned anniversary, they could assume connotations detrimental, under the formal organisational and content aspect, to the national value that the Italian Republic has attributed with the aforementioned law to the commemorative spirit of the racial laws (...)”.

The circular ends by saying that ‘in the current international conflictual context, the rise of tensions with the consequent risk of negative effects on the maintenance of public and social order’.

So while our country’s involvement in the trend towards war on various fronts - with this week’s vote in Parliament on arms supplies to the Kiev regime and its announced participation in the EU’s Aspide military mission in the Red Sea against the Houthi rebels -, it wants to criminalise dissent to governmental political choices in advance, starting with mobilisations that highlight its complicity with the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinians, with a very dangerous precedent being set by centre-left local administrations such as in Milan or Rome.

Because this is genocide, just like the various ‘holocausts’ that took place in the golden age of colonialism, starting with the European one against the Amerindian peoples, the one perpetrated by the young Turkish state against the Armenians, and the one perpetrated by the Nazi-fascists (and their allies) against the Jewish people as well.

Italy, under pressure from Tel Aviv, is aligning itself with the initial unsuccessful attempts by France, Great Britain and Germany to prevent a human tide from rising in solidarity with Palestine by isolating the Israeli government.

We politically denounce this extremely serious act on the part of the Italian government, which undermines the already slim margins of democratic political viability in this country and is the consequence ‘on the domestic front’ of a wicked warlike adventurism.

We call to vigilance all those who in recent months have taken to the streets in support of Palestine and against the ongoing Zionist massacre, to continue with greater determination and lucidity these internationalist initiatives to which we have contributed, and will continue to contribute.

January 26th, 2024

Rete dei Comunisti (Italy)
Cambiare Rotta (Communist Youth Organisation)
Opposizione Studentesca d’Alternativa (OSA)

 

Print Version - new window Email article

  Invasion Day leaflet

" property="og:description" />

Invasion Day leaflet

Written by: on

 

  Invasion Day leaflet

 

Print Version - new window Email article

January 26, what’s to celebrate but struggle?

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 26 January 2024

 

When Jacinta Nampijinpa Price outraged First Peoples by saying British “settlement” had a positive impact on them, she joked about her convict ancestors sent to Australia. 

It’s true, England wasn’t kind to a huge and suffering underclass created by rising capitalism. Forced transportation ripped families and lives apart. But stolen First Peoples’s lands eventually brought better homes and better lives for most of their children’s children.

On 26 January, 1788, over 700 convicts were still trapped on board. One in 18 who left England died on the trip. More horrors awaited, for them and the 160,000 prisoners eventually sent to slave here. The First Fleet did better than the privatised for profit Second Fleet, which killed 26 percent of convicts on board. The rest were so sick, forty percent were dead within six months of arrival. 

Convicts, sailors and soldiers were stunted from poor diet. Gadigal, Guringai, Wangal, Bidgigal and other clans grew tall and muscular. They thrived on the riches of the lands and waters. 

When they saw convicts flogged, flesh and blood flying as the knotted, nine-tailed whips were flicked clear, First Peoples cried. 

The invading British didn’t only destroy lives. The living stream flowing into what’s now Circular Quay became an open sewer.  

A reminder

No wonder First Peoples were outraged four months back, when Ms Price praised what she calls ‘settlement’.

“A positive impact?” she answered a Coalition audience. “Absolutely, now we have running water, readily available food.” 

She says Australia Day unites us, but her usual ally, Warren Mundine, disagrees. Like millions here, he wants to change the date. Why? 

Whether it’s a Day of Mourning, or Survival or Invasion, or all three combined, it’s a day of struggle that unites First Peoples. As a public holiday, it easily brings tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of First Peoples and their allies to the streets. 

Compared to a decade ago, a tiny number of flags now fly on houses or cars. 

Woolworths’ CEO cited small sales for not stocking Australia Day paraphernalia, and was given lots of free air on ABC 7.30 to explain that and sharper questions, like why it really wasn’t ripping off farmers and price gouging customers.  

Ms Price and her corporate backers use threats to Australia Day to bind their non-Indigenous followers more closely to them. A few target Woolworths.

Yet, struggle to change the date has become so strong, other corporations and their supporters seek to turn it into its opposite, a way of defusing struggle by First Peoples and their allies. 

Both groups may gain strength if the date is changed. But whatever Australia’s “celebration” date, fundamentals remain. First Peoples will never give up.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Imperialists divided and isolated in the face of resolute Palestinian resistance

Written by: Ned K. on 24 January 2024

 

As the first month of 2024 draws to a close, Palestinian people's resistance to the Israeli Defense Force's aggression in Gaza and the West Bank remains strong. 

Global support actions for the Palestinian people continues to grow, whether it be action in small regional towns or major cities like Melbourne, London, Paris or Cairo or New York.

In Israel itself, the Netanyahu Government is powerless to stop the larger and larger demonstrations for a permanent cease fire and release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. Relatives of some of the hostages, such as Noam Dan, cousin of Israeli captive Ofer Calderon, accuse Netanyahu of "enacting on us the Hannibal Directive", an IDF policy according to which it was better to have Israeli soldiers killed by their own troops than taken hostage. Noam Dan says Natanyahu is intentionally killing captives in Gaza and refuses to negotiate their return so he can extend his political survival. "My government is annihilating them," he said. 

Israel's main imperialist backer, USA, has had to ramp up its military "aid" to Netanyahu at a time when the USA Biden regime is also facing demands from the Ukraine Government for more weapons for use against Russian imperialism. 

The Biden government also has its hands full ensuring safe passage of freight through the Red Sea. To add to its woes, Biden is facing electoral defeat in the Presidential election later this year and there is pressure on him to at least be seen to be bringing an end to the military spending for wars overseas in the Middle Est and Ukraine and to address the cost of living issues facing millions of people inside the USA.

While Biden faithfully carries out the wishes of the pro-Israel big business lobby in the USA, he is faced with a fast-growing movement of Jewish people in the USA who support the Palestinians through organizations such as Jewish Voice For Peace.

Faced with this deteriorating situation for the Israeli Government, US imperialism and its allies including the Australian Government, are busy hatching new "solutions" to end the armed struggle in Gaza and the West Bank on imperialism's terms.

Biden, echoed by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, calls for a two-state solution of a state of Israel and an ill-defined state of Palestine. 

They think they can impose such a solution on the colonized Palestinians and there are press reports of this so-called solution being attached to a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

There are also media reports of high-ranking military leaders in the USA admitting that the Israeli Defense Force goal of wiping out armed resistance by Palestinians in Gaza is just not going to happen.

The chances of their two-state solution happening, let alone succeeding from an imperialist perspective are pretty much nil.

Why is this so? 

Firstly, Palestinian people have had decades of bitter experience of what a so-called two state solution means in practice - increasing expansion of Israeli settlements and apartheid-like conditions for Palestinians.

Secondly, US imperialism's Biden government has lost full control of the fascist monster it created, Netanyahu and his henchmen. The latter want a single Zionist state with what is now Gaza and West Bank occupied territory to be part of that single Zionist state, colonized by Israelis. 

US imperialism and its allies like the Australian governments over many decades have been on the wrong side of history again and again, most notably in the Vietnam War when a small country, Vietnam, defeated US imperialism to signal the start of its decline as the number one imperialist power in the world.

The heroic Palestinian people are putting another nail in the coffin of the world's biggest but declining imperialist power.

They are sure to win and deserve the peoples of the world's continued visible active support. 

Their win will be defined by the Palestinian themselves.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The eclipse of economic rationalism?

Written by: (Contributed) on 23 January 2024

 

(Above - this US cartoon from over a century ago reflects an enduring truth about capitalism)

A recent report from the OECD has revealed how governments are increasingly using tax-payers money for state-controlled programs, as GDP continues to decline. (1) In fact, the global economy is on present track to record the slowest GDP growth in three decades. (2)

An official IMF projection has already concluded that Australia will face a major downturn to a mere 1.2 per cent economic growth this year. (3)

Economic rationalism became vogue thinking for the business-classes and corporate sector during the 1980s. International financial institutions including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund foisted programs of privatisation, de-regulation and liberalisation through trade bodies in order to keep the US at the centre of the global economy; globalisation became the order of the day. A prominent feature of economic rationalism was 'trickle-up' patterns whereby the rich became even richer at the expense of the mass of the population.

An OXFAM report in 2020, for example, established the richest one per cent of the world's population had grabbed two-thirds of the $42 trillion of 'new wealth', while the remaining 99 per cent acquired the remainder. (4) It also established that the fortunes of billionaires were increasing by US$2.7 billion each day, while 1.7 billion workers lived in countries, such as Australia, where wages were outpaced by inflation and CPI. (5)

An IMF report in late 2023 officially recorded that the global economy was 'limping along … not sprinting … growth remains slow and uneven … with widening divergences'. (6)

It is important to note, therefore, that the latest World Bank report, Global Economic Prospects, noted 'a grim outlook beyond the next two years' … the outlook is dark … what looms … is a wretched global growth performance'. (7) There has been a general decline in economic growth over decades: during the 2010s, the average was 3.1 per cent, it is now barely 2.4 per cent and not expected to rise higher. (8) Global trade figures, likewise, have also declined: it is now expected to be only half this year, of an annual average during the decade before the pandemic. (9)

The recent Global Risks Report released by the World Economic Forum, likewise, forecast 'a doomsday scenario of events which could occur in the future'. (10)

The business-classes and the corporate sector, however, were well aware of the looming problems and have already taken precautionary measures to safeguard their positions and stabilise economic systems. It was done with very little publicity and was often hidden amongst indirect forms of support; in South Australia, for example, many companies use government subsidies for 'training provision', with numerous courses linked to private training agencies.   

A significant increase in the role of state spending in recent years, nevertheless, has included 'an array of new spending needs, from military priorities to industrial policy'. (11) It marks a shift away from previously held economic rationalist models which emphasised a reduction in state support for business.  

The change has been particularly noticeable in the European Union where government spending is now accounting for half of the region’s economic output in 2023. (12) Higher interest rates, globally, have also made their mark; re-payment on existing debt levels has already been recorded rising from 104 per cent of GDP in 2019, to 112 per cent in 2023. (13) They are set to rise even higher.   

What is significant is that the business-classes and corporate sector expect governments to use tax-payers money as subsidies, while continuing to gloat over their own profits. Some of their businesses, furthermore, do not even pay tax. It has led to an official statement from a major European bank that 'this means many rich countries … have no alternative to raising tax revenues’. (14)

In conclusion, the economic rationalist business model foisted on countries by international financial institutions can be seen to not have produced healthy, vibrant economies, but those which require government support to maintain their existence.

Ordinary tax-payers are paying subsidies for the business-classes and corporate sector.  

It is a disgrace!

The old trade-union slogan from a century ago of 'I work, you work, they profit', would appear to still be holding and highly relevant!

1.     Tax take on the rise as borrowing declines, Australian, 20 December 2023.
2.     World Bank's 'hazard' warning, Australian, 10 January 2024.
3.     Global economy still limping along: IMF., Australian, 11 October 2023.
4.     Survival of the richest, OXFAM publication, 2020.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 11 October 2023.
7.     Australian, op.cit., 10 January 2024.
8.     Ibid.
9.     Ibid.
10.   Black swans on horizon, Australian, 11 January 2024.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 20 December 2023.
12.   Ibid.
13.   Ibid.
14.   Ibid.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Can Australian workers manufacture electric cars? Yes we can – dump the nuclear subs.

Written by: Ned K. on 22 January 2024

 

On Sunday 21 January 2024, there was a "Holden Day" event held at the beachside Adelaide suburb of Glenelg. Hundreds of Holden cars manufactured in Australia were on display for the thousands of people who attended the event. 

The display included the first Holden cars to roll off the production line in 1948 to the last Holden cars made at the Elizabeth production and assembly plant in Adelaide in October 2017.

The time and work done by these Holden car enthusiasts to maintain and where necessary restore the earlier models to their former glory demonstrates not only their individual interest in Holden cars. It also shows younger people that Australian workers are capable of producing forms of private and public transport that have a use value for the people of this country.  

The display of Holden cars at the Holden Day is a timely reminder that there IS an alternative future for manufacturing industry in Australia which serves the needs of people in Australia. The Holden cars on display embody the work and skill of hundreds of thousands of workers in Australia over three or more generations. This is conveniently forgotten by politicians who tell people that the country's future lies in spending $380 billion or more on other countries building a majority of “our” nuclear powered submarines and subsidizing multinational companies along the way.

Why do politicians continue down this war-mongering path rather than invest in public-owned electric vehicle manufacturing and manufacturing that will assist the people in the "war" against climate change, global warming and destruction of the environment?

Thousands of people in Australia and indeed throughout the world are taking to the streets demanding their governments take action to force Israel to stop its genocide against the Palestinian people.

People are "joining the dots" and seeing the disastrous ink between Israel's war machine and their own country's increasing dependence on a military related manufacturing base.

Our young people need to be able to look back at their lives when they are older and see that they were part of an Australia manufacturing useful products like electric cars, rather than feeding the US war machine. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Sovereignty, a message to whitefellas

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 19 January 2024

 

(Photo by Lindy Nolan)

 

Black Sovereignty sends a powerful message to whitefellas about what unceded land means to First Peoples. It tells us wherever we stand, we are on stolen land. It reminds us every part of these lands were defended in armed struggle and in so-called peace. It speaks of reckonings, of just treaties, of reparations to be won in ongoing battles.

For a decade or more the word ‘sovereignty’ has confronted Australia’s parliament in giant letters from the Tent Embassy. 

Yet, there is no word in any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language for it. The term only arose with capitalism. First Peoples’ society did not have classes. They did not need a capitalist state apparatus underpinned by a theory of national sovereignty to empower a ruling class to suppress, enslave or exploit others. First Peoples had no courts, jails, rulers, parliaments, army or police, no written laws.  

They had much more – tens of thousands of years of lore and ceremony, arising from the need to survive and flourish in ever-changing lands. Before he was elected to the NT Parliament, Yingiya Mark Guyula compared the Madayin system of Yolngu Lore that made him Djirrikaymirr (a senior leader), to Australia’s 122-year constitution. He called the constitution ‘just a piece of paper’.

An evolving meaning

Encyclopaedia Britanica charts sovereignty’s development. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t mention either class or capitalism, only nationalism: ‘Sovereignty, in political theory, the ultimate overseer or authority, in the decision-making process of the state and in the maintenance of order” but “has often departed from this traditional meaning.’ 

The encyclopaedia writes of this new concept used by political philosopher, jurist, parliamentarian and law professor Jean Bodin in 16th century France to strengthen “the power of the French king over rebellious feudal lords”. 

The overthrow of feudalism by capitalism took different forms in different places, so the concept of sovereignty developed different emphases. Feudalism evolved in violent struggle with previous slave owning societies, but sometimes – like capitalism and colonialism – incorporated slavery. In England it played out in wars and the rise of parliament. 

In North America, both British colonialism and later revolutionary independent US capitalists freely used slavery to secure their rule and profits in stolen lands. After the US civil war, winners and losers disagreed about what was ‘sovereign’. Sovereignty was claimed and argued over by states and their people, by the federal government, in the Supreme Court and in the constitution. 

Whatever the subtle differences, claims of sovereignty and sovereign interest (like claims of democracy) often underpin ruling class state apparatuses that deceive, divide and suppress the masses. 

It is regularly a weapon of current ruling classes to justify unjust rule and unjust wars against other nations also claiming sovereignty.

So called sovereign citizens use it, on behalf of far-right capitalists, to manipulate some First Peoples. 

“I come in spirit from the land”

This sovereignty is a totally different idea to what First Peoples mean when they use it. They don’t rule the land, they’re part of it. They have responsibility to it. 

As an elder on a 1970’s poster said, "The land is mine because I come in spirit from the land.”

But sovereignty also has a progressive content. It focusses strength for the people in struggles to overthrow foreign empires or imperialism. Revolutionary Chinese leader Mao Zedong led the defeat of Japanese invaders in World War Two and the US-backed Guomindang reactionaries after it. 

Under Chairman Mao’s revolutionary leadership, the Chinese Communist Party was still a Marxist-Leninist Party. It lifted more people out of poverty than at any time in history. 

At a time when national liberation struggles were exploding worldwide, it put forward the slogan ‘Countries want independence, nations want liberation, people want revolution.’ 

Controlling the commanding heights

Since World War Two, US imperialism has systematically seized sovereignty in Australia. 

It controls what Lenin described as ‘the commanding heights of our economy’. Australia’s military is part of the US war machine. It’s Kardashian culture bombards Australian minds. Our politicians dance to every US tune. 

The two biggest Australian capitalists may flirt with the other imperialist superpower, China, as market for their minerals. But even Gina and Twiggy are dwarfed by US imperialism’s power. They have to come to terms with US control of Australia. They help buy off mineworkers and others with high wages, making them prey to sovereign citizens movements with themselves as philanthropic heroes.

First Peoples cannot win their liberation against such power alone. The working class as a whole is the greatest potential ally of First Peoples and all oppressed. We have the same enemies – US imperialism and those who do its dirty work. 

Here sovereignty becomes a progressive term for both First Peoples and their allies. Sovereignty in the hands of the people demands independence and socialism from US capitalist domination.  

Class struggle is full of examples where ruling class weapons were turned against them. When First Peoples claim unceded sovereignty to demand justice, this is what they are doing. But their own lives – as part of the land and water and air they move in and on –  creates a far richer, more powerful and more generous concept than the word sovereignty can ever convey. 

Elders like Yaluritja 

When Nyungah were occupying sacred Goonininup, in Perth’s old Swan Brewery site in 1989, union organiser, activist and Elder, Yaluritja Clarrie Isaacs, travelled as their representative. 

Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney Harbour was occupied by workers. Of course, Yaluritja stayed with them! 

Land Rights flag he gave them flew alongside the Eureka flag from the Titan crane till the occupation ended three months after it began. 

Those two battlegrounds, four thousand kilometres apart, symbolise the power of working class and First Peoples’ unity. 

There can be no justice without justice for First Peoples. There can be no justice with these lands and our peoples dominated by US monopoly capitalism, or by their Australian collaborators. They are the murderous white heart of capitalism here.

Independence regained by First Peoples is independence won also by the working class and its allies. It’s the core of socialism. There will be a new ruling class – the working class and its allies who are the vast majority – whose key job in serving their peoples will be to end class rule forever.

On January 26 and every other day, it is a collective dream to work for, to organise for, to fight for. Elders like Yaluritja embody it. 

First Peoples have chosen to speak of sovereignty. They are loud, united and strong!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

When whitefellas dance Ceremony, it’s time for consequences

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 18 January 2024

 

(Sovereignty banner faces parliament from tent embassy.  Photo: Will E. Clicket  Flickr Commons)

The so-called sovereign citizen movement is a puppet of the most vicious wing of US imperialism, that wants rules and laws only to benefit itself. The puppet master wants to make war, exploit lives and destroy environments with zero consequences. 

Sovereign citizens claim that laws, like taxes, are ‘illegal’ if they stop citizens ‘freely’ living their lives. 

Here they claim James Cook’s secret instructions from British Admiralty – to chart this continent and make agreements with inhabitants – was illegally broken by him when he claimed British sovereignty on Possession Island. They say all subsequent law here is illegal. A small but growing number of First Peoples agree.

Laws ALWAYS have a class content. The British didn’t reprimand Cook for claiming British sovereignty on Possession Island. 

They promoted him from lieutenant to captain. Eighteen years later, Britain invaded what is now called Australia.

They aimed to challenge the Dutch spice trade monopoly and create both a military base against France and a dumping ground for convicts. They knowingly brought the diseases and guns that decimated other First Peoples in other lands they’d already invaded. 

A birthright

When so-called original sovereigns invaded the Tent Embassy in 2022, allowing painted up whitefellas to dance “ceremony”, some claimed missing Aboriginal children were prey to paedophiles in tunnels under old parliament house. 

This divisive Q-Anon poison provides some First Peoples’ troops backing Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s demand for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. It will launch another witch-hunt.

False claims of paedophile rings run by male Elders was the excuse for the 15-year NT Intervention. In reality it was a land grab that humiliated and disempowered Aboriginal men and destroyed almost all NT First Peoples’ hard-won rights. By every measure it made their lives far worse. 

Recently sovereign citizens have bombarded native title meetings. Native title is not land rights. It can be divisive. It can be manipulated to favour lands councils over custodians. But it can have great positive impact for First Peoples too.

The sovereign crew use the negatives to trick and win over First Peoples, calling it ‘slave title’, saying ‘you’re actually signing the land away’.  

First Peoples themselves led the pushback against sovereign citizens’ hijack. In early January 2022 Birpai journalist Jack Latimore, quoted Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) spokesperson, Gamilaraay and Kooma woman Ruby Wharton, who slammed the attempt to “co-opt the First Nations Sovereignty rights movement.

Wharton said, “Sovereignty is our birthright.

“It’s our birthright to occupy our traditional homelands, it’s our birthright to speak language, it’s our birthright to practise our traditional laws and protect our Country.” 

She ridiculed so-called Australian sovereignty for belonging to the British queen or king. Parliamentarians still swear allegiance to them, and Britain’s flag dominates the Australian one. But like Australia, Britain now dances to a US tune. 

Wharton is right, Australia is not independent. Sovereignty is in other hands. Laws are in other hands. It’s time for consequences. It’s time to smash the foundations and build new ones. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Multipolarism – the new Kautskyism

Written by: Alan Jackson on 14 January 2024

 

(Above; Prominent leftist academics help sell multipolarity)

 

It is clear that U.S global hegemony is on the decline while economic formations like BRICS and Imperialist powers Russia and China are growing in global dominance. 

The U.S since the dissolution of the social-imperialist Soviet Union in 1991 has since been the most powerful economic and military power with little competition due to the destruction of its main contender, the U.S.S.R. This led to bourgeois journalists, think tanks, politicians, financiers and academia in their refusal to acknowledge Imperialism, to refer to the global relations situation and the supreme dominance of the U.S as one that was Unipolar. 

• China: Revolution and Restoration
• Explaining China: how a socialist country took the capitalist road to social-imperialism
• China, a new social-imperialist power
• Pao Yu-ching, From victory to defeat
• Pao-yu Ching, Revolution and counter-revolution
• Deng-yuan Hsu and Pao-yu Ching, Re-thinking socialism

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Condemn US attacks on Yemen

Written by: Nick G. on 12 January 2024

 

Above: Millions of Yemenis march for Palestine

The US imperialists, backed by the UK, have attacked Yemen in a move that may spread the Zionist-Palestinian conflict throughout the region.
The Australian puppet government has supported the attacks. 

In deference to Australian public opinion, Albanese and Marles made a show of rejecting a US “request” to send a warship to the Red Sea. However, they did send six more ADF personnel to join five already working for US imperialism in its base in Bahrain. These ADF members have been part of the US attack on Yemen allowing Marles to blabber on about Australia “defending the international rules-based order”. It is quite likely that Australia also supported the US attacks through Pine Gap.

Yemen has survived previous attacks

US and Saudis waged war on Yemen for 7 years from 2015-22, killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. It ended in humiliating defeat with Houthis far stronger than before the war. Today, the "Houthis" (officially called Ansarallah) aren't a "militia"; they lead the government where 80% of Yemenis live. 
In response to the Zionist genocide in Gaza, the Houthis have boarded ships carrying supplies to Israel. Their objective has been to make it more difficult for the genocide to succeed.

In contrast, the US and its subordinates have blocked UN resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza, and continued to arm Israel to support its murder of Palestinians.

There was no such condemnation by the US when Israeli soldiers landed on the Gaza Flotilla, six civilian ships carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials to Israeli-blockaded Gaza on 31 May 2010. Nine peace activists were killed by the Israelis, dozens wounded and 629 taken hostage,

Danger of war throughout region

The Gaza conflict has been embroiled in the contradictions existing thought the Middle East.

For example, the Saudis who had only recently acceded to US demands to improve relations with Israel, are one of the countries supporting South Africa’s case for declaring Israel’s actions genocidal at the International Court of Justice. (No Western “defender of human rights” has yet backed South Africa’s ICJ approach.) Despite still recognising the Yemeni regime that it had supported during its war with the Houthis, they and the Saudis are continuing negotiations for an end to their fighting.

Although the US attack was launched from Bahrain, with the support of that government, a more convenient launching pad would have been its base in Djibouti, just across the narrow strait between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. However, the Djiboutian government rejected a US request to allow missile launchers to be installed in Djibouti to target Yemen.

The Prime Minister of Djibouti said “Djibouti confirms that the solution lies in stopping the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.”

Meanwhile, US “advisers” in Iraq have come under fire and rocket attack. In return, they have killed a number of Iraqis and militia leaders alleged to have been backed by Iran.

On Jan. 5, a day after the US struck a purported militant leader in Baghdad, the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Iraqi government was taking the first steps towards removing US and coalition troops “permanently,” beginning with setting a date for a committee discussion about how to do so. 

Al-Sudani repeated his demand on January 10, although he is reported to have told American officials privately he wants US troops to stay to help fight the regrouped ISIS, and had only called for the removal of US soldiers to calm domestic pressure.

Throughout their aggression against Gaza, the Israelis have continued to launch strikes against Syria and Lebanon, provoking forces such as Hezbollah to increase their missile attacks in retaliation. 

On January 2, Israeli airstrikes resulted in the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy chairman of the Hamas political bureau, in Beirut, Lebanon, while on January 8, Israel assassinated Wissam al-Tawil, the deputy commander of Hezbollah's Redwan Force. Each assassination was accompanied by other deaths. Media outlet Al-Jazeera said the killings “raised the fears of total war”.

Turkey, seeking to expand its influence in the region and in Africa, has been loud in its condemnation of Israeli genocide, and is one of the nations backing South Africa’s case at the ICJ. Its public opposition to Israel is welcome. Yet its exports to Israel have increased since October 7, and it is conducting its own war against Kurds and their allies in Rojava north-eastern Syria, engaging in murderous attacks against the progressive enclave.

As for Iran, demonised relentlessly by the Western media, it has so far remained out of the conflict. How long that lasts is entirely dependent upon the provocations that US imperialism and its allies throw in its direction.

The only certainty at present is that imperialism is driving towards war and the people of the world are growing increasingly united against it.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

US wants Australia to stockpile the weapons it would need for war with China

Written by: Nick G. on 7 January 2024

 

US moves to increase its military presence in Australia contain two immediate threats to our nation and people.

One is the more obvious danger that US bases and equipment stockpiles become targets in the event of a US war with China. The other, less obvious, relates to biosecurity threats.

Ukraine and Gaza raise supply chain problems

The Ukraine and Gaza conflicts are forcing the US to reexamine its logistics deployment.

From maintaining platforms from afar to a deep-seated demand for mass quantities of munitions, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is providing US Army Materiel Command with a wealth of insights into what it needs to do to prepare for contingency in the Indo-Pacific region, according to a three-star general there, Army Materiel Command’s deputy Lt. Gen. Christopher Mohan.

“(Ukraine’s) lines of communication are contested, like we know we’re going to have in the South China Sea, so we should look at it from that same lens,” he later added.

US imperialism has provided more than $13 billion in equipment and weapons to Kyiv since the Russian invasion.

Mohan was critical of Ukraine’s wasteful use of US weapons and said that the US was continuing to grapple with an array of stockpile questions after watching Ukraine burn through munitions provided by US and other friendly nations.

The drain on US stockpiles by Ukraine created similar problems when the Zionists launched their genocidal attacks on Gaza. On October 17, the Australian Financial Review reported that “US arms manufacturers are preparing to surge weapons supplies to Israel at a time when they are already under pressure to arm Ukraine and replenish depleted Pentagon stocks, a challenge analysts say will add stress to a stretched defence industrial base.

“Unlike Ukraine, which has been the recipient of hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles, Israel is primarily seeking munitions. Interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defence system are at the top of the country’s wish list.”

US Congress dragged its feet on approval of sales to Israel, forcing Biden to use an emergency authority to allow the sale of about 14,000 tank shells to Israel without congressional review. 

The tank rounds worth $106.5m were for immediate delivery to Israel to assist its killing of Palestinians. The shells are part of a bigger sale the Biden administration is asking the Congress to approve. The larger package is worth more than $500m and includes 45,000 shells for Israel’s Merkava tanks, regularly deployed in its aggression in Gaza.

US plans military expansion

According to the online US newsletter Breaking Defense, “One key to any future US engagement could be, for instance, US Army Prepositioned Stockpiles or APS”.  The US has seven such stockpiles around the globe, one of which is “afloat” or stored on naval vessels.

Mohan said he is a proponent for expanding land-based equipment numbers in the Indo-Pacific region to reduce transit times and avoid hurdles like agricultural inspections.

He wants military exercises in our region in 2024 to focus on provision of supplies from stockpiles. Mohan said he is a proponent for expanding land-based equipment numbers in the Indo-Pacific region to reduce transit times and avoid hurdles like agricultural inspections.

Australia, because it is a “friendly” country and because of its location, is favoured to host more APSs. 

However, a December 23, 2022 US Congressional paper notes that such large stockpiles “makes them potential priority targets for adversary long range weapons in conflict scenarios”. 

That is the first and obvious danger to Australia if it hosts such stockpiles.

Mohan’s desire to “avoid hurdles like agricultural inspections” refers to quarantine requirements governing the introduction of foreign goods to Australia.
During the Talisman Sabre Exercise in 2023, the US Army had to bring huge amounts of equipment into Australia. However, Australia’s strict agricultural inspection guidelines, including searching inbound military weapons for pests, meant the US spent months deep cleaning the weapons and vehicles in Hawaii before loading back onto a ship with an agricultural inspector onboard outfitted with pesticides. 

Under an agreement with Australia, that inspector is not allowed to be an Australian. The US refuses to allow Australian or any other country’s inspection of its vessels, military equipment and personnel. We are in the invidious position of having to train US personnel to do the job for us, and to trust that they will do it to the standards of exactness and thoroughness required to protect our biosecurity.

US Maj. Gen. Jered Helwig, in charge of logistics deliveries into Australia for Talisman Sabre, said “We did a really good job of cleaning… but they did find a few .” 

So, what’s a few little insects between friends?  In a “nudge-nudge wink-wink” explanation of how this was got around, Helwig admitted “…because of the relationship that we built with the (Australian) Department of Agricultural, Fisheries and Forestry … they allowed us to mitigate that in a way” that only took days and not weeks.

Even allowing for our “strict agricultural inspection guidelines” to be “mitigated”, in real war conditions such delays in the movement of armaments and other supplies is unacceptable to the US, so increasingly, it is looking to have an Australian APS or two or three so that what it needs for a conflict with China is immediately within the region.

It is not in our interests to increase the presence of US bases that other countries may attack if push comes to shove, and because we don’t want our biosecurity protections diminished as the US transports materiel into and out of our country, we must say “No” to US APSs on our soil.

Australia’s best defence is its own people motivated to protect an independent and peaceful foreign policy.

Sources:

From petroleum pipes to pest problems, what a US Army 2-star learned from Talisman Sabre 23
Defense Primer: Department of Defense Pre-Positioned Materiel
Telemaintenance and stockpiles: Army Materiel Command takes its own lessons from Ukraine

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Strategic Denial Rights, EEZ's, Rare Minerals: Palau And US Neo-Colonialism

Written by: (Contributed) on 3 January 2024

 

(Above: the three island chains)

Palau is fast becoming a key strategic component in US-led regional military planning; the small Pacific country has increasingly been used by the Pentagon for military training and weapon technology transfer with Taiwan. Strategically placed within US-led Island Chain Theory (ICT), designed to restrict and control regional access and egress, Palau has recently signed a new agreement with the US to enforce their large Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), thought to be rich in resources and rare deep-seabed minerals. The so-called US-led Strategic Denial Right (SDR), and other recent initiatives, have transformed Palau into a military hub for US-led operations. Political opposition to the war-mongering has taken place in recent times, in line with the present Cold War.

The US recently began moves to establish work on over-the-horizon radar facilities in Palau, coinciding with President Surangel S. Whipps Jnr., requesting the US station the Patriot missile defence system in the country for permanent regional deployment.  

Palau, a tiny country sandwiched between the Philippines and Guam, has become highly strategic for US regional military planning in recent years. Palau is also particularly close, in diplomatic terms, to Taiwan; the recent moves to install military facilities in Palau have coincided with Taiwan and the US signing a $83 million deal in 2022 to upgrade defence systems. (1)  The present presidential administration wants to further strengthen their diplomatic links to provide even greater inclusion with Taiwan. (2)

It is not difficult to understand why pro-US presidential administrations in both places have acted accordingly; Taiwan forms part of the first Island Chain, whereas Palau is part of the second chain. They are, therefore, central to attempts by the US to restrict China's regional involvement in the Pacific.

A military intelligence assessment submitted to US Congress in early 2021, contained the initial plan for 'the fielding of an Integrated Joint Force with precision-strike networks along the first island chain and integrated air missile defence in the second island chain'. (3) The estimated cost of the military plan amounted to $27.4 billion over a six-year period from 2021 to 2027. (4) It was not intended as a narrowly defined defence and security gesture, but with capability to 'dispense and sustain combat operations for extended periods'. (5)

The moves have also rested upon even longer-term military planning over a decade ago when a statement issued by the Congressional Research Service noted the US was 'laying the foundations for a region-wide missile defence system that would combine US ballistic-missile defences with those of regional powers, particularly Japan, South Korea and Australia'. (6) The defence system was subsequently updated to the present Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), with parameters from India, Japan, the US and Australia, to contain sensitive areas of the vast region. (7)

Palau, interestingly, is situated half-way between sensitive US military facilities at Pine Gap, central Australia, and their counterparts in Japan. (8) Other countries, close to Palau, have already hosted sensitive US military facilities, including satellite systems. (9)   

The fact the US has full diplomatic links with Palau, including an Embassy in the capital, Melekeok, and an Ambassador, Joel Ehrendreich, appointed in August, 2023, would clearly, highlight the importance placed on the tiny country with an estimated population of only 18,054, by Washington and the Pentagon. Palau, in the eyes of the Biden administration in the White House, cannot be regarded as a diplomatic backwater. Ehrendreich is noted on the official US Department of State website as a career diplomat, for example, with a 'deep and substantive background in East Asian and Pacific Affairs and previous regional assignments, coupled with nearly thirty years of Foreign Service experience make him a well-qualified candidate for Ambassador to Palau'. (10)  

Just what, therefore, does Washington and the Pentagon have in mind for Palau?

It is also particularly interesting to note the recent opposition in Palau to the US-led moves; fears have been raised about real-war scenarios with lethal AI-powered warfare, together with the country's Senate being opposed to the plans. (11) Due to the small size of the country and population, very little must be able to happen without residents becoming aware. Military facilities and fortifications must be easy to detect and visible. Palau, however, is a country strongly subject to US-led Cold War problems and it is difficult to establish how deep and widespread opposition is inside the country to the US military planning. Interests, perceived as being pro-China, are regularly met with accusations, even if not true. (12) Those willing to challenge US-led positions experience difficulty.

The recent moves by the US military have also included other initiatives, which appear more in line with traditional neo-colonial thinking. Recent diplomatic initiatives by China across the region, for example, have allowed it to gain access to about 80 per cent of the Pacific's EEZ's, which has been assessed as a serious threat to traditional US-led hegemonic positions. (13) The EEZ's are thought to be rich in natural resources, rare and deep-seabed minerals, which the US want to control and to restrict China's access.

The recent US-led military planning has, therefore, also included both Palau and neighbouring Micronesia signing deals with the US for warships to patrol their EEZ's to enforce 'strategic denial rights'; the Marshall Islands is also considering similar moves at the present time. The three countries possess huge EEZ's which straddle the first and second island chains, reaching almost to the Philippines and Indonesia. (14)

1.     Opinion: From Taiwan to Palau, The Island Times, 3 October 2023.
2.     Palau's president wants greater inclusion, BBC News, 16 December 2022.
3.     US Indo-Pacific Command proposes new missile capabilities to deter China, RFA., 5 March 2021.
4.     US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei, 5 March 2021.
5.     Ibid.
6.     US seeks new Asia defences, The Wall Street Journal, 24-26 August 2012.
7.     See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
8.     See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
9.     China now controls 80 per cent of the Pacific EEZ., US v. China, Japan Forward: Politics and Security, Rieko Hayakawa and Jennifer L. Anson, 14 February 2020.        
10.   Website: US Department of State, Ehrendreich, Joel, 28 March 2023.
11.   Palau joins chorus, The Island Times, 19 December 2023; and, Palau – Opinion Observer, The Global Times, 21 December 2023.
12.   See: Failed Palau media deal, ABC News, 21 July 2023.
13.   China now controls 80 per cent of the Pacific EEZ., op.cit., 14 February 2020.
14.   Opinion, Island Times, 3 October 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Support for Palestinians on New Year's Eve

Written by: Ned K. on 3 January 2024

 

(Above: original photo by Asbjorn Kanck)

On New Year's Eve 2023 in Adelaide, thousands of people gathered at Elder Park on the banks of the city's Karrawirra Pari ("River Torrens" is the colonial name) to see in the New Year. 

At the same time, thousands more walked across the footbridge of Karrawirra Pari on their way to watch the Big Bash cricket game.

These two events occur every year, but this year was different. 

As people walked to both events they were greeted by over 300 people walking along the river bank path and over the footbridge carrying flags and banners in memory of the Palestinians in Gaza who had been killed by Israeli Defence Force missiles, bombs and gunfire since 7 October 2023. 

The Palestinian supporters were led along the path and over the bridge by a Palestinian woman read out the names of individuals killed and a short summary of their lives cut short.

The action organized by Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) was deliberately a solemn protest with the wording on banners and placards "doing the talking".

The response from the people crossing the bridge on their way to the cricket was more than the organizers of the action could have wished for. People going to the cricket made comments such as "good on you", "we support you" to several stopping and clapping to how their support.

Perhaps people connected this peaceful action with the pro-Palestinian stand taken by opening batter for Australian cricket men's Test team Usman Khawaja?

Actions in support of the Palestinian people both in the Israeli Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank and all round the world have varied. Even the most desperate, violent actions by some individuals or groups have their root cause in the colonial occupation of Palestinian lands through the establishment of the Zionist state of Israel.

Even the Zionist leaders are aware of this. For example, Avraham Burg, the former head of the Knesset and former head of the Jewish Agency, wrote "Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israel escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated." (from Conversations With Tariq Ali)

There was a pre-colonialism time when Palestinians lived together peacefully. Some were Moslem, some Christian, some Jewish but no Zionists backed by colonial or imperialist powers.

As one Palestinian said at the New Year's Eve action, Palestinians whatever their faith are going to stay on their land.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Global climate change hits dangerous new milestones in 2023

Written by: Leo A. on 28 December 2023

 

For decades, we have been warning about the consequences of careless greenhouse gas emissions on the Earth’s environment. Now the pace at which the global climate is changing is speeding up. 

On November 17, the global average temperature hit 2.07 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average (specifically above the average global temperature across the 1850-1900 period, before artificial greenhouse gas emissions began to have a noticeable effect). This is the first time the “two-degree threshold” has been crossed since prehistoric times. While the exact threshold was just crossed temporarily, it seems likely that this will become the new “normal” in a matter of years. 

The impact of artificial warming is already being felt across Australia. Earlier this month much of the country experienced severe heatwaves. For example, on December 9 the outside temperature in some parts of Sydney got as high as 46 degrees Celsius. If the big fossil fuel corporations have things their way, that’s going to become a regular occurrence. And not just in Australia – this year heat waves have hit every continent, with hundreds of confirmed deaths so far. 

It is not just temperature that has hit dangerous new records this year. Back in July, the Antarctic sea ice “deficit” (that is, the difference between how much of the Southern Ocean was covered by sea ice and how much is normally covered by sea ice at that time of the year) grew to 2.5 million square kilometres. In other words, an area equal to that of the state of Western Australia that should’ve been ice-covered wasn’t. 

What will the world look like if this becomes an everyday occurrence, if the two-degree mark is crossed as a year-round average rather than as a temporary event? Over the past ten years several research studies and reports have attempted to answer this question. Their conclusions? In a two-degree “new normal”, severe heatwaves will last much longer and expose much more of the global population on a regular basis. Heavy rainfall will be more intense and across much of the world’s land, the risk of river flooding will increase substantially. Either most or all coral reefs will be at risk of annual bleaching. Crop yields such as those of wheat and maize will plummet, which may cause the largest mass famines in history. Global sea levels will rise significantly, washing countless islands and coastal communities off the map. Extreme weather, famine, and sea level rise could result in a refugee crisis on an unprecedented scale, conflicts over food and clean water, and the extinction of a significant fraction of the world’s plant and animal species. And this is not even a worst-case scenario. 

Earlier this month, the United Nation’s COP28 Climate Conference was held in Dubai. Despite how much this year has demonstrated the severity of the crisis, the draft agreement published on December 11 was described as a “death certificate” for the most vulnerable countries. Later “compromise” agreements essentially amounted to “we promise we will achieve net zero emissions by the time we’ve used up almost all the fossil fuels on the planet”. That's not very helpful.

It is obvious who’s interests are being represented here and who’s aren’t. As Irish communist leader James Connoly excellently summarized back in 1915, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class. This is just as true in the present day. The bourgeoisie are not the ones at risk of starvation, dehydration, hyperthermia, or drowning. And they already view those who are at risk as expendable. In particular, the decision to continue a business-as-usual approach is most beneficial for multinational fossil fuel corporations and the politicians affiliated with them. It is no secret that these corporations have a significant amount of leverage in Australia, and as a result are, for example, permitted to mine and drill on Indigenous peoples’ lands without their consent. 

The military-industrial complex also benefits from this policy approach. When we think of the devastation caused by the war industry, it is natural to immediately remember the mass suffering this causes directly, in countries such as Ukraine and Palestine. But what is often overlooked is the contribution warfare makes to greenhouse gas emissions. Here in Australia, the ADF is responsible for 66% of the Australian government’s emissions. Elsewhere the portion is similar – the UK armed forces account for 50% of the British government’s emissions, and the US military accounts for 56% of American government emissions. 
 
There is hope. As the effects of the climate crisis continue to grab headlines and catch the world’s attention, more people will take the crisis seriously, and this may lead more people to question the mode of production that’s driving us into this catastrophe. In the short-term, we’re likely to see more activism placing pressure on the bourgeoisie to take some measures to at least slow down the crisis. In the long run, increasing awareness of the climate crisis and it’s driving causes could lead to an increase in class consciousness, which may become an important step toward the establishment of socialism in Australia and elsewhere, leading to more serious measures being taken. The technology to solve the climate crisis already exists, all we need are leaders willing to solve it, to prioritise the interests of the Earth over the interests of capital. 
 
As we all enter the new year, we should keep in mind that despite the severity of the crisis, a better world is still possible. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Doctor On the Frontline Gaza Praises Palestinian Resistance

Written by: Ned K. on 28 December 2023

 

Recently a YouTube video was circulated by supporters of the Palestinian people called "Wounds of War: The Gaza Experience Through the Eyes of Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta",

Dr Ghassan is speaking to other health workers in a forum organized by the Global Health Institute (GHI).

Dr Ghassan is a Palestinian surgeon living in the UK. He went to work in hospitals in Gaza in October and November 2023 to perform surgery for the Palestinian victims of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

He found that the Israeli Defense Force were systematically targeting hospitals, universities, water supply, power stations. He witnessed the Israeli attempts to destroy the health system and all major needs of society. 

He said Israel's strategy was to create a "self-catastrophe."  Bombing the health system and medical supplies needed for surgeries in turn created disease and epidemics. Bombing bakeries created catastrophe of starvation and malnutrition while destroying water and sewerage works created the catastrophe of no sanitation.

Dr Ghassan explained that the bombings of Gaza by Israel were to create what he called "performative deaths" that everyone could see. Added to this were deaths caused by Israel's experimenting with the latest phosphorous bombs to kill people and then conduct research on the dead bodies so as to be able to see the impact of these bombs on humans. Then Israel would showcase the research results as part of their marketing strategy for sale of weapons to other countries.

This strategy by Israel was designed to create a mindset within the Palestinians that the only solution was to leave Gaza via Egypt and become a refugee as thousands of Palestinians had done in the past 70 years.

However, Dr Ghassan said this strategy was doomed to failure because the Israeli Zionist regime did not understand that for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, there was something worse than death for them. That was becoming a refugee without a home as they had seen the impact of that on previous generations of Palestinians.

This resistance by Palestinians in the face of Zionist barbarism was creating mixed messages from Netanyahu. On 27 December he boasted about "voluntary migration", a euphemism for mass forced expulsion of Palestinians to Egypt and he claimed he was talking to other countries to take refugees. His plan was then to extend Israeli settlements throughout Gaza. 

However, on the 28 December, the ABC news and Murdoch press reported that Netanyahu said the Israeli war on Gaza would go on for many more months.

At the end of the interview with Dr Ghassan, he was asked how he saw the future for the Palestinian people.

He said "Acts of steadfastness of ordinary people doing ordinary acts of living gives great hope. Despite Israel's acts of barbarism, people are still there."

The ordinary people of the world are supporting the Palestinian people in any way they can and there is no sign of that support declining. 

Israel and its imperialist and pro-imperialist backers, including the Australian Government are increasingly isolated and more desperate to hide the truth of what they are doing in their support for the Zionist regime. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Closing loopholes or creating new ones?

Written by: Ned K. on 27 December 2023

 

The federal government's Closing Loopholes Act Part 1 was passed on 14 December 2023. This Act covers industrial issues raised by workers through their Unions as part of the latter's financial and voting support for the election of the Albanese led Labor Government in 2022. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Christmas: It’s all class…

Written by: Nick G. on 27 December 2023

 

(Source: favim)

The gorging on products that is celebrated in the commercialised “holy” day of Christmas has seen more families than ever disadvantaged as a result of the current cost of living crisis.

Charities had struggled to keep up with the distribution of toys to families that could not afford them. And a new demographic has appeared at food distribution centres.

There was a person interviewed on the radio from Foodbank who said that half of those seeking food were employed, and a third had mortgages. That is, it is no longer the homeless who are seeking assistance, but people in the ranks of the working class who are finding, in the current crisis, that they really can’t make ends meet. 

Foodbank’s 2023 Hunger Report is pretty self-explanatory and provides the data underlying the observations made in the radio interview.

Regional centres are experiencing the same problems as the big cities. Mount Gambier Foodbank reported that where it usually provided food to 30-40 families a day, in the week before Christmas the numbers had shot up to around 100 families a day.

Part of the problem has been rising interest rates. The CEOs of the big four banks told a parliamentary enquiry in July that the 4% increase in rates over 14 months had not pushed customers over the “mortgage cliff”. 

The changing face of those seeking help from charities gives the lie to the big banks. People may be making mortgage payments, but they are giving up a lot to do so: skipping meals, taking kids out of sport because the club fees and club uniforms cost so much, not purchasing household goods or toys for Christmas, etc.  

Capitalism is a terrible system. It impoverishes and drives into despair the most vulnerable sections of one class, while increasing the wealth and luxury of another. Four months ago, the Guardian reported that the typical CEO in Australia now earns 55 times that of the average wage worker. 

There is no justification for this growing gap between the rich and the poor. While it fluctuates somewhat over time, it never goes away, and never will, so long as we allow capitalism to survive.

And the Australian Tax Office has just reported that more than 800 of the biggest companies in Australia paid no tax.

This gives the lie to government claims that it is chasing the big multinationals and forcing them to pay the taxes owing on their Australian revenues.

Make 2024 a year of heightened struggle against imperialism, and for an independent and socialist Australia.

.....................

PS: A reader has contacted us suggesting that we highlight this link to the contact addresses for charities seeking food donations. If you open the link, click on “Australia” on the right-hand side for Australian charities. We also recommend this article from 2021: Charity, hand in hand with the military, strengthens capitalism’s grip on Australia. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

RIghts Of Indigenous Peoples’ Struggles Continue As Governments Side With The Big End Of Town

Written by: Ned K. on 23 December 2023

 

(Above: Image ironically sourced from https://humanrights.gov.au/ )

The National Indigenous Times December edition reported on the front page that both Labor and Liberal Parties voted in the Senate to defeat the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Bill 2022. The Bill was tabled by Indigenous Senator Lidia Thorpe. 

The Bill, if it became law, would require Commonwealth law in Australia to be consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. If the Bill became law in Australia, the federal government would have to prepare an action plan to enhance the objectives of the Declaration. The Bill if it became law would also require the Prime Minister to present annual reports to Parliament.

Reading the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it is not hard to see why the 
two major parliamentary political parties voted against it.

The Declaration comprises 42 Articles. 

For example, Articles 3 and 4 state:

"Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development"

"Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions".

Article 10 would send alarm bells to the mining companies and their obedient politicians.

"Indigenous people shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories."

The Rights expressed in the Declaration are far in advance of the Voice and the promise by the federal Government that the Voice would have required governments to "consult" with Indigenous Peoples on some issues.

The UN Declaration when first passed by a majority in the General Assembly in 2007 was a "non-binding" Resolution. Even so, four settler society governments -USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia voted against it. 

Lidia Thorpe rightly expressed her anger at the federal government voting against the Bill in Parliament on 6 December 2023. The federal government voting against the Bill showed that they now have no problem supporting a non-binding UN Resolution. Enshrining the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Articles into Commonwealth law would be binding on the government, a far cry from the requirement to "consult" with Indigenous Peoples' representatives but not being bound by their demands.

When it comes to the crunch, the major political parties in parliaments at both state and federal levels since the Voice was defeated are acting in a manner that shows they are more interested in protecting the interests of capitalism and the policiesof the imperialists than the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Another example of this was the recent banning of the words "From the River to The Sea" on a mural by an Indigenous artist at a local Adelaide suburban community public school.

The mural expressed solidarity and connection between the Indigenous Peoples of Australia and Palestine.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap: political scandal in Japan

Written by: (Contributed) on 23 December 2023

 

An unfolding political scandal has placed the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in panic mode. It sacked four cabinet ministers in mid-December as the government struggled to cover the main scandal: long-time political corruption stretching back decades with connivance from far-right groups, spurious pseudo front organisations, organised crime and seemingly non-legitimate business practices as standard operations.  The relative silence accompanying the scandal from US-led mainstream media outlets is evidence, in itself, of US concerns about their main partner in their Indo-Pacific foreign policy.

In mid-December an announcement that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was planning to sack four of his cabinet ministers, who, within hours, tendered their resignations, escaped the attention of most mainstream media outlets despite being senior government members. The resignations were also accompanied by a special advisor to the PM and five deputy ministers also quietly leaving office. Diplomatic silence, on the part of the US, however, would appear to have been the order of the day; all the Australian newspaper, the mouthpiece of Canberra, could manage was 75 column centimetres over two days. They were also evasive about the main reasons for the political crisis.

While the stated explanation for the resignations was financial corruption of an estimated $5.26 million, the real reason was the ongoing investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last year; for example, 'media reports suggested prosecutors were about to begin raiding offices and start interviewing dozens of M.P.s'. (1)

The LDP is known to be bitterly divided into factions and the fact those allegedly receiving the corruption were from the largest faction which was formerly headed by Shinzo Abe has thrown light on the shadowy nature of the inner workings of the Japanese political system and culture. (2) The LDP has ruled Japan, effectively, for decades; political opposition is largely ignored.

In recent years the US has upgraded its diplomatic relations with Japan to that of a fully-fledged global alliance: the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) is now a central feature of US regional and global foreign policy. (3) Japan, together with the US, India and Australia, form the 'quad', effectively hemming in China on all sides, with other countries, including South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, China’s breakaway province of Taiwan, and others as lower-level partners. (4) Under such circumstances the US, clearly, does not want any unfavourable publicity about Japan.

Japan, however, has had a troubled history which continues to hang like a shackle: many countries in Asia have difficulty forgetting the period of Imperial Japan, militarism and its horrific human rights abuses. Soon after the Second World War, however, the US quickly developed Japan as a major player in their foreign policy. Those associated with Imperial Japan were allowed to slip away, as if unnoticed.

The far-right figures also quickly re-grouped.

It was noted that, 'just as they did with the Nazis in Europe, the American occupation authorities had a change of heart about Japan's war criminals. As the Cold War began, the enemy was no longer the fascists but the communists … war criminals were quietly released from prison in 1948 and became some of the prime movers, organisers, and funders of the LDP, a conservative pro-American party that has controlled the political life of Japan ever since'. (5) The LDP soon emerged as the 'respectable' party of the Japanese middle-classes.

The nature of the recent corruption investigation threw light upon the inner workings of the LPD and the prevailing long-engrained political culture of their supporters and associates: party members were required to sell tickets for fund-raising, if they exceeded their quota the extra money was retained as a personal 'kick-back'. (6) The method of operation revealed a compliant power-base of supporters who, 'had their M.P. to look after their interests', along the lines of the 'big man at the top'; an almost tribal political culture. Tax evasion would appear another side of the political corruption; it was noted in the inquiry, for example, even the faction of the LDP until recently headed by Fumio Kishida was suspected of failing to declare more than 20 million yen between 2017 and 2020. (7) No wonder Fumio Kishida became P.M.; those in the know wanted a compliant leader to serve their interests!   

Another organisation they used for more covert operations was the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL), established in 1954, which later merged to become the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) in 1966. Studies of the organisation have concluded that it was, 'the most sinister of all the internationally active extreme right-wing organisations … and the … main conduit for funds for extreme right-wing organisations throughout the world'. (8) It later became a dominant player in the Iran-Contra scandal. (9)

The Japanese APACL/WACL league chapter was also controlled by the shadowy Unification Church or 'moonies' led by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon; a seemingly pseudo 'front-type' organisation based on devoted followers. (10) It 'has kept close to its Yakusa origins', that of organised crime. (11)

The fact that a recent parliamentary inquiry found that nearly half of the LDP's M.P.s, 'had some connection with the Moonies', has raised serious questions about their credibility. (12) Reference to the, 'deep, historical ties between Japan's ruling LDP and the Unification Church … and … the groups alleged predatory fund-raising practices', has serious implications for the ongoing corruption inquiry in Japan. (13)

Studies of the Yakusa have proved particularly revealing and throw light upon a turf-war type mentality where organised crime has been able to control large sections of the Japanese economy. During the 1980s, for example, the Yakusa moved into real estate to launder 'their ill-gotten profits from drug sales, prostitution, gambling and extortion. Yakusa's annual income is estimated at $10 billion'. (14) Japan is a centre of the global pornography industry.

Later studies, in 2020, revealed the Yakusa had increased their wealth to an estimated US$50-100 billion a year, with legislation passed in the Japanese parliament merely forcing the criminal organs underground, where they operated with relative impunity. (15) A further study conducted in 2023, likewise, revealed the organised crime body had increased its wealth still further with an annual income of an estimated $200 billion. (16)

The increased wealth amassed by the Yakusa has revealed they have been able to control their own turf very effectively; and they also evade detection. They form part of a relatively closed political system and a culture whereby questions are not asked and items pushed to the bottom of government agendas to avoid lifting the lid on non-legitimate business practices, in fear of creating widespread political turmoil. 'Yes, Minister', write large.

Japan, nevertheless, is a country in relative decline: only criminals appear in ascendency and prospering, the rest of Japan's population appear to be paying a high price for little.

Domestically Japan used to have a high standard of living: recent studies, however, have revealed many grievances with falling living standards and inflation; recent tax cuts appear to have fallen on deaf ears with 'real wages are still in decline'. (17) As a regional player for US foreign policy, Japan used to be the, 'biggest supporter of ASEAN's economic growth and industrialisation'. (18) In recent years its position has been eclipsed by China, which also pushed Japan into third place as an important part of the global economy.

In conclusion, the recent corruption inquiry in Japan has produced evidence of a political system under strain, although commentary about the forthcoming general election has already stated, that, 'there is no realistic proposition it … the LDP … could actually lose power', despite the fact the Kishida government has approval ratings of less than thirty per cent. (19)

The LDP has become a permanent feature of Japan's political culture, and is also Australia's partner in US-led regional military and security provision:

                                    We, therefore, need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Four Japanese ministers quit, Australian, 15 December 2023.
2.     Japanese PM tipped to sack four ministers, Australian, 14 December 2023.
3.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA.,Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Inside the League, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, (New York, 1986), pp. 62-63.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 14 December 2023.
7.     Australian, op.cit., 15 December 2023.
8.     Website: In Latin America, libcom.org - 38025
9.     See: The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History, Edited by Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne, (New York, 1993), reference – Retired Major-General and former Commander of US Forces in South Korea, John K. Singlaub, Chair of WACL., page xxx.
10.   See: Inside the League, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, op.cit., pp. 124-25.
11.   Ibid., page 125.
12.   Fumio Kishida orders probe of Moonies, The Financial Times, 17 October 2022.
13.   Could former P.M.s assassination end the Moonies in Japan?, CBC News, 7 December 2022.
14.   The family that preys together, Jack Colhoun, Covert Action, Edited by Ellen Ray and William H Schaap, (Victoria, 2003), pp. 192-205.
15.   Yakusa alive, The Asia Times, 3 December 2020.
16.   How rich is the Yakusa?, NAVI / 33 Square, 28 October 2023.
17.   See: Kishida's popularity in free fall, The Japan Times, 16 October 2023; and,     Kishida is so unpopular, The Japan Times, 7 November 2023.
18.   Missile test 'threat to region's stability', Australian, 19 December 2023.
19.   Japan Times, op.cit., 7 November 2023.

 

 

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

An unfolding political scandal has placed the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in panic mode. It sacked four cabinet ministers in mid-December as the government struggled to cover the main scandal: long-time political corruption stretching back decades with connivance from far-right groups, spurious pseudo front organisations, organised crime and seemingly non-legitimate business practices as standard operations.

" property="og:description" />

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap: political scandal in Japan

Written by: on

 

An unfolding political scandal has placed the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in panic mode. It sacked four cabinet ministers in mid-December as the government struggled to cover the main scandal: long-time political corruption stretching back decades with connivance from far-right groups, spurious pseudo front organisations, organised crime and seemingly non-legitimate business practices as standard operations.  The relative silence accompanying the scandal from US-led mainstream media outlets is evidence, in itself, of US concerns about their main partner in their Indo-Pacific foreign policy.

In mid-December an announcement that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was planning to sack four of his cabinet ministers, who, within hours, tendered their resignations, escaped the attention of most mainstream media outlets despite being senior government members. The resignations were also accompanied by a special advisor to the PM and five deputy ministers also quietly leaving office. Diplomatic silence, on the part of the US, however, would appear to have been the order of the day; all the Australian newspaper, the mouthpiece of Canberra, could manage was 75 column centimetres over two days. They were also evasive about the main reasons for the political crisis.

While the stated explanation for the resignations was financial corruption of an estimated $5.26 million, the real reason was the ongoing investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last year; for example, 'media reports suggested prosecutors were about to begin raiding offices and start interviewing dozens of M.P.s'. (1)

The LDP is known to be bitterly divided into factions and the fact those allegedly receiving the corruption were from the largest faction which was formerly headed by Shinzo Abe has thrown light on the shadowy nature of the inner workings of the Japanese political system and culture. (2) The LDP has ruled Japan, effectively, for decades; political opposition is largely ignored.

In recent years the US has upgraded its diplomatic relations with Japan to that of a fully-fledged global alliance: the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) is now a central feature of US regional and global foreign policy. (3) Japan, together with the US, India and Australia, form the 'quad', effectively hemming in China on all sides, with other countries, including South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, China’s breakaway province of Taiwan, and others as lower-level partners. (4) Under such circumstances the US, clearly, does not want any unfavourable publicity about Japan.

Japan, however, has had a troubled history which continues to hang like a shackle: many countries in Asia have difficulty forgetting the period of Imperial Japan, militarism and its horrific human rights abuses. Soon after the Second World War, however, the US quickly developed Japan as a major player in their foreign policy. Those associated with Imperial Japan were allowed to slip away, as if unnoticed.

The far-right figures also quickly re-grouped.

It was noted that, 'just as they did with the Nazis in Europe, the American occupation authorities had a change of heart about Japan's war criminals. As the Cold War began, the enemy was no longer the fascists but the communists … war criminals were quietly released from prison in 1948 and became some of the prime movers, organisers, and funders of the LDP, a conservative pro-American party that has controlled the political life of Japan ever since'. (5) The LDP soon emerged as the 'respectable' party of the Japanese middle-classes.

The nature of the recent corruption investigation threw light upon the inner workings of the LPD and the prevailing long-engrained political culture of their supporters and associates: party members were required to sell tickets for fund-raising, if they exceeded their quota the extra money was retained as a personal 'kick-back'. (6) The method of operation revealed a compliant power-base of supporters who, 'had their M.P. to look after their interests', along the lines of the 'big man at the top'; an almost tribal political culture. Tax evasion would appear another side of the political corruption; it was noted in the inquiry, for example, even the faction of the LDP until recently headed by Fumio Kishida was suspected of failing to declare more than 20 million yen between 2017 and 2020. (7) No wonder Fumio Kishida became P.M.; those in the know wanted a compliant leader to serve their interests!   

Another organisation they used for more covert operations was the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL), established in 1954, which later merged to become the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) in 1966. Studies of the organisation have concluded that it was, 'the most sinister of all the internationally active extreme right-wing organisations … and the … main conduit for funds for extreme right-wing organisations throughout the world'. (8) It later became a dominant player in the Iran-Contra scandal. (9)

The Japanese APACL/WACL league chapter was also controlled by the shadowy Unification Church or 'moonies' led by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon; a seemingly pseudo 'front-type' organisation based on devoted followers. (10) It 'has kept close to its Yakusa origins', that of organised crime. (11)

The fact that a recent parliamentary inquiry found that nearly half of the LDP's M.P.s, 'had some connection with the Moonies', has raised serious questions about their credibility. (12) Reference to the, 'deep, historical ties between Japan's ruling LDP and the Unification Church … and … the groups alleged predatory fund-raising practices', has serious implications for the ongoing corruption inquiry in Japan. (13)

Studies of the Yakusa have proved particularly revealing and throw light upon a turf-war type mentality where organised crime has been able to control large sections of the Japanese economy. During the 1980s, for example, the Yakusa moved into real estate to launder 'their ill-gotten profits from drug sales, prostitution, gambling and extortion. Yakusa's annual income is estimated at $10 billion'. (14) Japan is a centre of the global pornography industry.

Later studies, in 2020, revealed the Yakusa had increased their wealth to an estimated US$50-100 billion a year, with legislation passed in the Japanese parliament merely forcing the criminal organs underground, where they operated with relative impunity. (15) A further study conducted in 2023, likewise, revealed the organised crime body had increased its wealth still further with an annual income of an estimated $200 billion. (16)

The increased wealth amassed by the Yakusa has revealed they have been able to control their own turf very effectively; and they also evade detection. They form part of a relatively closed political system and a culture whereby questions are not asked and items pushed to the bottom of government agendas to avoid lifting the lid on non-legitimate business practices, in fear of creating widespread political turmoil. 'Yes, Minister', write large.

Japan, nevertheless, is a country in relative decline: only criminals appear in ascendency and prospering, the rest of Japan's population appear to be paying a high price for little.

Domestically Japan used to have a high standard of living: recent studies, however, have revealed many grievances with falling living standards and inflation; recent tax cuts appear to have fallen on deaf ears with 'real wages are still in decline'. (17) As a regional player for US foreign policy, Japan used to be the, 'biggest supporter of ASEAN's economic growth and industrialisation'. (18) In recent years its position has been eclipsed by China, which also pushed Japan into third place as an important part of the global economy.

In conclusion, the recent corruption inquiry in Japan has produced evidence of a political system under strain, although commentary about the forthcoming general election has already stated, that, 'there is no realistic proposition it … the LDP … could actually lose power', despite the fact the Kishida government has approval ratings of less than thirty per cent. (19)

The LDP has become a permanent feature of Japan's political culture, and is also Australia's partner in US-led regional military and security provision:

                                    We, therefore, need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Four Japanese ministers quit, Australian, 15 December 2023.
2.     Japanese PM tipped to sack four ministers, Australian, 14 December 2023.
3.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA.,Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Inside the League, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, (New York, 1986), pp. 62-63.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 14 December 2023.
7.     Australian, op.cit., 15 December 2023.
8.     Website: In Latin America, libcom.org - 38025
9.     See: The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History, Edited by Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne, (New York, 1993), reference – Retired Major-General and former Commander of US Forces in South Korea, John K. Singlaub, Chair of WACL., page xxx.
10.   See: Inside the League, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, op.cit., pp. 124-25.
11.   Ibid., page 125.
12.   Fumio Kishida orders probe of Moonies, The Financial Times, 17 October 2022.
13.   Could former P.M.s assassination end the Moonies in Japan?, CBC News, 7 December 2022.
14.   The family that preys together, Jack Colhoun, Covert Action, Edited by Ellen Ray and William H Schaap, (Victoria, 2003), pp. 192-205.
15.   Yakusa alive, The Asia Times, 3 December 2020.
16.   How rich is the Yakusa?, NAVI / 33 Square, 28 October 2023.
17.   See: Kishida's popularity in free fall, The Japan Times, 16 October 2023; and,     Kishida is so unpopular, The Japan Times, 7 November 2023.
18.   Missile test 'threat to region's stability', Australian, 19 December 2023.
19.   Japan Times, op.cit., 7 November 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Support for Palestinians grows in Adelaide

Written by: Ned K. on 21 December 2023

 

On Sunday 17 December, thousands of people participated in a rally and demonstration in Adelaide in support of the Palestinian people's struggle in Gaza and the West Bank against the Zionist colonial occupation of Palestinian land.

Some might say "just another rally"!

How wrong they would be. This rally in support of the Palestinian people was not only another show of force of people power "on the ground". It included some new speakers who represented very important sections of the working people of South Australia.

A 16-year old public school student took to the microphone and proudly declared that she was of Jewish heritage and that her grandparents fled Europe from the Nazi terror against Jewish and other nationalities.

She said that the Zionist Israeli Government did not speak in her name in their genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people. She said that just as Hitler and the Nazis were condemned and fought against by western governments, including Australia's, so these western governments should be fighting against the Zionist genocidal attacks against the Palestinians in 2023.

She said it was a step forward but a step too late by the Albanese Government to finally support the UN General Assembly Resolution for a Cease Fire but they needed to do much more! 

She also had strong words to say to the media barons and some politicians who said that school students should stick to their studies and not be out on the streets participating in rallies in support of "terrorists" like Hamas. She said she and thousands of 16-year olds like her were intelligent enough to realise that the struggle by Palestinians against the Zionist Israeli Government, backed by Britain and the USA in particular, had been going on for many decades before Hamas even existed!

She ended her speech with "Free, Free Palestine!" and received rousing applause.

The next speaker was also significant due to who he represented.

For the first time since the post-7 October rallies, the Secretary of SA Unions, Dale Beasely spoke in support of the Palestinian people.

SA Unions represents the voice of thousands of workers in SA from diverse cultural backgrounds, including Palestinians and Jewish people.

He pointed out that Unions in Australia had a proud history of opposing wars of aggression, going back to the anti-conscription struggle in the First World War and the struggle to end Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War.

He also said that the Australian Government needed to do much more to force a Cease Fire in Gaza. 

Unions are a diverse movement on social issues but he said a common point of agreement is that Unions stand for peace not war. He gave the example of the MUA members in Perth recently refusing to co-operate with the docking of an Israeli ship.

The third speaker who added to the breadth of support for Palestinians was a local Doctor who was born in Gaza and who gave the crowd examples of the tremendous courage of doctors and nurses in the hospitals in Gaza, despite the constant bombing by the Israeli Defence Force.

Despite the thousands of Palestinian deaths and even more wounded, he had no doubt that Palestinians would overcome the colonizer state of Israel.  

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Community school mural censored over First Nations artist's identity with Palestinians

Written by: Nick G. on 21 December 2023

 

(Above: Mali Isabel's beautiful mural)

The intimidation that the Australian Zionist lobby exercises over Australian politicians and public servants was seen on December 19 in Adelaide.

Martin Westwell, the Education Department Chief Executive directed the staff of the Bowden-Brompton Community School to remove the words “From the River to the Sea” from a mural on one of the school’s buildings.

For many decades the school has served students from predominantly working class families who have become disengaged from mainstream schooling and who have complex emotional and social needs. The mural artist had been working as an artist-in-residence at the school. She is Mali Isabel, an Arabana and Kokatha artist.

According to an Advertiser article, Westwell was responding to a complaint from Australian Jewish Association chief executive, Robert Gregory, who was quoted as saying that ‘From the River to the Sea' is “widely recognised as a genocidal call for the elimination of the state of Israel” as well as being antisemitic.

Both sides proclaim From the River to the Sea sovereignty.

In fact, the phrase has been used by Zionists and Palestinians alike, but for very different purposes.

The 1977 original platform of Israeli Prime Minister Netaniyahu’s Likud Party began with the heading The Right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) and continued with the two following points:

a. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

b. A plan which relinquishes parts of western Eretz Israel, undermines our right to the country, unavoidably leads to the establishment of a "Palestinian State," jeopardizes the security of the Jewish population, endangers the existence of the State of Israel. and frustrates any prospect of peace…

The term “Eretz Israel” originated in the Torah and was adopted by Zionists to refer to the Mandated Territory of Palestine, that is, to the entire area from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Judea and Samaria specifically refer to the area designated today as the occupied West Bank.

In opposition to the Zionist claim to an exclusively Jewish/Israeli sovereignty over the area from the Sea to the River (Jordan), the Palestinians have promoted the slogan “From the River to the Sea” as a single secular state where Jews, Christians and Muslims will share equal rights of citizenship.

Does this mean, as Gregory alleges, that Palestinian use of From the River to the Sea is “widely recognised as a genocidal call for the elimination of the state of Israel” as well as being antisemitic? 

It does mean the elimination of the apartheid state of Zionist Israel, that is, of a state whose governing party the Likud, in its current Party Platform, states:

3. The Government of Israel will enable the Palestinians to manage their lives freely, within the framework of self-government.  However, foreign affairs and defense, and matters which require coordination, will remain the responsibility of the State of Israel.  The government will oppose the establishment of an independent Palestinian state…

5. Jewish settlement, security areas, water resources, state land and road intersections in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip shall remain under full Israeli control.

The so-called “two state solution” proposed by some is a dead duck. The Zionists have made it clear that they will never accept an independent Palestinian state. 

The choice is either a continued genocidal repression of Palestinians by a state that is exclusively permitting rights for people of one religion only, or the dismantling of that state and its replacement by a single secular state that grants equal rights to people of all religions and ethnicities .

Both sides believe in the slogan “From the River to the Sea”, but the Zionists dishonestly attribute this exclusively to Palestinians and smear them as anti-Semitic.

First Peoples first Australians to support Jews facing Nazi genocide

The mural expresses First Peoples identity with the oppressed Palestinians.  What right have they to do this?  

The first political action by Australians against the Nazis and in open support of the oppressed Jews of Europe was undertaken by Aboriginal Australians.

Reading press reports of the Nazi Kristallnacht in November 1938, Yorta Yorta man William Cooper organised Aboriginal community activists to approach the German consulate in Melbourne to deliver a letter of protest against the violence meted out to the Jews. It is considered by many to be the only protest of its kind in the world at the time, according to the National Museum of Australia.

The identity of First Nations activists with the Jews then facing the genocidal rampages of the Nazis gives contemporary First Nations activists every right to today stand with the Palestinians between the River and the Sea who are suffering the genocidal rampages of Netanyahu and his allies.

Responding to the Education Department’s political censorship, Mali Isobel said:

The fact that someone can attempt to censor Aboriginal art and call it a “hateful stunt” is extremely offensive, not only to myself, but to my practice as an Aboriginal artist. As someone whose people and family have been victims of genocide, displaced from their land, and torn from their families through colonisation, I find this situation and the article published by the Advertiser personally insulting. 

I have been in communication with the beautiful staff at the school who have been instructed by the Department for Education to remove the words. I appreciate that they have no choice in this matter and want to make this process as stress free as I could for them. However, I could not stay silent. My people have already been without a voice for too long.

The Education Department must reverse the decision taken to censor the work by Mali Isabel.

It must ensure a balanced and informed discussion of the issues arising from the Israeli attacks on the West Bank and Gaza throughout the Department and its schools.  

Informed discussion seeks truth from facts. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Australia’s sub-imperial relations with PNG

Written by: (Contributed) on 19 December 2023

 

(Above: US agent of influence Albanese with PNG Prime Minister James Marape on December 7.  Photo: Nick Haggarty, ABC News)

The signing of a new security treaty between Canberra and Port Moresby on December 7 has carried all the hallmarks of Australia being a sub-imperial power for 'US interests' in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

The security treaty, aimed at side-lining China as an emerging regional power, has followed the US treating China as a competitor and thereby, threat to their traditional diplomatic and hegemonic position.

The security treaty, however, is especially fraught with controversy as PNG remains faced with a constitutional crisis over its strained relationship with Bougainville.

Australia's diplomatic relations with neighbouring PNG have been topical for over fifty years, since independence of the country during the mid-1970s. PNG, as part of the Melanesian South Pacific, has also included the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, as strategically-placed countries for the pro-imperialist exercise of Australian sovereignty. Diplomacy between Australia and the three countries has been historically based in neo-colonial type relations: the former has exploited the latter for cheap minerals and resources.

The present potential $80 billion merger between Australian-based Santos and Woodside, for example, is primarily focussed upon greater access to PNG's vast oil and gas reserves. (1) Similar moves are common across the South Pacific, as vast wealth has been systematically siphoned off and paid in massive dividends to shareholders in western countries. Ordinary residents and citizens of the South Pacific, rarely, if ever, see any benefit from the neo-colonial relations.

Australia, officially, has 41 billionaires, a number of whom own and control large-scale mining companies. (2) What proportion of their vast wealth was linked to the extraction of South Pacific minerals and resources has not been disclosed in documentation in the public domain. It is likely to be considerable, if not huge.

The three South Pacific countries, however, tend to be politically unstable and have a multitude of internal problems: effective and transparent governance, basic security considerations, ethnic and inter-ethnic rivalries and separatist movements. They have far-reaching implications: the PNG constitution and military regulations, for example, contain the right to conscientious objection when dealing with ethnic problems as a safeguard for preventing the escalation of ethnic tensions.

The fact that China has also courted the three countries in recent decades has, therefore, raised serious diplomatic considerations in Canberra and the US, as the dominant regional players. Large-scale Chinese investment has taken place in recent years, based, primarily, in economic programs and infra-structure projects, which have effectively been designed to open the countries for later development.

Regional diplomatic rivalry between the US and China has, therefore, been increasingly played out in the small South Pacific arena. The US fear competition: their regional development programs have historically, however, been barely effective; the mass of the population of the South Pacific continue to live in poverty with subsistence life-styles.

The diplomatic rivalry has also had to take into account that Melanesian culture and sovereignty is based upon the notion of a 'friends to all, enemy to none' standpoint: domestic and foreign policy diplomatic positions tend to remain relatively independent and non-aligned. (3) A recent defence agreement with the US, for example, raised concerns in Port Moresby that 'it could compromise PNG's sovereignty'. (4)

The US, for example, recently re-opened an embassy in the Solomon Islands after decades of ignoring the small country and its significant strategic importance. Elsewhere, across the small region the US has now increased its presence. Australia, nevertheless, has remained the dominant player for 'US interests'; with all which that position entails.

China, diplomatically, remains quite popular in the South Pacific: local people rely upon cheap manufactured produce from China in their everyday lives.

Studies of the Solomon Islands, furthermore, have revealed China's aid 'is attractive to the Solomon Islands because it largely stays in Solomon Islands; Australian aid does not … this is a form of boomerang aid that simply returns to Australia … Australia was the largest recipient of its own aid funding '. (5) The studies concluded with Australia being assessed as a sub-imperial power.

Defined along the lines that 'Australia has a capable, technologically advanced military and a number of intelligence agencies that operate in the region and far afield to uphold the US-led order. Australia's trade and investment agreements are organised with a similar goal in mind', sub-imperialism is conducted by Australia remaining subservient to 'US interests'. (6)

Bougainville and PNG

The new security treaty between Australia and PNG, therefore, has to be evaluated and assessed in that light. The smaller print of the treaty is particularly revealing. A total of $200 million has been included for a new PNG police infra-structure and a new $110 million 'police investigations training centre in Port Moresby'. (7) While law and order is an important consideration for stability in PNG, the concern has to be seen in light of moves by the peoples of Bougainville for full independence from PNG.

The issue of Bougainville has been contentious for decades.

The former Australian colonial administration placed the island in PNG in the lead-up to independence in the mid-1970s. It was an uncomfortable fit. The inhabitants of Bougainville
had a strong independence movement and regarded themselves as ethnic Solomon Islanders.
During the late 1980s an insurgency led by the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) began, which resulted in the largest open-cast mine in the world being closed due to hostilities. All attempts by the mine-owners and mercenaries to re-open it, failed.

The armed conflict saw human rights abuses on a wide scale: controversy over the use of Australian-issued helicopters for PNG Defence Force personnel to throw BRA personnel into the sea, some being still alive, remains a strong allegation from the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG). (8)

While a lasting peace agreement was eventually established after a decade of hostilities, a referendum in 2019 saw 97.7 per cent of the population of Bougainville vote for full independence, as opposed to the present autonomous status.

The whole matter of the referendum still remains a matter for the PNG government to resolve. They have, to date, proved apprehensive to deal with issue on account of other
parts of PNG feared to follow suit leading to the fragmentation of the large country into smaller 'countries'. The issue, nevertheless, will continue to simmer as separatist groups continue to agitate for a more localised sovereignty.

Behind the scenes, however, the US fears China will establish stronger diplomatic relations with Bougainville, given the opportunity. It has already been noted that 'China looks to make inroads in Bougainville, with promises to fund major infra-structure upgrades in the autonomous region'. (9)

A statement issued by the ABG Attorney-General, Ezekiel Massat, about the new security agreement was unequivocal: it was noted, 'Australia was deliberately avoiding its obligations to hold PNG accountable, amid delays by the Marape government in tabling the referendum result in the nation's parliament … Australia is supposedly the Big Brother in the Pacific, but it is a coward when it comes to the Bougainville independence issue'. (10)

As a sub-imperialist power Australia has moved into a very murky diplomatic area by signing the new security treaty with PNG. It is also highly significant to note that the agreement document itself, has constitutional considerations with the small print possibly having serious implications at a later date: it is considered legally binding, not merely a military-based treaty. (11)

                                         We need an independent foreign policy!     
 

1.     See: PNG key in Santos-Woodside merger, Australian, 12 December 2023.
2.     See: Aussie rich-listers' wealth up as inheritances pay off, Australian, 1 December 2023.
3.     PM stokes Bougainville tension, Australian, 8 December 2023.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Sub-Imperial Power – Australia in the International Arena, Clinton Fernandez, (Melbourne, 2022), pp. 94-97.
6.     Ibid., page 3.
7.     Australian, op.cit., 12 December 2023.
8.     Australian, op.cit., 8 December 2023.
9.     Australian, op.cit., 12 December 2023.
10.   Ibid.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 8 December 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The truth about Hiroshima and Nagasaki must not be forgotten

Written by: Nick G. on 15 December 2023

 

(Above: Nagasaki, August 9, 1945)

On December 9, an influential Australian media commentator and presenter made a comment which revealed her ignorance of the political struggles that surrounded the defeat of Japanese militarism at the end of World War 2.

Specifically, she was unaware of the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan, and the relationship of that to the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In a sense, it is not her fault. The narrative that has been built up around the US use of atomic bombs is tightly controlled, dominates academia, school curricula and the media. It simply “disappears” any view sympathetic to the Soviet Union or questioning of the US narrative.

Stalin secures his eastern front

The attempts by the Soviet Union under its Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, during the 1930s, to win acceptance of collective security as a defence against fascist aggression, were rebuffed by the British and French who sought to direct the Nazis eastwards against the Soviet state. 

The Stalin leadership expected a German attack, and had fought several battles against the Japanese between 1932 and 1939 along the border between Japanese-occupied Manchuria and Mongolia and the Soviet Union. The Soviet-Mongolian victory over the Japanese in the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 convinced the Japanese to concentrate on expanding into China rather than continuing their conflicts with the Soviets.

Japan and the Soviet Union signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact on 13 April 1941, allowing Stalin to withdraw troops from the east and concentrate his defences on the west, facing Germany. The famous German spy, Richard Sorge, who worked as a journalist in Japan at this time, provided Stalin in mid-September 1941 with documentary proof that Japan would abide by the Treaty and not attack the Soviet Union.

At the Tehran Conference in November 1943, Joseph Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan once Germany was defeated. 

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin agreed to Allied pleas to enter the war against Japan within three months of the end of the war in Europe. 
The Soviet intention was to make a unilateral declaration of war against Japan on August 7, 1945.

US bombs Japan to keep Soviets out

In the lead-up to that date, the US imperialists were working frantically to develop the horrifying new weapon, the atom bomb.

If they could develop the bomb in time, they could force a Japanese surrender before the Soviets won control of Japan’s second biggest island, Hokkaido, as was the plan. They were desperate to avoid the power-sharing arrangement that had been imposed on Germany at the war’s end.

James Forrestal, then US Secretary of the Navy, writing of James Byrne, who had been appointed President Truman’s Secretary of State on July 3, 1945, said “Byrnes said he was most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in…” (Forrestal Diaries p. 78).

This was spelled out by Norman Cousins and Thomas K. Finletter in an article in 1946. Finletter later became Truman’s Secretary for Air. The article said, that in dropping the bomb, “the purpose was to knock out Japan before Russia came in – or at least before Russia could make anything other than a token of participation prior to a Japanese collapse.” (Saturday Review of Literature, June 15, 1946).

Scientists who created Bomb opposed its use on civilians

The atomic scientists who developed the bomb were vigorously opposed to its use on Japan. These scientists had thought long and deeply about the problems of atomic warfare and its implications and had appointed a committee to present their views to the US Secretary of War, Henry L Stimson. Accordingly, a month before the test of the bomb in New Mexico, a company of seven scientists, headed by Professor James Franck, submitted a report.

This report has also become known as the Franck Report, and its main purpose was to advise against use of the bomb on Japan.

Richard Flanagan’s latest book, Question 7, has the great credit of bringing to the fore the little-known Hungarian Jew and nuclear scientist Leo Szilard who was one of the originators of nuclear fusion. 

He was also one of the seven signatories to the Franck Report (The Franck Report: A Report to the Secretary of War, June 1945 (fas.org) ) who stated to the US Secretary of War in June 1945 that they believed “the use of nuclear bombs for an early unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable”, and called for “an effective international control of nuclear armaments”. 

Szilard was active on other fronts. I quote Flanagan (p. 137):

Szilard’s torment was only beginning. In late May, weeks before the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico on 16 July he passed a memorandum to James Byrne, soon to be secretary of state for the new president, Harry Truman, for him to deliver to Truman. Szilard asked that the president withhold his approval of using the bomb against Japan, pleading that Japan be given advance warning, arguing for a demonstration bomb explosion to be witnessed by Japanese officials to show the terrifying power that the US could now unleash.

Byrnes never delivered the memorandum. 

The day after the first atomic bomb test Szilard, frightened by what he had been central in creating, forwarded a petition to Truman signed by 155 Manhattan Project scientists that advanced a moral argument against the bomb’s use against Japan, warning that any subsequent global nuclear confrontation would be catastrophic. There would have been more signatories but J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of Los Alamos, forbade the petition’s circulation there.

General Groves delayed the petition’s delivery. To negate its impact he ordered a poll of his scientists only to discover that 83 per cent supported a demonstration of the bomb to Japanese officials before using it. He buried these findings also.

US war crimes to defeat Japan and freeze out the Soviet Union.

In the later narratives of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the anti-Soviet element disappeared, and justification centered on the desire to avoid the deaths of US troops in the island-hopping approach to Japan.

The two atom bombs certainly hastened the Japanese surrender and saved US military losses. But the targeting of the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and of the conventional bombing of Tokyo before this) was a war crime, that is, the killing of civilians to save military lives.

And the US knew from having cracked Japanese encryption codes, that its emperor Hirohito was close to surrendering anyway. His change of heart had been prompted by the US air war on the civilian population of Tokyo. 

The Japanese capital had been within reach of US bombers since February 1945, when its bombing of Kobe and Tokyo began. 

The decisive bombing raid was on March 9-10, 1945 when 1,665 tons of bombs rained down on 16 square miles of Tokyo, killing 100,000 civilians and leaving one million homeless.  It was the single most destructive bombing raid of the war. However, it required 279 B-29 Superfortresses to carry and drop this combined payload. Although the subsequent bombing of Hiroshima was not quite as destructive, it required only one plane and one bomb.

US President Truman authorised the dropping of an atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, one day before the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. A second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki two days after the Soviet entry into the war in the light of swift and devastating Soviet advances into Japanese-occupied Manchuria and Korea. 

This is the buried truth of the US war crime of using atom bombs against civilians to “keep out the Soviets”.

It should not be forgotten.

  

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Miko Peled speaks truth about the Zionist war against Palestine

Written by: Nick G. on 12 December 2023

 

I heard an important talk this evening.

I was at the Al Salam Community Centre and mosque in Adelaide with more than 200 others who had responded at less than 24 hours’ notice to hear a speaker.

The Community Centre belongs to the Islamic Society of South Australia and the meeting was chaired by Mike Khizam from the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA).

And the speaker? His name is Miko Peled.

He is the grandson of a Zionist who was a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. He is the son of an Israeli general who commanded troops during the so-called Six-Day War of 1967. 

His message was simple. The Zionist state of Israel was a terrorist creation, a racist and apartheid presence that has no right to exist, and must be replaced by a single secular state – “from the River to the Sea – will I get into trouble for saying that?” - where Jews and Palestinians have equal rights.

He described the current Israeli aggression against the Palestinians of Gaza as the continuation of 75 years of efforts by Zionism to wage war, not on this or that Palestinian resistance organisation, but on the entire Palestinian people.

He said that Israel was a gangster state that had been humiliated by the events of October 7. In the week that followed, it had lost a mass of territory and its armed forces and security service had been paralysed in front of the whole world. Its military was a paper tiger incapable of facing a serious fighting force, so in pure gangster logic it was taking revenge against the poorest and weakest sections of the Palestinian people.

He said that known deaths among the Palestinians currently stood at 20,000 people, but that figure could rise to as many as 50,000 once all bodies had been excavated from the rubble of civilian society.

He said that the initial military success of October 7 had not yet resulted in political gains for the Palestinians. The hostages seized on October 7 were intended to be traded for the release of many of the 6000 Palestinians held in Israel jails, but since then the number of jailed Palestinians had doubled to 12,000. 
He said that it would be unrealistic to expect anything good to come so quickly after October 7. The Zionists had created a compelling, well-financed story since 1947 that controlled the terms for public discussion of the issues. No opposing view could yet penetrate public discourse.

However, truth was on the side of the Palestinians. The so-called “two state solution” was a myth. The state of Israel would never agree. An independent Palestinian state would never be allowed to exist alongside a Zionist entity.

He said the international community must demand sanctions against Israel, insist on a no-fly zone over Gaza, and take steps to dismantle the apartheid regime in Israel. 

While he had never met a Palestinian who did not want to see Palestine freed, it would take a long time, under the repressive conditions imposed by the Zionist state, for a unified strategy to emerge. Even so, Palestinians were teaching their children that the Jews were not their enemies -it was Zionism.

The Zionist state would always try to label its opponents as anti-Semitic. He had faced that accusation himself. The Palestinians had nothing to apologise for. Zionism had 75 years of oppression and murder that it must first apologise for.

Israel must be made a pariah state through sanctions, divestment and boycotts. There should be no Israeli representation in any international arena.

At the end of his talk and the subsequent question time, Miko Peled received a well-deserved standing ovation.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Military Satellite Project JP1902: Class and State Power in Australia

Written by: (Contributed) on 11 December 2023

 

In April, the Australian government selected US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin to partner the Department of Defence to build the JP Defence Satellite Communications system following the tender process. It has shown the age-old concept of the military-industrial complex is alive and well in Australia, with all that area of state activity entails with security vetting procedures and wider surveillance and political interference in civil society.

Already labelled as the 'critical enabler' for Australian Defence Force operations at home and overseas, the new satellite forms part of an increasingly hostile Cold War diplomatic stance which has drawn heavily upon space projects. It has also drawn Australia even closer to US-led Cold War military planning for 'real-war scenarios' in one or more of several regional flashpoints.

A recent statement from Canberra about enhancing interoperability with the US also said that 'we can't, for example, target our long-range missiles without accessing America’s system'. (1) The alliance between Australia and the US has been systematically strengthened over decades to ensure the ‘defence and security’ of the former remains totally dependent upon the latter and 'US interests'. The exploration of space and subsequent research and development has merely extended the reach of US foreign policy further into the skies.

In Adelaide, South Australia, usually referred to as the Defence State due its defence industry sector, Lot 14 on the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site on North Terrace has been converted into massive research and development for space projects. Satellite JP9102 is a fundamental part of those projects.

Work is already under-way to extend the program into local manufacturing industries and workshops to strengthen the military-industrial complex. Over the past decade similar work commissioned for the US F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program which included research and development of hyper-sonics, autonomy, machine learning, artificial intelligence, command control and communications together with surveillance and reconnaissance, saw more than seventy Australian companies winning tenders for about $4.13 billion. (2) The new JP9102 project has already seen Lockheed Martin assemble a team of leading Australian companies to research and develop ground and control segments and beyond. (3) They include Inovor Technologies, EM Solutions, AV-Comm, Linfox, Shoal Group, Ronson Gears, Calytrix Technologies, Conscia, Clearbox Systems, DXC and Blacktree Technology. These are part of the national bourgeoisie “working for the Yankee dollar”.

What proportion of the companies and related business organisations are 'proprietary companies' remains, as yet, to be accurately established. The term is a CIA definition for, 'a commercial asset of front company', used, specifically, for 'US interests'. (4) It is likely to be a considerable number and proportion, including workforces which are unionised. Studies conducted even a generation ago, before the present-day Indo-Pacific became a central Pentagon focus point, noted, 'as far as despots of untraceable arms, airlines and other installations concerned, one wonders how the CIA could accomplish the tasks required of it in South-east Asia without such facilities'. (5) The use of proprietaries was widespread; there is every reason, therefore, to believe it remains a central feature of 'US interests', in present-day Australia.

Reference in official media releases to the Mentor Protege Program (MPP), for example, has thrown light upon a shadowy business network launched in the US, in 1990. Its specific aim is to enable, 'successful long-term relationships with eligible small, innovative businesses while helping them to develop technical and business capabilities that will enable them to compete more effectively'; it has already recruited a number of Australian businesses. (6) The MPP, operating in the sensitive areas of defence and security research and development and procurement, would obviously possess those connections with the nerve centres of power and the exchanging of required information. And also excluding those who they have no wish to deal with.

References to the project have also included tender collaboration and improvement activities with the British Commonwealth, and it is, therefore, no surprise to find proposed AUKUS legislation being introduced into the Canberra parliamentary system at the end of November to increase vetting procedures for those employed in the military-industrial complex. (7) The proposed Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill, 2023, will draw Australia 'into the US's military-industrial eco-system, enabling the transfer of sensitive US technology to Australia … under the AUKUS pact'. (8) So much for the national sovereignty of Australia and the civil liberties of its residents and citizens.

The bill, will restrict employers from recruiting foreign workers from a number of countries including China and India, while providing exemptions for those from countries forming the elite intelligence-sharing Five Eyes and Japan. (9) Those from Five Eyes countries, however, would appear likely to have already been subject to security vetting procedures as a matter of course. Canberra, nevertheless, has remained silent on the sensitive issue.

Shadowy class and state powers linked to routine monitoring and surveillance systems, lurking in almost every aspect and level of society inside the Five Eyes, would appear to have profiled entire populations, without their consent. Those on the receiving end of such class and state repression remain left, invariably, with everyday concerns about why the job they always wanted, and which they had the required qualifications and experience, was, nevertheless, always outside their grasp. Others, less well-suited, however, moved into their career pathways with relative ease. The simple explanation is that vetting procedures have already taken place and that, 'detailed, private and intimate knowledge of a prospective employee and her or his acquaintances', has been provided for employers. (10)  

During the previous Cold War US-led security vetting was primarily linked to identification of those assessed as unsuitable for security clearances due to pro-communist views, often of other family members or their associates; the definition of communist was broad, and virtually useless. It was, however, used to justify profiling of whole populations of countries who were subsequently placed on white, grey or black-lists for identification. (11)

While intelligence-gathering was conducted through US facilities at Pine Gap, with its huge surveillance capacity, a generation ago in the previous Cold War, security vetting in the present Cold War would appear to be conducted on the far more systematic basis with complete coverage of the internet and on-line facilities. Massive monitoring facilities collect intelligence from all everyday on-line communications. (12)

A generation ago the capacity of the Pine Gap facilities included the capacity for surveillance along the lines of, 'a multi-purpose vacuum cleaner, sucking electronic signals 35,000 kms into space and feeding them to the enormous computer complex at Pine Gap'. (13) The facilities have been upgraded throughout recent decades; they now have the capacity for intercepting all global internet connections and telecommunications, including those of Australians through XKEYSCORE programs. (14)

Such facilities have serious implications for security vetting for the Australian working-class, and their families, friends and associates, turning civil society into one where suspicion becomes the order of the day. A noticeable feature of societies under such surveillance is isolation; doubts linger, whereby people lose trust in those whom they associate, with concerns information is being collected on files. The problem of 'unwitting agents' is a very important consideration in society at large: they provide information about their associates, 'without knowing the ultimate recipient is an intelligence service'. (15)  

And during the present-day Cold War, domestic surveillance remains directly linked to US-led military and security considerations. The use of military terminology, including reference to the JP9102 being a, 'critical enabler for every ADF operation at home and overseas … and … enhancing our interoperability …  with the US', furthermore, reveal Australia is being drawn closer to US-led real-war scenarios primarily in the Indo-Pacific region. (16)

It has nothing to do with the defence and security of Australia, only the role of this country as a regional hub for 'US interests'.

The US-led present day Cold War is a real threat for Australia; the US is preparing for war!

                                        We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Space as a critical enabled: nation has a strategic imperative, Space Capability supplement, Australian, 28 November 2023.
2.     Partnership fosters innovation, Space Capability supplement, Australian, 28 November 2023.
3.     Ibid.
4.     See: Proprietary Company, Espionage, Spies and Secrets, Richard M. Bennett, (London, 2002), page 227.
5.     Lyman Kirkpatrick, former CIA Executive Director, US News and World Report, 11 October 1971, quoted; The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, (London, 1976), Proprietary Organisations, Chapter 5, Part 2, pp. 161-81.
6.     Partnership fosters innovation, Australian, op.cit., 28 November 2023; and, The CIA's Australian Connection, Denis Freney, (NSW, 1977), Multi-nationals as CIA cover, pp. 56, with specific references to Lockheed.    
7.     AUKUS bill to restrict use of foreign workers, Australian, 30 November 2023.
8.     Ibid.
9.     Ibid.
10.   See: Vetting and Surveillance, State Research, (London, 1978), Bulletin No. 5, pp. 77-78.
11.   See: Army's Project X had wider audience, The Washington Post, 6 March 1997.
12.   See: The intelligence coup of the century, The Washington Post, 11 February 2020.
13.   The Secrets of Pine Gap, William Pinwill, Australian Penthouse, October 1979, pp. 62-68.
14.   See: Wikipedia – Pine Gap.
15.   See: Unwitting Agent, Espionage Spies and Secrets, Bennett, op.cit., page 385.   
16.   Industry survival is vital in the contested and congested domain, Space Capability supplement, Australian, 28 November 2023; and, Space as a critical enabler, op.cit., Australian, 28 November 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

#FreeDanDuggan - A Fight for Freedom and Australian Sovereignty

Written by: Free Dan Duggan Campaign on 8 December 2023

 

We are reprinting without change or comment the latest update from the campaign to have US extradition charges dropped against US-born Australian citizen Dan Duggan. Today is Day 412 of Dan's incarceration in solitary confinement. We stand with Dan and his family - eds.

Secret courts and glaring errors all in a day's extradition

A legal debacle has emerged in what can only be described as yet another sad example of Australia’s relentless and wilful persecution of Australian citizen Daniel Duggan and his family on behalf of the United States.

Earlier this month, a hastily and sloppily prepared AFP affidavit riddled with typos, mistakes and misleading information was secretly submitted (ex parte) to the NSW Supreme Court.

The AFP’s false affidavit again weaponised the Australian legal system against Dan, his wife Saffrine and his six children on behalf of the US government, all paid for by Australian taxpayers.

Most Australians might believe that secret ex parte courts where allegations can be laid and property seized, without the defendant or legal representation getting a chance to contest,  only happen in authoritarian countries. Not so.

In fact, the geopolitical persecution against Daniel Duggan dates began in 2016 in another secret  court in the US which indicted Dan for allegedly training Chinese military pilots while working as a flight instructor to a civilian South African test flying school 12 years ago. Dan rejects these allegations entirely.

The indictment, however, led to his arrest on the 21st of October 2022 and he has been in maximum security solitary confinement in Australian prisons ever since. Put simply, his presumption of innocence was trampled on.

Dan is now forced to fight extradition to the United States from solitary, despite have no Australian charges or previous criminal history of any kind. The father of six children is locked up in maximum security with severely limited communications, trying to navigate a complicated and expensive legal system that appears to be stacked against him.

This harsh, heavy-handed treatment is no accident. Akin to the Robodebt scandal, it is deliberately cruel and designed to break a person psychologically, emotionally and financially. Dan’s legal fees are mounting quickly and, while he has no Australian charges against him, he has no access to legal aid nor has he or his family received any support from the Australian governments, be it federal or state.

One might wonder what are the benefits of an Australian citizenship when a foreign government can persecute you inside Australia, and the Australian government assists them in doing so with no regard to your welfare or the welfare of your family, including six children.

If that weren’t bad enough, in a mean-spirited deliberate move to cause as much duress as possible on this Australian family, this disgraceful, false affidavit has been filed by the AFP again in secret ex parte hearing.

It is an attempt to seize a property solely owned by Dan’s wife, Saffrine, and which was in the process of being sold in order to pay for more than a $1 million in legal fees mounting, and the future of the children.

This is all part and parcel of the US government’s extradition playbook designed to cause as much psychological, emotional and financial duress as possible to force them to give up. It’s all enshrined in one of the most unjust legal instruments in the country, the Extradition Treaty.

As unfair as this treaty is, it still requires two main thresholds to be met:

• principle of dual criminality requiring an equivalence of law in both countries which is not the case in Dan’s matter, and
• the principle that the allegation cannot be of a “political character”, which is certainly the case when it comes to anything related to China in the current environment.

As a sovereign nation, is the Australian government’s primary responsibility to prioritise the welfare and interests of its citizens over that of a foreign government?

Throughout the entire extradition proceedings against Dan, we have witnessed a disgraceful display of lapdog politics.

False affidavits and improprieties that don’t stand up to scrutiny, and certainly don’t pass the Australian pub test.

It’s hardly what we expect of the land of a fair go.

 When coupled with other matters like David McBride, Richard Boyle and Julian Assange, it helps explain why faith and trust in government is now at an historic, all-time low.

If you believe Dan’s persecution is unfair and unjust, please sign the petition at FreeDanDuggan.org, to urge the Australian government to vacate this extradition request and be on the right side of history.

Please also consider making a donation to help the family pay its huge legal costs and survive through this extremely unfair abuse of power. https://chuffed.org/project/freedanduggan-campaign  

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The housing problem in Australia: caused by capitalism and capitalist social relations (reprint)

Written by: Alex M. on 7 December 2023

 

(Above: original photo courtesy of Fernando Goncalves)

Introduction: The housing crisis is not going away. It is a crisis in what Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen identifies as one of five pillars for the comfortable existence of the mass of the population. As such, it should be a social right and not an opportunity for private speculation and investment. 

A comrade has commended our article on housing in the latest (Spring 2023) Australian Communist, which can be downloaded from our website. He has suggested, in addition, that we reprint an article we published in June 2014.  That article in turn makes reference to, and quotes from, an article we published in 2010.

Over what is now more than a decade since the 2010 article, the housing problem has only worsened. 

Our comrade writes, “Even with a federal Labor Government and Labor Governments in most States and Territories, there still reliance on “the market” to control housing. Rents and house prices have increased even more and Governments at state and federal level rely on private “developers” who build suburban estates with no or little public services, or high-rise city apartment blocks which target the very wealthy or international students.”

Influential ABC financial analyst Alan Kohler has just had an essay titled THE GREAT DIVIDE: Australia's Housing Mess and How to Fix It published in the hard copy Quarterly magazine. A substantial extract can be accessed here, and is worth reading alongside our articles.

Our 2010, 2014 and 2023 analyses of Australian housing go beyond the suggestions forwarded by bourgeois economists on how to fix the housing crisis. That crisis cannot be fixed so long as capitalism is allowed to exist - eds.   

...................

The housing problem in Australia: caused by capitalism and capitalist social relations
Alex M.

A previous article on housing in Australia published in the ‘Marxism Today’ section of Vanguard in November 2010 referred to a report by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). 

The report examined the benefits and risks of home ownership for low to moderate income households. 

Fast forward to earlier this year and AHURI have made a submission to the Senate Economics Reference Committee, which has been given the task of investigating affordable housing in Australia. 

The Senate Committee took submissions from a number of interested parties, from individuals to organisations, amongst them AHURI. The Committee is due to report its findings to the Senate in late June.

What has triggered the inquiry into housing affordability is the inexorable rise in house prices and rents and the consequent rise in housing related poverty, people being priced out of homeownership and increasing numbers of the homeless.

What often gets overlooked in these sorts of Parliamentary inquiries are the main beneficiaries of house price inflation; landlords, real estate agents, property developers and financial corporations.

Inevitably, what is overlooked are the class aspects of the provision of housing in Australia. Nonetheless, it is possible to get important insights and information from such inquiries. 

Factors that have influenced housing affordability in Australia AHURI’s analysis

The AHURI submission identifies a number of conditions that are currently influencing housing affordability in Australia and are worth noting here. These are: 

• Insufficient supply of new housing to meet underlying demand. 

• Real house prices rising faster than incomes – estimates of the ratio of average/median house prices to average/median incomes vary between 5 and 7 depending upon which measures are used. 

• A preference for larger, higher quality dwellings, despite relatively small household sizes – from 1994 to 2009, the average size of a new house in Australia increased by 30% from 189 to 245 square metres, average household size fell throughout 20th century from 4.5 to 2.5 persons in 2006, yet the median price of housing in Australia rose 1994–2009 by 240% cent from $125 000 to $425 000.

• Falling rates of home ownership amongst 25-44 year olds. In 1981 61% of 25-34 year olds and 75% of 35-44 year olds were home owners. By 2011 these figures had fallen to 47% and 64% respectively.

• A change in the secure ‘tenure for life’ status of home ownership with 22% of Australian home ownership careers characterised by either dropping out permanently (9%) or churning in and out (13%) of home ownership.

• Market failure at the bottom end of the private rental market with supply unresponsive to demand, despite a context of growth in the relative size of the private rental market – in 2006 it was estimated there was an undersupply of 298,000 private rental properties affordable and available to households in the lowest 40% of the income distribution. By 2010, this is estimated to be over 500,000 dwellings. 

• Continuing high numbers of households in the private rental market in housing affordability stress – in 2007-08 60% of lowincome private renters were in housing affordability stress.

• A change in the nature of the private rental market from a predominantly short-term transitional tenure, to one that has 33% of its occupants (in 2007- 08) as long-term private renters who have rented for 10 years or more continuously, an increase from 25% in 1994. Long term private renters (597,000) now outnumber households in public housing (365,000). 

• The supply of dwellings in affordable housing programs (National Rental Affordability Scheme, community housing, public housing) is not keeping pace with population growth or the changing nature of Australia’s population (e.g. more older households and more households with people with disabilities). The share of affordable housing program dwellings in Australia has fallen from 5.5% in 1998 to 4.7% in 2012

• Growth in the numbers of people living in boarding and rooming houses and living in severely overcrowded dwellings from 46,991 in 2006 to 59,111 in 2011.

The AHURI submission to the enquiry is detailed (as are many other submissions) and does take a critical look at aspects of the taxation system such as negative gearing; the latter having contributed to the spike in house prices and rental increases. 

However, as the submission is to a Senate Committee, then it is reasonable to assume that the final recommendations will be for reform to address the inequalities inherent in the housing market here. Fundamental change and views that support that change will most likely be marginalised.

The problem of inequality 

Still, voices that highlight the inequalities inherent in the provision of housing under capitalist conditions in Australia persist, despite being marginalised. 
Frank Stillwell, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, made a short submission. 

His submission gets to the heart of the matter: “First we need to challenge the view, commonly conveyed in the media, that rapid housing price inflation is beneficial. The question should be: good for whom? There are losers as well as winners in a game such as this. Existing home owners and those owning rental properties may benefit in terms of capital appreciation. On the other hand, those who are seeking to become first homeowners must pay ever higher entry prices, making homeownership an increasingly unattainable goal for many households. Tenants meanwhile face escalating rents…”

Furthermore, inequality is an inherent part of the problem of housing affordability as well as being an intrinsic part of capitalism itself: 

“The contrast between wealthy suburbs and areas with poor housing is the physical expression of a deeply divided society. Of course, people’s capacity to service a mortgage or to pay market rent varies markedly according to their income. So it is very difficult to achieve the social goal of decent and affordable housing for all without addressing the economic forces that generate those inequalities. It is not just that some people derive income from capital while others only derive income from labour. Nor that some people benefit from inherited assets while others do not. These processes are compounded by the way in which housing inequalities interact with labour and capital market inequalities to create cumulative patterns of social advantage and disadvantage.”

Stilwell’s submission is critical of the role of what he calls the ‘economic forces’ which generate inequalities, in wealth and homeownership for example. 

He avoids using terms such as class and capitalism, due most probably to the audience he is addressing. 

We don’t need to be quite so circumspect. The housing problem in Australia is a product of the profit maximising drive of capitalism. Particular class interests benefit from the way things are in the housing sector now. 

What is also apparent is the decline of direct government involvement in the provision of housing at the Federal and State levels. 

The November 2010 ‘Marxism Today’ article on housing gave an overview of housing policy in Australia since the 1950s and the class aspects of housing and these sections from that article are worth repeating here.

Overview of housing policy in Australia 

In the 1950s, in line with postwar reconstruction in general, home ownership was promoted. 

A combination of housing and non-housing policies encouraged this ideal. 

These policies included: ‘exemption from capital gains tax, discounted/ controlled interest rates for home mortgages, cash grants to first home buyers, provision of low interest home loans directly by governments and via intermediary organisations such as state banks, sales of public housing to sitting tenants, mortgage deductibility (for a short period only), development of “affordable” home ownership lots by state land developers, and planning policies which promoted detached housing, the house type desired by purchasers’.

It was clear that governments at Federal and State levels saw it as their duty to help people achieve the ‘Australian dream’. 

With modifications, the broad policy settings of Australian governments continued along the lines mapped out in the 1950s. 

With the stagnation that accompanied the ending of the long boom of capitalism in the late 1970s-early 1980s, government policies regarding housing were re-assessed. 

The 1990s ushered in ‘a fundamental change in policy settings on home ownership with the elimination of some of the more explicit measures to promote home ownership.

In particular, governments no longer saw it as their role to assist the “marginal would-be home owner” in purchasing a home’. 

Emphasis in government housing policies shifted from the promotion of home ownership for ‘marginal’ people to the provision of rental housing assistance for those with urgent housing needs. 

Such a shift in emphasis was driven by neo-liberal ideology which saw the market as the most efficient resource allocator, with governments having the reduced role of safety net providers ‘for some “at risk” households’.

The class aspect of housing 

Clear from what has been outlined above about declining government involvement in and concern with housing policy is the power of particular class interests. 

Finance capital in the form of banks, home loan brokers and others have big stakes in the housing market and some rental investors do too, though the latter do not necessarily have the same clout as the finance capitalists.

As has been pointed out before in the pages of Vanguard, the provision of housing and related government policies necessarily reflect the values of the dominant class. 

That is, the provision of affordable housing to low and middle income families, or working class families, is not a priority for governments, landlords or fi nance capitalists. 

For the latter two, their priorities are profit maximisation. For governments, beholden as they are here in Australia to capitalist class interests, the social reforms of the 1950s and the long boom years are things of the past. 

Markets are alleged to be the most efficient mechanisms for distributing commodities such as houses. 
In his work The Housing Question, Frederick Engels wrote rather presciently about the attitude of capitalist states to the issue of working class access to affordable housing. 

“It is perfectly clear that the existing state is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the housing difficulty. The state is nothing but the organised collective power of the possessing classes, the landowners and the individual capitalists (and it is here only a question of these because in this matter the landowner who is also concerned acts primarily as a capitalist)… “

“If therefore the individual capitalists deplore the housing shortage, but can hardly be persuaded even superficially to palliate its most terrifying consequences, then the collective capitalist, the state, will not do much more.” 
Housing in Australia will continue to be fraught with problems of affordability for working class families, and fi nance capitalists and landlords will continue to rake in the profits. 

This is the stuff of capitalist social relations. The only solution to such inequity and inequality is the creation of a more just and equitable society, that is, an independent, socialist Australia.

Vanguard June 2014

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Did capitalist corner-cutting kill the Thylacine?

Written by: Leo A. on 5 December 2023

 

(Above: Original Image by Daniel Eskridge on Flickr Commons)

 

Amidst the ongoing crisis of environmental destruction across Australia, countless species of plants, fungi, animals and so on are rapidly becoming threatened with extinction. In order to save as many of these as possible, it is important to have as accurate as possible an “inventory” of threatened species. Some organizations, most notably the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), attempt to do exactly this. However, as we described in a previous article, capitalist interests' interference results in many species which should be officially considered vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered, appearing on no such lists. 

These “hidden threatened species” can be grouped into multiple categories. In some cases, a species may not be well-studied enough for its appropriate conservation status to be known, and may remain in this situation for an extended period of time, resulting in the species either being labelled “data deficient” or being given an inaccurately “secure” official status. Alternatively, a species may not be “registered” at all, either because its existence is genuinely unknown, or because the body of evidence supporting the species’ existence is not yet considered absolutely conclusive. Finally, a species may not be listed as threatened as it may already be erroneously considered extinct. 

The difficulty in assessing hidden threatened species lies in the fact that, while all of these categories make theoretical sense and have plenty of historical precedents, due to the problem’s very nature there are no officially-recognised present-day examples. But while we cannot know with certainty how many hidden threatened species are in Australia or what those species are, we can at least find clues that could lead us in the right direction. And a research study published in March may have revealed one such clue for a species falling into the lattermost category – an animal which likely persisted beyond its “official” date of extinction (the scientific term is that it is a ‘Lazarus Taxon’). 

When considering the extinction of Australian wildlife, the most “iconic” example which comes to mind is the Thylacine, Thylacinus cynocephalus, also sometimes known as the Tasmanian Wolf or Tasmanian Tiger. Prior to the British conquest, this marsupial was populous across the island of Tasmania, co-existing with other unique wildlife and the Indigenous people since prehistoric times. But when colonizers first arrived in Tasmania in 1803, they began an act of ecological genocide. The largest flowering trees on Earth, the giant mountain ashes, were mostly cleared. The Tasmanian emus were hunted into extinction within a few decades. 

Areas of otherwise-unprofitable forest were cut down to allow the grazing of sheep, and the Thylacine came into conflict with sheep farmers. Whether any sheep really fell victim to Thylacines is unknown, but the claims of predation by some sheep farmers were on such a scale as to be physically impossible. Like most politicians in every capitalist state, the Tasmanian officials were self-serving cowards with knee-jerk reactions. To be seen as doing something, they offered bounties on Thylacines from 1830 to 1909. During those years, 2184 bounties were paid. 

Deliberate extermination attempts, snaring, trapping, capturing, and habitat damage reduced the species’ population to extreme rarity. Many specimens were caught for zoos around the world, but no concerted attempt was made to captive-breed them. The last Thylacine in captivity died on September 7, 1936, at Hobart Zoo, apparently from cold, as it had been locked out of its sleeping quarters. 

The species was officially declared extinct fifty years later in 1986. 

If that was where the story ended it would already be a tragedy. However, using a detailed statistical analysis the new study sheds light on a darker conclusion to the animal’s story – that at the time the Thylacine was declared extinct, there were likely still a few left in the Tasmanian wilderness. In other words, that the Thylacine could’ve still been saved from extinction had the right decisions been made, but was instead simply given up on. 

The study used a sample of one thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven unconfirmed records of Thylacines in Tasmania between 1910 and 2019. While no-one ever reports sighting a Dodo, Passenger Pigeon, Quagga or Moa in the present day, alleged observations of Thylacines continued well past the 1930s. Of course, we should not immediately jump to the conclusion that these observations were all genuine. As a remarkable example of convergent evolution, the Thylacine closely resembles some dog breeds, and as such some observations may be the result of misidentification. Some others may be the result of deliberate dishonesty. 

But these reported sightings come not just from laypersons, but also from some very credible witnesses such as zoologists and wildlife rangers. That alone doesn’t conclusively prove anything, since even experts can make mistakes, so the new study takes a very different approach. Rather than rely on the legitimacy of any specific observations, it applied a mathematical model which accounts for uncertainties to estimate the most likely time in which the animal went extinct. Several different scenarios were calculated – in some, observations by experts are given more “weight” in the calculations, in others, only specific types of evidence is counted, and so on. 

In total the results of 16 scenarios were presented. In the somewhat “average” scenario the study chose to emphasize the results of, in which all 1237 records are counted but all are given a low “weight” in the mathematical model, the Mean Time of Extinction (MTE) is in the year 1993, with a 95% confidence interval spanning the years of 1969 to 2017. In the most optimistic scenario, the MTE is in the year 2007, with a 95% confidence interval spanning the years 1975 to 2040, and a probability of the species’ survival in 2023 of thirteen percent. 

We are left with two uncomfortable possibilities. The first is that the extinction of the Thylacine in the wild took place between the death of the last individual in captivity - and most likely the time when it was “officially” declared extinct - and the present day. In other words, the Thylacine could have been saved within the past few decades, but was essentially driven to extinction by the negligence and corner-cutting of wildlife protection policies under capitalism. The IUCN acknowledges this phenomenon in which a species’ proclaimed extinction becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, referring to it as the ‘Romeo Error’. 

The second possibility is that the total, complete extinction of the Thylacine in the wild not only didn’t happen as early as was previously believed, but hasn’t happened yet at all. Recall again that the likelihood of the species’ survival in 2023 was calculated to be up to thirteen percent. A maximum of thirteen percent is, admittedly, a rather low probability. But is it really so low as to receive the neglect, indifference, and ridicule it’s so far had? The study even went as far as to map out where in Tasmania the last surviving populations of the species may be. 

It is easy to understand why our capitalist politicians lean in favour of sweeping this whole situation – and others like it – under the rug. But the effects of this dismissive attitude trickle down to individual researchers and experts too. A little earlier than the Thylacine study’s publication, in January, another research study tried to explain some of the cognitive biases that can afflict those without anti-environmental motives. While the study primarily focused on the Caspian Tiger (an unrelated animal native to Asia which happens to be in a similar situation to the Thylacine), the following conclusions are equally applicable here: 

“Humans including academics, conservationists, and wildlife managers are hardwired for cognitive biases. Cognitive biases play a role when people assessing a species’ status notice evidence in the first place; how they interpret it, and how they make conclusions during the process of species assessments. The case of the Caspian tiger demonstrates the cognitive bias of the Dunning–Kruger effect in action and the potential implications for conservation. The Dunning–Kruger effect, a phenomenon known in psychology, prevails when people overestimate their competence and underestimate their incompetence in social and intellectual domains. As a result, people not only reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, their incompetence prevents them from critically evaluating their own thinking.” 

In other words, people overestimate how thoroughly they know what’s in our biosphere, and as such are hesitant to consider any possibility that could be considered out-of-the-ordinary. This of course is a result of the capitalist narrative that mankind has “conquered” nature and that our environment primarily exists to serve capitalist interests – and not as a system that has existed for billions of years before class struggle even began. 

So how will the environmental conservation issue of hidden threatened species be treated differently in a socialist Australia? An important change is that sufficient effort should be put into properly surveying and recording the contents of our nation’s ecosystems, to ensure that ambiguous situations can be cleared up. This should be implemented alongside other efforts to protect and preserve these ecosystems. In our pre-revolutionary Australia, our efforts will have to be smaller in scope. Much of the environmental activism we are already familiar with indirectly supports hidden threatened species by helping to protect their habitats. And as with all environmental issues, spreading awareness about the problem may also prove beneficial. 

Above all else, we must understand that the more we know – not believe, not assume, not guess, know – about our biosphere, the better we will be at saving our nation’s species from the ongoing mass extinction crisis. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

There’s no space for warfare in Space

Written by: Nick G. on 5 December 2023

 

On November 30, the Australian Defence Magazine hosted a Space Summit in Canberra.

If the various imperialist blocs actually honoured the UN Outer Space Treaty, formally the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, there would never have been such a Summit.

Their violation of this negotiated “international rules-based order” has been led by US imperialism, which has created a Space Force to operate alongside its Army, Navy and Air Force.

Increasingly, the lines are becoming blurred between the military and legitimate civilian uses of space such as the tracking of space debris, of meteors, and on meteorological patterns.

This was made clear by the contribution to the Summit of Australian company Electro Optic Systems (EOS). The company began operating more than 40 years ago in the civilian arena, but has increasingly focussed on the following:

• space domain intelligence and control services 
• laser, remote weapon system and counter-drone technologies 
• high-performance naval satellite communications products

2022 was a disastrous year for the company financially, and it lost many staff.  Its Chairman and CEO told shareholders in the 2022 annual report that they were cutting back so “we are focused on core business areas where we have genuine technological advantages over competitors. Current examples include our family of remote weapon systems (RWS); our long-established expertise in space domain awareness and other space services”. The presentation it made at the Summit was basically to sell its services to US imperialism in its contention with Chinese social-imperialism over the seeking of military superiority in Space.

It claimed that Australia is one of just two countries with the capabilities to neutralise large numbers of satellites passing over its territory.

EOS spokesperson Dr Ben Greene said Australian Space Domain Awareness (SDA) covered around one sixth of the sky, delivered by, among others, EOS with its laser tracking facility in Canberra, the RAAF’s space telescope in WA and the new US-owned LeoLabs Australia space radar, also in WA.

“We could intercept and interdict the satellite operations of any country on earth, if we chose to. That’s a really powerful platform for us,” he said.

“It’s quite feasible now to talk about taking out hundreds of satellites a day if that was necessary.”

An ASPI (aka Australian Serving Predatory Imperialism) spokesperson supported EOS’s vision for the military use of Space, saying: “We need a much more ambitious approach to how we think about defence and space. It can’t just be for communications provision. It’s got to be about space control.

“It’s got to be how we respond to a contested space domain when China is rapidly developing counter-space capabilities and fully intends to use them in the next war. Space will quickly become a warfighting environment, not because of our own actions but because of decisions in Beijing.”

A spokesperson for the US-owned LeoLabs lamented that lack of Australian political support for turning Space into a US-dominated battlefield.

He said, “We actually need ministerial type leadership to set the policy and strategy to do everything we are talking about and it’s unfortunately not happening yet.”

EOS also has its sights on connections within the government, and had appointed retired ACT Labor Senator Kate Lundy as one of its four directors.

Lundy and current Defence Minister Richard Marles were parliamentary colleagues in the various Rudd and Gillard governments, so she is really only a phone call away from the ear of a prominent pro-US decision-maker in the current government.

We must raise the demand that Australia respect and work within the provisions of the UN Outer Space Treaty and not allow Australian companies to violate it.

Late News: December 1 2023

The top defence officials from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia today  announced a raft of new initiatives associated with the AUKUS security pact’s second pillar. Included in the new items is an announcement that the US, Australia and the UK are creating a joint radar network for enhancing space domain awareness, with each home to one of three planned sites for the US Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC).

“In the coming years, our nations will be creating a global radar network, bringing together three ground base stations, one in each of our countries,” Shapps said. “Radars more sensitive, more accurate, more powerful and agile than anything that has gone before giving us the ability to see beyond the clouds to detect, identify and track in space, up to 22,000 miles away.”

DARC is being developed by Northrop Grumman under a February 2022 contract to provide global monitoring of geosynchronous orbit 24/7 in all kinds of weather and during daylight. The trilateral network is apart from but will support Pillar II of the AUKUS agreement, and help the allies keep tabs on potentially Chinese and Russian spacecraft.

 

............

For previous articles on the militarisation of space. see:

Beware AUKUS expansion

US wants AUKUS to expand into outer space

An “Australian” Space Agency?

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Imperialist Rivalry Plays Out in Fight for Control of Australia's Rare Earth Minerals Deposits

Written by: Ned K. on 4 December 2023

 

(Above: Image from Flickr Commons)

While all the hand shaking and well-wishing between Prime Minister Albanese during his recent meetings with US President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the economic front, the competition for access and control of raw materials, a feature of imperialist rivalry, continues.

With changes in technology this competition spreads to new raw materials required by capitalist production. One of the new areas is the desperate search for access and control of the world's 17 critical minerals defined as rare earths.

Even though China mines 70% of these critical minerals and processes more than 80% of them, companies based in China are still in the hunt for these critical minerals in other countries. Australia has a growing number of critical minerals mines. 

The dominance of China in the race for access and supply of critical minerals has alarmed the Quad members, Australia, USA, Japan and India who want to find alternative sources of these minerals. 

The 17 critical minerals (rare earths) are essential in the manufacture of such commodities as electric vehicles, wind turbines and for the precision-guided missiles.

Given this relatively new arena of imperialist rivalry, it may come as no surprise to see the Australian Financial Review headlines on Monday 27 November, "China Link To Firm In Rare Earths Fight".

The article was about a rare earth mine in Browns Range in the north east of WA near the NT border. The mine is owned by Northern Minerals and will have the first fully integrated rare earths refinery. The federal government is putting up $1.25 billion loan for the building of the refinery. The refinery will process dyprosium and terbium.

A Singapore registered company, Yuxiao, has signed a co-operation agreement with China Northern and Shanghai-based Shenghe Resources. Yuxiao has shares in Northern Minerals and recently had its attempt to increase its shares in Northern Minerals to 19.9% blocked by the Australian Government Treasurer Jim Chalmers. 

This Browns Range venture is meant to be part of the Quad goal of decreasing dependency on China for critical minerals.

Yuxiao with direct connections with Chinese capital is now trying to install one of its people on the board of Northen Minerals.

Dyprosium and terbium are essential for the permanent magnets used in weapons systems to give them extreme accuracy, according to former Defence Minister Kim Beasley.

Beasley is an adviser to Lockheed Martin which uses these critical minerals in its fighter jets.
The story of imperialist rivalry is being played out on the economic front behind the facade of diplomacy. 

The other untold story about this imperialist rivalry for critical minerals is that these powers put their interests before the interests of First Nations people who may object to the mines or demand ownership and control of the mines as a condition of them going ahead.
..................
Additional reading:  In 2019 we covered the imperialist rivalry over Australian dysprosium deposits, concluding that "Pressure will be exerted in all manner of ways by both US and China on the Morrison Government regarding to where the rare earths from Australia are exported."  See: Rare Earth Minerals and Australian Independence

 

Print Version - new window Email article

DFLP: The future of the Gaza Strip is an internal Palestinian matter

Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 30 November 2023

 

Some political positions are presented by Western officials about their vision for the future of the Gaza Strip after the aggression. Israel expressed its position that it wants to install “a new security system in the Gaza Strip” in addition to what it describes as “liquidating the infrastructure of the Palestinian resistance.” In another place, the Israeli prime minister said: “After the war, there will be no civil authority in Gaza that teaches children to hate Israel.” These positions are consistent with the positions of the United States and some European countries, who spoke of a different reality for the future of the Gaza Strip.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Mr Mundine, stop harming kids if you want them to go to school!

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 30 November 2023

 

(Above: Twiggy Forrest and Warren Mundine.  Image Flickr Commons)

 

Before the Referendum, Warren Mundine revealed plans to completely crush or assimilate First Peoples, to silence them, and provoke their allies to hit out blindly.  

Alongside Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Coalition politicians and former prime ministers, Mr Mundine is a self-serving spokesperson for far-right corporations. These corporation know strong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and language stands in the way of their profits from Aboriginal lands.

Mr Mundine identified four fronts of ongoing corporate attacks – accountability, education, economic participation and social change.   

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Opposition to Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

Written by: Nick G. on 27 November 2023

 

Ever since international solidarity with the Palestinian resistance to Zionist aggression against Gaza emerged after October7, the Zionist lobby and its supporters have charged their opponents with anti-Semitism.

The Zionist lobby knows well the effectiveness of this charge. As one group of Semites (the term originally included Palestinians and other Arabs, and Akkadians, and Phoenicians), the Jews had been attacked by Christians for their alleged involvement in the crucifixion of Christ and barred from most employment and professions throughout Europe. Pogroms attacked Jewish communities over hundreds of years before Hitler elevated ethnic cleansing into wholesale genocide. Thus, from the late 1800s on, anti-Semitism was promoted by some, and opposed by others, as a specific form of hatred of Jews.

The German variant of the fascist movement that began in Italy under Mussolini, took anti-Semitism and anti-Communism as its targets. Hitler often spoke of them in the same breath as “Jewish Bolshevism”. The National Socialist Program of 1920 clearly stated its intention to deny citizenship to Jews and people of Jewish descent, and five years later, Hitler’s Mein Kampf further developed his racial hatred of Jews as a people inferior to the Aryan “master race”.  

There was nothing hidden or concealed about Hitler’s intentions towards the Jews. As his Nazi Party grew in strength, world leaders were asked by Jewish organisations to take a stand against anti-Semitism. Many were affected by the disease themselves or were afraid to alienate those in their electoral bases who were anti-Jewish. Only one leader made a public condemnation of anti-Semitism, and he was the head of a country which had a long history of hatred of Jews and of pogroms against their communities.

Stalin’s forceful denunciation of anti-Semitism

On January 12, 1931, Joseph Stalin replied to an inquiry from the Jewish News Agency in the United States:

In answer to your inquiry :

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.

J. Stalin
January 12, 1931

Not one other leader of the so-called “democracies” denounced anti-Semitism so forcefully. Indeed many did not at all.

Despite knowing of Hitler’s desire to cleanse Germany (and Europe) of Jews, and knowing of the existence of concentration camps, they refused to condemn Hitler.

On the other hand, and knowing of Hitler’s plans for war and his “final solution” of the “Jewish problem”, Stalin had Pravda publish his reply to the US Jewish News Agency on November 30, 1936 so as to provide leadership on this question among the Soviet people.

Anti-Semitism not an issue for Menzies.

This stands in marked contrast to people like Robert Menzies. As Attorney-General in the Lyons United Australia Party government, Menzies admired Hitler’s government for its suppression of the workers’ movement, and ignored its growing record of anti-Semitism. In 1933, he had acknowledged the “barbaric and medieval persecution” to which Jews in Europe were “apparently” being subjected, but the following year he unsuccessfully attempted to exclude Czech Jewish Communist Egon Kisch from entering Australia on an anti-fascist speaking tour. 

Whilst still Attorney-General (and Minister for Industry) he toured Europe from April to August 1938, and included Nazi Germany on his itinerary. Persecution of Jews was in full swing (it was only three months before the notorious Nazi pogrom known as the Kristallnacht) yet all he could talk of was how wonderful was Hitler’s leadership.

Addressing the Australian Women's National League in Melbourne in October after his return, he said “If you were Germans, you would take off your hats to Herr Hitler, who does really rule Germany and is not a figurehead. He has produced results. He has been able to bluff and the other nations have not been able to call his bluff.”

The Melbourne Argus, Nov. 15th, 1938 said “In his recent visit to Germany he (Mr. Menzies), had been impressed with German industrial efficiency and with the attitude of responsibility of the big industrial enterprises to the welfare of their employees and their children.”

Reporting on the same speech by Menzies, the Sydney Morning Herald quoted him as saying “The dictator in Germany had been guilty of unspeakably bad things, but there were also points in the dictatorship that Australia could learn from. He had been impressed with German industrial efficiency.”

On July 17, 1939 in Perth, Menzies said “If Herr Hitler were to be considered fairly and dispassionately, it must be admitted that he had done remarkable things for his country.”

A woman shouted an interjection: “Concentration camps, my God!”

Menzies replied that he regarded it as a cardinal rule to be fair to one's opponents. In other words, the woman should be fair to Hitler!

Following the death of Lyons in April 1939, Menzies became UAP leader and Prime Minister. In September, he announced as his “melancholy duty” that as a consequence of the UK declaring war on Germany, Australia was also at war.

But at this stage it was a “phoney war”, with no real action being taken by the US and France to stop Hitler. That lasted for eight months until May 1940, when Germany invaded France. Up until this point, Menzies was still defending Hitler. 

“I have a great admiration for the Nazi organisation of Germany. There is a case for Germany against Czechoslovakia. We must not destroy Hitlerism, or talk about shooting Hitler,” he told Parliament (Hansard, April 22, 1940).

Zionism has inherited the spirit of anti-Semitism

It is all very well for the heirs of Menzies and their look-alikes in the Labor Party to decry anti-Semitism, but they do so only as a defense of Israel as an imperialist enclave within the Middle East.

When the Israelis engage in Nazi-like suppression of the Palestinians, they are silent. 

When Israel established itself through terrorist violence of the Haganah, and of the Irgun and Stern gangs, Zionism fully embraced a racist ideology of conquest and suppression. As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl had proclaimed that “The superiority of Jewish colonial rights over the rights of the indigenous Palestinians has always been the hallmark of the Zionist movement.” He had the Nazi concept of lebensraum (the right of conquest for seizure of living room) before Nazism existed and made it its own. It still manifests itself in Israel’s illegal seizure of Palestinian territory following the Zionist state’s creation in 1947, and in its state-supported invasion of the West Bank by so-called settlers who impose their will by way of anti-Palestinian pogroms.

To achieve its attempted crushing of the Palestinians, Israel has imposed the Warsaw Ghetto writ large upon Gaza. Announcing a “complete siege” of Gaza two days after Hamas’ attack on Israel, the latter’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, was straightforward about his view of Palestinians. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals and will act accordingly.” When the Palestinians stage their own Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Israelis stage their own Nazi demolition of the ghetto they have imposed.

It is one thing to slander the supporters of the Palestinian resistance as anti-Semitic. It is a blindness to the spirit of anti-Semitism that lies at the heart of Zionism and its supporters.

This is the Nazi-like spirit that infuses the comments of Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu who said that dropping a “nuclear bomb” on the Gaza Strip is “an option”.

Eliyahu, a minister from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said that “one of Israel’s options in the war in Gaza is to drop a nuclear bomb on the Strip,” Daily Times of Israel reported.

Speaking a radio interview, Eliyahu also “voices his objection to allowing any humanitarian aid into Gaza.”

“We wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid,” the minister said, adding that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”

The far-right minister also said that the Palestinian population “can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”
He added: “Anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.”

Again, the same spirit infuses the comments by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu following the events of October 7. 

In describing the war he had unleashed as a “holy mission”, he said: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible”. His words are reference to a text which goes on to read: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass,” (1 Samuel 15:3). 

According to George Browning, former Anglican Bishop of Canberra Goulburn, “This statement frighteningly tells you all you need to know about the mindset and intention of Israel’s vengeful Prime Minister, and of the future that lies ahead for all Palestinians in the lands of their birth.”

Nothing gives the lie to charges of anti-Semitism directed at supporters of the Palestinian resistance more than the involvement of non-Zionist Jews in the rallies and demonstrations. A disciplined approach to anti-Semitism has been a hallmark of the organisers of pro-Palestinian marches and rallies, and they have welcome the presence of Jews with their anti-Netanyahu slogans of “Not in our name”.

The courage of the young Jewish boy who spoke at the Sydney school student strike for Palestine, and the welcome afforded by the Palestinian organisers points in the best possible way to a future in which Jews and Palestinians, and Hebrews, Muslims and Christians cooperate in the creation of a singular, secular state from the River to the Sea.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The Factors of Production in Contemporary Australia

Written by: (Contributed) on 26 November 2023

 

A recent Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) poll has revealed a large-scale reaction to the Australian corporate-led agenda of pushing their profits to the detriment of basic workers' rights and attempting to undermine and vandalise the Closing the Loopholes Bill passing through Canberra. The findings, together with other additional information, provide all trade-unionists with data to strengthen their bargaining power at all levels of industrial relations in workplaces across Australia.

In early November an ACTU-commissioned survey conducted by Essential Research found two-thirds of voters from a sample of 1216 voters within fifteen marginal seats that they regarded big business of possessing too much power; they also supported labour hire casual workers in the struggle for same-job-same-pay legislation. (1) The poll followed similar findings with an earlier survey conducted by SEC Newgate Mood of the Nation where nearly half the 1600 voter sample expressed the view that the Australian corporate sector were not behaving in an ethical manner when dealing with workers' issues. (2)

The results of the two surveys reveal the reaction taking place against decades of economic rationalism which enabled the business-classes to strengthen the role of capital against organised labour; the result was enrichment of the corporate sector, with little benefit for the working class. Decades of liberalisation, de-regulation and privatisation foisted on governments through international financial institutions controlled by the US, had removed barriers to wealth creation solely for the rich.

The role of capital, as a basic factor of production, was strengthened over labour, the other factor. Information, readily available in the public domain, has revealed the problem.

Over twenty years ago an eighteen-month project commissioned by the elite US National Security Council (NSC) intelligence service, concluded that economic globalisation 'will not lead to a general well-being … because the gap between rich and poor … both between countries and within them … is growing'. (3) The findings, while subsequently subject to classification, were leaked to a Spanish language media outlet without comment from Washington.

Similar studies also conducted years ago showed how wealth accumulation accelerated under globalisation; the rich were quick to expand their wealth. A study conducted in 2005 concluded that in 1980 the income of the advanced, industrial countries was eleven times larger than the rest of the world; by 2000 it had increased to 23 times larger. (4) Global inequality grew at a rate of 2.4 per cent in the decade before 1980, afterwards it had an annual rate of 3.9 per cent into this century. (5)

In fact, by 2020, it was established the richest one per cent of the world's population had already grabbed two-thirds of the US$42 trillion of new wealth; the remaining 99 per cent acquired the other one third. (6)

With such inequalities commonplace it was hardly surprising that the ACTU-commissioned survey also found that, 'Australians don't trust big business and they see through the lies they have been peddling simply to protect their profits'. (7)

Against the backcloth of vast economic power wielded over the working-class, it was noted that business groups had already spent millions of dollars opposing proposed government legislation designed to create a more favourable industrial relations arena: the Closing the Loopholes Bill at present passing through Canberra deals with same-job-same-pay procedures and wage theft, which remains rampant across Australia. (8)

Elsewhere, information emerging about wage theft, has revealed how the Fair Work Ombudsman has already recovered $17.7 million on behalf of 7,242 underpaid workers in the care industry during the past financial year. (9) An official media release from the department noted, 'increases in civil penalties and the proposed criminalisation of wage theft would act as a deterrent'. (10) No wonder the business-classes are campaigning against the proposed legislation; it effectively challenges the power of capital and the abuses of their power over entire workforces.

Official facts and figures about the Australian workforce, for example, reveal a third were born overseas; despite continuing problems of shortages of workers only one per cent of employers, however, were keen to offer higher wages to attract suitable personnel. (11) It is, therefore, not particularly difficult to establish how wage theft takes place: many new workers from overseas originate from countries where trade-unionism is dangerous and activists are targeted by para-military organisations, they are reluctant to challenge Australian employers; language difficulties, likewise, present a challenge. Australian employers appear only too keen to exploit the vulnerable sections of the workforce. (12)

And, finally, there is the whole issue of tax evasion; data released by the Australian Tax Office has shown that during the 2020-21 financial year, 66 very wealthy Australians, who had amassed over one billion dollars, paid no income tax, not even the Medicare levy. (13)

The sooner the Closing the Loopholes Bill is passed, the better!

Dealing with massive tax evasion should then also become a government priority. Workers pay income tax all their working lives, while unproductive employers bludge on the system!

1.     Big business has too much power: voters, Australian, 14 November 2023.
2.     Voter rage against corporate ethics, Australian, 7 November 2023.
3.     Hunger does not subside and slavery returns, Granma International (Havana), 24 June 2001.
4.     How globalisation fuels poverty, Socialist Campaign Group News, (Westminster, London), July 2005.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Survival of the Richest, Oxfam publication, 2020.
7.     Big business, Australian, op.cit., 14 November 2023.
8.     Ibid.
9.     Pay a priority for work adjudicator, Australian, 10 October 2023.
10.   Ibid.
11.   See: Skills shortages proving chronic, Australian, 5 October 2023.
12.   See: $50m to combat 'systemic' exploitation of migrants, Australian, 5 October 2023, which has provided evidence that Canberra is aware of the problem of exploitation of vulnerable workers and unscrupulous employers.
13.   Rich should pay their share, says Smith, The Weekend Australian, 11-12 November 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Zionist State Of Israel Always Dependent On Imperialist Powers

Written by: Ned K. on 25 November 2023

 

The theoretical founders of the political Zionist movement in Europe from the 1880s were well aware that their desire for a region in the world for exclusively Jewish people was dependent on the support of the imperialist powers. 

One of the theoretical founders, Herzl, was acutely aware of this. He realized that the Zionist movement needed to paint a picture of a Jewish state that would enhance European imperialist expansion and that colonization needed to be presented as spreading of "progress, civilization and well-being".

Herzl opposed the "spiritual Zionism" of Ahad Ha'am, who only wanted to form a spiritual homeland in Palestine, not necessarily a distinct state of Israel.  He envisaged scattered Jewish agricultural colonies spread "harmlessly" across Palestinian land.

Herzl criticized this as being based on the "false principle of successive infiltration". Herzl said infiltration will always end badly because it would not enable the "influx" of European Jews. Only a Jewish state of Israel could do this.

Herzl's "Society of Jews" would "negotiate with the sovereign authorities of the territories in question, and it will do so under the protectorate of the European powers, if they find the arrangement to their liking".

The "sovereign authorities" were the Ottomans and then the British imperialist power.
Nowadays it is US imperialism and its supporters including the Australian Government!

In the Introduction to Maxime Rodinson's book, Israel A Colonial Settler State?, Peter Buch quotes Herzl as to what he foresaw as the value of a state of Israel in Palestine

"If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could undertake to regulate Turkey's finances. For Europe, we would constitute a bulwark against Asia down there, we would be the advance post of civilization against barbarism. We would remain in constant touch with all of Europe, which would guarantee our existence".

The language used by Herzl way back in the late 1800s which frames Israel as the "advance post of civilization against barbarism" is similar to how the current Zionist leaders frame their vicious genocidal attack on the Palestinian people.

The world-wide protest movement in support of the Palestinians is an aspect of the international situation that was not present in Herzl's time. The power of the people will defeat Zionism and its imperialist backers.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Pilbara Train Drivers Take industrial Action Against BHP

Written by: Ned K. on 22 November 2023

 

About 400 train drivers in the Pilbara voted to take industrial action in pursuit of higher wages and better conditions. The train drivers transport iron ore from BHP owned mines to the coast for export to steel corporations in other countries, including China.

The industrial action started with train drivers banning the use of BHP's mobile app fr rostering.

The industrial action is significant. It is the first industrial action in the Pilbara region of this magnitude for 15 years. It comes at a time when last financial year the mining industry made a staggering $304 biillion in profits. In the last decade mining industry wages have gone up by 22% while in the same period mining industry profits went up by 200%.

These figures show that even though wages may be higher than in many other industries, they are low when compared with the surplus value and profits of BHP and other mining corporations. The latter come from the toil of mining industry workers like the 400 train drivers in the Pilbara.

The industrial action by the train drivers is occurring as the Labor Government's Closing Loppholes Bill crawls through the federal parliament.

The key element of the Bill is to prevent corporations like BHP using labour hire workers to cut wages by labour companies paying labour hire employees far less than the going rates paid to directly employed workers.

Like most Bills that go through parliament generated from workers through their unions, there are qualifications and limitations for the bosses' side.

The Bill provides that where the host employer (eg BHP) is covered by an Enterprise Agreement and engages labour hire through a labour hire company, an application may be made to the Fair Work Commission for a "regulated labour hire arrangement order". If the order is made the host employer has to pay the labour hire workers not less than the rate of pay applying under the enterprise agreement.

If the Bill becomes law, it does not apply in the first three months of labour hire. The Bill does not apply to what is described as "genuine service contractors". In the mining industry this will mean that where mining companies like BHP use other multinationals like Sodexo, Compass or Civeo or ISS to provide support services such as cleaning miners’ quarters or providing their meals in the mining site canteen, these workers will still be subject to cheaper labour rates than if they were directly employed by the host mining company.

Despite the conditional nature of the Closing Loopholes Bill, it is still a win through years of struggle by the working class against labour hire wage swindles. 

The ACTU in their excellent research paper "Digging a Hole: Mining Boss myths about the Closing Loopholes Bill" estimates that about 600,000 labour hire workers will be better off if the Bill becomes law.

As with all gains won through workers’ struggles, the bosses will try and claw back and find ways around the new laws. 

However the Pilbara train drivers’ collective action and the example they set to other workers is what the bosses fear most. It is when workers organize to defend and extend their interests that those bosses like BHP become most alarmed.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Will US base new Typhon strike weapon in Australia?

Written by: Nick G. on 21 November 2023

 

(Above: Typhon missile launcher.  Photo: US Army)

According to a US report last Saturday, the US plans to deploy a new long-range missile launcher in the Indo-Pacific next year.

Known as Typhon, the land-based system is designed to launch Raytheon’s existing SM-6 missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles to hit targets between the Precision Strike Missile’s (PrSM’s) planned 500-kilometer range and the 2,776-kilometer reach of the future Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW).

US Army Pacific commander Gen. Charles Flynn did not identify where the Typhon launchers would be based, but told reporters that he does not anticipate needing foreign government permission to deploy the interceptor if they have already signed off on HIMARS.

Australia signed up to HIMARS, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launcher, when it agreed on January 5 this year to purchase 20 of the launchers from Lockheed Martin for an estimated cost of $558 million. The Hong Kong-based Asia Times reported on the purchase agreement under the heading Australia to point America’s HIMARS at China. The Chinese mainland could not be reached from Australia, but Chinese naval and commercial shipping are obvious targets.

HIMARS was on display and used by US forces in the recent Talisman Sabre Exercises in Queensland. American 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Battalion, Specialist Juan Jimanez said “It’s good for you guys to see how we operate and shoot. It gets the excitement going, so when you do get them, it’s like, ‘Alright, let’s go play’.”

Sadly, that would appear to match the child-like enthusiasm of Defence Minister Richard Marles for any new US weaponry. 

Would Australia need to give permission to the US for it to base its Typhon launchers here?

Australia is the only country in the region to have signed off on HIMARS.  So too has the regime in Taiwan, but they are not really within the region, and their HIMARS will be pointed at mainland China. Singapore has also signed up, but is further from the South Pacific island nations whose relationships with China are threatening US domination of the region.

The supply chain for the missiles to be launched from HIMARS vehicles and from the Typhon is not regarded as reliable, particularly given the deployment of HIMARS in Ukraine where it is regarded as having passed all tests against the invading Russians with flying colours and where the demand for missiles is insatiable.

So, not only has Australia had to purchase the launch systems from US manufacturers, it has had to agree on a program to produce missiles domestically, partnering domestic firms with US defence contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.  

The deployment of the Typhon, if indeed Australia is the country that the US believes it does not need to seek permission from, is another unwelcome betrayal of our sovereignty and a further hold that the US has over the capacity we are meant to have for independent decision-making.

Should one or other of the rival imperialist powers seeking to dominate our region provoke an armed conflict, any use of US missile launch systems from Australian soil will immediately see us at war and a target for the opposing imperialism.

An independent and peaceful Australia should not lend itself to the war games of competing imperialisms.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Australian Communist 
Spring 2023

 

" property="og:description" />

Australian Communist Spring 2023

Written by: on

 

Australian Communist 
Spring 2023

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

How Secure Are Australia's Defence Bases?

Written by: Ned K. on 20 November 2023

 

(Above: Wilson Security guard at Watsonia barracks.  Picture: Angie Basdekis News.com.au)

There are many military bases in Australia. There are air force bases, army bases, navy bases, rocket and missile bases, signal bases and proof ranges and training bases. Since September 11, 2001 when Al Qaeda operatives used planes to target the twin towers in New York, security measures at defence bases and domestic and international airports have received more attention and resources from successive Australian Governments. 

The growing rivalry between imperialist powers of the USA, Russia and China have added to the Government's determination to ensure that Australian military bases are secure and adequate to facilitate military operations required by the US - Australia Alliance and now AUKUS commitments. These commitments successive Australian Governments have entered in to suit the needs of the USA in particular in its military operations on a global scale. 

The Australian people support Australia having Australian military bases which are secure and adequate for the defence of Australian independence and peaceful neutrality. 

It is ironic that as Australian Governments talk more and more about the need to increase the country's defence and national security, they have handed over the operation of security services at all defence bases to foreign owned multinational corporations!

There was a time before the frenzy of outsourcing of government services in the 1980s and 1990s when military base security services were owned and operated by Australian government departments.

Now military security services and airports are almost entirely in the hands of Wilson Security, MSS Security, Securecorp, Secom and Certis

Wilson Security is owned by the Hog Kong Kwok family who also provide security services to the Chinese Government.

MSS Security is owned by an Indian multinational security company SIS Group Enterprises.
Securecorp is owned by multinational Guardforce Group with headquarters in Hong Kong.
Secom Group is Japanese owned.

Certis Group which is a major player in airport security in particular is Singapore owned. 

These multinational corporations' primary concern is not the security of Australia, Australian defence bases and the workers and military personnel inside those bases.

Their primary concern is maximizing profits. 

In 2015 for example, Wilson Security's Kwok family were caught shifting profits to the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands through a shelf company Wilson Offshore Group (BVI) Holdings.

The Security Officers employed at the defence bases work long hours for low wages with high workloads. Most are on base Award rates of pay. They also get swindled out of leave entitlements and overtime payments by the way their employers construct the rosters over lengthy roster cycles. 

Sub-contracting is also a common feature of security services at the Bases.

Trawling through Facebook posts by angry Security Officers indicates that these workers have had enough.
 
They expect more from Governments who tell the public day in and day out how important defence is at the moment. 

Their demands for higher wages and better conditions and ultimately to be directly employed as government Security Officers will be supported by the people. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip continue (2006-2023)

Written by: Fouad Baker DFLP on 17 November 2023

 

The comrades at the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) have asked political parties everywhere to publicise their statement on Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip. We are more than happy to oblige - eds.

 

Foreign affairs Department at the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine 2023/11/16 

Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip continue (2006-2023)

To the political parties in the world,

The barbaric Israeli aggression supported by Western colonial countries, especially the United States, which has been continuing since the eighth of last October, was not the first. Rather, it was preceded by many wars on the Gaza Strip, resulting in tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded, in addition to the systematic destruction of homes and infrastructure. 

Wars and aggression are an inherent feature of the Israeli entity since its inception, which masters committing massacres and crimes against defenseless civilians, using the latest products produced by the Israeli and Western killing and destruction machine against residential neighborhoods and civilian facilities, in an area with the highest population density (the area of the Gaza Strip is 365 km2 and it is more populated (2.2 million people)). 

During a period of 17 years (i.e. from the start of the unjust siege on the Gaza Strip from 2006 until 2023), Israel launched (12) wars against the Strip, including (6) destructive wars. The number of martyrs during these wars reached more than 4,300 martyrs, in addition to about 19,500 wounded, 2014 was the bloodiest and most brutal year, not to mention the massive destruction... while the number of Israeli deaths did not exceed 136 dead and about 4,000 wounded.

1) Shattered Illusion 2006: 277 Palestinians were killed and 1,167 wounded in Israeli raids that continued for three months. 
2) Hot winter 2008: 125 Palestinians were killed and large numbers of wounded over the course of five days of bombing. 
3) Battle of Al-Furqan 2008 – 2009: 1,430 Palestinian martyrs were martyred, including about 400 children and 240 women, 5,400 wounded, in addition to the complete or partial destruction of more than 10,000 homes. 
4) Battle of the Shale Stones: About 180 Palestinians were martyred, including 42 children and 11 women, and about 1,300 others were injured. 
5) The battle of the eaten storm: 2,322 martyrs and 11,000 wounded were killed, and Israel committed massacres against 144 families. 
6) Battle Cry of Dawn: 34 Palestinians were killed, and more than 100 others were injured 
7) Battle of Saif Al-Quds: About 250 Palestinian martyrs were killed and more than 5,000 wounded.

The Gaza Strip is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories and it is not possible to create any kind of geographical or political separation between them. These territories are a single and unified territorial unit, and any dealing with them in a partial manner is an attempt to divide the Palestinian land with the aim of striking the unity of the Palestinian people, which we will fight. In order to dedicate it as a major issue in the central trinity: the unity of the land, the people, and the cause. 

What must be emphasized repeatedly is that what happened on October 7 is an extension of what was happening before that date in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the city of Jerusalem in terms of criminal practices against the Palestinian people. Therefore, the battle of “Al-Aqsa Flood” comes in the context of responding to the massacres and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip, whether daily killings, arrests, theft of land for the purposes of settlement, the demolition of homes, the burning of entire towns, the storming and destruction of cities and camps, and the terrorization of those who are safe, are in response to the occupation’s aggression against the land and the sanctities. Therefore, we say that there is no solution to our national issue without recognizing that occupation and settlement are the basis of the issue.

The aggression is not against a faction or party, but rather against all the people, with all their parties and political and social components. It is a systematic aggression, even genocide, against an entire people, for women, for children, for the sick, for the elderly, for everything that is alive and moving on the land.

The Gaza Strip is an Israeli and Western aggression, targeting the Palestinian people across all of Palestine, especially since the number of martyrs in the West Bank has exceeded 500 martyrs since the beginning of the year, including about 200 martyrs since October 7, which is the bloodiest year for the Palestinian people. In the West Bank and Jerusalem, which confirms that the main problem is the physical presence of the occupation and its settlers. 
The United Nations and its resolutions consider the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem to be Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. All international law charters allow persecuted peoples to resist the invaders. The Palestinian people have the right and even their duty to resist the Zionist occupier, and the legal, political, moral and humanitarian duty of the international community is to support the people’s resistance. The Palestinians who struggle to liberate their land do so to enable them to freely exercise their national rights away from occupation, subordination and colonialism.

The Occupation and settlements are the main root of the problem, and any solution that does not take into account the national rights of the Palestinian people will be a reason for reproducing conflicts in Palestine in Palestine and the region. 

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) calls on all parties of the world and its political and popular institutions to condemn the war of extermination pursued by the Israeli enemy against the Palestinian people, to take punitive and deterrent measures against Israeli war criminals, and to exert pressure on Western governments that support the aggression to stop their partnership in killing and crimes against civilians of the Palestinian people and to work from In order to stop the series of crimes against humanity. 

Fouad Baker 
FOREIGN AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT AT (DFLP)

Contact us: 
Telephone: 0096176927214 
Email: baker.fouad@yahoo.co

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Palestine will live!

Written by: Alice M. on 16 November 2023

 

The Palestinian people’s protracted struggle for self-determination and liberation is inspiring people the world over.   

Centuries of oppression, from slavery to Palestine today, show that the oppressed will resist, organise rebellions and revolutions for freedom, national liberation and class struggle.  

Struggles against colonial, capitalist and imperialist oppression, exploitation and plunder, ebb and flow, take different forms, depending on the conditions and the relative strengths between the oppressed and their oppressors. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Will AUKUS turn us into the world’s nuclear waste dump?

Written by: Nick G. on 15 November 2023

 

While Albo and Marles are confident that the US Congress will approve the sale of several second-hand nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, doubt remains in the US over the wisdom of the whole AUKUS arrangements.

This despite the US having suggested back in 2013 that we lease ten or twelve Virginia-class nuclear submarines, a proposal that Malcolm Fraser strongly opposed. This beneficiary of a US-backed constitutional coup became so worried about Australia’s surrender of sovereignty to its US masters that he called his book Dangerous Allies, criticising the US proposal. 

Under the Morrison-Albanese AUKUS arrangements, the submarines are to be purchased, and not leased. However, the US Congress is worried that the US is so far behind in the production of nuclear submarines for its own use that it will not be able to supply new ones to Australia. 

Speaking of the recent Indo-Pacific Conference in Sydney, the US online Breaking Defence journal wrote:

Indo-Pacific naval and industry leaders meet in Sydney this week for the Indo-Pacific Exposition, amid growing concerns that AUKUS, the region’s signature defense initiative, is running out of steam. Despite substantial investment over the last decade, the US submarine industrial base is generating as much backlog as boats, leading US lawmakers to question the wisdom of selling a tenth of the operational US submarine fleet to Australia. On the other side of the Pacific, a chorus of Australian leaders is balking at the potential bill for a country of 26 million to field its own nuclear submarine force.

The author went on to say of the Australian Navy that:

…its fleet of about 50 ships and 16,000 personnel is small compared to the vast region it has to protect and the alliance operations it may need to support. 

And demands on the RAN are only likely to grow, as the new Australian Defence Strategic Review highlighted. Australia’s sparsely-populated northern approaches are expected to be critical for supporting alliance air and naval operations in a confrontation with China, but sustaining a presence across thousands of miles of water will be impossible using the existing Australian fleet and air force.

Meanwhile, concerns have grown about the responsibility Australia has taken on in relation to the decommissioning of the eight nuclear-powered submarines it hopes to own and operate. As the government’s Australian Submarine Agency website now clearly states;

As a responsible nuclear steward, Australia will manage all radioactive waste generate by its own Virginia Class and SSN-AUKUS submarines, including radioactive waste generate through operations, maintenance and decommissioning.

Morrison had not drawn attention to this when he announced AUKUS with his US and UK counterparts, knowing well that it would never be accepted by most Australians.

The decommissioning of a nuclear-powered submarine is a costly and complicated process. The UK has decommissioned 20, but they remain in dockyards and have done so for more than thirty years.

The problem is the nuclear waste. The reactors employ enriched uranium high in U-235 isotopes which are constantly bombarded by neutrons to release energy. The U-235 that remains after the submarine is taken out of service must be carefully extracted and stored. It has a half-life of 704 million years. 

From 1946 through 1993, thirteen countries used ocean disposal or ocean dumping as a method to dispose of nuclear/radioactive waste with an approximation of 200,000 tons sourced mainly from the medical, research and nuclear industry. Since 1993, the UK has not been able to dump high level waste in the ocean, has not yet discovered a geologically stable land dump site, and so has its retired nuclear-powered submarines sitting in its harbours with their nuclear wastes intact.

Unfortunately for Australia, we are seen as a prospective dumping ground for high-level nuclear wastes because we are a relatively geographically stable land mass. It would seem that the US and the UK saw AUKUS as an opportunity to require Australia to create the high-level radioactive waste dump that could eventually solve their own nuclear waste disposal problems.

After all, if Australia can be made to dispose of the U-235 in its nuclear-powered submarines, why could it not be persuaded to take other nations’ wastes as well? This idea had previously surfaced in the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission established in 2015 by the “left” ALP state Premier Jay Weatherill. Weatherill was enthusiastic about what it could mean for the state’s revenues, but a randomly-selected “citizens’ jury” overwhelmingly rejected the idea, and it was binned.

It stands to reason that the US made it a condition of supplying us with nuclear-powered subs that we take care of the wastes, so that they can manipulate a future Australian government into taking their, and the UK’s, waste as well at a future date.

The AUKUS arrangements must also be binned if we are not to become the world’s nuclear waste dump.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Book review - Missing the point: Alison Pennington's "Gen F'D"

Written by: Blake Sartori on 15 November 2023

 

Review of Alison Pennington’s Gen F’D, How Young Australians Can Reclaim Their Uncertain Futures, $24.99.
Review by: Blake Sartori 

To tread the dangerous path of summarising a book in one word, let’s settle on disappointing. If Pennington succeeded in one aspect, it is demonstrating just how void the mainstream Australian left is today, and how much farther we have to go before any of us can provide genuine explanation and battle against the current tumults. 

In fairness to Pennington, the pitfalls which Gen F’D leaps into are not unique, or new. Similar stories can be found through the opinion pieces slapped on the Guardian’s website, in the Green’s talking points, and from too many a ‘progressive’. These pitfalls all share a common root, which Gen F’D fails to unearth. This weakness stems from an inherently bourgeois economics, not a socialistic one. Let us, to paraphrase Marx, be radical – and grasp matters by the root. 

The issues that Pennington identifies are shared by many of the proletariat – precarious housing without much hope of home ownership, insecure jobs that are typically underpaid, and a lack of faith in the political system (take note – a political system, at large, which escapes scrutiny in Gen F’D). But these are all signs of an underlying disease. This disease, Pennington posits, is the nebulous neoliberalism. This is wrong. Instead, these symptoms come from the disease that is Capitalism. Neoliberalism is the label attached to one of its recent phases.

The first chapter of Gen F’D demonstrates Pennington’s bourgeois economic outlook from the onset. According to Pennington:

“From the 1970s, but gathering pace in the 1980s, big structural changes were made to the DNA of Australia’s economy. Businesses became increasingly determined to make quick bucks for shareholders rather than investing in people for the long term.” 

Seemingly the bourgeoisie only became more determined in ever higher profits in the late 1970’s and 80’s. When the aim of the game is valorisation, ever higher profits are always front and mind of a capitalist. Pennington’s claim fails to properly account for the nature of the class struggle within Australia in the 30-odd years following WWII. In those years, the bourgeoisie still had just as much of an interest in yielding ever higher profits. What was the counter to this drive? Put simply – labour militancy, through trade union struggle by the proletariat. This omission foreshadows Pennington’s later resorting to a ‘generational divide’ analysis later in Gen F’D. If we are to concede the proletariat of past generations had their own trade union militancy and class struggle, then any sort of analysis of ‘generational divide as a class divide’ becomes unravelled. 

One need look no further than the sub-section in Chapter 4 titled the loss of class to lament at the liberalism tainting Gen F’D. Pennington fails to identify class in its most basic form – being determined by the social relations that different groups have to the means of production. Even for an introductory book, this requirement shouldn’t be a tall order. Indeed, without this conceptual understanding, how can one hope to comprehend the problems facing us today and begin to forge, at least in our imaginations, what a new world might look like? And while it is essential to understand there are different strata within the proletariat and bourgeoisie, especially so in a ‘developed’ capitalist country such as Australia, to understand their underlying commonality, one must understand how these layers relate to the means of production. In a word, as workers versus owners. 

Another pitfall is Pennington’s resort to a ‘generational divide.’ The inability, as outlined above - to see class as determined by social relations to the means of production - allows Pennington to divide people by age. Given the title of the book, one shouldn’t be surprised at this lacklustre analysis. And although it is true that the ratio of the average income compared to the average house price has shifted significantly in the last 50 years, Gen F’D readers are once again denied the class analysis that would allow us to see that it is not baby-boomers who are our enemy, but rather the owners and controllers of global capital. Once again, a failure to see social divide in terms of property relations. 

Pennington does make some strides when confronting the liberal’s tendency to focus on ‘identity formation’ as the guiding star of one’s politics. She does well to approach this subject by not discounting the varied challenges that marginalised communities continue to face. In addition, Pennington draws a potent link between this liberal identity formation and the types of content that today’s younger generation share and consume en masse. 

“Millions of algorithmically tailored sales pitches entrench human differences… Despite facing similar conditions, time spent online can make people feel worlds apart from others.”

Greens, Labor Lefties and ‘progressives’ take heed. If we are to advance the processes for total transformation, this ideological battle must be understood, lest we land ourselves with a century of infighting. 

Pennington’s final chapter, Making the Modern Fair Go, introduces readers to another re-heated slab of social democracy. Even using the term ‘social democracy’ is a stretch, given the lack of any proposals for nationalisation. There is some attempt to draw readers towards the importance of rebuilding the trade union movement. But without any class analysis, this cry rings hollow. Let us be clear, labour should be organised by our class. Our interest is directly opposed to that of the owners. Past union struggles, such as the green bans waged by the Builders Labourers Federation, understood this class analysis and distilled it into concrete action. Pennington’s failure to do the same will not help to deliver a reinvigorated labour movement. What’s more, Gen F’D in no way confronts the reality of today’s labour bureaucracy, exemplified by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, as the enemy of rank-and-file activism, let alone militancy.

Today, our class needs to be reintroduced to the basics. Good theory sharpens good practice. For all Pennington’s talk of neoliberalism, in the final analysis, we still exist in (or more accurately, are ruled by) the same economic system – capitalism. Today’s proletariat have greater means to access scientific socialist works, like those of Marx and Lenin. What’s more, we have had over two centuries of struggle from which to learn. Using the insights from theoretically informed practices will continue to prove the most adept at realising real benefits for our class. 

If Gen F’D is the best on offer from today’s Australian left, that is because it is ‘best’ for those who dare not go to the root of a system of exploitation grounded on class relations. 
 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Corporate management and the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

Written by: (Contributed) on 14 November 2023

 

A recent study of the views of Australians toward the economy has produced some interesting insights; a substantial section of the electorate has serious concerns about corporate management.

The corporate sector has also taken notice of the problem: their cronies and associates deeply penetrate government departments in Canberra and provincial cities, international financial institutions and other influential organisations. Little escapes their notice although whether they admit it is another matter; problems of liability merge with political expedience and the hidden identities of their trusted informants.

It has been noteworthy, therefore, how the corporate sector has chosen to deal with the problem, who selected the Australian delegation for the recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, and the political line they appear to be formulating for future agendas.

The recent SEC Newgate Mood of the Nation survey of more than 1,600 Australians has revealed nearly half thought the corporate sector was not behaving in an ethical manner: key points included excessive profits, unjustified price increases, tax avoidance, political interference, stagnant wages in relation to executive pay, and the general treatment of employees. (1)

Australia, like most of the world economy, was swept along by the tide of US-led globalisation implemented through international financial institutions; after four decades of economic rationalism marked by deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation, however, ordinary Australians have received little benefit. It remains particularly revealing, therefore, to note only twenty per cent of the sample agreed with corporate sector ethics. (2)

The fact many of the richest people in Australia, and globally, pay little or no income tax on their immense wealth remains a serious matter of contention. (3)

In fact, a total of 63 per cent of the sample thought Australia was heading in the wrong direction and, 'are increasingly uneasy about the long-term prospects for the economy'. (4)
The bigger picture, likewise, is not rosy; economic rationalism has not created a vibrant economic environment.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook, published last month, upgraded Australia's growth, but only from 1.6 per cent to 1.8 per cent; the figures reveal a mediocre level of sustainable economic development. (5) The report noted global growth was again slowing from 3.5 per cent last year, to a projected 3.0 per cent for 2023, with an even slower level of 2.9 per cent for next year. (6) So much for the dynamics of globalisation.
  
The corporate sector, however, is not oblivious to the economic quagmire they are largely responsible for creating.

As a means of consciously distancing themselves from traditional US-led international financial institutions they have recently established the ARC which held its first major international forum in London last month. A total of 1,500 delegates paid a conference fee of $2870 to attend a talk-fest amongst former political and economic leaders and those who have been groomed to revamp the flagging fortunes of the corporate sector. (7) The extensive use of flowery language, carefully fine-toned to create an image of something new and fashionable, included the view that 'Davos man became a caricature of itself, almost the platonic ideal of elites out of touch with ordinary people and common sense'. (8) This refers to the notion of 'Davos man' being the symbol of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The ARC sales and marketing personnel would appear to have been working alongside specialists in psychological warfare techniques to create a viable alternative to existing bodies such as the WEF and other international financial institutions.

When studied closely, however, the ARC is not different but a continuation of the same political and economic traditions of right and far-right positions; it merely marks an attempt at re-packaging traditional conservative positions, making the way for a takeover by right and far-right forces, if, and when, required. In fact, it is not surprising to note the ARC would appear to have direct lineage to earlier, largely US-based, political front organisations including Western Goals, the American Security Council and the Conservative Caucus which were major players during the previous Cold War. (9) They are now being revamped for the present Cold War.

The Australian link in the elite ARC patronage system chose a motley crew to steer the country into higher levels of capitalist exploitation which appear more in line with far-right positions than the supposedly democratic ideals usually associated with Canberra and other provincial cities; the delegation carried some considerable and curious baggage, to say the very least.

Three former Australian right-wing prime ministers attended the London ARC conference: John Howard, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, together with Dominic Perrottet, former premier of NSW, and the First Nations quisling who almost single-handedly brought about the defeat of the Voice Referendum, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. They enjoyed a wave of favourable publicity in the mainstream media. (10)  

All, however, was not what it seemed at face value.

John Howard, for example, has held a long-time involvement with the notorious World Anti-Communist League (WACL) and its renamed counterpart, the World League for Freedom and Democracy (WLFD), although has always presented himself as a political figure of the centre. (11) He attended their 22nd annual conference in Brisbane in August, 1989, which was composed of 120 delegates representing fifty countries. (12)

Political expedience and downright duplicity merge; studies of the WACL/WLFD conducted by interviewing former members and their associates have revealed it is, 'largely a collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and corrupt self-seekers … the very existence of this organisation is a total disgrace … and it is a … collection of fringe ultra-rightists, religious nuts, aging ex-Nazis, emigres and cranks'. (13)

It is important to note those hosting the Brisbane conference were not only able to invite WACL delegates from such backgrounds but to also enable their safe passage through stringent Australian border controls without difficulty and without too many questions being asked about sponsoring organisations and their political affiliations. Grey flannelled dwarves in the corridors of power obviously served their purpose as Mr and Mrs Fixit.

Tony Abbott, likewise, has a long history of nasty right-wing politics and was mentored by Bob Santamaria, founder of the notorious National Civic Council (NCC). (14) The NCC was, and remains, committed to a political strategy of establishing front organisations which spew anti-communist positions and socially conservative Catholic bigotry in line with 1930s clerico-fascism. (15)  

Scott Morrison would also fit comfortable into the mould of religious bigotry, holding right- wing evangelical positions which were subsequently pushed into the political arena. His tenure as prime minister was continually marked by highly questionable behaviour, which at times, bordered well into the illegal 'grey' areas of constitutional irregularities together with the notorious and illegal Robo-debt scandal. Morrison, nevertheless, remains a man in denial behind a smug grin.

Last year Morrison also joined the board of the International Democrat Union (IDU), which has been described as being aligned with 'the intolerant far-right'. (16) The stated position of the IDU was openly flouted by Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who in 2020, addressed an audience which included Tony Abbott with praise for Australia due to its 'brave, direct and Anglo-Saxon constituency which it has shown on migration'. (17)  

The fact that John Howard held the position of IDU chairman from 2004-14, is evidence of his far-right position. (18) His period of tenure was marked by disturbing trends of openly resisting asylum-seekers, which appeared blatantly racist and Islamo-phobic in nature. Howard, even to the present time, has openly admitted he has 'always had trouble with the concept of multi-culturalism', despite the fact contemporary Australia is a truly multi-cultural and multi-racial society of a vast number of different cultural and racial types. For him, the Anglo-Saxon European world in which he resides, takes precedence over the rest.  

Jacinta Price has embraced this world, telling the Conference that she rejected “our most marginalised being told they are victims of their racial heritage, of our country’s history, because of colonisation…”. Instead, she said, as individuals “we all have agency”, implying that if someone is marginalised and disenfranchised it was because they had failed to use their “agency” successfully. Referring to the right-wingers and racists who had backed her campaign, she said its success “has emboldened every day Australians”. (19)

And, finally, there is the case of Dominic Perrottet; while being carefully groomed as a 'party animal', it eventually emerged he had the disposition of liking to get 'dressed up', including wearing Hitler's uniforms. When challenged about his strong identification with German fascism he dismissed it on the basis, 'he had nothing to disclose that could embarrass the Liberal Party'. (20) The NSW Liberal Party, historically, it should be noted, has come under considerable scrutiny on a number of occasions for harbouring far-right figures masquerading as loyal party members. (21)
 
Perrottet has been particularly noted as remaining close to John Howard and the product of a family background with strong allegiance to the reactionary Catholic Opus Dei sect; all sexual activity is for procreation only, with sublimation including flagellation. (22) The norms lend themselves to a closet lifestyle based on secrecy to avoid open identification and ridicule.  

In conclusion, the corporate sector appears to be pushing the ARC agenda as a means of strengthening their class and state power to enable higher levels of exploitation of the working class; the Australian contingent, however, have chosen some highly questionable leaders! Others, associated with the Australian ARC link, have yet to be identified; for reasons perhaps best known to themselves. They appear to have no wish to openly identify themselves as being associated with the ARC.

A noted strategy used by the right and far-right, however, has always taken the form of the 'use of double agents and sleepers by the conservatives – people who join the Liberals, claim to have moderate views and become friends with the moderates, while secretly working for the right and taking over their branches'. (23)

1.     Voter rage against corporate profits, Australian, 7 November 2023.
2.     Ibid.
3.     See: Alan Kohler – Make billionaires and multinationals pay more tax? The New Daily, 25 October 2023; and, Survival of the Richest, Oxfam publication, 2020.
4.     Voter rage, Australian, op.cit., 7 November 2023.
5.     Global economy still limping along: IMF., Australian, 11 October 2023.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Meeting of minds for a better future, The Weekend Australian, 28-29 October 2023.
8.     Ibid.
9.     See: Inside the League, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, (New York, 1986), pp. 155-61.
10.   Meeting of minds, Weekend Australian, op.cit., 28-29 October 2023; and, Howard's way 'leads to harmony', Australian, 3 November 2023.
11.   See: Howard's way, Australian, ibid., 3 November 2023.
12.   Website: WACL., 9 January 1990.
13.   Inside the League, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, op.cit., page 88.
14.   See: Crusader who gave lift-off to a PM., The Weekend Australian, 1-2 August 2015.
15.   Ibid; and, John Maynes and the National Civic Council, Chapter 12, The CIA's Australian Connection, Denis Freney, (Sydney, 1977), pp. 59-67; and, B.A. Santamaria, Your most obedient servant, selected letters: 1938-96, Edited, Patrick Morgan, (Victoria, 2007), pp.185-86; and, Catholic spies in ASIO's network, Australian, 11 August 2017.
16. Scott Morrison signs on with global political network home to 'intolerant far right', The New Daily, 14 September 2022.
17.   Ibid.
18.   Ibid.
19.   See:  Jacinta Price
20.  Wikipedia: Dominic Perrottet.
21.   See: A right wing and a prayer, The Weekend Sydney Morning Herald, 10-11 September 2005; and, Putsch to extremes, The Weekend Australian, 17-18 September 2005; and, Ardent Nazi took Liberal to extremes, Obituary: Lyenko Urbanchich (1922-2006), The Weekend Sydney Morning Herald, 4-5 March 2006; and, A man and his dogma, The Weekend Australian, 14-15 April 2007.
22.   Wikipedia: Dominic Perrottet.
23.   Party animals, The Weekend Sydney Morning Herald, 1-2 July 2006.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Solidarity with the garment workers of Bangladesh

Written by: Garment Workers’ Trade Union Centre, Bangladesh on 12 November 2023

 

We have received a request from Bangladesh to support the struggles of garment workers. In the face of severe repression, including killings, they are demanding to be lifted above their poverty-level wages. According to Australian support group ActionAid, “the mainly women workers at the heart of the industry are routinely expected to work 12-to-16-hour days, six days a week in unsafe and exploitative working conditions.” Organisations such as Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA should take on working for the support of Bangladeshi’s exploited workers.

November 08, 2023 

Minimum Wage Movement: 230 USD for a Month 

International Call of Immediate Solidarity Action for the Struggle of Garment Workers of Bangladesh

The Garment Workers' Trade Union Centre (GWTUC), representing the interests over five million garment workers in Bangladesh, is a major global supplier of garments. They have called upon all stakeholders involved in the industry, both within and outside the country, as well as the government, to heed the demands of the ongoing movement for a minimum monthly wage of 25,000 BDT (230 USD now). This wage has remained stagnant at only 8,000 BDT (73 USD) for the past five years. 

In support of the wage increase movement for workers in Bangladesh, the GWTUC calls on workers worldwide and the downtrodden to unite against the repressive owners and their government. During peaceful worker demonstrations, the government resorted to violence. Despite being the primary clothing supplier to the world, Bangladesh’s garment industry workers receive the lowest wages globally. Foreign buyers and multinational corporations in this supply chain should be held accountable. Simultaneously, the GWTUC calls upon the autocratic government of Bangladesh to stop now the human rights violations, surveillance through cell phones and social media, the killing of unarmed civilians, and the false cases and trail against trade union leaders. The world is urged to raise their voice against these injustices, and GWTUC represents this perspective.

The current wages make it nearly impossible for workers to make ends meet, and all stakeholders, including local owners, international retail brands, and other supply chain beneficiaries, should take a humane and sensitive approach to safeguard the lives of these workers who power the apparel industry. 

Bangladesh ranks as the world's second-largest apparel supplier, with major brands like Adidas, Gap, Calvin Klein, H&M, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, Nike, and Tommy Hilfiger manufacturing their products here. However, Bangladeshi workers receive the lowest wages among their global counterparts.
Workers have been submitting demands to the government for nearly three years, and they are now initiating activities to increase their wages. The latest protest erupted when employers proposed a minimum wage of only 10,400 BDT. 

Protests for a higher minimum wage began on October 23, as it was revealed that the wage would increase to only 10,400 BDT per month, effective from December. As in the past, protests led to confrontations with the police and hooligans affiliated with the ruling party.

In three separate industrial areas, the police are using force to suppress extensive worker protests. They are arresting hundreds of workers and filing false cases against thousands of workers, including trade union leaders. 

So far, at least five workers have been killed due to police and ruling party hooligans' torture. One of them, Rasel Hawladar, was shot from a point blank range and killed at 30th October. A worker named Imran died in the fire on the same day. These protests have now spread to various industrial areas, and violence and oppression continue. Workers have gone on strike and ceased working in factories. Unable to force them back to work, factory owners are now seeking negotiations with worker representatives, including those from the Garment Workers’ Trade Union Centre. Among all these, on November 8, the government has proposed a minimum wage of 12,500 BDT for the workers. The workers rejected the proposal and announced to continue the movement. Workers refuse to return to work with the proposed minimum wage. In response, the ruling party and factory owners are jointly threatening local union leaders, hinting at the possibility of arresting and imprisoning these leaders if the strike persists. On November 8, police fired at a workers rally again and killed another woman worker, Anjuara Khatun.

The government is in discussions with GWTUC on one hand. On the other hand, various false allegations are being rapidly processed against the top leadership of GWTUC, including Vice President Joly Talukdar, General Secretary Sadekur Rahman Shamim, and Deputy General Secretary Monzur Moin. Due to the judiciary's complete dependence on the government in the current governance system of the country, GWTUC is calling on the global community to stand against the unjust incarceration of top trade union leaders again for an extended period. Additionally, GWTUC are asking to the working class of the France to raise their voice in protest of the act by the French government, for serving Bangladeshi autocratic government by giving aggressive surveillance technology which is barbarically using against human rights activists, trade unionist and democratic movement. They have urged people around the world to join this cause.

The garment workers of Bangladesh are demanding a minimum monthly wage of 25,000 Bangladeshi Taka and are struggling against the factory owners. Despite facing various atrocities, the movement continues. We call on all of our fraternal trade unions to stand in solidarity with the ongoing movement of the workers in Bangladesh. 

Workers of the World, Unite! 

Long live, Internationalism and Solidarity! 

Thank You 

Maria Ferdawsi 
International Affairs Secretary 
Garment Workers’ Trade Union Centre, Bangladesh

Further reading and links:

http://Bangladesh police clash with protesting garment workers | Business and Economy News | Al Jazeera

http://Anjana's Story - ActionAid Australia

http://Our Projects | Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Albanese’s visit to China – a different China from the one Whitlam visited in 1973

Written by: Ned K. on 11 November 2023

 

(Above: Albanese and Xi Jinping   Photo source: Twitter)

Recently Prime Minister Albanese visited China and met with the Chinese Communist Party's leader Xi Jinping. Albanese and his government know they have a problem. Their political and military allegiance is with US imperialism and this has deepened through its commitment to AUKUS, nuclear submarines and an expansion of US military bases of one form or another in Australia. US imperialism's main target is China. The problem for Albanese and his government is that China also remains Australia's major trading partner and is likely to remain so for many years to come. 

Albanese came away from his visit to China all smiles in the hope that China's tariffs on Australian products will be lifted. He also trotted out the same mantra of previous Prime Ministers about their concern about "human rights" violations in China, a few days after China would have noted that Australia abstained on the UN vote for an immediate Ceasefire in Gaza!

Albanese's visit to China came 50 years since Prime Minister Whitlam's visit to China in 1973 which was a landmark visit because Australia recognised the People's Republic of China before the US did so. Albanese in his visit was hoping to repair trade relations between the two countries and paint a picture of himself as following in the footsteps of Whitlam as far as relations with China goes.

However, there are some important differences regarding the relationship between Australia and China in 1973 and in 2023 and also the relationship between Australia and the USA.

In 1973 when Whitlam visited China, China was starting to emerge from the Cultural Revolution and was still on the path to building a socialist country with the ruling CCP under the leadership of Mao Zedong. In 1973, Whitlam made murmurs about whether it was in Australia's interests to have the US-owned Pine Gap and other military bases in Australia. The CIA was meddling in Australia's internal affairs and the US embassy in Australia was openly concerned about Whitlam's murmurs.

In 2023 when Albanese visited China, China was no longer on the path to building a socialist country, but challenging US imperialism as the world's number one capitalist economic system "with Chinese characteristics". President Biden of the USA and US imperialism's mouthpiece in the media in Australia, the Murdoch Press, were impressed with Albanese's total commitment to AUKUS and the USA's use of Australia as a military base from which to launch attacks on China when required. 

China in 2023 has expanded economically like previous imperialist powers with a very visible and wealthy capitalist class of private and state-owned corporations and individual company directors. 

Evidence of Chinese capitalist expansion sometimes hits the news headlines such as the Chinese company operating the Port of Darwin, a few hundred kilometres away from large US military bases in Australia! 

There are other forms of Chinese capitalist expansion into Australia that Chairman Mao and Whitlam, when they met in 1973, would never have imagined! An example of this was tucked away in a report in the Australian Financial Review on Wednesday 8 November 2023. The reporting article was headed "Chinese buyers use private jets to swoop in on Toorak mansions".

The report said that a real estate agent in Melbourne, Mr Bragilevsky, "facilitated $135 million of real estate deals in Toorak in the past 6 months and all these buyers were Chinese". One of the buyers from China was Xin Zhang who bought a Toorak mansion for $21.5 million. Another Chinese client, a Mr Jin Du, the chief executive of a clothing manufacturer, bought a mansion on fashionable Whernside Avenue Toorak for $33.5 million. 
Mr Bragilevsky said "the Chinese will pay over the odds for single dwellings. These will serve as the family home with their children attending prestige schools like Scotch College"!

The Albanese government can see that it needs China as a trade partner for its own electoral survival but that it must continue to kow-tow to US imperialism or face the same or similar fate as the Whitlam government - a semi coup orchestrated by USA.

There is an alternative for an Australian government. That is to have trust in the people of Australia to back Australia having an independent foreign policy and removal of all foreign power owned military bases in Australia. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Bosses still out to undermine Awards in changing workforce

Written by: (Contributed) on 7 November 2023

 

While the federal government in Canberra makes minor amendments and deals with opposition to their Closing the Loopholes Bill, some reports emerging about the changing composition of the Australian workforce have not raised concerns from the business-classes.

In fact, the business-classes have remained totally quiet about the massive growth of temporary work visas, which hinder security of longer-term, viable employment and permanent residency leading to citizenship status.

It provides evidence of a business-class agenda marked by attack on basic Award terms and conditions of employment being largely unaccountable, a plan designed to ensure many workers remain employed, indefinitely, on the vulnerable basis at the whim of their employers.

Criticism of the Closing the Loopholes Bill, passing through Canberra, has been the rallying cry of the Australian business-classes. Some of the complaints have been particularly revealing; while casualisation remains a huge problem, the political line of the business-classes is that it remains a matter of choice and the 25 per cent paid over the standard wage is a fair outcome for not having sick leave, annual leave and other entitlements; a position symptomatic of industrial relations conducted on level-playing fields with economic trickle-down wealth rubbish. (1) The business lobby, in conjunction with the Opposition in Canberra, have, nevertheless, launched a multi-million dollar campaign to challenge the legislation.  

It is not particularly difficult to establish why the business-classes remain so agitated about the Bill; an official statement from Canberra, for example, has accused opposition to Labor's proposed legislation as 'being solely motivated by a desire to keep wages low'. (2) Decades of economic rationalism and exploitation of workers has created huge profits which have not 'trickled down', but, to the contrary, enriched the already wealthy and powerful business lobby; they are now, therefore, squealing like stuck pigs, realising their game is up!

For 2.7 million Australian workers employed as casual workers, for example, opposition to the legislation completely overlooks the fact they remain on minimal credit ratings due to no security of employment and, therefore, remain on the economic fringes of mainstream Australian society, subsisting on the day-by-day basis with little opportunity for longer-term financial planning and enhanced outcomes. Mortgages and car loans are a major problem. Many have also been long-term casual workers for years, seemingly, almost forgotten.

Casual workers tend to be difficult for trade unions to recruit and organise, for a variety of reasons. The temporary nature of their employment creates conditions whereby longer-term planning for improved terms and conditions of employment take lower priority over receiving their pay every week. Immigrants arriving in Australia from some countries may also be cautious about joining a union in fear of retaliation from employers; in countries such as the Philippines and India, two large immigrant groups in Australia, trade union activists are often targeted by far-right para-military organisations and killed.  

Official statistics reveal Australia has a total workforce of those aged between 18 and 67 years, of 14,115,100; a participation rate of about 66 per cent, however, leaves only 9,428,886 million. (3) In reality the true figure is likely to be far lower, with those of working age not officially registered as unemployed or elsewhere. When comparing the small size of the Australian workforce with the estimated $3.3 billion Super theft by employers each year, it is not difficult, however, to establish what the business-classes regard as ethical best practice. (4)  

When broken down into component parts, the Australian workforce would also appear to have changed in composition in recent years. While the country has always been dependent upon immigration for a reliable workforce, in recent years there has been a dramatic increase in temporary work visas. The latest official statistics reveal nearly 2.3 million workers live in Australia without permanent residency. (5)

Many of those residing in Australia on temporary work visas also never access permanent residency for a variety of reasons: better prospects elsewhere, high rents, problems with employers, bureaucracy. In fact, during the past financial year, for example, those on temporary work visas rose 424,000, 'more than twice the number of enduring settlers'. (6)

The Australian economy has also been noted as stagnating during the three months to June, with at least one in eight mortgage-holders now, 'unable to make ends meet … and … Australians may have been working harder and longer to maintain a reasonable standard of living as the cost of living soared'. (7) Those casually employed, together with those on temporary visas, must find living in Australia, at the present time, financially very difficult.

It is also significant to note a substantial proportion of those on temporary visas do not necessarily enter the Australian workforce as skilled workers, revealing shortages of labour in those areas of unskilled and semi-skilled employment. In fact, in the 2020-21 year, when the permanent program accepted 160,000 new immigrant workers, only half were in the skilled sector; later in the 2022-23 year, only 73 per cent were skilled. (8) Unskilled and semi-skilled workers are usually paid basic Award rates of pay or slightly above on workplace agreements, while skilled workers and trades-people receive far more.

The early experiences of immigrant workers in Australia often include rampant wage theft, as they are not aware of their rights and the obligations of employers. (9) A recent study conducted by Unions NSW and the Migrant Workers Centre found more than one-fifth of immigrant workers were paid less than other workers for the same job and 19 per cent 'lost an opportunity for promotion at work because of their visa status'. (10) So much for a fair go. A similar study conducted by the ACTU in May also established the hourly pay rate between casual workers and those permanently employed had risen to 28 per cent; casual workers earned $11.59 less an hour than their permanent work colleagues. (11)

When added together, 2.7 million casual workers and 2.3 million workers on temporary visas comprise a substantial proportion of the Australian work-force, although there may be some overlap. The former, however, have been targeted by the business-classes for special attention, to undermine government planning for permanent employment provision and increased wage rates, whilst the latter have been subject to silence as they are being systematically used to undermine Award wage rates, and terms and conditions of employment.

The problem, nevertheless, has already been highlighted by a top bureaucrat in Canberra, Martin Parkinson, who detailed how, 'what we've done without ever setting out to do it … is we've created a guest worker program with a permanent underclass of people who are temporary migrants … they have no pathways to permanency, they have no idea what their status is, but we also don't force them to leave'. (12) So there!

The silence of the business-classes over the matter is, therefore, revealing!

They have 2.3 million workers who live in fear of losing their employment as they are not entitled to welfare benefits and, therefore, remain in Australia for their livelihoods at the whim of their employers. The master-and-servant type relationship has been pushed by employers to undermine basic Award terms and conditions of employment and standard industrial relations. Those on the receiving end of this standard business practice continue to suffer, in silence. It is a total disgrace!

What is urgently required is for more stringent policing of the powers of the business classes
by trade union delegates and officials, by allowing open access to financial records and incriminating information, and for the judiciary to then act in the appropriate manner and secure criminal convictions!

1.     See: Casuals still in danger under Labor's blue-print. Australian, 2 November 2023; and, Survival of the richest, Oxfam publication, 2020.
2.     Pub giant toasts changes for casual workers, The Weekend Australian, 4-5 November 2023.
3.     Labour Force, Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 19 October 2023.
4.     Pub giant, Weekend Australian, op.cit., 4-5 November 2023.
5.     See: Migration reboot to target skilled talent, Australian, 30 October 2023.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Flat-out working but going nowhere, Australian, 11 October 2023.
8.     Migration reboot, Australian, op.cit., 30 October 2023.
9.     See: New migrants the key victims of wage theft, Australian, 24 May 2023.
10.   Pay rorts rife for migrant workers, Australian, 22 June 2023.
11.   Casual pay gaps at record levels, Australian, 23 May 2023.
12.   Migration reboot, Australian, op.cit., 30 October 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Imperialism and the Israeli state condemned Palestinians to poverty.

Written by: Ned K. on 5 November 2023

 

In his book Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine, Jeff Halper provides readers with an insight into how imperialism and the Israeli state imposed their neo-liberal economic policies on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) to impoverish the Palestinian people.

Harper says that the foundation of neoliberal control was the Paris Protocol of 1994 which gave Israel control over Palestinians and customs and trade, two thirds of the Palestinian Authority's revenue and 40% of its spending. Israel since then controlled all the points of entry into Palestinian territory giving it power over Palestinian imports and exports.

Even worse, the imperialist backed Paris Protocol gave Israel control over the licensing of both industrial and commercial Palestinian enterprises, plus control over shipping and insurance agents that Palestinian businesses had to use.

By 2021 manufacturing owned by Palestinians had declined to 10% of the economy and 90% of industrial enterprises in the Occupied Territories employed less than five people. 

Neoliberal "reforms" prioritized the West Bank over Gaza under attempts by Israel and western powers led by the USA and supported by the Australian Government to isolate Hamas which in 2006 was the elected government of Gaza. Israel expanded industrial zones attached to their expanding settlements on Occupied Land and used cheap Palestinian labour to serve Israeli owned businesses.

Over time, the Occupied Palestinian Territories’ economies became co-opted in to Israel's "free market" economy, itself dependent on imperialist finance capital.

By 2021 less than 1% of so-called 'development funds' from the West via Israel into the Palestinian Occupied Territories economies went to agriculture.

By 2018 unemployment in the West Bank was 31%. In Gaza unemployment was a staggering 52%!

70% of Palestinians in 2018 lived on less than $2 per day. 

60% of Palestinian imports are from Israel and 80% of its exports go to Israel. So not only has Israel backed by the western powers de-developed the Palestinian Territories’ economies (that have never been strong in any event) but made them dependent on Israel.

The Israeli economy in 2021 was 60 times the size of the economies of West Bank and Gaza and with more and more land disappearing through illegal Israeli settlements, the situation in 2023 was even worse.

It is in this economic context of deliberate economic impoverishment that Hamas launched its attack on Israeli settlements north of Gaza.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Strength In Diversity - The Australian Working Class

Written by: Ned K. on 3 November 2023

 

(Above: Victorian dairy workers, members of the United Workers Union display unity in strike action in October)

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has recently released its Population By Country Of Birth Report for 2022. The Report recorded that the overseas-born people in Australia represented 29.5% of the total population. 

According to the Report, by international standards, Australia has a high proportion of overseas-born people. The USA has 15.3%, Canada has 21.3 % and France has 13.!%.

The USA figure may be much higher if undocumented migrant workers, arguably the backbone of the US economy are included.

Although people born in England are still the largest migrant group at 961,000, the number of migrants born in England is steadily declining. The number of migrants born in developing countries continues to increase. Indian-Australians born overseas number 750,000, with large numbers of people born in China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Nepal also looking to build their lives in Australia. The total number of overseas-born people in Australia is 7.7 million out of a total population of about 26 million.

There are overseas-born migrants in smaller numbers from many other developing countries from Asia, Africa and South America.

Most of the new migrants have to work for a living and make up a significant portion of the working class. They come from different cultures and have experienced different economic and political lives in their countries of birth. 

For generations since British colonial invasion of this continent, the ruling class has hoped new migrants and First Nations People turned out as a good source of cheap labour for the needs of capitalism's industries. 

In the age of the internet and now Artificial Intelligence, the nature of work is constantly changing but the ruling class still needs workers to create surplus value from which profits are derived.

New migrant workers are awake up to this and participate in collective action with other workers in pursuit of common goals as cost of living continues to rise. Sometimes they participate in workers struggles despite their visa status and threats from some employers of dobbing them to Immigration Department authorities for working when their visa has expired or is awaiting extension.

Many new migrants from developing countries in particular were ineligible to vote on the Voice Referendum but empathize with First Nations people because of their own experiences in their country of origin. 

This empathy with First Nations people's struggles and the experiences in their countries of origin strengthens the working class as a whole.

This in stark contrast to the ruling class and their press barons like the Murdoch group who look for every opportunity to weaken and divide the working class.
 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

For a United Front against Fossil Fuels and Feral Species

Written by: Alan Jackson on 3 November 2023

 

(Above: Original image Queensland Fire and Emergency Services facebook)

This week, dozens of fires have burned across Queensland. More homes have burned in the state than during the 2019–2020 Black Summer – 57 so far this year, compared to 49. 

The current fires are peculiar compared to previously because the fires aren’t being slowed in any capacity by nighttime which usually brings lower temperatures and more moisture in the air. Queensland South-East and western downs regions are seeing more than five times more nighttime hotspots than average. (1) This is not an isolated issue and corresponds to similar cases in Canada, Spain, Greece and many other countries. Strongly permeated by ongoing climate change due to capitalism’s inherent infinite expansion of a finite planet and gutting of safer more pricey alternatives for cheaper and dangerous alternatives that destroy the environment.

Adding petroleum so to speak to this already heated situations is a key ingredient in Hawaii’s deadly Maui fires — unmanaged invasive grasses, like the highly inflammable buffel grass — is also spreading throughout vast areas of Australia, prompting a warning about the increased risk to people, houses and biodiversity on this side of the globe. 

Buffel grass expansion is growing further south at an accelerated rate and has the ability to grow in 60-70% of Australia, particularly in dry and arid climates which are so very common place in Australia. Buffel grass is also tough to manage with the labour required being intensive and expensive due to buffel grass’s widespread distribution often in remote areas. (2) Almost 50% of the Tjoritija/MacDonnell national park west of Alice Springs has been burnt since the start of 2023 with Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife senior director Chris Day stating “if we only had native grass in the landscape we would find these fires much less intensive”. (3)  To date, an area twice the size of Tasmania has been burnt in the NT.

Not only is the damage from the expansion of buffel grass ecological due to the fires it permeates but it is also cultural effecting Fist Nations people directly through its destruction of native plant biodiversity that is so important to their daily lives. 

Buffel grass is one of the worst invaders of arid ecosystems worldwide. Across Central Australia, buffel grass was deliberately planted at scale since the 1950's by the NT Government, CSIRO and pastoralists as a feed for cattle and as a dust suppressant for degraded lands (usually due to overstocking). Buffel grass outcompetes native wildlife and is considered a transformer weed due to its ability to change habitat and is greatly impacting First People’s culture and connection to country. For many years Aboriginal leaders from affected areas have been speaking out and demanding action to mitigate the buffel grass threat. Buffel is still not considered a weed in the Northern Territory despite it being declared so in South Australia in 2015. Buffel affects the viability of bush foods, bush medicines and plant materials to be harvested, in addition to altering hunting practices. Culturally significant animal and plant species are to also be impacted. (4)

The reason that Buffel grass and climate change have been allowed to gut Australia’s climate and habitat is due to monopoly capitalism and its failure to shut down fossil fuel industries allowing global warming to permeate. Inherently connected to capitalism’s insatiable drive for profit is the pastoral industry’s profit-before-environment over-grazing and denuding of country, followed by introduction of invasive species like cane toads, and grasses such as buffel grass and the failure of the governments and pastoralists to manage crops that aren’t native to our country. 

These fires and the ecological destruction of the country cannot be stopped unless capitalism is dismantled. A system predicated on infinite expansion of a finite planet cannot fix our ecological disasters and societal ills. Socialism is a necessity. In the meantime, a United front of the First Nations people, small and medium-sized farmers, regional townsfolk and the urban working classes must be agitated, organised, mobilised and unleashed in mass united struggle against buffel grass, global warming and unhealthy environmental practices that continue to destroy Australia’s environment and First Nations peoples’ daily life necessities. 

I write this on the traditional land of the Butchulla people and recognise the abhorrent appropriation that led to my fortunate dwelling here.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Support for Albanese, Wong and Marles declines, even within their own ranks

Written by: Ned K. on 3 November 2023

 

Within the governing Labor Party parliamentarians there are a range of views regarding the Palestinians struggle against Zionist state of Israel and its imperialist backers, led by the USA. 

Some in the ALP government such as Tony Bourke are more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and are also worried about an election voter backlash in his western Sydney electorate. Others like Sue Lines from WA are strong supporters of the Palestinians.

However, the decisive leadership of the ALP Government in Albanese, Defence Minister Marles and Foreign Minister Wong are firmly in the Zionist/US imperialist camp.

They were quick to condemn Hamas when it attacked Israeli forces and settlements in occupied Palestinian land north of the Gaza open air prison and quick to join the USA in branding them as a "terrorists".  Albanese and Wong in particular had some support from the Australian people when they attacked Hamas over reports of killing civilans.

However their support from the Australian people started to go downhill from there. 

As the Zionist Israeli regime launched its devasting military arsenal on the people of Gaza and to a lesser extent in the West Bank, Albanes, Marles and Wong pushed the US imperialist line that Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas. 

They repeated ad nauseam that Hamas was a "terrorist" organization, conveniently omitting that Hamas was actually an elected government of Gaza which even former US President Jimmy Carter said was a fact. 

Their justification for condemning Hamas was the killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas. 

The Israeli military's response in killing thousands of Palestinian civilians including children in Gaza has not been met by cries of Israeli Government "terrorism"  by Albanese, Marles and Wong. They still push the line of the Israeli Government and US imperialism that Israel has the "right to defend itself"! 

As the situation in Gaza worsens for the people, many rank-and-file people within the ALP and trade unions in particular can see that the struggle in Gaza is one of an oppressed, poorly armed Palestinian indigenous people and an Israeli military force armed with the most advanced weapons and financial backing of the USA. 

The other day, one young ALP member said in a lunchtime conversation that it was time to "call them out" (ie Albanese, Marles and Wong) regarding their " disgraceful" lack of support for the Palestinians.

Another young ALP member said that she thought Israel wanted to flatten the northern part of Gaza and everything in it and expand Israeli settlements into more Palestinian land!

In response, another ALP member said, "And the rest. Israel intends flattening the whole of Gaza and getting rid of all the Palestinians"

These young people were hopeful that with "Left" faction leaders Albanese and Wong in key positions of Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, there would be progressive change especially on foreign policy. First, they were served up with AUKUS and nuclear submarines and now with Australian Government support for the Zionist regime of Israel!
Albanese, Marles and Wong then would have heard the views of Sydney's western suburbs people of the Islamic faith saying they would never vote ALP again after the Sydney Opera House was lit up in Israeli colours of blue and white.

To top off their commitment to the Zionist regime and the USA the Australian Government could not bring itself to support the UN Resolution for a Cease Fire in Gaza. 

Then Albanese, Wong and Marles must have had a light bulb moment, but with a pretty dimly lit globe. 

They started saying that Israel should continue its aggressive military push into Gaza to "defend itself against Hamas" but kill less civilians in the process. 

They could still not bring themselves to say Cease Fire Now!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Microsoft buys into AUKUS and Australian surveillance industry

Written by: (Contributed) on 31 October 2023

 

(Above; original image by freepik0

An announcement that Microsoft was planning joint operations with Australian security agencies has revealed higher level Cold War security provision with the military-industrial complex. It has also revealed even closer diplomatic links between Australia and the United States, and a further escalation of hostilities directed toward China across the Indo-Pacific region. While ostensibly concerned with cyber-related defence and security concerns, the move will affect every level of Australian society, directly or indirectly. 

The planned $5 billion upgrade of Australian defence and security provision with cyber strategy by Microsoft had been additional to the already $9.9 billion allocated for the Redspice program with Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) last year. (1) There is little ambiguity about the planned upgrade: resting on the Redspice program where it was formally noted to be linked to the elite Five Eyes intelligence sharing facilities and the AUKUS defence and security for 'supporting a secure Indo-Pacific region', the new bumper Cyber Security Strategy (CSS) has been primarily directed toward countries considered adversaries; it is intended to be fully operational by 2030 as the 'second pillar' of AUKUS focussed upon 'technology sharing of advanced capabilities'. (2)

Two features of the CSS include: stronger diplomatic links between the US and Australia; and intelligence facilities primarily concerned with more efficient information and technology sharing through the use of AI. (3)

When viewed in the context of the present Cold War with China, an escalation of diplomatic hostilities will obviously occur, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region where Australia provides defence and security coverage of the southern half for 'US interests'.   

The announcement that Microsoft was already planning to increase its computer capacities by about 250 per cent during the next two years, reveals a stepping up of Cold War militarism; it rests upon a rapid uptake of AI. (4) When viewed in the context of the previous Cold War, there are far-reaching implications for Australians, directly by placing the country on a war-footing with China, and indirectly by domestic surveillance and monitoring of the civilian population.

There is little doubt that China remains the focus of US-led militarism sweeping the Indo-Pacific region; what, however, clouds the war-drive is the massive domestic surveillance of civilian populations. (5) Numerous US-led military exercises create fictional enemies in the warped minds of those lurking in the corridors of power inside the Pentagon.

Hidden in the official media releases was reference to 'Microsoft's collaboration with the ASD (Australian Signals Directorate – eds) to enhance cyber security for households and business', which can be viewed as contentious. (6) The previous Cold War was marked by massive domestic surveillance and espionage by those welding class and state power over ordinary citizens. Declassified documents, from the period, reveal civil liberties amounted to very little in those eyes of those welding power. 

Beginning in the 1960s, the US formalised Project X, for example, which was based at the US Intelligence Center and School at Port Holabird, Maryland; the project was designed to 'provide intelligence training to foreign friendly governments'. (7) Various 'lessons' provided for students, by US military officials, included extensive profiling of entire populations: 'they included lessons in creating black, grey or white lists of potential adversaries and in making block-by-block inventories of families and their assets to keep tabs of the population'. (8)   

The extensive use of intelligence agents to infiltrate 'a wide array of groups, including political parties, labor unions, youth and student groups, religious organisations, and publishing organisations', was considered a legitimate way for those welding class and state power to gather intelligence for profiling. (9) Today, there is little need for infiltration agents, the required intelligence can be easily collected from cyber-space and social media.

In fact, several years ago the US National Security Agency (NSA) closed a number of intelligence-gathering facilities because 'the NSA's attention shifted to finding ways to exploit the global reach of Google, Microsoft, Venizon and other US technical powers'. (10)

Studies of the US-led telecommunications interception facilities have concluded that the Echelon system has the ability to sift through millions of messages and select intelligence using 'trigger words' which are then used for higher-level analysis and profiling. (11)

The new CSS facilities also include Microsoft establishing nine 'new data centres in Australia', supposedly for protecting the country from cyber-criminals, while declassified documents from the previous Cold War have revealed US foreign policy and 'co-ordinated counter-intelligence activities world-wide … are conducted against … those who oppose the US Defence Department … during peacetime and all levels of conflict'. (12)  

The latter would appear to have taken priority over the former; the military practice was never discarded, only upgraded through the subsequent decades to the present day. The spies in cyber-space are not elsewhere, but within.

And those who fail to learn the lessons of history, have to repeat them over and over again:

                                          We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Microsoft to spend $5 billion 'turbocharging' AI in Australia, Australian, 24 October 2023; and, Redspice, The Guardian (U.K.), 29 March 2022.
2.     Guardian, ibid., 29 March 2022; and, US trip must send signal of unity, Editorial, Australian, 25 October 2023; and, Australian, ibid., 24 October 2023; and, Killing by Algorithm, Declassified Australia, 21 August 2023.
3.     Editorial, Australian, ibid., 24 October 2023.
4.     Microsoft, Australian, op.cit., 24 October 2023.
5.     See: China 'is right at the top' of US watch list, Australian, 26 October 2023; and, Indo-Pacific still 'top of the list', Editorial, Australian, 26 October 2023.
6.     PM enlists Microsoft for cyber war, Australian, 24 October 2023.
7.     Lost History: Project X, Drugs and Death Squads, Robert Parry, The Consortium Magazine, 31 March 1997.
8.     Army's Project X had wider audience,  The Washington Post, 6 March 1997.
9.     Ibid.
10.   The intelligence coup of the century, The Washington Post, 11 February 2020; and, Compromised encryption machines, The Washington Post, 17 February 2020; and, Crypto AG / Five Eyes, The Millennial Source, 15 February 2020; 'Crypto AG – the CIA', The Daily Telegraph (London), 12 February 2020.
11.   Espionage, Spies and Secrets, Richard M. Bennett, (London, 2002), Echelon, pp. 89-93.
12.   Turbocharging, Australian, op.cit., 24 October 2023; and, Army Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program, Army Regulation 381-20, Section 1.5, Mission and Policy, page 1, (declassified, 15 November 1993).  

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Beware AUKUS expansion

Written by: Nick G. on 30 October 2023

 

US imperialism wants to expand AUKUS on several levels, neither of which contribute to global peace or to Australia as an independent and sovereign nation.

Opposition to AUKUS has for very good reasons concentrated on the question of Australia acquiring at a staggering cost of at least $368 billion eight nuclear-powered submarines. This is the so-called First Pillar level of the AUKUS arrangements, and involves a tri-lateral agreement between the US, UK and Australia.

It is possible for this level of the agreement to include other nations. As early as December 2022, at the annual AUSMIN talks, the question arose of incorporating Japan into AUKUS, and there were some light-hearted references to it becoming JAUKUS.

More recently, the UK Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee again raised the matter of expanding AUKUS to include Japan in its Second Pillar of “information sharing”, saying that its aim was to eventually invite Japan into the First Pillar nuclear-powered submarine arrangement.

However, Japanese public opinion is unlikely to support such a move.  This was made clear on September 20 by Abe Nobuyasu, a former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs and former Director-General for Arms Control and Science Affairs at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In an article for the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network, he cautioned that:

…nuclear-powered submarines would be a very different story for Japan. Unlike South Korea, which has already expressed interest in acquiring such submarines, a significant part of the Japanese population still maintains a strong aversion against anything “nuclear.” Japan continues to monitor radioactive releases from American nuclear-powered warships when they visit Japan. There is a historical precedent of Japan abandoning its civil nuclear-powered ship project after an experimental vessel named Mutsu was found to have released radioactive waste. The residents of Mutsu port refused the entry of the ship, leading to its eventual abandonment in 1990.

With the recent election of the New Zealand conservatives, the focus has shifted to Pillar 2 of AUKUS. 

In 1987 New Zealand was thrown out of the Australia-New Zealand-US (ANZUS) Alliance after Wellington banned nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion from its territory. However, Pillar 2 of AUKUS relates to creating a shared platform for military expansion as defined in the following areas: 

• Undersea capabilities. Through the AUKUS Undersea Robotics Autonomous Systems (AURAS) project, our nations are collaborating on autonomous underwater vehicles, which will be a significant force multiplier for our maritime forces. Initial trials and experimentation of this capability are planned for 2023. 
• Quantum technologies. The AUKUS Quantum Arrangement (AQuA) will accelerate investments to deliver generation-after-next quantum capabilities. It will have an initial focus on quantum technologies for positioning, navigation, and timing. Together, we will integrate emerging quantum technologies in trials and experimentation over the next three years. 
• Artificial intelligence and autonomy. Trilateral cooperation on artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy will provide critical enablers for future force capabilities, improving the speed and precision of decision-making processes to maintain a capability edge and defend against AI-enabled threats. Early work is focused on accelerating adoption, and improving the resilience of, autonomous and AI-enabled systems in contested environments. 
• Advanced Cyber. In light of the importance of the cyber domain to advanced capabilities, we are focusing our efforts on strengthening cyber capabilities, including protecting critical communications and operations systems. 
• Hypersonic and counter-hypersonic capabilities. The AUKUS partners will work together to accelerate development of advanced hypersonic and counter-hypersonic capabilities. 
• Electronic warfare. The electromagnetic spectrum is increasingly contested. The three countries will work together to share understanding of tools, techniques, and technology to enable our forces to operate in contested and degraded environments. 
• Innovation. Our work on innovation aims to accelerate our respective defense innovation enterprises and learn from one another, including ways to more rapidly integrate commercial technologies to solve warfighting needs. 
• Information sharing. We will expand and accelerate sharing of sensitive information, including as a first priority enabling workstreams that underpin our work on agreed areas of advanced capabilities.

New Zealand Nationals leader and Prime Minister Chris Luxon has confirmed that New Zealand is looking to join Pillar 2. If Japan and South Korea also join Pillar 2, it will mean an expanded development of war capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region.

The other area of AUKUS expansion is outer space. We have already commented on US plans for expansion of AUKUS to include the space domain. On October 27, further details emerged of these plans, namely a redrafting of US Space Command’s Joint Publication 3-14 (JP 3-14): Joint Space Operations.

This includes more clearly establishing the fact that SPACECOM and the other combatant commands will conduct “offensive and defensive space operations” during conflict, using “direct or enabling” capabilities against adversary space assets — that is, spacecraft on orbit, terrestrial control stations and/or the data links between them. It also details SPACECOM’s area of responsibility (AOR) in joint operations.

The new JP 3-14 introduces the term “astrographic” to describe SPACECOM’s area of responsibility, which starts at 100 kilometers (54 nautical miles) above mean sea level.  It says that SPACECOM’s AOR is “defined by altitudes rather than a nations’ borders or latitude/longitudinal coordinates.”  It stretches into “exgeosynchronous” orbit — that is, beyond about 36,000 kilometers (about 19,000 nautical miles) above mean sea level. 

Another change in the new JP 3-14 is the avoidance of the terms “space control” and “counterspace” in acknowledgement that space control “implies ownership,” which could be read as counter to the UN 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Euphemisms are the first refuge of the dishonest and it is of some concern that the US is now prepared to ditch terms which over many years have been used as code for offensive space operations and the weaponry to support them.

It is in this context that the new agreement signed between Albanese and Biden on October 26 needs to be seen. The two countries have signed a Technology Safeguards Agreement that will create more opportunities for US space companies to launch space vehicles from Australia. Underscoring the military implications is the design of the agreement – it seeks to protect sensitive US space launch technology and data. According to the online US Breaking Defense in a comment on the Biden-Albanese meeting:

The US Space Force is keenly interested in the capability to launch military payloads from Australia and the wider Southern Hemisphere.

Most spacecraft are launched eastward to take advantage of the speed boost provided by the Earth’s rotation, and the closer to the equator — where the Earth’s surface spins the fastest due to the laws of physics — the launch takes place, the bigger that boost. Australia is not only fairly close to the equator, but also launching eastward from the continent allows easier orbital insertion over China.

Any plans for the expansion of AUKUS run counter to the objective of an independent and peaceful Australia. 

They need close and careful scrutiny by all who refuse to see further surrendering of Australian sovereignty to the US war machine.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Free Palestine! The National Liberation struggle of the Palestinian people is just!

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 28 October 2023

 

The massive offensive by Hamas forces, with numerous rockets, the breaking through the Israeli prison fence and the entry of Palestinian fighters into seven Israeli-occupied areas of Palestine on Oct 7, is the just reaction of a people who, for decades, have been suffocating under Israel’s murderous grip. 

It is an act produced by the ongoing crime of the Israeli-Zionist-settler state against the Palestinian people.

The crime is the transformation of the Gaza Strip into the largest prison in the world. Israel's fascists have driven Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants into conditions of unbelievable poverty and misery through a 16-year blockade. The Israeli state is displaying its brutal dictatorship and its moves towards implementing a "final solution" of the complete annihilation of the Palestinian people in its massive bombardment of houses, and apartment, hospital and other civic buildings in densely populated areas, heightened by its ‘total blockade’ of food, water, medicine and fuel.

The crime is continuous encroachment of Palestinian land by settlers of the Israeli occupiers with the effective blessing of all Israeli governments - "left-wing", "centrist", "right-wing" and in recent years "far-right" and openly fascist parties. The new crime of forcing abandonment of north Gaza under fierce bombardment strives to extend and consolidate land seizures.  

That crime, continuous, now accelerated and fascist, is ultimately directed at the expulsion of Palestinians from their land through the 1948 war of conquest, the 1967 war, repeated lesser wars and ‘incursions’ that led to the occupation of most of Palestine and the suffocating control of the rest by the fascist-Zionists of Israel, on behalf of and dependent on arms and funding by the USA.

The US has done all it could to plant a watchdog state in the Middle East to dominate the region and, to provide a platform for interventions to ensure its superiority in this crucial - geopolitical and economic-energy – crossroads.

Given the characteristics of Hamas, its illusions about some of the reactionary regimes in the region and its connections with others, this attack is also linked to Palestinians’ efforts to blow up the Biden administration's promotion of agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, by which the US strives to further "degrade" the "Palestinian issue".

Despite reservations about the disposition of the Hamas leadership, the depth of the preparation of the attack and the response of the occupiers, and, above all, the lack of those ideological and political elements of a communist orientation that could bring victory to the armed struggle, these developments show that, even if they don’t have the leaderships they are due, the people reject their chains! 

The Palestinian people have taken their armed struggle to the heart of the Israeli-Zionist settler state, exposing their own determination and rejection of genocide, while exposing the inherent weakness of their fascist-occupier. Oppression and fascist genocidal extension of their occupation continuously build and rebuild the Palestinian struggle for National Liberation, while exhausting the occupiers’ forces.  

This development multiplies the complications of the Middle East. The region has become a red-hot tangle of contradictions. Significant rearrangements have been taking place. Simultaneously with the events in Gaza, the Turkish bourgeoisie has bombed areas of Iraq and Syria for the umpteenth time, while its drones have been shot down by US forces based in the Kurdish areas of north-eastern Syria. Iran and Saudi Arabia, mediated by China, are trying to find ways to coexist (hence Biden's intervention), while Yemen continues to suffer the long-standing back-breaking war by Saudi Arabia and its allies. Internal contradictions in the Arab world have been tightened by several notches at once. 

The United States, joined by the European Union, accomplices and pillars of fascist-Zionist-settler Israel, and enablers of its crimes against the Palestinian people, issue statements of support and talk about the "right of self-defence" of the occupiers. The Australian government can’t echo US statements fast enough. Grovelling to the USA in supporting Israeli genocidal efforts, the Albanese Labour government continues - shamefully for every progressive person - the support of the Zionist-Settler state that has characterised every Australian government throughout the shameful history of Israeli settler land theft, dispossession and fascist-occupation.

Progressive people all over the earth, the oppressed peoples of the planet, are with the Palestinian David versus the Israeli-American Goliath. They are with the Palestinian people struggling to live with dignity in a free homeland against their fascist-Zionist conquerors who have been murdering them in every way and by every means for 75 long years!

The CPA (M-L) calls on all progressive organizations, every progressive collective, every progressive person, to defend, broadly and massively, on the street and in every corner of the country, the just cause and rights of the struggling Palestinian people to their national liberation.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

“Understanding of Zionism…” available again

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 28 October 2023

 

A Canadian friend has sent us a Canadian reprint of a 3-part article on Zionism that was first published in Vanguard in 1975.

The series provides evidence of collaboration between Nazi and Zionist leaders to prioritise the escape of certain Jews to Palestine at the expense of the vast majority left to suffer and die in the concentration camps. An example is provided of Hungary where Zionist leader Rudolf Kastner collaborated with the man who was Commissar of all German concentration camps, Kurt Becher.  Becher was saved from prosecution at Nuremburg by Kastner, and lived in Germany until 1995. He became a fabulously wealthy businessman in Germany after the war, doing business with Israel. Kastner, however, was prosecuted in Israel and subsequently assassinated. The author claims this may have been to conceal the full extent of the collaboration between Zionist leaders and the Nazis.

At the time of writing, the author did not have access to an equally damning study of the fate of Jews in Holland under the Nazis. Jewish Dutch historian Jacob Presser presented evidence of the collaboration between Zionist Jewish community leaders and the Nazis as the latter progressively deprived Dutch Jews of their rights and shipped them to concentration camps and death. His book,  Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry was published in 1965, but was out of print for many years, only being reprinted in 2010.  

Our Canadian friend suggested we reprint and publish this 3-part series, and a retyped version would have perhaps been more readable, but given the current interest in Israeli Zionism’s war on Gaza Palestinians, we have decided to instead make the Canadian pdf immediately available. It can be accessed here in our booklets section. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The GPS system: military use and US strivings to maintain domination

Written by: (Contributed) on 28 October 2023

 

 

Revelations that the US is urgently seeking to upgrade their dual-use Global Positioning System (GPS) intelligence facilities has emerged due to significant factors, including competition from China and the Russian Federation together with other systems controlled by those usually associated as US allies. 

Serious questions about the effectiveness of the US-led GPS system and defence and security provision appear to have arisen. An insight into the US position, furthermore, can be found amongst studies from the previous Cold War which reveal the nature of US foreign policy toward China in the present Cold War.

During mid-October a media release from Washington found its way into a mainstream Australian outlet. It announced that fears had been raised about the centrality of the US-led GPS, which for fifty years had been a world leader in global navigation, geo-location and time services. (1) Planning has already taken place for the system to be further upgraded with a fleet of satellites to enable 'non-military devices more precise co-ordinates in more indoor and hard-to-reach spaces'. (2)  

Non-military users of the GPS rely upon the facilities for a multitude of household items including clocks and timing devices, smart-phones and other smart-devices, and road-users with location finding. The gadgets are a dominant feature of everyday life in Australia.

What was not divulged, however, was that the GPS is dual-use technology, closely linked to sensitive US-led intelligence facilities. It is, therefore, not surprising to note the GPS was established for use in 1973, coinciding with the official opening of intelligence facilities based on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Pine Gap in Central Australia; other linked facilities included the opening of Silvermine near Cape Town in South Africa with arcs within the Southern Ocean Defence Plan, from Argentina to South Africa, to Diego Garcia, to Pine Gap. (3) Pentagon controlled, it transformed the nature of intelligence-gathering. (4)

While the system has been fully operational since 1995, the US Space Force have now taken control of the system, while still inside the Pentagon. (5)  

Present-day military planning to upgrade the GPS has also included maintaining the original radio frequencies for gadgets, 'to avoid making billions of dependent devices obsolete'. (6)

Studies of the military-uses of the GPS have revealed widespread surveillance and monitoring facilities: the Pine Gap facilities have been noted as possessing the ability to work as a 'multi-purpose vacuum cleaner … sucking electronic signals 35,000 kms into space and feeding them into the enormous computer complex at Pine Gap … unwanted data is sifted out by computers on the ground'. (7) 

The Echelon system has provided the basis for sifting through masses of basic intelligence data and selecting only those items required for higher levels of analysis and profiling. (8) It was working overtime during the pandemic.

Any controversy surrounding the use of the GPS system by the Pentagon for regional surveillance can be easily clarified by the fact the main satellite position was placed over Borneo in Indonesia, at the end of the First Island Chain of the US Island Chain Theory (ICT) and its regional defence and security provision. (9) The island chains represent areas of access and egress into the Asia-Pacific region, which the US have used in an attempt to restrict China's ability to enhance their diplomatic presence and influence in the most dynamic sector of the global economy. (see diagram)

ICT was conveniently shelved at the end of the previous Cold War, then suddenly revamped and directed toward China with the onset of the present one.

The island chains have also been subject to US military planning for their Pacific Deterrence Initiative with networks of precision-strike missiles along the first island chain, costed at $27.4 billion; integrated air missile defence systems have also been planned for the second island chain. (10) The US are clearly planning for military hostilities and ‘real-war scenarios' against China, more likely than not, in the Indo-Pacific region.

Fears, however, have arisen within Pentagon circles that competition from both China and Russia have presented a credible challenge to US-led supremacy with their own GPS.

China's Beidou system, for example, has grown in recent years to have 46 operational satellites which provided global coverage in 2020; the US, by contrast, has only 31 operational satellites. (11) The Beidou system, furthermore, is based on at least thirty precision-enhancing monitoring stations on earth and claims to pinpoint users' locations accurate within several cms. The service also offers ‘basic two-way communications capacities'. (12) Other competitors including Russia and the EU, likewise, already have facilities which offer global coverage. (13) Japan and India have also developed technology for more localised uses in the northern Asia region as part of main US-led systems. (14)

In conclusion, the balance of forces is swinging away from the traditional US-led hegemonic position in the Indo-Pacific region; hidden within Australian defence budgets from Canberra, nevertheless, lies information relating to the extra burden placed on Australian tax-payers to fund US-led military and security provision for ‘US interests' together with wholesale interference with our domestic and everyday communications:

                   We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     US's GPS system at risk of losing top position, Australian, 17 October 2023.
2.     Ibid, and, Wikipedia: List of GPS satellites, detailing that on 15 August 2023, the system had about half of its satellite system officially ‘retired', together with a further two lost while being launched.
3.     Wikipedia, Diego Garcia; and, Maritime Operational and Communications HQ., Front Page, The Star (South Africa), 10 March 1973; and, Security in the Mountain, The Star (South Africa), 17 March 1973.
4.     The CIA and the cult of intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John D, Marks, London, 1976), page 121.
5.     Australian, op.cit., 17 October 2023.
6.     Ibid.
7.     The Secrets of Pine Gap, Willian Pinwill, Australian Penthouse, October 1979, pp. 62-68; and, The Falcon and the Snowman, Robert Lindsay,        (London, 1981), Chapter 34, pp. 237-249.
8.     Espionage, Spies and Secrets, Richard M. Bennett, (London, 2002), Echelon, pp. 89-93.
9.      Secrets of Pine Gap, ibid; and, Diagram – Island Chain Theory.
10.   See: US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei., 5 March 2021; and, US Indo-Pacific Command proposes new missile capabilities to deter China, RFA., 5 March 2021.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 17 October 2023.
12.   Ibid.
13.   Ibid.
14.   Ibid.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

" property="og:description" />

Republished: Understanding of Zionism is necessary to develop struggle against superpowers

Written by: on

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

After the referendum, we cannot fight blindly

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 23 October 2023

 

The enemies of First Peoples have announced their strategy and tactics. Over coming days, weeks, months and years, allies of First Peoples must be ready to join the fight with the clear eyes of truth. 

Years ago, a dear friend said, “We live very different lives Lindy.” She grew up in La Perouse on Botany Bay shores, but her kinship links spread southwards along Yuin land to towards Lake Tyers in Victoria, west into the headwaters of the Snowy River, and north along the coast to her mother’s People. None of those links, she says, is a full stop.  They flow further with connections to all those who make up the First Peoples of this continent and its islands. 

Each day my friend stands for unity and for justice despite ongoing trauma.

Saturday 14th October remains a time of deep grief for the great majority of First Peoples and their allies. But the pain is deeper for those on the front line of the enemy’s attacks. Its offensive has already begun. 

It means allies who have the privilege to live comparatively comfortable lives on stolen lands must stand strong, to show First Peoples they are not alone.

We cannot fight blindly. Non-indigenous people made up the vast majority of combatants in the referendum battle.  We have both the luxury and the ethical obligation to begin summing up the lessons that led to its defeat. 

We need to set aside our own grief and anger and blame, and look with clear eyes at what went wrong.

From the past to the future

The first Aboriginal resistance to invasion began on Bidjigal land and lasted 20 years. It then spread to every corner of what is called Australia, holding back safe settlement on average between ten and thirty years.

How did spears, nulla nullas and boomerangs have such success against the world’s most powerful economic, scientific and military power?  

Bidjigal man Pemulwuy struck the first blow, leading clan alliances of Bidjigal, Dharawal and Dharug. They fought from Botany Bay’s wetlands and high rocky cliffs, to Sydney Town, to Parramatta and many places between.

At Brickfield Hill near what became Sydney’s Central Station, they approached apparently peacefully. A sudden attack, and they disappeared without injury into sunset’s blinding light, where no amount of 18th century firepower could make them visible.

Ground chosen by the enemy

That pattern to strike where the enemy was weak and they were strong was repeated again and again across continent for 150 years.  

When their enemy attacked, they retreated. When their enemy retreated, they attacked. They never fought on ground that suited their enemy. 

The referendum, with all the good will and immense effort in the world, did the opposite. The decision on First Peoples lives was handed to non-Indigenous people. Most were indoctrinated, told half-truths, lied to or empowered to vote in ignorance. In some places and cases vicious racism was let loose. This was ground where the enemy held strength.

Yet 5.5 million still voted yes. That’s no small number. Some who voted no, both First Peoples and allies, will join other campaigns and battles, when First Peoples’ ground is safe and solid and their enemy is disadvantaged.

Victory from defeat

Pemulwuy was killed in 1802 and his son Tedbury in 1810. Pemulwuy’s decapitated head was sent to England, and lost. But his spirit, and of all those who resist in their myriad of different ways, live on. 

On October 14, a long battle ended in defeat. It’s harder and crueller, but we can learn more from defeat than victory. 

The enemy has declared war on multiple fronts. We must deny them the capacity to ever fight on such favourable ground again, where those who don’t know truth in all its fullness or those who act in irrational fear or with malice can so easily be used. We must find ways to disrupt their unity and build our own. 

We must look beneath the surface to those who benefit from the far-right push of Abbott, Dutton, Mundine and Price, the giant corporations which stood on both sides in the referendum, which used it to divide. They are still coming for Aboriginal lands.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Dan Duggan - a shameful anniversary

Written by: Nick G. on 21 October 2023

 

Today marks the first anniversary of the jailing of US-born Australian citizen Dan Duggan.

He was seized by Federal Police officers at the insistence of our US rulers who want to extradite him to face charges in the US. The charges relate to training he undertook of Chinese pilots.

Even assuming the extradition process is legitimate, Duggan could have been kept in home detention, or in a minimum security facility close to home. 
But no, such is the power of the US over Australian politicians and police that he was thrown into the harshest possible environment - a maximum security gaol where he has been held for long periods in solitary confinement. 

Only three hours after he was scooped up by Australian Federal Police on Oct. 21, 2022, a Friday, Dan Duggan was on his way to Bathurst Correctional Centre. He would find himself not just in maximum security, solitary confinement. But in a dry cell.

“A dry cell is one with no toilet or running water. Placement in a dry cell may be suitable for an inmate suspected of concealing contraband within a body cavity or an inmate who has refused to supply a urine sample. No inmate is to be placed in a dry cell for more than 24 hours,” Corrective Services NSW website states. 

Dan should not have been in a dry cell. And he should not have been in a dry cell for two days, nobody should be. These are just two of the first breaches of Dan’s human rights that have been perpetrated on him. Dan remained in Bathurst for about five days until he was transferred to Silverwater. During this time his lawyer Dennis Miralis did not know where he was. His wife and children did not know where he was. Yet Dan had not been charged with any offences in Australia. He has no history of violence. This is what the system can do in Australia. This, apparently, fulfils our extradition treaty with the US.

The state apparatus under capitalism – the judicial system, police, gaols, armed forces – is the coercive, violent expression of capitalist state power. In Australia, that means state power in the service of US imperialism. Its economic, political, diplomatic, cultural and military control of Australia is manifested everyday. Just think of Assange, of AUKUS, of US bases throughout the country, of Murdoch’s media, of war preparations against China, of repetition of US assurances that Israel can do what it likes to the Palestinian people.

Today, Dan Duggan will have been locked up in his own country, in maximum security solitary confinement on the say-so of the United State government for 12 months. This is a horrific breach of Australian sovereignty and a nightmare for an Australian family of eight.

The #DanDuggan Twitter (X) page, supported by his family, pulls no punches:

While Dan has been tortured and has his rights as an Australian citizen stripped away by a government that has bent its knee too far to its US ally, his family has suffered cruel and unusual punishment.

That the Australian government has deliberately chosen to inflict such pain and trauma on an Australian woman Saffrine Duggan and her and Dan’s six children Molly 18, Finn, 17, Rory, 17, Jack 10, Hazel 8 and Ginger 6 is beyond shameful. Labor came to office promising better, kinder government  and almost immediately granted a bridging visa to the Murugappan family including the two young girls born in Australia, releasing them for years of government sponsored torture and trauma. Yet it has turned around six months’ later an incarcerated Dan Duggan, on the back of an unproven and disputed US indictment for events that took place outside the US 12 years ago. Since then not one government agency has been in contact with the family to offer any help. You, the taxpayer, are paying for Dan’s incarceration but the government won’t offer a single one of your cents to helping this family.  Once a week, Dan’s kid’s make the 90 minute drive to Lithgow’s brutal, unwelcoming gaol where they are searched and prodded, sniffed by dogs and moved through up to a dozen security doors. They spend maybe an hour - if they are lucky - in a tiny glass encased room watched constantly by guards. Is this how Australia's politicians, the shadowy bureaucrats who advise them and other decision makers in the security apparatus want their kids to be treated? Is this the Australia that you want to live in?

No, we want to live in a free and independent socialist Australia where Australians determine the direction of the economy, the content of cultures, and exercise the fullest capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy.

We stand with Dan Duggan and demand his release and protection from the vengeful processes of US extradition.

We stand with Assange on the same basis.

We stand with persecuted whistleblowers David McBride and Richard Boyle.

Unite to protect our rights and liberties!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Palestinians just struggle demands support!

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 18 October 2023

 

Hundreds of thousands around the world rallied in the streets of more than 90 cities demanding Israel immediately ends the genocidal bombardment and barbaric blockade of Palestinian Gaza.

The relentless carpet bombing and cutting off power, water, food and medicines into Gaza has left more than 3,500 Palestinians dead with numbers of dead and injured continuing to rise as Israel continues to pound Gaza and threatens military invasion and annihilation of Palestinians.  Israel bombardment is targeting schools, hospitals, Mosques and Churches housing fleeing refugees from north Gaza.

Gaza is an open air prison of displaced and dispossessed Palestinian refugees evicted from their homes and country by the colonial Zionist Israel state with the full support of western imperialist powers.  For 75 years Palestinians have fought for their liberation, resisting Zionist Israel’s ruthless oppression and occupation, backed by US imperialism.

Israel would never be able to maintain and escalate its brutal colonial occupation, expansion of settlements, the Gaza blockade, murdering thousands of Palestinians, without full political and financial backing from U.S. imperialism, pouring nearly $4 billion in military aid every year into Israel.  Since 1948 at the establishment of Israel state and brutal eviction of Palestinians from their homes and country, the US has given Israel more military aid than to any other country.

Israel is a vitally important strategic economic and military base for US imperialism in the Middle East with huge oil and gas reserves in the Mediterranean sea bordering Gaza.  The ordinary people of Palestine and Israel are hostages of the US and Zionist colonial and imperialist domination.

World Wide Solidarity
Solidarity with Palestinians struggle for national liberation is galvanising globally. The long struggles of Palestinians for national liberation resonates strongly with millions of people, especially those living under the heavy boot of colonialism and imperialism. 

Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People identify with the Palestinian people’s shared history and experiences of dispossession, oppression, discrimination, and in their long struggle for self determination.

In Australia, since the start of Israel bombing of Gaza nearly 2 weeks ago protest rallies have been held in many Australian cities.  On the weekend of 13 – 15 October thousands joined protest rallies across the country in most cities, and heard passionate and powerful speeches by Palestinians, First Nations peoples, Moslems, Jews, Christians and many others.  

More rallies will be held on the weekend of 21-23 October.

Many peoples'organisations are releasing statements and petitions condemning Israel.
Australian Palestine Union Solidarity Statement https://auspalestine.org/our-statement/

Reports from around the country ...

Brisbane - Meanjin
Thousands marched through the streets of Brisbane on 13 October.
 Canberra - Ngambri

Canberra held one of its biggest rallies attended by approximately 300 people.  For a city populated largely by public servants and politicians it was a significant and militant protest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sydney- Gadigal

Despite threats, thousands rally in Sydney for Palestine
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Yoav Gallant, Israeli “Defence”
Minister https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-fighting-human-animals- defence-minister

After the Opera House sails and Australian Parliament displayed Israeli flag colours, NSW Premier
Chris Minns used media outrage about smoke flares and anti-semitism to undermine further Palestinian protests in Sydney.

Despite threatening potential protestors with new NSW anti-protest laws, more than 6000 came in defiance.

A speaker from Palestine Action Group told them, “For 75 years these horrors have been inflicted
upon us. This did not start last weekend. This has been ongoing for seven decades.”

He continued, “And what did the world do, when faced with images of the apartheid brutality in the
West Bank? Gaza has been under blockade for 16 years. What did the world do in years past? With
every single war on Gaza? The asymmetric death toll, Palestinians dead in their thousands?

“Because you cannot keep a people locked up, chained, subject to brutality and occupation and the
indignity of the military violence that Israel subjugates us with every single day, and not expect that
would somehow come crashing down.”

Beyond endurance
Professor Peter Slezak, the son of holocaust survivors and for decades a voice for sanctions on Israel,
said thousands of Jews are protesting in New York chanting ‘Not in our name’.

“It’s not anti-Jewish to protest the crimes of the state of Israel,” he declared.

“It was a desperate breakout from a concentration camp by the people of Gaza,” he continued,
saying this so-called ‘unprovoked’ attack came after the decades of attacks by Israel. “The world only
pays attention when Israelis are killed and Palestinians resist,” not when the opposite is true.

Professor Bezak said life in Gaza “is beyond endurance. What did Israel or the world community
expect? How can you trap over two million in Gaza, half of whom are children in the one of the most
densely populated places on the planet?

He condemned the officially stated Israeli policy, of keeping Gazans at starvation level, but still alive,
that Israeli leaders mockingly describe as ‘putting Palestinians on a diet’.

In one attack, “Israeli snipers lined up on a barricade and shot nurses, disabled people in wheelchairs
and hundreds and hundreds of unarmed civilians.”

There have been four military invasions since 2008. 70 percent of the population of Gaza are on humanitarian aid, 40 percent are unemployed, ten percent of the children under five have stunted growth due to malnutrition, 60 percent of Gaza’s school children are anaemic and 90 percent of the water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption.”

Current Israeli leaders have publicly abandoned the so-call two state solution

Al Jazeera gives the hourly toll of new horrors.

The Palestine Action Group speaker concluded, “My message to politicians is Palestine will be free!
And a day of reckoning is coming that a genocide was being perpetrated AND YOU DID NOTHING!
And that shame will live with you forever.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melbourne - Naarm

Justice and equality for all “from the river to the sea”. In Melbourne, on Sunday 15 October, 15,000 rallied and marched through the streets of Melbourne CBD calling for an end to bombing of Gaza and the blockade, end Israeli occupation and the slaughter of Palestinians.

The rally heard passionate and powerful speeches from Australia’s First Nations people,  Palestinians, Moslems and Jews.  Gary Foley, a veteran leader of the First Nations people told the rally that the First Nations people have stood in solidarity with Palestinian people and their liberation for a long time.   He linked the Australian First Nations people’s struggle for land rights and self-determination with the Palestinian struggle against Israel colonialism and imperialism.

Nasser Mashni representing Australians for Palestine Advocacy Network, expressed his heart felt thanks to the thousands who came out in support of the Palestinian people.  He said it was gratifying to see so many from people’s organisations at the rally.  Mashni, son of Palestinian refugees evicted from their Palestinian home during the 1948 Nakba, pointed out the hypocrisy of the successive Australian governments and the media, silent  for decades whilst thousands of Palestinians were being killed.  Mashni told the rally to be proud for standing on the side of justice with the Palestinian people, and not be intimidated. 

The large crowd enthusiastically welcomed a young Jewish speaker who condemned the occupation of Palestine and compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.  Other speakers included representative of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Samah Sabawi (Palestinian poet and writer), Women for Palestine, Janet Rice (Greens) and socialists.  Speakers called for end to apartheid, and justice and equality for all “from the river to the sea”. 

The rally marched through the streets of Melbourne chanting “Free, Free Palestine”,  “End the blockade and bombing of Gaza”, “Israel, USA how many kids did you kill today” and “In our thousands, in our millions we are all Palestinians.”

  

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Statement by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society (Melbourne -Naarm))
“We recognise that Israelis will never truly be free until Palestinians are also free; that for Israelis to be safe, there is no option but to achieve a robust political resolution with Palestinian that demands painful concessions on both sides, including recognizing the reality of the other´s permanency.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adelaide - Kaurna

In Adelaide about 4,000 people attended the biggest Palestinian rally for a long time.  The rally marched from Parliament House onto North Terrace and to Victoria Square.

Imad Mahmoud called on Australian federal and state governments to stop being complicit in Israel's ongoing violent occupation of Palestinian territories.
"If there was no ongoing occupation, there would be no violence and you know that," he said.  "If there was no daily brutal oppression there would be no violence and you know that.
Mike Khizam from Friends of Palestine group said only the people's movement in support of Palestinian people in Gaza could prevent Israel from escalating their aggression into a catastrophic war throughout the Middle East.
Another rally is planned for next Sunday 22 October.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perth - Yagan

Perth rally was attended by 500 people calling for end to the bombing and blockade of Gaza.

 

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Capitalist interference disrupts Australian science

Written by: Leo A. on 18 October 2023

 

It is pretty common under a capitalist system for scientific progress to receive unnecessary obstacles and roadblocks as capitalist interests are given priority. Its predictable that one of Australia’s premier scientific research organizations, the CSIRO, would become a significant target for this kind of interference. Recently, a boiling point within the organisation has gone public.

In late June, internal divisions were exposed within the CSIRO’s leadership. One side, led by the organization’s former chief Larry R Marshall, leaned more toward support for corporate interests such as those involving fossil fuels. Over two decades after he originally left Australia for the United States, Marshall returned and first arrived at CSIRO from Silicon Valley in January of 2015, although even the year prior he had already faced backlash for promoting practices with dubious scientific validity. 
 
The time in which Marshall was chief of the organization saw cutbacks to research into climate change, which was criticized by scientists both in Australia and elsewhere. In November of 2021, oil and gas company Santos announced it was “partnering” with the CSIRO to develop their technology. The organization also undertakes work through the Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance (GISERA), which as the name suggests is largely funded by gas companies. 
 
In opposition to Marshall’s goals, CSIRO board members have indicated that they lean more toward prioritising the Australian public – a position also supported by some politicians, such as Greens senator Barbara Pocock. The result of this conflict between incompatible priorities was that Marshall was refused another term in his role. After leaving the CSIRO, he joined the board of the fourth-largest iron ore mining company on Earth, the Fortescue Metals Group. 
 
To be clear, neither side in these tensions is against the domination of capitalism in Australia, however this still illustrates how conflicts can arise between different interests in a capitalist system, and decisions that benefit working-class society must come at the expense of capitalist profits. Marshall attempted to justify his decisions by claiming that the CSIRO was originally created “specifically for the purpose of assisting industry”. In reality, the CSIRO’s official function specifies “furthering the interests of the Australian community” as a goal no less important, and its definition of “assisting Australian industry” may not encompass the extent to which the organisation has been collaborating with fossil fuel corporations. And even if the relevant policies were rewritten to encompass such actions, that doesn’t make it okay! 
 
Australian society has been polluted by capitalist interference in scientific research – both metaphorically and literally. 
 
In contrast with this, the 20th century has shown us what scientific and technological progress can look like under socialism. The Soviet Union, for example, produced inventions such as the world’s first anthrax vaccine, artificial heart, nuclear power plant, orbital launch vehicle, satellite, and manned spacecraft, all within the span of less than thirty years. The Soviet Union also performed extensive exploration of Antarctica, conducting numerous scientific expeditions and even establishing multiple research stations on the continent. The first man-made object on the surface of another world was a Soviet spacecraft, and Soviet spacecraft were also the first to see the far side of the moon, to enter interplanetary space, and to fly past both Venus and Mars. 
 
If all this could be performed by one Marxist-Leninist state within the span of a few decades in the mid-20th century, then what accomplishments could be made in our near future, once the weight of capitalist interference has been lifted? We may have a truly bright future ahead of us. It won’t be easy to get to, but it’ll be worth the effort. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

We stand with Rojava and Palestine (Farsi)

Written by: Nick G. on 18 October 2023

 

 

We have received the following Farsi translation of our statement on Palestine and Rojava from an international friend. We reprint it here for circulation amongst Farsi-speaking Australians - eds.

(بالا: فرح عدنان الخیر و جراحات ناشی از بمباران ترکیه)

 

ما در کنار روژاوا و فلسطین ایستاده‌ایم

نوشتۀ نیک جی.

نشریۀ پیشتاز (Vanguard)، ارگان «حزب کمونیست استرالیا (مارکسیست-لنینیست)»

13 اکتبر 2023

همزمان با جنگ رژیم صهیونیستی اسرائیل علیه فلسطینیان، رژیم فاشیست ترکیه نیز جنگی را علیه منطقۀ آزادشدۀ روژاوا در شمال شرق سوریه به راه انداخته است.

روژاوا منطقه‌ای‌ست که توسط «یگان‌های مدافع خلق» (YPG) و «یگان‌های مدافع زنان» (YPJ) که عمدتاً سازمان‌های کورد هستند، اما سایر مردم عرب را نیز دربرمی‌گیرند، از دست داعش آزاد شده است.

روژاوا چیزی بیش از یک مکان است: این جنبش همچنین یک جنبش سیاسی است که بر تمرکززدایی، برابری جنسیتی و نیاز به حکومت محلی از طریق دموکراسی مستقیم تأکید دارد. «یگان‌های مدافع زنان» (YPJ) یک گروه مسلح است که به دلیل مخالفت با مردسالاری و مبارزه برای حقوق زنان مورد پذیرش قرار گرفته است.

وجود روژاوا ستم دولت ترکیه بر اقلیت کورد خود را به چالش می‌کشد.

در چند وقت اخیر، ترک‌ها مبارزان YPG و YPJ را با بمب‌افکن‌ها و حملات پهپادی مرگبار هدف قرار داده‌اند. این امر از زمانی که توجه بین‌المللی بر غزه متمرکز شده است تشدید شده است.

در 9 اکتبر 2023، 29 عضو «واحد مبارزه با مواد مخدر نیروهای امنیت داخلی» روژاوا در حملۀ پهپادهای ترکیه به مقر آن‌ها در شهر «دِریک» کشته شدند.

زیرساخت‌ها و غیرنظامیان نیز هدف قرار گرفتند.

در «تربسپی» تأسیسات گازی «گردَهول» هدف قرار گرفت. در «دِریک»، هواپیماهای جنگی ترکیه میدان نفتی «تَقِل بَقِل» را بمباران کردند. «واصل حسن المحمد» غیرنظامی 60 ساله در حملۀ ترکیه به تأسیسات گازی «اَودا» در شرق «تربسپی» مجروح شد.

«نادیا محسن العیاش» 10 ساله و «علی احمد العیاش» 9 ساله در گلوله‌باران ترکیه در «عین عیسی» کشته شدند.

«فرح عدنان الخیر»، زن جوان کوردی که در مزرعه مشغول چیدن پنبه بود بر اثر بمباران ترکیه مجروح شد، و به دلیل شدت جراحات وارده، هر دو پای خود را از دست داد.

در 12 اکتبر، پلیس ترکیه به تظاهراتی که برای همبستگی با روژاوا در «رحا» (که «اورفا» هم نامیده می‌شود) در جنوب شرقی ترکیه برگزار شد، حمله کرد. 35 نفر از جمله اعضای هیئت «حزب چپ سبز»، اعضای «شورای جوانان رحا» و 15 دوست انترناسیونالیست آن‌ها بازداشت شدند.

«حزب چپ سبز» اعلام کرد: «ما در برابر سیاست‌های ظالمانه سر فرود نمی‌آوریم. ما به دفاع از روژاوا ادامه خواهیم داد.»

رئیس جمهور ترکیه، اردوغان، نقض حقوق بشر در غزه را به درستی محکوم می‌کند، اما در عین حال، دست به نسل کشی کوردها می‌زند و باعث کشته شدن کودکان در روژاوا می‌شود.

ما در کنار فلسطین ایستاده‌ایم.

ما در کنار روژاوا ایستاده‌ایم.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

From the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Written by: DFLP on 17 October 2023

 

From the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
To the political powers and parties in the world

Dear comrades:
We send you our greetings,

 

Print Version - new window Email article

" property="og:description" />

Comments In The Lead Up To The 2023 Referendum

Written by: on

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

For our friends who fought for Yes

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 15 October 2023

 

(Above: Symbol of the frontier wars, 'Atnerte Urrpele' in Eastern Arrernte, is also called the desert pea or blood flower. Photo: Lindy Nolan)

 

“When I think of the battles that lay ahead for our people on the other side of the Voice referendum, I am drawn to the legacy of the late Gladys Tybingoompa, who successfully led her people in the landmark High Court case. 

After years of litigation against the state of Queensland, Gladys stood on the footsteps of the High Court of Australia in Canberra and said: ‘My name is Gladys. I’m the hot one. The fire. Bushfire is my totem. And I’m a proud woman of Cape York today. It is for me, here today, a historic moment as a Wik woman.’ 

‘I am not afraid of anything!’

“Not being afraid of anything, despite the brutality of Australian history. This is the energy I am taking on the road to the Voice referendum and beyond. To show up with compassion and kindness, propelled by an undying love for our people, exactly as our Ancestors would have done.”   

Wiradjuri and Wailwan writer and lawyer Teela Reid, 29 September 2023

Kindness, compassion and bravery are strong companions. Yet sometimes fear and grief are part of life. What we do in their face, how we find courage in dark and dangerous times – whether it be for ourselves or for others – determines the future. 

How many defeats have First Peoples suffered? Yet collectively they never had the luxury to give up. 

The referendum remains a launching pad for the far right to further divide and crush First Peoples. It is stronger and more dangerous than ever.

Gathered around Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, John Howard, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Warren Mundine, it represents one faction of the corporate ruling class. The other faction is organised through the Business Council of Australia. Both capitalist blocs profit from First People’s lands, from the labour power of workers and other everyday people. Both use sprinklings of truth to better deceive with half-truths and big lies. They use people and spit them out.

Collectively, First Peoples won’t be able to give up after the Voice’s defeat or victory, because their lands, their lives, their cultures, their present and their future depend on it. Yet they will assert their voices each time they teach their children in two ways or walk in their own lands or those of other clans, when they work, each time they talk or sing or dance or paint or reclaim language, each time they support each other in heartache or celebration. 

But there is no room for romanticism. Ongoing trauma has its terrible cost. Unlike/Alongside unity, division and lateral violence are genocidal inter-generational poisons.

Sleeping people have awoken

First Peoples want and need and deserve control over their own lives. But with the best of intentions and the greatest of hopes, the Yes/No decision was given to non-Indigenous people, and to social media awash with deception. 

There will be hard truths for us all, but whatever the final count, truth has to be faced and understood. Because the far right has made a declaration of war on First Peoples and all who support them. This is on top of the bipartisan war that steals lands and jails ten-year-olds.

Clothed in deceit, Mundine and the rest have laid out their strategy and tactics. We need to study them. We need to learn from our own errors.

People across the lands have been awakened to the lives of First Peoples. Despite the lies, the referendum has shaken the sleep from their eyes and ears and hearts. Opportunity lies before us. 

But first, a breath. Accept and understand fear and grief or even relief.

Kindness, compassion and bravery are strong companions in life. Another is humility to listen. In the quest for truth and justice, those four will serve the people. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Bosses deny need for “Closing the Loopholes” Bill

Written by: (Contributed) on 14 October 2023

 

While the 'Closing Loopholes Bill' makes its way through parliament and into law the response from the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and their associates has been particularly interesting and quite predictable. Once implemented the new laws will potentially benefit millions of workers, especially those in low-paid and vulnerable employment by enhancing their workplace rights and living standards together with increasing their opportunity to raise loans with enhanced credit-ratings.

Elsewhere, however, a related matter linked to inflation has received scant publicity although it remains of huge significance to the Australian workforce; the Closing Loopholes legislation, however, is unlikely to be effective and there remains an urgent need for further legislation to prevent blatant racketeering by the business-classes.

The Closing Loopholes legislation is making its way through parliamentary processes at the present time. It will have far-reaching benefits for millions of workers once implemented; problems arising from casualisation, wage and super theft, same job same pay, failure by employers to update workplace agreements within the allocated time frame and various other matters will become legislation by the end of the year. Millions of Australian workers will return to their places of employment in the New Year with different contracts of employment and enhanced pay and terms and conditions of employment.

Australia has an estimated 2.7 million casual workers from a workforce of about eight million. (1) Many of those not officially included within the category, however, continue to remain on less than full-time 38 hour a week permanent provision, with a multitude of alternatives such as permanent part-time and fixed-term contracts, rendering them vulnerable with employers using master and servant workplace relations to control workers.

The response from the BCA and those associated with the employer's organisation has been useful to monitor, if only to identify their continued ability to deny the existence of problems in all industries across Australia. Their latest ploy has included an attempt to refer the proposed legislation to the Productivity Commission, 'in order to avoid an economic calamity'. (2) Those concerned, however, have not been specific about which areas of the legislation they regard as responsible for the pending calamity they allege they face.

Some industries, hospitality, retail, transport and agriculture, in particular, have problems with rampant underpayment, and flouting of basic terms and conditions of employment remains commonplace. The legislation contains provision for dealing with the matter.

A Senate inquiry last year concluded with grim findings that an estimated 13 per cent of the Australian workforce were subject to wage theft, amounting to about $1.3 billion per annum. (3) It also noted that the problem was the outcome of business practices, and, 'systemic wage theft is often a deliberate decision of businesses that participate in a race to the bottom to bring down wages and increase profit'. (4)

The BCA and their associates, nevertheless, have been quick to try and undermine the legislation, without being too specific with content.

Their arguments and suggestions, nevertheless, have been revealing; bleating that the legislation will cost businesses up to $9 billion in extra wages over the next decade, they did not even bother to explain how they had conducted their calculations. (5) It is remains significant to note how those responsible for the calculations can specify the total cost, while not having the ability to read awards and regulations which have been flouted by wage-thieves on their behalf to maximise profit over obligation.

Some of their cronies in mainstream media outlets, likewise, have used their 'expertise' to draw attention to the casualisation issue. One, having access to a large feature spread in the Business Australian, attempted to argue those who were casualised workers were so by choice; Australians, furthermore, benefited from what they referred to as the 'gig economy'. (6) A statement from Canberra, however, quickly clarified the urgent need for the legislation to be passed; it noted, 'everyday it is delayed is another day that gig workers have no minimum standards, agreed rates are undercut and wage theft is not considered criminal'. (7)

The inability of casualised workers to raise even small loans due to their low credit-ratings, was an issue not addressed. Casuals frequently have difficulty with even basic financial planning. The fact the business-classes casualise employment in order to undermine awards and other regulations was also an issue not addressed or even acknowledged.

Numerous examples of business practices merging with unethical and illegal activity can, nevertheless, be easily assessed from reliable sources in the public domain; they have been caused by the same cost-cutting mentality and flagrant disregard for established rules, laws and regulations designed to ensure accountability and compliance with ethical business practices. It remains a sad reflection of contemporary corporate Australia and high inflation rates they are largely responsible for creating. (8)

The other side of the present price / profit inflation caused by the business-classes is that Australian workers have lost between 20-25 per cent of their spending power over the past eighteen months; the problem of food inflation is also particularly noteworthy. Recent studies have concluded Australian supermarket food prices rose dramatically during the past twelve months. (9)  

In the previous twelve months to April, for example, food inflation rose 9.6 per cent, to June, 8.8 per cent, to July, 7.6 per cent, and to August, 8.5/9.0 per cent. (10)

Other areas of concern include automotive fuel prices surging with petrol and diesel prices rising by 9.1 per cent in the twelve months to August, rents rising 7.8 per cent during the same period, as did electricity prices by 12.7 per cent and gas prices by 12.9 per cent. (11)

Meanwhile, corporate Australia continues to record mega-profits, while criticising the working class and demonising the trade union movement - so much for a fair go!

1.     Business blasts 'flawed' IR bill, Australian, 27 September 2023.
2.     IR laws risk economic 'calamity', Australian, 2 October 2023.
3.     Senate inquiry calls for laws to stamp out 'systemic, sustained and shameful' wage theft, ABC News, 30 March 2022.  
4.     Ibid.
5.     Business blasts, Australian, op.cit., 27 September 2023.
6.     See: Why we need gig economy, Australian, 27 September 2023.
7.     IR laws, Australian, op.cit., 2 October 2023.
8.     See: ASIC in crackdown on reporting laggards, Australian, 29 September 2023; and, 'Aggressive growth' unstuck PwC., Australian, 28 September 2023; and, PwC Australia boss insists culture problem is local, Australian, 28 September 2023; and, Starting as one means to continue? Australian, 28 September 2023.
9.     Food prices outpacing inflation, Australian, 26 September 2023.
10.   Ibid.
11.   Volatile inflation muddies the water for RBA., Australian, 28 September 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Put Kaurna People's Land of Cultural Significance Before Private For-Profit Housing Development

Written by: Ned K. on 14 October 2023

 

Natasha Wanganeen speaking at 2020 Black Lives Matter rally

As people in South Australia went to vote on the Voice Referendum on Saturday 14 October 2023, the local Advertiser newspaper contained an article about the discovery of Aboriginal remains on a private for-profit $3 billion Riverlea housing development of the Walker Corporation. 

The housing development is on the Adelaide to Port Wakefield Road, and part of the urban sprawl of the northern suburbs of Adelaide. The skeletal Remains of 31 people were excavated and put in a shipping container!

A community meeting of the Kaurna Yerta Aboriginal Corporation has made five recommendations to the SA Labor Government Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Kyam Maher, himself a First Nations person. One of the recommendations is that the 31 Remains be put back in the ground where they were found by workers. 

This discovery of cultural significance was also raised by Kaurna People's actor Natasha Wanganeen, a Ngarrindjeri, Narungga, Kaurna and Noongar woman, on the ABC's Q & A program earlier in the same week.

Whether the remains were the result of a massacre or group burials has yet to be determined by Kaurna people who want an independent forensic archaeologist to conduct a review of the findings.

The Walker Corporation under capitalism's laws "owns" the housing development.

The Advertiser article says that the Corporation "plans to build 12,000 homes for 40,000 residents over a 15-year plan.
 
However on September 13, the Walker Corporation applied to the Minister to extend the application to 25 years and conduct ground disturbing works which would see more remains 'excavated and removed where necessary'!

The SA Labor Government expects its investigations into Walker Corporation's application for expansion and decisions about the discovery of the 31 remains of Aboriginal people will be made in early 2024. 

Many organizations and entities, including the SA Government, start meetings with an Acknowledgement To Country of the First Nations people where a meeting is being held. The Acknowledgement includes verbal recognition of "Aboriginal Land, Always Was, Always Will Be."
Yet here there is a case of a corporate developer "owning" the new Riverlea housing development but clearly on Kaurna land of cultural significance to them.

What will the SA Government do? It has recently legislated The Voice to require it to consult with First Nations people in SA on issues that affect them. The SA Government, like all colonial governments in Australia is highly dependent on the private for-profit sector to increase available housing for people.

How the SA Government attempts to resolve this contradiction between its commitment to the Voice process legislated by SA Parliament and its dependence on corporate developers for housing construction will be watched by both First Nations people and non-Indigenous people alike. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

We stand with Rojava and Palestine

Written by: Nick G. on 13 October 2023

 

(Above: Fereh Ednan El Xayir and injuries from Turkish bombing)

At the same time as the Israeli Zionist regime’s war against Palestinians, the Turkish fascist regime is unleashing war against the liberated Rojava region in north-eastern Syria.

Rojava is an area liberated from ISIS by the People’s Defence Units (YPG) and the Women’s Defence Force (YPJ) which are predominantly Kurdish organisations, but also include other Arab peoples.

Rojava is more than a location: it is also a political movement that emphasizes decentralization, gender equality and the need for local governance through direct democracy. The YPJ is an armed group which has won acceptance for its opposition to patriarchy and its fight for women’s rights.

The existence of Rojava challenges the Turkish state’s oppression of its own Kurdish minority.

In recent times, the Turks have targeted YPG and YPJ fighters with bombers and murderous drone attacks. This has intensified since international attention has focussed on Gaza.

On October 9, 29 members of Rojava’s Internal Security Forces’ Anti-Narcotics Unit were killed in a Turkish drone attack on their headquarters in Derik.

Infrastructure and civilians were also targeted. 

In Tirbespiye the Girdahol gas facility was targeted. In Derik, Turkish warplanes bombed the oil field in Teqil Beqil. 60-year-old civilian Wasil Hesen El Mihemed was injured in a Turkish attack on the Ewda gas facility in eastern Tirbespiye.

10-year-old Nadiya Mehsin el-Eyaş and 9-year old Ali Ahmed el-Eyash were killed in a Turkish shelling on Ayn Issa. 

Fereh Ednan El Xayir, a young Kurdish woman who was picking cotton on a field when she was wounded by a Turkish bomb, lost both of her legs due to her heavy injuries.

On October 12, Turkish police attacked a protest held in solidarity with Rojava in Riha (also known as Urfa) in southeastern Turkey. 35 people, including Green Left Board members, Riha Youth Council members and 15 internationalist friends, were detained.

The Green Lefts declared “We will not bow to oppression policies. We will continue to defend Rojava.”

Turkiye’s President Erdogan correctly condemns human rights violations in Gaza but at the same time is perpetrating a genocide against Kurds and causing child casualties in Rojava.

We stand with Palestine.

We stand with Rojava.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Call to support US Auto Workers' Strike

Written by: ICOG on 13 October 2023

 

We have received the following appeal from the International Automotive Workers’ Coordination to support the strike by US auto workers. It contains an important message about international working class solidarity, and we recommend it to our readers – Eds.

10 October 2023

Touch one – touch all!
Call of the ICOG for active solidarity with the strike of the UAW in the USA

Dear Colleagues,

Despite a widespread media boycott, the already 4-week strike of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union against the "Big Three" (GM, Ford, Stellantis) has attracted worldwide attention. The list of international expressions of solidarity is long and an important trump card in the "historic strike". There are already 25,000 colleagues in the "Stand Up" strike. Thousands more are ready to fight. The UAW and its members have prepared for a long labor struggle. The strikers' will to fight and their self-confidence are high. A large majority in the USA is still behind them. The bosses of the international auto monopolies of the "Big Three" also know this. Meekly, they have already announced individual concessions to the workers and their union. We call on them to fulfill the justified demands of the UAW comprehensively and immediately. Workers will not be satisfied with crumbs.

In view of the high inflation rate, the demand for 40% more pay over 4 (!) years is more than justified. The transition to electromobility and digitalization will also destroy tens of thousands of jobs in the USA. Therefore, the 32-hour week with full wage compensation is necessary to preserve jobs and create new ones. We have anchored arguments for the 30-hour week with full wage compensation in our International Program of Struggle.

If U.S. President Biden now wants to "join the strike front," we ask, what about 2009, when as then vice president he was involved in the mass layoffs at GM and Chrysler subsidized by billions of dollars. The U.S. auto monopolies are being massively financed by taxpayer money, as with the "inflation reduction act" under the slogan "America First". The strikers are rightly demanding the restoration of the social benefits that were massively cut during the crisis 15 years ago.

From September 5 to 6, 2023, the First World Conference of the International Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Fascist United Front against Fascism, War and Environmental Destruction (United Front) took place successfully in Thuringia/Germany. Automotive workers participated in this conference with an Anti-Imperialist Platform within the International Automotive Workers Coordination in the United Front. The message of this conference with 124 international participants from 46 countries is: we take responsibility for each other internationally and no struggle should be left alone. Instead of "my country first", a global anti-imperialist counter-concept against the worldwide rightward development and fascism is being advanced here. This is where the solidarity with the strike of the UAW colleagues comes in.

We call on all auto workers and their families, especially at GM, Ford, Stellantis foreign plants, and their supporters to commit to consistently rejecting and stopping any strike-breaking activity. Take the side of the UAW strikers offensively with statements in your unions and at the workplace, and organize creative solidarity activities up to and including solidarity strikes. Promote support for this important labor struggle of the UAW! Collect donations for the strikers and their families! Overcome any squinting at alleged advantages that might be derived from the UAW strike, for workforces of other corporations and companies on the basis of nationalist or social-chauvinist thinking and acting.

Whether on October 13 at the Europe-wide uniting strike day of the unions in France or at the general strike of the grassroots unions in Italy planned for October 20, include the struggle and solidarity with the strike of the UAW. Unleash other joint unifying struggle actions in your countries, corporations and workplaces.

No workers' struggle should stand alone anymore!
Touch one - touch all! Attack one and you attack all!
Organize and consolidate international workers' and trade union unity!
Long live the international solidarity!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Standing with Palestine

Written by: Nick G. on 8 October 2023

 

After years of oppression at the hands of the Israeli authorities, the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip have launched a coordinated resistance.

Thousands of rocket attacks have hit towns in southern Israel, the fence imprisoning Palestinians in Gaza has been bulldozed and Palestinian fighters have entered occupied Palestinian territory in southern Israel by various means, seizing Israeli military hardware and taking over towns and engaging in fighting with Israeli troops.

Lead organisation Hamas has been accused of targeting Israeli citizens for killings and for seizure as hostages. Hamas is not a Marxist-Leninist organisation, and its methods of struggle, in-so-far as they are directed at civilians, are wrong. Terrorism is caused by a failure to understand it's the masses who make history. Concentrating on criticisms of Hamas as terrorist is a diversion from the reality of the oppressive terrorism of the Zionist regime.

We stand with Palestine and uphold the sacred right and duty of resistance to oppression.

Glove puppets echo their US master’s voice

Despite growing support in Australia for the rights of Palestinians, a support that reaches into the ranks of the governing Labor Party, the Albanese-Wong-Marles triumvirate have sung from the US song sheet, condemning the “unprovoked attacks from militant Hamas” and describing them as “abhorrent”. Echoing Biden, they have upheld “Israel’s right to defend itself”.

These are disgraceful sentiments. 

Palestinian citizens, including children and the elderly, have been brutalised and murdered daily by the Israeli authorities, Israel soldiers have stormed into the West Bank to kill people in their homes, and to turn those homes over to so-called settlers who have embraced the Nazi concept of lebensraum, or the right of the Nazis to take over the land of others for their own “living space”. 

Palestinian citizens, including children and the elderly, in 2018 in Gaza organised the peaceful Great March of Return to show the world their plight. Day after day, they walked, unarmed, to Israel's military fences around Gaza. Israel shot 8,000 with live ammunition, killed 220 Palestinians and injured 36,143. 

Palestinian citizens, including children and the elderly, have been subjected to indiscriminate bombing by Israeli armed forces that have resulted in thousands of deaths and the rubbleisation of whole districts of the 30 x 10 kilometre strip of land in which more than 2 million Palestinians are confined by the Israeli military.

Now the fascist Netanyahu orders these imprisoned peoples to “leave” as he promises to reduce Hamas districts to rubble. The Egyptians built pyramids, the Chinese built the Great Wall, but the civilization of the US and of Israeli Zionism reduces people’s homes to rubble.

Netanyahu has already cut electricity to Gaza. Cutting electricity to 2.2 million people will kill children. There’s no other way to look at such an action and the fact that Israel even has the power to do so highlights the daily oppression of Palestinians in Gaza.

Regional support for Palestine.

Unlike the traitorous triumvirate, popular opinion throughout the Middle East is with the Palestinian resistance.

In a statement on the day of the actions by Hamas, Saturday 6 October, the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) blamed the criminal occupation policy of the far-right Netanyahu government, underlining the grave dangers that it poses for the peace in the region. 

“The fascist right-wing government’s crimes to perpetuate the occupation are leading to a regional war that must be stopped. Even in difficult days like this – we repeat and voice an unequivocal condemnation of any harm to innocent civilians, and call for their removal from the bloodshed. We send our condolences to all the families of the victims of the occupation, Arabs and Jews alike”, the statement reads. 

CPI and Hadash put the “full responsibility on the fascist right-wing government for the sharp and dangerous escalation of the last few hours, that has already cost the lives of many innocent citizens.”

“At the end of a shocking week in which the settlers ran amok throughout the occupied territories under the auspices of their government, desecrated the Al-Aqsa Mosque and carried out another pogrom in Huwara, we woke up this morning to a very serious escalation, which endangers the entire region in a regional and dangerous war – which the right-wing government has been fueling since its first day.”

The Israeli Communist Party was joined by that of neighbouring Lebanon. The Secretary-General of the Lebanese Communist Party, Hanna Gharib, saluted the Palestinian resistance on Saturday.

Gharib said, in a Facebook post: A thousand greetings from the Lebanese Communist Party to all the heroic resisters in occupied Palestine who are today writing a new epic of heroism against the Zionist occupation.

He concluded by saying: "All of us together, were and remain with Palestine and its people resisting for the right of return and the establishment of their national state on the entire Palestinian national territory with Jerusalem as its capital."

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, calling on its fighters to join with Hamas, said Saturday was “a day when the nature of the conflict and the dignity of the Arab nation will be restored.”

And the Lebanese Hezbollah on Saturday congratulated the Palestinian resistance for the heroic large-scale operation and pledged their support.

The racist and expansionist Israel must be brought to heel. 

Like every reactionary entity, it will not fall until it is pushed over. The heroic resistance of the long-suffering Palestinians will help destabilise the Israeli regime.

We stand with Palestine!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Message from the Women’s Defence Forces (YPJ) of Rojava, Syria

Written by: YPJ Information Office on 3 October 2023

 

(Above: September 17, 2023, YPJ women fighters at a memorial meeting for comrades killed in Tourkish drone attacks)

We have received a message from the Women’s Defence Forces (YPJ) of Rojova, a predominantly Kurdish-held area in Syria. Having successfully fought against ISIS, they are now under drone attack by the Turkish state. 
They have sent us two pdf documents, Turkey’s War Against Women Fighting ISIS, and Ten Years of the YPJ. If you would like copies of these, please contact us at ozml@protonmail.com. 

Dear comrades, 

We are the YPJ Information & Documentation Office and write to you from the heart of the Rojava Revolution in North and East Syria. 

One of our goals is to strengthen alliances with democratic and socialist forces from the world and get in touch with organisations which are struggling against capitalist modernity. We believe that the paradigm on which we built our revolution is not just an alternative for Rojava, Syria or the Middle East, but for the whole world. 

As YPJ we are mostly known for our fight against the Islamic State, in which we turned ourselves into living shields protecting the whole of humanity against the barbarism of these Islamist gangs who were used by nation-states against our people and our revolution. But next to our defensive tasks as a military force, we see ourselves first and foremost as an ideological force committed to create a society around the three principles of women's liberation, direct democracy and ecology. 

As a basis we take the paradigm of Democratic Confederalism, a concept that Abdullah Ocalan developed after he was kidnapped in an international conspiracy with the involvement of various NATO states and imprisoned by the Turkish state in 1999. Since then, he is imprisoned in solitary confinement. For the last years he is completely cut off from any legal support or communication, and so we don’t have any information about his current situation. 

The YPJ was founded on the long tradition of the anti-colonial women's struggle in Kurdistan and the experiences of the women's guerrilla forces in the free Kurdish mountains. We have a deep ideology and analysis on patriarchy, the capitalist system and its liberal ideology. In the 11 years of the ongoing revolution, we developed methods and concrete ways on how a just an equal society can be built and how especially women can liberate themselves from thousands of years of patriarchy mentality. 

At the moment we are facing brutal attacks of the Turkish state which is killing our comrades in targeted assassinations via drone strikes. Almost every day, a Turkish drone is targeting vanguards of the revolutions, women who bravely fought ISIS and also civilians. Even according to Human Rights Conventions or International Laws these attacks are classified as war crimes. 

Being a NATO member, Turkey is committing these crimes with complete impunity. The silence of the international community is supporting Turkey, making them understand that they can act completely outside any legal or ethical standards. 

As YPJ Information & Documentation Office we provide on the ground information and want to get in touch with journalists who are already covering the region or who would be interested in covering the topic. Therefore, we would like to ask if you could forward our contacts to journalists, but also to activists, politicians, researcher or anyone who wants more information on the ongoing Turkish attacks, the Rojava Revolution and the works and tasks of YPJ. 

We are also interested to be in exchange with feminist, socialist or democratic organisations to discuss and share the experiences of our struggle. Attached you will find two brochures. One is about the history, ideology and aims of the YPJ, the other one documents Turkish drone assassinations which killed eight of our comrades in 2022.

If you have any questions please contact us via mail or phone: WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram: +491782238561 

Revolutionary greetings, 

Sara YPJ Information & Documentation Office

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

First Nations People Lead The Way In September

Written by: Ned K. on 2 October 2023

 

(Source: 6PR )

The last Saturday in September 2023 was the day of the Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Final between Melbourne-based Collingwood Magpies and Brisbane-based Brisbane Lions. 

There were over 100,000 people at the MCG for the game and millions watching the game on TV or mobile phones around the country and in remote locations around the world including one overseas based Australian in the remote west of China!

 

Seats available for supporters of the competing clubs at the game was limited to about 18,000 each to enable the corporate sponsors and the "establishment including the top politicians, to be assured of seats. There was also an allocation of seats for the other 16 clubs of the competition. This has become the normal practice of a highly corporate controlled elite level competition.

It was, as always, the skill of the players and the love of the game by people in Australia that made the Grand Final day a people's cultural event, despite the inevitable intrusion of corporate interests into a uniquely Australian game. 

The highlight of the game was the extraordinary play of First Nations player Bobby Hill who was playing his first season with Collingwood. Hill kicked a match winning four goals and provided more opportunities for his team mates to kick goals as well.

Millions of people watching the game would have marvelled at his high marking and goal kicking skills. He was awarded the maximum 15 points by the panel that determined him as the winner of the Norm Smith Medal for the best player on the ground.

Two weeks from the Grand Final day is the vote on the Referendum on The Voice to federal parliament. 

The effort of Bobby Hill in the Grand Final followed the outstanding efforts of many First Nations People in Australian Football League's Grand Finals and competitions over many decades. 

It is a great irony that a First Nations person, Bobby Hill, won and received the Norm Smith Medal as thousands of Collingwood supporters cheered. It was three decades ago that First Nations St Kilda player Nicky Winmar was racially abused by a small section of Collingwood supporters at Collingwood's Victoria Park home ground. Winmar responded by lifting his St Kilda jumper and pointing proudly to the colour of his skin.

More recently, Sydney’s Adam Goodes was virtually forced from the game after sustained racial abuse by other club’s followers. Idiot and provocateur Sam Newman just weeks ago called for those attending the finals series to respond to Welcomes to Country by booing and slow hand-clapping. But the Welcomes proceeded respectfully and were applauded by the huge crowds. They did not embrace the nastiness promoted by Newman. It is a hopeful sign that in 2023, Collingwood supporters and the club and indeed hundreds of thousands of AFL followers will not tolerate racism aimed at First Nations players.

No matter to what extent the skills of Bobby Hill at the MCG on the last Saturday of September influence how people vote in the Referendum on 14 October, one thing is certain. 

Millions of people today recognise and respect the extraordinary contribution of First Nations people to Australian people's culture, a culture which will outlast the corporations that want to make it serve their profits

 

Print Version - new window Email article

ASEAN Solidarity Exercise keeps US and China at a distance

Written by: (Contributed) on 1 October 2023

 

(Source: Ministry of Defence, Singapore)

The ASEAN Solidarity Exercise, a joint military drill, has provided further evidence of a growing reluctance by South-east Asian nations to get drawn into escalating US-China diplomatic hostilities. 

There was, for example, no official US or China involvement.

While it will take time to assess the significance of the exercise, it is important to note the response as indicative of deeper problems and issues. It is highly relevant that the exercise took place with widespread publicity across the region. In Australia, the main hub for 'US interests' in the southern part of the region, however, there was near silence; a brief official media release from Canberra was terse in style and did not follow the stated ASEAN line but merely reiterated the standard US diplomatic position.

On 19 September ASEAN member countries began a five-day joint military exercise, ASEAN Solidarity Exercise, near Batan Island, adjacent to Singapore on the eastern approach to the Straits of Malacca, a sensitive maritime area with congested shipping-lanes. (1) The host country, Indonesia, chose the area for the drills due to it not being contested by China and its claim to sovereignty of the South China Seas. The exercise was initially planned for the southern edge of the South China Seas although it was relocated to not provoke a confrontation with China. (2)

Singapore is regarded by the US as highly strategic: it is placed on a straight line from US intelligence facilities of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and Guam: the facilities have undergone extensive upgrading in recent years as part of US regional military and security provision, and rest upon an arc from base facilities at Pine Gap in Central Australia. Singapore is also situated approximately half way between Diego Garcia and Guam. (3)

Military personnel and their civilian counterparts working for US signals intelligence (Sigint) were, no doubt, working overtime throughout the ASEAN Solidarity Exercise, sitting silently focused on computer screens in numerous regional facilities.

While officially planned in June, there was very little publicity in western media outlets although widespread coverage across South-east Asian countries, highlighting a welcoming stance after years of escalating US-led diplomatic hostilities toward China as a serious competitor and rival to their traditional hegemonic positions. Stand-offs in the contested South China Seas have become common, as the US moves toward real-war scenarios.

Official ASEAN diplomatic positions were pragmatically stated along the lines that 'by uniting together, we can maintain stability in the region for the favour of the people … and the drills were … about ASEAN centrality'. (4) The softer style diplomacy has highlighted ASEAN's attempt to accommodate China as a major trading partner with trade agreements.

The response from Canberra, however, was both direct, but extremely limited; a 32-column centimetre news item explained the ASEAN Solidarity Exercise was, 'largely aimed at countering Beijing's muscular defence of its claims to the disputed water-way', with reference to the South China Seas. (5) Scant on details, the official Australian diplomatic position slavishly followed the recently implemented US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy. (6)

A recurring problem is that the US bases its foreign policy upon geo-strategic goals for control with neo-colonial designs and finance capital, whereas China's foreign policy is more trade-based and subtle. Played-out in the ASEAN example, the sub-region forms a significant part of the US first island chain running from the Kuril Islands in the north to Borneo in the south; during the past and present Cold War the island chains are regarded as a first line of defence, with reference for the defence and security of Taiwan. (see diagram)

China, by contrast, has regarded Borneo as an important centre for its part-financing of a huge $132 billion trade zone and manufacturing hub; China has provided a hydro-plant for electrification. (7) The US has responded to the whole matter with icy diplomatic silence.

China's financing of overseas facilities also tends to be extensive, with outlays for longer-term planning. Flows into Indonesia, for example, doubled to $3.2 billion in the 2021-22 period. (8) Behind a great deal of economic development planning across South-east Asia, however, there is concern that the rapid growth could unleash new social and political forces. The nature of the independence struggles of yesteryear waged against unwanted outside interference in their own and neighbouring countries, continues to shape a great deal of political thinking of later generations of leaders across the sub-region; they fear politicisation of the working class and small farmers due to exploitation by the corporate sector and big land-owners who wield enormous power and extensive influence.

It is interesting to note, therefore, that while the ASEAN drills were officially billed as non-combat exercises, some coverage revealed a photograph of a counter-insurgency operation exercise in jungle terrain with Indonesian soldiers from the 112th Infantry Battalion (9) Indonesia has a long history of highly repressive military operations designed to stifle any political opposition, including in Indonesian Papua and East Timor, which is now part of ASEAN.

A number of the ASEAN countries have opposition political groups which has led to involvement with US-led military personnel and their allies for training local military forces in counter-insurgency and counter-intelligence operations. Those countries associated with ASEAN through various regional forums and observer status, likewise, include some with highly questionable political, economic and social stability: Ski Lanka, Bangladesh, DPRK.

Inside ASEAN, the Philippines, for example, has had a long-time insurgency led by the Communist Party New People's Army. As the US remain highly unpopular in the country, Australian Special Forces have been used, in their place, for training Philippine counterparts in recent years.

Thailand, furthermore, witnessed serious political upheaval following economic planning for agricultural areas by the World Bank over twenty years ago. It unleashed new popularist social and political forces which shook the foundations of Thailand's electoral system and saw the military step into civil society. Controversy surrounding recent elections was merely a continuation of the massive political discord sweeping Thailand.

Elsewhere, Malaysian politics has remained bogged down by massive corruption scandals and political intrigue; the problem could easily spillover and destabilise one of the dominant diplomatic players in ASEAN, particularly amongst rival ethnic groupings.

In conclusion, the ASEAN Solidarity Exercise can best be viewed initially as a highly localised attempt to deflect unwanted US-China diplomatic rivalry, regarded as an obstacle to further and higher levels of economic development amongst member countries and their associates. 

1.     See: ASEAN holds war games amid regional tensions, Australian, 20 September 2023.
2.     Ibid.
3.     See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
4.     First ever ASEAN drills held,  21 September 202; and, ASEAN kicks off joint military exercise near Batan Island, The Diplomat, 19 September 2023; and, ASEAN kicks off, REUTERS, 19 September 2023.
5.     Australian, op.cit., 20 September 2023.
6.     See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019, which has provided a fully detailed account of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy.
7.     China doubles investment, Benar News, 24 October 2022.
8.     Ibid.
9.     Star, op.cit., 21 September 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

US wants AUKUS to expand into outer space

Written by: Nick G. on 27 September 2023

 

(Above: As sinister as it looks, the emblem of the 23 Space Operations Squadron of the US Space Force.  Public domain image)

In April 2001, the US Department of Defence announced that its objective was “full spectrum dominance”. It included the domain of space in its definition of the term, which was:

The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment, which includes cyberspace, that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

When Workers Unite, Bosses Tremble!

Written by: Ned K. on 23 September 2023

 

Poultry Workers Getting Organized. Strike Against Corporate Greed And Rising Cost Of Living 

About 1,000 workers at Inghams Poultry processing plants in WA and SA went on strike on Friday 22 September. They are demanding wage increases that keep up with the rising cost of living and better working conditions.

Inghams have increased profits by about 70% in the last 12 months with the increased profits coming from the surplus value created by these workers. Apart from the 70% increase in profits, the workers on the picket line when interviewed by the mass media said that the CEO had a 9% salary increase. 

Inghams' wage offer after months of negotiations with the workers' Union Delegates was well short of their demands for 6% per year, just to keep up with inflation.

As with most strikes, wage levels are not the only issue. Delegates said work intensification, repetition strain injuries and increased fatigue levels had reached unbearable levels. 

Before taking the strike action, workers spent months building their own networks and organization on the job to ensure that the required Protected Industrial Action Ballot was supported by a big majority of workers,

There are many strike actions by workers across many different industries despite the limitations of the Fair Work Act  enterprise bargaining laws

What is important about the Inghams workers' strike is that the the company's strategy of hiring new migrant labour from diverse cultural backgrounds (a divide and conquer strategy) has met its match. 

The strength of the workers in this dispute lies in the unity of a diverse workforce.

When workers unite, bosses tremble!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

70th anniversary of Emu Field A-Bomb tests approaches

Written by: Nick G. on 22 September 2023

 

As a kid growing up in the western suburbs of Adelaide, a hand-painted slogan on the old bridge over the railway line on Henley Beach Rd (where the underpass is now) is firmly imprinted on my memory. I suspect it was done by CPA members in the late 50s.  It read “Ban all A- and H-Bomb Tests”.  It was unmistakable and lasted there for years.

A similar slogan had been painted on the wall of Government House in 1957 and a young member of the Moulders Union convicted and ordered to remove the slogan. 

The CPA paper Tribune gave regular coverage to atomic and hydrogen bomb tests on Monto Bello Island and at Emu Field and Maralinga. These were carried out by British imperialism and its local servants in violation of Australian independence and sovereignty, and against the wishes of the people.

Even before the tests, the CPA had begun a campaign against the creation of the Rocket Range on Mt Eba pastoral station. A town, later known as Woomera, was built to service the testing of rockets. Alf Watt, SA State Secretary of the CPA, published a booklet in the late 1940s titled Rocket Range Threatens Australia which first raised the issue of threats to First Peoples from the weapons tests.

The Central Australian Aborigine Reserve is to be violated. Across its 65,000 square miles there will pass a rocket range 200 miles wide. Falling missiles, some fitted with war-heads (including atomic war-heads) will endanger both the lives and food supply of the natives. With observation posts placed at I00 mile intervals along the range, the Reserve will be opened to white men, with disastrous effects upon the aborigines and their tribal organisation. 

Another crime is to be added to the long list by which the aborigines chiefly know us. It is the fashion of governments to proclaim New Deals for the natives. But practice, without exception, has been to destroy the aborigines as a race, and turn the survivors into virtual chattel slaves for the white exploiters.

The following drawing illustrated the passage above:

When the first tests of atom bombs on Australian soil were announced in 1953, Tribune again exposed the dangers to First Peoples:

Truth (October 4) said that “nomadic tribes of Aborigines have been rounded up…It is impossible to round up these tribes, impossible to stop them returning to their hunting grounds…Even if the atom blast does not kill and mutilate a number of Aborigines, it will devastate their hunting grounds, destroy their water holes, and devastate tribal territory that is sacred to them, and to which they believe their spirits will return after death. The inevitable result will be disastrous to the tribes.

Tragically, the scenario painted by the Tribune materialised with the first A-Bomb test at Emu Field on October 15, 1953. A second A-Bomb was detonated on October 27, 1953. The effect of these explosions was to render Emu Field contaminated by nuclear radiation, so the test site was moved to Maralinga where further tests were held in 1956.

Aboriginal people did die as a result of nuclear explosions on their lands. Yankunytjatjara man Yami Lester later became well-known for having suffered blindness from the black mist which blew across his family in the aftermath of a test. He became a much-admired activist against nuclear energy and for the rights of First Peoples. Paul Kelly’ song Maralinga references Yami Lester.

On September 21, 2023, the Adelaide Advertiser revealed that for nearly 70 years, the British imperialists have kept hidden from nuclear veterans and First Peoples the results of their blood tests taken between 1956 and 1960. The blood tests would have benefitted doctors treating people exposed to radiation from the bomb tests, but would have significantly assisted those tested in lodging claims for compensation from the British and Australian governments. Keeping these blood tests secret for all these years is a crime against the people concerned. Yami Lester’s daughter Karina has called for the records to be made public. 

During the time that atomic and hydrogen bombs were tested on Australia soil, the Communist Party encouraged unions and peace committees and the Union of Australian Women to condemn the tests and demand their cancellation. 

This was a strong campaign, but ultimately unsuccessful in achieving its objectives.

As the 70th anniversary of the Emu Field tests approaches, we must redouble our efforts against the contemporary abominations of the AUKUS arrangements, the preparations for fighting the US war against China, and the push to create an Australian nuclear energy industry.

Please seek out Emu Field commemorative activities and take part in them.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

We are always stronger when we stand together

Written by: Louisa L. on 18 September 2023

 

Palawa lawyer and activist Michael Mansell recently called for the referendum to be abandoned, labelling it divisive. 

Michael Mansell has a long and militant history. As a young man his existence as a Tasmanian Aboriginal person was denied and he was demonised above all other First Peoples’ leaders. His lived experience makes his words today particularly potent. 

He was present and voted for the Statement from the Heart. But his repeated and powerfully argued preference is for Treaty over Voice if – as Anthony Albanese made clear – only one is on offer in this parliamentary term. Michael Mansell says to non-Indigenous people, “You have every right” to vote Yes or No without fear of being attacked.

A cry for justice

Younger activists are rightly impatient for justice because lives are at stake. 

Before January 26, Tom Tanuki a white YouTube activist and satirist publicised the voices of strong Blak opponents of the Yes campaign like Amy McQuire and Linda-June Coe, and encouraged people to attend Invasion Day rallies. But, instead of attacking the ruling class, he repeatedly ridiculed those allies who actively support the Yes vote as “Age-reading, white Australian, leftie brothers and sisters.” 

Many of them are older women, unionists and workers with long history in struggle. While some think a No vote will be a victory for racism, most now understand the view of First Peoples who oppose the Voice because it is not enough. Overwhelmingly, like many First Peoples, they see no alternative to the current system, including parliament. Hardly surprising given the sea of sophisticated and all-encompassing propaganda against alternatives, particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union and 1989 events and rise of capitalist corporations in China.

Those whom Tanuki targets are not stupid. They have generations of experience. 

Underlying Tanuki’s concern, but not mentioned, is the huge job done by the Business Council of Australia to hide First Peoples’ suffering from non-Indigenous people, to mesmerise them with vibrant culture and successful individuals, voting Yes to convince themselves that real change is afoot. There may be some who fit this description. But while 9 network’s ‘Age’ may be one-sidedly pro-Yes, many articulate No activists have now appeared on NITV and the ABC this year, because they are so numerous and active their voices can no longer be effectively suppressed. 

Tanuki’s negative mantra mimics “the latte-sipping inner-city lefties” so mocked by the right before they discovered “woke”. It’s not helpful. But his anger as he sees the carnage wrought on First Peoples is a cry for justice.

While growing numbers of non-Indigenous No voters are influenced by First Peoples’ concerns, those influenced by Sky, Advance Australia and official Government Referendum No propaganda know far less about First Peoples lives than Yes voters. 

Far right No propagandists ridicule and belittle Yes advocates, including First Peoples, as they ridiculed and demonised Lidia Thorpe when she used parliament to consistently expose tax avoiding multinational corporations. Even worse when she showed just who parliamentarians swear allegiance to, “the colonising queen” of England. 

We have not lived the lives of First Peoples. We cannot speak for them. We cannot act for them.

First Peoples often remind us they are only 3 percent of the population. They need allies to stand alongside them if they are to win this centuries’ long war.

Our comrades have consistently amplified First Peoples’ voices silenced by capitalist media as the twin constitutional recognition and reconciliation juggernauts rolled forward. 

We were far from the only ones, and others did far more. Many, many non-Indigenous groups and individuals dedicate their lives to First Peoples and make sure quieter voices were heard and supported.

But we have not lived the lives of First Peoples. We cannot speak for them. We cannot act for them. 

Like others we shared the stories of Grandmothers Against Forced Removals who said, “Sorry means you won’t do it again”, as state-sanctioned theft of First Peoples children skyrocketed. 

Together we reported from coroner’s courts and protests years before Black Lives Matters erupted.

Together we spread the words of women and men, young and old, from all over the lands, speaking for Treaty and unifying inter-clan treaties. 

Whether our joint enemies were mining, fracking, damming or poisoning lands and waters, denying the frontier wars, crushing culture, raiding communities, torturing children in prison, within and beyond the even greater myriad of First Peoples struggles over decades, we all tried to listen, learn, share and act. 

The non-Indigenous people the far right targets to vote No are undermined by ignorance and motivated by fear. They didn’t create the lies, but they believe them. As we build our own forces, Non-Indigenous people who support First Peoples need to gradually drive wedges into the far right’s support, just as it does to us.

People learn from their own experiences

One key leader of the Yes campaign, a former firebrand, later saw the terrible carnage all governments ignored as she worked in depths of the Deaths in Custody royal commission. Soon after, she became a vocal advocate of the “opportunities” provided by mining corporations. She now bitterly condemns the industry. 

Her own experience showed the truth, even before Rio Tinto destroyed the cave at Juukan Gorge. Her anger is also a cry for justice.

Awabakal man Terry Mason says the Voice will undoubtedly disappoint most who have faith in it, if against the current odds, it is implemented. But we believe they’ll learn from its failure in practice.

Sixty years ago, our party said the ALP was a capitalist party and said parliament is part of the deceptive apparatus of the ruling capitalist class. That didn’t mean parliament, the ALP or even Liberals like Malcolm Fraser did nothing of benefit to the people, especially when waves of struggle forced their hands.

Other left parties condemned us as sectarian. Experience has accumulated since then. Now every left party looks askance at Labor. Out of office it makes all sorts of claims. In office it never delivers on fundamentals. Capitalism still runs the show, even when Labor prosecutes things like Robodebt that widely expose capitalist cruelty, but don’t threaten profits.

How is it that so many people now see through the Labor Party? Is it because we condemned it? Or is it because their own experience convinced them the Labor Party would never bring about the change that is necessary in this country? Could the same be true of the Yes vote? We know it could deliver nothing fundamental. We know it could overpower the voices of others. 

Yet, the struggles surrounding the referendum process have seen the voices of those demanding fundamental change grow louder. 

Collectively and individually, especially in struggle, people learn from their own experiences.

The masses make history. First Peoples and non-Indigenous people have different lives, different priorities, different battles. But we have the same enemies.

We are always stronger when we stand together.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Is Jacinta serious?

Written by: Mike W on 17 September 2023

 

You’ve got to hand it to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – she sure knows how to prettify colonialism and its aftermath.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Price, who is the Opposition’s shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs and one of two prominent Indigenous advocates for the reactionary No vote in the Voice Referendum, denied that colonialism had negatively impacted upon Australian First Peoples. 

Instead, she said that it had impacted positively. “Absolutely. I mean, now we’ve got running water, we’ve got readily available food.”

Food

But First Peoples always had “readily available food”, according to Geoffrey Blainey, a conservative historian. He said that famines were rare. “It may well be that on most days of 1788 the Aboriginals ate a much greater number of fresh fish than the 13 million Australians eat today,” he argued in his 1975 book Triumph of the Nomads (p. 133). After making similar comparisons based on waterbirds, shellfish, seeds and meat, he concluded, “If we specify the main ingredients of a good standard of living as food, health, shelter and warmth, the average aboriginal was probably as well off as the average European in 1800…” (p. 225).

What changed was the impact of colonialism which, by force and violence, or the threat of force and violence, separated First Peoples from their lands, and then destroyed the bountiful habitats that had sustained human life in favour of sheep and cattle runs that brought in feral grasses and destroyed the medicinal and food stores of the First Peoples. Changes that wiped out biological diversity included clearing land for grain crops. 

I have seen the terrible quality of the “readily available food” in canteens and stores on the APY Lands and throughout northern Australia, and I have seen the prices asked of people living on or below the poverty line. The quislings are wrong.

Water

First Peoples have had their water sources: soaks, water holes, creeks and rivers, and certain tree roots and ground-burrowing frogs, exchanged – violently – for the “benefits” of running water from taps.

I say violently, because farmers and pastoralists, and in more recent time, miners, have taken the pure waters of the land from their fellow human beings and given them over to the stock and the crops and the minerals whose value capitalism places above that of the welfare of people.

Waterholes were poisoned, the shit from stock fouled others, and First peoples were “dispersed” by guns and whips.

In 1856, John Bowyer Bull recorded how he had visited waterholes on Flinders Ranges stations. At Minbrie, Wilpena and Aroona, he reported seeing only women of the Adnyamathanha. They all said the same thing “Whitefella shootem all about blackfella”.

At Angepena Station, “Stewart took me down the creek…and showed me a camp of lubras and children all cut to pieces with the stockwhips. The women’s breasts were cut open and little children six to twelve months old were bleeding all over.” Bull was told that the women and children went to a little spring to get a drink when stockmen whipped them to keep them away from waters now reserved for cattle.

In 2011 I wrote a poem about this:

Angepena Waters

Angepena waters were always just there
For all of the yura to share
And the birds and the creatures 
Danced through its virgin features
As the yura chanted the songlines

Angepena waters are sparkling in the sun
But white men took the land for their cattle to run
And for them it makes more sense 
Than to build a big long fence
That the yura are dispersed with the gun

Though yura men lay dead
Their families had not fled
They still huddled near Angepena water
So the stockmen took whips
And slashed their breasts with great rips
And cut the heads and the backs of their children

At Angepena waters there were genocidal slaughters
So that cattle could drink without disturbance
With the water holes mud
Mixed with cow shit and blood
Angepena’s a shame job for whitey.

But the shame job continues today in First Peoples communities. 

Almost all of what city people call remote communities are reliant on bore water and, as a result, there are concerns that groundwater is being exposed to large amounts of minerals, particularly heavy metals. These are a major cause of kidney disease in First Peoples.

In some communities, uranium is the problem. Laramba is an Aboriginal community, roughly 205 kilometres west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), that is home to about 300 people. Its water comes from a bore, and uranium occurs naturally in the area. A 2020 NT Power and Water report found the community's water was contaminated with 0.052 milligrams per litre of uranium, more than three times the concentration limit recommended in the Australia's drinking water guidelines.

Salt and calcium are also present in bore water. Washing machines, taps, electric jugs become heavily calcified and require regular replacement. In addition to these ongoing costs, communities often have to purchase bottled water. 

Jacinta Price cannot plead ignorance about these things. Just last June, the community at Ali Curung, 400km north of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) started trucking in bottled water because issues with local water quality — including contamination, taste, colour or even temperature — are causing many residents to turn to the sugared poisons of soft drink instead.

Controversy surrounding the bottled water issue is well-known in the Territory following a decision by the government to grant a private water licence to Fortune Agribusiness at the nearby Singleton Station. 

The licence will allow Fortune to extract up to 40,000 megalitres a year for a major fruit and vegetable project in Central Australia that will mostly supply China.
Kaytetye Warlpiri woman Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe is one of the local mob who fear any drop in the water table could risk "irreversible damage" to sacred springs, soakages and trees.

"This is about people's lives, this is about human rights," she said. "The impact will be devastating, and we will hold the government responsible for the damage."

Nor should Jacinta Price be unaware of problems closer to Mparntwe. 

Her mother, Bess, was NT Community Services minister in August 2014 when water was cut off from the town camp of Ingerreke (Whitegate).

Because it is not an official camp, Whitegate residents, who live in tin sheds, do not get basic services, including electricity. The population fluctuates from a handful to up to 30 people, and they organised a rally against Bess Price in September 2014 to demand access to water.

As the daughter of a Warlpiri women, Jacinta surely knows the story of her own people’s denial of access to water by pastoralists. In her June 2023 Arena Quarterly article on the police killing of Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker, Melinda Hinkson wrote:

Such an attitude marks the character of a lot of what occurred across the Australian continent in the early brutal years of colonial invasion. It is a vital ingredient to the othering that enables one person to kill another, and that rationalises the dispossession and destruction of entire societies in the name of European progress. On Warlpiri Country this process acquired purposeful intent in the 1920s and was felt most profoundly with the granting of a pastoral lease over Pikilyi, a tract of land of great cultural significance which contains the only precious permanent water source throughout the vast Tanami Desert. Having secured the pastoral lease and named it Mt Doreen for his wife, William Braitling set about a brutal campaign to exclude Warlpiri from the life-giving spring and surrounding lush hunting grounds. Through their starvation he forced them to mine wolfram in return for meagre food supplies. There were documented cases of malnutrition, of floggings, of women and girls suffering venereal disease, of a group of Warlpiri being neck-chained and forced to walk the 250 miles to Alice Springs as part of investigations into the death of a white man. The work of missionaries and anthropologists to expose the brutal conditions on Mt Doreen station was one significant factor in the establishment of settlements and reserves across Central Australia in the 1940s and 1950s.

Why Jacinta Price wants to put lipstick on the pig of colonialism is beyond me.

She will not stop First Peoples fighting for their rights.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The reactionary No vote and a term we must revive

Written by: Nick G. on 17 September 2023

 

When Labor PM Albanese decided that the No campaign in the Voice referendum would not be attacked for being racist, he opened the floodgates of racist opinion.

We all know from the treatment of Adam Goodes, Stan Grant, Lydia Thorpe and many more First Peoples, that to have a First People’s voice is to make oneself a target of the vilest residual racism that still infests much of the non-Indigenous population.

What enables the die-hard racists to persevere with their racism is the legitimacy given to their views by certain conservative First Peoples themselves.
An appropriate term to be attached to such people is “quisling”.

Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian fascist who headed a domestic Nazi collaborationist regime during World War II. He headed the government of Norway during the country's occupation by Nazi Germany during World War II. He was a traitor to his people and identified completely with the occupiers.

The Nazis were adept at using quislings in their areas of occupation. Other notable quislings were Croatia’s Ante Pavelic and Ukraine’s Stepan Bandera. At the end of the war, Quisling was tried and executed for crimes against his own people.

During the lead-up to the Voice Referendum, racists have claimed that a Yes vote would create apartheid in Australia, that it would extend privileges not enjoyed by other Australians to First Peoples, that it would divide the country.

A form of apartheid already exists in Australia. It is not enshrined in law, as was its South African version (itself inspired by the treatment of First Peoples in Queensland), but is for that reason so much harder to identify and oppose. The invisible apartheid can be seen, however, in the social avoidance of First

Peoples by many non-Indigenous Australians and the informal closing of doors to their employment and advancement.

Some more recent arrivals in this country, themselves facing barriers to education, housing and employment, are susceptible to the poison spread by racists that the Voice would privilege First Peoples ahead of other Australians. A Voice that is purely advisory does not do that. 

Those who claim that the Voice would divide Australia engage in the real racism of denying existing division as witnessed in the appalling gaps that exist between First Peoples and the rest of the population in areas such as housing, health, education, incarceration and suicide rates, and employment. 

Die-hard racists in the community, and in the ranks of Liberal and Country Party politicians say all of these things and more, not only because Albanese has said not to name racism for what it is, but also because these views are legitimized by quislings among the First People. 

They deny the need for Treaty, decry the “romanticism of Culture” and deny the ongoing trauma of unsettlement and colonialism.

When some people defy Albanese and call these quislings out for their treachery and complicity with Australian racism, they cry foul and behave like pitiful victims of the same racism that they have themselves covered up, aided and abetted.

Our use of the term “quisling” does not extend to those First Peoples who advocate a No vote based on their refusal to acquiesce in reliance on parliament, and their rejection of the explicitly racist Australian Constitution.

The quislings to whom we refer represent and do the work for the most reactionary section of the mining industry who want unhindered and unlimited freedoms to exploit and plunder the lands of the First Nations Peoples.   

Capital's economic imperatives create the capitalist ideology of neo-neoliberalism and reactionary conservatism.  Racism is a tool of colonialism, of capitalism, of imperialism.   

The racism displayed by the quislings on behalf of the most reactionary section of the ruling class needs to be challenged by facts - truth telling.

That's why Truth Telling (educating about, and challenging, the intense propaganda and lies) should have been the first step, before the Voice.

First Peoples will make up their own mind about how to vote in the Referendum. 

We have refrained as a Party from advocating a Yes vote out of respect for the divergence of views among First Peoples, but we will call out the racist underpinnings of the reactionary No vote for what they are.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Article review: Changing Composition Of Working Class In Australia

Written by: Ned K. on 15 September 2023

 

George Megalogenis has written a very good article in the latest edition of The Monthly about the history of past Referendums in Australia, He provides a convincing argument that the most reactionary sections of the ruling class led by Peter Dutton should be careful what they wish for in campaigning for a No vote in the coming Voice Referendum. 

Megalogenis demonstrates that the inner-city parliamentary electorates that the Liberal Party need to win back in the next federal election contain the largest number of people likely to vote Yes in the Referendum. Dutton and those he represents may well campaign successfully for a No vote in the Voice Referendum, but Megalogenis predicts this may be a hollow victory for them as it will make their chances of winning the next parliamentary election very remote.

Megalogenis invites the readers of his article to visualize the people in Australia as a "family tree".  The roots are the First Nations Peoples, the Old Australia trunk comprises non- First Nations people born in Australia and so were their parents and grandparents.

The "new Australians" are the tree's branches and comprise migrants and their locally born children.

Megalogenis points out that First Nations People now outnumber the English-born population in Australia for the first time since the 1820s!

The roots of the family tree (First Nations People) and the branches (migrants and their Australian born children) according to Megalogenis, "now account for almost 55% of the national population: 56% in Victoria, 57% in NSW, and 68% in WA. But Old Australia retains a majority in SA (51%), Qld (53%) and Tasmania (65%)".

These percentages are a reflection of the diversity of the working class in Australia, a trend that is likely to continue with increased permanent migration, which further enriches the working class giving truth to the saying "strength in diversity"

The reactionaries represented by Dutton become less appealing to a larger section of the people, sending them further in to the parliamentary political wilderness.

This puts the ALP in the driver's seat of the ruling class's parliamentary vehicle as their natural party of government whichever way the Voice Referendum goes.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

What’s wrong with the Constitution? Everything.

Written by: Louisa L. on 11 September 2023

 

'Surely one of the biggest truths we need to be tell in the first place is how the Constitution came to be and why it was deliberately written to exclude us. And given this, is the answer really our inclusion, or is it coming to the table as equals, sitting down and nutting out, as sovereign peoples, treaties that could ensure a better, more inclusive, way forward?' Arrernte woman Celeste Liddle

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) acknowledges that it is not our place to advise First Peoples how to vote in the forthcoming referendum. 

The Statement from the Heart organisers worked within Constitutional Convention, guaranteeing a decision on the Voice through Constitutional change would be decided by all adult Australians in a referendum. That immediately established an obstacle to a process which should have been one for self-determination by First Peoples themselves. It empowers the divide and rule structures of the original colonies, now called states.

Other divisions were deliberately fostered by the Business Council of Australia which interfered in the process from the beginning, using its enormous resources. 

First Peoples are right to be suspicious of the process that has led to the Referendum on a Voice to Parliament. The Statement from the Heart, as a first step, diverted First People’s aspirations to parliament, ahead of demands for Treaties (including unifying ones between various First Peoples’ clans) which many of those present saw as a more important first step. Some who walked out of the meeting rejected the parliamentary approach altogether, others because of attempts to silence dissent, particularly against DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman Lidia Thorpe. 

The Constitution thrown out and a new one written

Some First Peoples hope fundamental change will come through parliament listening to a constitutionally enshrined First Peoples Voice. 

We believe that focussing on the Constitution was problematic from the start. It was unfit for purpose even before the ink of its signatories had dried. It tried to affect a compromise between the British Crown as “owner” of the Australian colonies, the local elites which had their own political and economic base in a particular colony, and that section of the capitalist class that needed a national framework for its development. The result was a weak three-way compromise in which each of these competing elements tried to grab power from the others. All, however, accepted the correctness of the colonial seizure of First Peoples’ lands and consequently refused to even acknowledge First Peoples as citizens of the newly emerging nation. 

The Constitution legally recognised the nationwide character developed in industry and transport. Australia-wide working class industrial action and political struggle against plunder of the people and country by British Imperialists and their local collaborators reflected national development in the economic base. Mass maritime’, shearers,’ and miners’ strikes in the 1890s, including acts of sabotage and armed camps of strikers, forced the hands of British and local elites. Federation saw Britain legally establish the nation, but hold onto separation into states. The unity alongside division sought to secure a legal form of apparent independence while ensuring continuing real imperialist dominance.

To add to the confusion of the Constitutional referendum, at the time of its adoption in 1901, the Northern Territory was part of South Australia. In 1911, the NT was excised from South Australia; at the same time, the ACT was excised from NSW. Both remained as Territories whose laws were made by the Commonwealth. In 1978 they were granted responsible government but not Statehood. The Constitution requires a referendum to be carried by a majority of electors and by a majority of the six States. Voters in the two Territories are included in the nation-wide result, but are disenfranchised from the tally of the States. This particularly disenfranchises First Peoples in the Northern Territory and the ACT from one of the two tallies that determine the result of the Referendum. The injustice of this can be seen in that the State with the largest number of First Peoples is NSW. First Peoples in NSW make up 3.55% of the NSW population. By contrast, First Peoples in the NT comprise 30.34% of its population, but they are excluded from the decision-making process enjoyed by people in the States.  

We believe that to change this Constitution to recognise First Peoples by way of a Voice to parliament is window-dressing. Yet, despite that, the desire for a Voice that they hope can't be dissolved or fragmented is supported by many First Peoples who have fought alongside their communities for land rights, for First Peoples' control of their own affairs, for justice against corporations.  

We say this Constitution enshrines violence and attempted genocide, that the sovereignty of First Peoples was never ceded to the colonialists, and remains in force alongside, and as the foundation of, any true sovereignty that the Australian people aspire to. 

As Lidia Thorpe so powerfully pointed out, Australian politicians swear allegiance to a foreign power. 

We work for the day when united struggle of all Peoples is strong enough for the Constitution to be destroyed and a new one written, beginning with the truth-telling – already understood by all –  that the Australian nation was created by the unsettlement of, and theft from, the sovereign First Peoples, whose dispossession was everywhere attempted by the force and violence, or threat of force and violence, employed by the unsettlers and their police and troopers, that every land was defended in warfare. 

We struggle for just settlement that creates enduring peace between our Peoples.  

From there we can begin again.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Parliament votes to continue prosecution of whistleblowers.

Written by: Nick G. on 8 September 2023

 

On September 6, independent MP Andrew Wilkie sought leave to move a motion calling on Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to drop the prosecution of whistleblowers David McBride and Richard Boyle.

The text of his motion read:

That the House:
(1) notes that:
(a) Mr David McBride, a former military lawyer, is facing five charges relating to the disclosure of information that is undeniably in the public interest, including credible evidence of war crimes committed by Australian Defence Force personnel in Afghanistan;
(b) Mr McBride faces court on 13 November 2023, and will be the first person on trial in relation to alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan and he faces the very real prospect of spending years in prison, simply for telling the truth, because of this Australian Government prosecution; and
(c) Mr Richard Boyle, a former Australian Tax Office official, is also facing the prospect of life in prison within the year, for revealing information about serious improper conduct within the Australian Taxation Office, which was also undoubtedly in the public interest; and
(2) calls on the Government to immediately intervene pursuant to the Judiciary Act 1903 and discontinue the politically motivated prosecutions of Mr McBride and Mr Boyle.

The leave was not granted.

Wilkie then sought to suspend the standing and sessional orders that had been used to deny the leave he had sought. His motion to do so was seconded by another independent MP, the Member for North Sydney Kylea Tink. 

In seconding Wilkie’s motion, Tink said “Every day the government lets the prosecution of these two men continue is another day it's having a chilling effect on anyone who is considering revealing unlawful and other wrongful conduct inside the Australian government because these prosecutions send a very clear message: to blow the whistle is to bring the full force of the law down on your own head and the cost of courage is too high.”

Dreyfus was reminded that he had intervened shortly after the election to drop the prosecution of whistleblower Bernard Collaery over his involvement in disclosures of Australia’s bugging of the East Timorese government during negotiations over oil and gas extraction in the Timor Sea.

This followed a massive people’s campaign of support for Collaery. 

Speaking against Wilkie’s motion, Dreyfus refused to address the key issues of concern, denied that the “extraordinary circumstances” of Collaery’s case applied to McBride’s and Boyle’s, and hid behind the fact that both were the subject of criminal proceedings before the courts to justify his refusal to comment further on their cases.

If ever proof were needed that so-called “Labor values” are nothing more than the merest fig-leaf trying to hide Labor’s essential service to the ruling class, this was it.

The heads of the armed forces, of government instrumentalities and private monopoly corporations want to see McBride and Boyle imprisoned. They want the courts to set an example to anyone else contemplating blowing the whistle on injustice, corruption, dishonesty and criminality that they will not be protected, but instead, prosecuted and jailed.

On the one hand, Dreyfus has committed the government to continue its prosecution of McBride and Boyle, whilst on the other, admitting that the whistleblower legislation is faulty, and that a second review of the legislation is contemplated. He said, “…the government intends to commence a second stage of reforms, which will include public consultation on, firstly, broader reforms to the Public Interest Disclosure Act to provide effective and accessible protections to public sector whistleblowers.”

His was a contemptable performance in the service of those who seek to crush whistleblowers.

After Dreyfus spoke, there was only time for two more independent MPs, Allegra Spender and Zoe Daniel, both of whom supported Wilkie’s motion.

When time for  debate expired, the vote was put. 

There were 15 “Ayes” and 83 “Noes”. 

The Lib-Labs for the big end of town had crushed the independent voice of the people and, by refusing to protect the whistleblowers, left them both facing years in jail.

See also: Speech by IPAN member Derek Burke at a rally in support of Richard Boyle here.

 
 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The major powers and their South Pacific strategies

Written by: (Contributed) on 5 September 2023

 

In late August a major diplomatic statement issued through a New Zealand university highlighted the continued significance of Island Chain Theory (ICT) for present-day US-led regional diplomacy across the vast Indo-Pacific Region. (1) While the theory was largely discredited, it has, nevertheless, been re-vamped for use in the present Cold War by the Pentagon and, at present, moves are also under-way to enlarge the scope by introducing fourth and fifth chains across the Indian Ocean to comply with the Indo-Pacific Command. (2) The existing scope of ICT rests upon three chains which have been strengthened by the US in an attempt to encircle and contain China's influence in the Asia-Pacific region. (see diagram)

While the US has implemented its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), marked by the importance of the US-Japan alliance as central to global strategy, elsewhere Australia and New Zealand also have roles within their own localities, with specific reference to the South Pacific. (3) It is not coincidental that Australia and New Zealand form part of the elite US-based Five Eyes global intelligence sharing organisation: its regional eyes and ears.

Reference in the recent diplomatic statement to the Solomon Islands, therefore, have followed the set pattern of criticism of the Sogavare administration in Honiara: it noted, for example, 'Beijing was interested in the Solomon Islands because of its geographical location in the second island chain in the Pacific'. (4) The Solomon Islands is, indeed, a strategic part of the second chain, running from Japan to Western New Guinea, and a boundary for the Philippine Sea and islands in Micronesia including Guam which hosts numerous sensitive US military facilities. But, Prime Minister Sogavare has already stated, without ambiguity, 'Australia remains the security partner of choice', for the Solomon Islands. (5)

Speculation, nevertheless, has arisen about China using its favourable diplomatic links with the Solomon Islands in order to establish military facilities which would 'significantly change the strategic order which has prevailed in the Pacific since the end of WWII'. (6) No credible evidence was provided, or ever has been. Elsewhere, studies of the problem, however, have already established the US has become a declining regional power, with China presenting credible challenge to existing traditional hegemonic positions. (7)

The August diplomatic statement was contained in a larger article about problems of policing across the Pacific: the issue of effective governance remains a central concern in numerous countries which are relatively poor, political unstable and socially volatile.

Historically, Australia and New Zealand have taken a leading role in regional police training. Immediately prior to the independence of most Pacific countries in 1970, the Pacific Islands Chief of Police Forum was established in conjunction with their Australian and New Zealand counterparts on the basis of encouraging a 'Pacific First' response to regional security problems. (8)

In May, Canberra provided additional funding for the forum leading to the creation of the Australian Federal Police and Pacific Police Partnership, termed the AP4: other additional police organisation has included the Law Enforcement Co-operation Program, designed to strengthen the capability of Pacific police forces. (9)

Studies of the official websites for the Pacific Faculty of Policing Program Guide, 2022/23, reveal extensive educational and training facilities with a wide range of courses available on-line for distance learning techniques from basic training to higher management. (10)

Starting in late August, a regional meeting of 22 leading Pacific police officers has taken place. Included in the official media release was reference given to, 'this year's conference comes at a time of increased tension, when China is seeking to establish policing deals as part of its growing footprint across the region'. (11) Elsewhere in the media release it was noted, 'the Pacific is an increasingly complex environment that faces multifaceted security challenges and a dynamic geopolitical environment'. (12) The latter statement is best understood in the context of the former, whereby US-led Cold War considerations have been prioritised.

While there is little doubt serious law and order problems exist in the Pacific, and particularly the South Pacific: recent coverage of ethnic and inter-ethnic killings in PNG, for example, leave little to the imagination or idle speculation. In both the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu similar problems remain an ever-present concern in a highly volatile environment.

Yesterday, September 4, in Vanuatu there was a change in Prime Minister, with the incoming Sato Kilman immediately saying that the security pact signed with Australia last December could harm his country’s relationship with China. Saying, "We are not pro-West, and we are not pro-Chinese. We adopt a non-aligned policy," Kilman foreshadowed a redrafting of the agreement before it could be ratified by Vanuatu’s parliament. (13)

Meanwhile, last week, controversy again flared in the Solomon Islands as leaked US cables suggested that replica firearms supplied by China to the local police for training purposes in March 2022, were not replicas at all, but real weapons. (14) The Solomon Islands has also received Australian weapons and vehicles.

It would, however, be a remarkably naive observer to conclude that merely strengthening Pacific police forces is taking place to safeguard ordinary workers and subsistence farmers.

The moves, to the contrary, highlight the ability of the US to push their Cold War diplomatic agendas onto Australia and New Zealand to act as their regional hubs for 'US interests':

                                          We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Policing confusion in wisdom of the Solomons, Australian, 29 August 2023.
2.     Wikipedia: Island Chain Theory.
3.     See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
4.     Australian, op.cit., 29 August 2023.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Ibid.
7.     See Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Paul D. Shinkman, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
8.     AFP bolsters Pacific police ties, Australian, 31 August 2023.
9.     Ibid.
10.   See websites: Pacific Faculty of Policing Program Guide, 2022/23; and, Australian Federal Police helps train, The Tribune, 8 February 2023.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 31 August 2023.
12.   Ibid.
13. Future of Australia-Vanuatu security pact in doubt after Pacific Island nation picks new PM - ABC News
14. Solomon Islands MPs demand answers over ‘replica’ guns from China | Weapons News | Al Jazeera

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Two referendums and a battle: lessons from history

Written by: Louisa L. on 4 September 2023

 

This is the third of five comments on the Voice Referendum approved by the Central Committee - eds.

As we face the coming referendum, the past gifts us experience. On January 26 this year we pointed out, “The 1967 referendum shifted focus to constitutional change. First Peoples saw it as a turning point. The Australian masses had turned towards them. Racism still existed, but 91 per cent had voted for them to be counted in the census and to transfer control from vicious state governments to the federal parliament. First Peoples were more free to travel and organise.

“Struggle everywhere ramped up. Federal funding for Aboriginal services followed. 

“Dialectics teach us to look below the surface to understand something, and that a thing may become its opposite, positive become negative, in certain circumstances. 

“The 1971 Census exposed for the first time the horror of living conditions for First Peoples, life expectancy, blindness and ill health, arrest, imprisonment and infant mortality rates. TV cameras brought vision into suburban lounge rooms.

“Capitalism did not change its spots. Today, the same shameful lived statistics for the majority of First Peoples, with the addition of substance abuse and child suicides.

“The Gurindji waited seven more years to be ‘given’ a piece of their own land. An Australian government had to negotiate with the invader’s Vestey Group! Who actually ruled?

“And in 2007, John Howard with ALP opposition support used Section 51(xxvi), the Constitution’s “race powers” introduced in 1967, to impose the 15-year genocidal NT ‘Emergency’ Intervention, for the benefit of resource giants,” we stated.

Howard had already relied on Section 51(xxvi), to extinguish native title claims of Ngarrindjerri women against SA’s Hindmarsh Bridge on a sacred site. With Justice Kirby dissenting, the High Court ruled Section 51(xxvi) could work to the detriment of First Peoples. 

Waves of struggle

The Whitlam Government came to power on waves of peoples’ struggles. It began the process which returned Gurindji land, later finalised by Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser. It outraged US imperialism mired in and soon losing the Vietnam War, when its little buddy Australia took some steps to greater independence.

US corporations faced a government trying to “buy back the farm” from US economic control, and even worse, with a loan from the rival Moscow Narodny Bank through an Arab intermediary. The government blocked sales of uranium to US Westinghouse Corporation which was sued for its inability to fill nuclear power station contracts. There was a lot more for the US to hate about Whitlam’s Government. It all came from the strength of the people.

The US appointed coup master Marshall Green as its ambassador to Australia. Protesters pointed out the coup death toll of his time in Indonesia – between 500,000 and 2,000,000. 

After a long period of undermining the government, the CIA overthrew the Whitlam Government using the British queen’s governor general. 
Two decades later, John Howard took on the growing republican movement. There were similarities to the gathering near Uluru, but the Constitutional Convention was entirely handpicked by Howard, completely omitting the working class and those who led struggle. It chose a referendum question doomed to fail specifying the president would be chosen by parliament. A true politicians’ referendum, so long chanted against by Dutton recently with so little truth. 60 percent voted no.

In 2000, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation made three recommendations to the Howard government.  All three were rejected in 2002, including the proposal for a referendum to change the preamble to the constitution to recognise Indigenous people as the first peoples of Australia

Howard and his ideological liars immediately began rewriting history for the ruling class. Australians opposed a republic, Howard said, while massively funding and speaking of our ‘British heritage’, ‘our flag that flew over battlefields’ and - often helped by state Labor governments – demanding the removal of Peoples’ history of resistance and struggle that kids thrived on from school curriculums. Instead, Federation, lists of prime ministers and favoured sports people and World War One battles made students turn their backs on our shared history.

Many First Peoples point out Australia can never be a republic until just settlement is made.

How we deal with defeats is as important as how we deal with victories

Thirty years after Whitlam’s sacking, two giant waves of mass struggle arose, the waterfront dispute and later Iraq war protests. Unlike the lead-up to Whitlam’s rise, when the Vietnam Moratoriums saw workers ‘Stop Work to Stop the War’, the working class was not nationally organisationally mobilised before the Iraq invasion. 

It was a lost opportunity. 

How we deal with defeats is as important as how we deal with victories. 

One of the failures of the anti-Iraq war movement was that we didn't go beyond the Stop the War demand and organisations which left the movement with nowhere to go once the war started.  The call for an independent foreign policy and opposing imperialist wars was not raised sufficiently by us or anyone at that time, which would have offered political direction and incentive to continue the struggle. Those of us who led those protests were not farsighted enough to make preparations for when war was declared, against over 94 percent opposition from the Australian people. Nationally, the working class was not systematically organised against it. There could have been major uplift in struggle, major disruption of capitalist profits. 

Why didn’t our lead-up publicity or protest speeches and banners make preparations for immediate action and protracted struggle following any declaration of war? 

Far more people marched before the Iraq War than during the Moratoriums. We felt our immense collective power. Yet it created pessimism. ‘We failed’, was the lesson learned. 

There’s always both negative and positives in any situation. Muslim people knew they were part of a world-wide and Australian mass movement. We all understood who our enemies were. We could have built on that. 

First Peoples are already looking beyond the coming referendum. Whatever the result, we all have to hit the ground running.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Cocos (Keeling) Islands prepared for war

Written by: Nick G. on 1 September 2023

 

Two years ago, the Australian government announced a $184 million expansion of military facilities on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands (CKI) is an Australian external territory located in the Indian Ocean, approximately 3,000km north-west of Perth, Western Australia. It comprises 2 coral atolls made up of 27 smaller islands.

The expansion reflects growing tensions and war preparations in the Indo-Pacific region with the Australian servants of US imperialism bending over backwards to “do their bit”.

The CKI proposal is for airfield strengthening and extension, and for a new permanent construction wharf on West Island.

In a separate project, the ADF will next month begin $22-million works to make the Cocos (Keeling) Islands a forward-operating base as part of plans to strengthen electronic warfare support to naval, air and land forces.

Islander concerns

The expansion plans have caused some concern on the part of local residents, according to ABC reports. 

Some residents have voiced concerns about deaths of local turtles which they claim are a result of military activity denuding their sea-grasses, and some have threatened to take the Australian government to the United Nations over Australian inactivity over global warming. A letter from the Shire of Cocos (Keeling) Islands calling on the federal government to recognise the devastating impacts of global warming on their lives remains unanswered five months on. Last year, the UN ruled that Australia had violated the rights of Torres Strait Islanders by failing to address the impacts of climate change. CKI residents are hoping for a similar ruling.

Others worry about their long-term safety as the threat of war grows.

In January the ABC quoted the CKI chief executive Frank Mills as saying "The community, I guess, has some trepidation as to what's going to happen in terms of the upgrade,” and he questioned whether there was any possibility of the runway becoming a target for armed forces from other nations.

He might also consider asking what armed forces from other nations might be given access to the longer runway and port facilities given that the Force Posture Agreement Australia has with the US surrenders our sovereignty to the overlords, allowing them unrestricted access to Australian territory for military bases and storage of supplies.

The ostensible reason for the airfield extension is the changeover from the Lockheed Orion to the Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance and anti-submarine planes.

However, the US is keen to obtain additional facilities for its nuclear-armed B-52 bombers. It has its puppets in Canberra extending the RAAF Base Tindal, outside of Katherine in the NT to make space for its B-52s which otherwise must use Diego Garcia or Guam. CKI would be closer to the action in our region than Diego Garcia.

Yet another cost blowout

Earlier this year, it was reported that the initial $185 million estimate for the expanded military facilities on CKI had blown out to $568 million in just two years.

This is typical of military contracts, which are thrown around like confetti by the so-called “Defence” Department. The cash cow of military contracts is milked for all it is worth - and that is a value derived from the bottomless pit of government debt.

Consider the original Collins class sub contract of $40-50 billion which quickly blew out to $90 billion, or the $2.4 billion blowout in the F-35 contract. The P-8A contract blew out by $1.8 billion, although two extra planes were included in that. The contract for the Lockheed Martin HIMARS rockets (valued at around $300,000 each) has grown from a package costing $604 million in May 2022, to the similar package for Australia now costed at $1.5 billion. The Australian package does include some more rockets than the other one, but Asia Pacific Defence Reporter editor Kym Bergmann still believes that more than $800 million of the blowout is unaccounted for and is just price gouging by the US arms manufacturer.

War is good for big business, and if there is no war, then the threat of war will do.

Imperialism spreads its menace to all on the globe, including those on tiny coral atolls in the Indian Ocean.

With politicians from both major parliamentary parties in furious agreement over how best to serve their US masters, it is up to the people to organise and fight the menace of imperialist war.

For anti-imperialist independence and socialism!

Fight the plans for warfare between the imperialists!

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Celebrating the 60th anniversary of Australia’s oldest revolutionary newspaper.

Written by: Nick G. on 1 September 2023

 

Vanguard, newspaper of the Australian Marxist-Leninists, was first published 60 years ago, in September 1963, predating by a few months the formation of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) on March 15, 1964.

The first issue continued the work of those within the original Communist Party of Australia who had been battling to defend Marxism-Leninism in the CPA.

The contradiction between the sliding into reformism of the revisionists and the commitment to revolutionary politics and ideology upheld by the Marxist-Leninists, reached such levels of antagonism that a parting of the ways became inevitable. The Marxist-Leninists were either expelled or forced to leave the CPA. The first editions of Vanguard rallied the revolutionaries and led them organisationally, politically and ideologically towards the reestablishment of a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party, the CPA (M-L).

Vanguard continued as a hard copy newspaper until December 2014 when articles were transferred to the Party’s website. Selected hard copy editions still occurred on important dates (eg the centenary of the October Socialist Revolution in 2017) and annually on May Day. However, the advantage of the online publication of Vanguard has been its greater reach (including on the Party’s Facebook and Twitter accounts) and the immediacy of comments being able to be published on important events.

The online and occasional hard copy editions of Vanguard make it, at 60 years since that first edition, the oldest continuing revolutionary paper in Australia.
We are very grateful to all those who over the years, have contributed financially, organisationally, as writers and photographers, suppliers of information to be followed up, and distributors to the people. And we are equally grateful to those who continue to read the Vanguard.

 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Vanuatu: Military Exercises and Real-Life Dramas

Written by: (Contributed) on 30 August 2023

 

Google Maps/Christopher Woody

While the recent Exercise Predators Run was under-way in the Northern Territories, a real-life drama was being played-out in Vanuatu. The exercise was planned to prepare countries allied with the US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) for military conflict in Australia's immediate northern region: the political crisis in Vanuatu, likewise, provided a vivid example of how diplomatic tensions can, potentially, escalate into real-war scenarios at quick notice, with far-reaching implications. It has also showed how the US-IPS is a military plan and part of US foreign policy toward the vast region, which has little scope, or any intention, of respecting the sovereignty of other countries.

During late August the twelve day Exercise Predators Run began, with a bare minimum of publicity. In fact, it was only publicised following the deaths of three US military personnel on Melville Island, about seventy kilometres north of Darwin. The military exercise, however, has been noted as a large-scale war-game with more than 2,500 troops from countries which form part of the US IPS: the US, Australia, The Philippines, East Timor and Indonesia, with land, sea and air military personnel. (1)

The exercise followed the recent Exercise Talisman Sabre, which was widely publicised.

The latter exercise and military planning was specifically concentrated upon the area of the region to the immediate north of Australia, and would appear to have been regarded by the Pentagon as sensitive. (2) A brief official media release about the exercise noted, for example, 'it aims to replicate a joint allied response to amphibious conflict to Australia's immediate north. It is one of a growing number of military exercises to prepare the ADF and allies for potential conflict'. (3) The exercise would, nevertheless, appear an important component part of the wider US-IPS, in the southern area of the region where Australia has the designated role of a major hub for 'US interests'. (4)

Situated from about 115 degrees east, to about 155 degrees east, the northern approaches of Australia include: the countries of the South Pacific, Indonesia, The Philippines, the South China Seas, and sensitive areas of the wider Pacific including Guam, which in turn is linked to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean on an arc from US intelligence facilities based in Pine Gap. The northern part of Australia is also littered with numerous military facilities, including: 1st Combat Signals, Darwin; 1st Signals, Brisbane; 3rd Signals, Townsville; Electronic Warfare, Cabarlah, Queensland. (5) Australian Defence Force military facilities at the Lavarack Barracks, Townsville, also host the 141st Signals Squadron together with numerous other sensitive and training units which were expanded during the previous Cold War due to conflict in South-East Asia. (6)

The new US-led Cold War with China has drawn heavily upon regional frameworks established decades ago, including those in Australia.

Moves by the US to establish the new Cold War included the re-use of numerous military facilities across the region, which were largely abandoned decades before, following the end of the Vietnam War. The re-use, however, has not involved large-scale military facilities, but emphasis is placed upon countries hosting temporary US presence, on a rotational basis. (7)

It is important to note, therefore, that initial US troop rotations through Australian facilities amounted to about two hundred in 2011, to 2,500, at the present time. (8) Similar increases have taken place elsewhere across the Indo-Pacific, as part of waves of US-led militarism.

The beginning of Exercise Predators Run also coincided with a regional diplomatic summit hosted by Palau which included the signing of a security pact for PNG, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, with Australia. There was, again, a minimum of official publicity although a Joint Communique issued by the Defence Department, did, nevertheless, note the pact included, 'co-ordination … amongst … regional security agencies … to address multi-dimensional security challenges'. (9) The economic use of language conveyed a certain type of diplomacy, aimed at being transparent as a matter of expedience, although circumspect.

But then, even the best made of plans taking place in relative secrecy, can go astray.

Within days of the signing of the pact, M.P.s in Vanuatu crossed to floor to side with opposition figures who subsequently won a vote of no confidence against Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau, following opposition leader Bob Loughman lodging a petition against the government, 'for signing a security pact with Australia … with the claim … the security pact with Australia compromised Vanuatu's neutral status'. (10)

DFAT here in Australia are keeping a very low profile about the whole matter.

The fact the successful vote of no confidence took place in the middle of a highly strategic US-led military exercise is evidence in itself of hidden hands in a troubled diplomatic environment.

While the matter rests with the Supreme Court in Port Vila, it has been noted that Vanuatu has become the 'centre of strategic rivalry between China and western countries'. (11)

And then the following day China deployed their police to Vanuatu to support counterparts: the deployment took place under a diplomatic provision established between Vanuatu and China last year, with a five-point agreement designed to 'deepen strategic co-ordination … and regional co-operation'. (12)

It remains highly significant to note the developments have taken place with the bare minimum of publicity, although present Australia with a major defence and security problem
in the South Pacific. Acting on behalf of the US and their IPS, Australia has also been seen to have been drawn into the very real likelihood of real-war scenarios and to have complied with the US line of little, or no, respect for the sovereignty of countries such as Vanuatu:  

                                         We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     The deadly cost of rising to challenge China aggression, Australian, 28 August 2023;  and, 3 US marines killed, Boston.com., 27 August 2023.
2.     Australian, ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
5.     Wikipedia.
6.     Ibid.
7.     See: US eyes return to south-east Asian bases, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 29 June 2012; and, US signs defence deal in Asia, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 2 May 2014.
8.     Australian, op.cit., 28 August 2023.
9.     Australian Government, Defence, Joint Communique, Meetings, 23-24 August 2023.
10.   China sends police experts to Vanuatu amid political crisis linked to Australian Pact, The New Daily, 27 August 2023.
11.   Ibid.
12.   China, Vanuatu reach five-point consensus, China.org.en., Xinhua, 2 June 2022; and, Chinese police experts, Radio New Zealand, 27 August 2023.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Australian armed forces – guardians of the Bushido

Written by: Nick G. on 29 August 2023

 

(Original photo under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

US imperialism created it and now wants to get rid of it – the so-called pacifist Constitution of Japan.

It wants to clear the way for the greater deployment of Australian and Japanese forces as its cat’s paws – agents of provocation – against its rival, Chinese social-imperialism.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Divide and conquer, the oldest trick in the book

Written by: Louisa L. on 28 August 2023

 

As the Voice referendum approaches, First Peoples have never been more divided. Competing factions within the capitalist ruling class have caused those divisions. The factions agree on fundamentals – that First Peoples’ lands and waters will continue to be exploited for oil, mineral and gas, for real estate profits, for corporate farming, for waste dumps or military bases. 

 

They disagree on tactics. One side prefers soft tactics with some concessions to the struggles led by First Peoples, the other wants to completely crush resistance. In the ruling class-controlled parliament they are represented by their respective servants, Albanese and Dutton.

Over years both factions gutted land rights and replaced them with native title which excluded the vast majority of First Peoples. They pitted traditional custodians against lands councils from which custodians are often excluded. They condoned world-leading incarceration rates, demonised and tortured children as young as ten, and stole others from families, hounded families on Centrelink. They evicted them from public housing. They sat on their hands as children suicided. They still do.

Witness the labelling of traumatised Aboriginal children at the Banksia Park detention centre as “terrorists” by the WA Labor Premier.

They prepared the Northern Territory for deeper exploitation through 15 years of the brutal Intervention: $100 million spent on police centres; forcing the young out of communities and off Country into towns; humiliating elders with allegations and the rest with basics cards; banishing language instruction in schools till late afternoons; dumping community run councils, businesses and employment programs. 

And so much more. How has it come to this?

How has it come to this?

In 1988, First Peoples struck a tremendous and united blow against 200 years of colonialism and imperialism. They said to the ruling class, you have thrown every weapon you possess against us but we have survived! It was an extraordinary moment of growing First Peoples’ unity, power and defiance, built upon two centuries of resistance. It struck fear into the heartless, inhuman, profit-driven core of the ruling class. 

The Business Council of Australia, set up to unify the largest corporations in the country, knew its outright suppression of First Peoples had failed. It began planning. By the year 2000, it set its vast economic, human, political, legal and cultural resources into an offensive on a wide range of fronts to systematically drive disunity into First People’s communities. It promoted the identity of corporate and First People’s aspirations, although in reality these are diametrically opposed. 

In 2017, our comrade Lindy Nolan first documented the process in Driving Disunity: The Business Council Against Aboriginal Community. 

One focus was constitutional recognition. 

Without grassroots processes of development, what became the well-funded Uluru process was outlined by Noel Pearson at Garma Festival 2016 on a platform shared with the BCA’s Michael Rose. Noel Pearson’s proposal incorporated and praised ‘Australia’s British Institutions’. Garma was full of Business Council of Australia members, 21 from Westpac alone. CEO Jennifer Westacott co-chaired another key forum of three BCA speakers. 

Corporations like Rio Tinto and other US-controlled mining giants support the Voice, but it’s nothing more than self-interest. They want to blackwash their image. Whether the referendum is won or lost, it’s nothing to them. Driving division was their true aim. 

Peter Dutton calls the Voice divisive. But it’s precisely what the ruling class intended. 

The far right organises

The commanding heights of the Australian economy are in US hands. Despite Australian faces in parliament, the USA holds state power. The biggest, most powerful US corporations organised as the ruling class have again and again shown their willingness to overthrow governments that no longer serve their needs, and institute open dictatorships. This happened in South Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, across Central and South America, in the Middle East, in Africa. 

Because Labor and Coalition unswervingly support US imperialism, there is no current danger of a coup. 

The particular danger which has to be more widely understood, opposed and eventually prepared for is the gradual removal of swathes of hard-won democratic rights, the personal attacks on opponents of US domination, brutal isolation and suppression of individuals who expose injustice to discipline the rest. 

First Peoples will not be the beneficiaries of what we loosely term fascism, but which really means the open and direct rule of the capitalist class, in Australia’s case, US imperialism. 

Marx pointed out parliamentary “democracy” is the ruling classes’ preferred option. It builds the far right, holding it in reserve for the time when so-called democracy no longer serves its purposes. More and more people see through Australia’s so-called democracy. Most politicians are rightly disrespected, because again and again the big end of town is the beneficiary of their decisions. But the majority still see no alternative to parliament.

With massive one-sided publicity that ignored the progressive First Peoples’ No sentiments and the undemocratic way it was set up, the 2017 Statement from the Heart won overwhelming support from non-Indigenous people. Yet it demanded more than some far right corporations wanted. Successive Coalition politicians stomped on change, delaying it while they organised. As proposals were watered down and negotiations dragged on, bit by bit they became more aggressive.

Now far right voices are roaring. Its leadership is mainstreamed under Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott. It’s no longer a few crazies targeting Muslims with roast pig festivals and burka banning. 

For decades they systematically created fear and division among everyday people over ‘Islamic terrorism’, abortion, voluntary assisted dying, Covid lockdowns and vaccines, with one section of the population after another drawn into their influence and organisation. This included some militant workers, First Peoples and left activists rightly suspicious of Big Pharma and discriminatory applications of lockdowns. Now, alongside attacking easy targets, like “woke” media personalities and trans sportspeople, they use ignorance to discredit the Voice. They don’t want even an advisory body to mitigate their total control when elected, even though as Michael Mansell points out, they could simply stop funding it. The Constitution’s Section 101 states, “There shall be an Interstate Commission.” It hasn’t existed since 1950.

The key for the far right is building a mass organisational base.

So, it lies and distorts. Even the official, publicly funded and distributed referendum material about the No “information” is full of lies. 

Compelled to lie

Racism is a tool of the ruling class to create division, often internalised and passed on generationally. Its Vote No campaign is motivated by centuries of the most vicious embedded racism. Although a “gentlemanly agreement” was proposed by PM Albanese under which the Voice debate would not see opponents labelled as “racists”, racism is at the heart of Dutton’s No campaign. 

Racism is a festering sore. Just look at social media support for cops who have killed First Peoples, the hounding of Indigenous sports people by racist trolls, the hounding of Wiradjuri man and media personality Stan Grant by the same racists, and the everyday lived experiences of so many First Peoples.

The far right have to lie and distort because Australians have never been more supportive of justice for First Peoples. They know if they told the truth – that they want to completely and utterly crush First Peoples’ lives and hopes – it would not be tens of thousands on the streets. It would be millions. 

This faction moans about the Voice causing division, of giving First Peoples privileges and power, so powerfully ridiculed decades back in Paul Kelly’s Special Treatment. Alongside this they cry about the terrible conditions facing First Peoples, despite their own role in generations of ongoing attacks and deliberate neglect. 

But they have more cynical and dangerous ploys. Guardian Australia’s Josh Butler and Nick Evershed documented Tony Abbott-led Advance Australia’s use of multiple social media platforms aimed specific groups, with different messages aimed at women and older people. For young people influenced by the left No campaign, Advance Australia’s ‘Not Enough’ Facebook page says people should vote No because the Voice won’t have enough power. They try to draw people into their organisational tentacles. 

Peter Dutton even abuses its factional rival Westpac for funding the Yes campaign. What a hypocrite! Where was this ex-Queensland copper when the last government tried to stop the royal commission into corruption by banks like Westpac? Dutton, Morrison and Co created the shortest royal commission in history in the lead up to Christmas, so it would fade in holiday celebrations.

Where was he when Westpac created a template empowering NSW lands councils to claim and sell swathes of “Crown” lands, while excluding traditional custodians? 

Their leaders are happy to shift their targets to increase their reach. For example, many Muslims were against vaccines and lockdowns. Now, like other religious groups, they are being mobilised against so-called threats to children – safety programs supporting transgender and non-binary young people in schools.

But their true target has always been the conscious and organised left which increasingly understands Australia capitalism as a wing of US imperialism and organises against it. 

In its march to war, in Garramilla Darwin and Mparntwe Alice Springs, First Peoples are on the front line yet again. Both parliamentary ruling class factions are complicit in this. 

We need to know our enemies, not just broadly, but in detail. If the No vote wins, as seems likely, Dutton’s group will claim responsibility. Sky’s wealthy Indigenous mouthpiece will be louder. The Coalition’s spokeswoman will continue to promote the cause of Northern Territory style interventions. 
Yes supporters will be deeply wounded.

Progressive No supporters must be organised and ready. They must be stronger. They must be armed with the knowledge that it is the masses who make history.

When the time is right, they must respectfully and gently reach out to Yes supporters to show all is not lost.

Together, we have a world to win. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Wage thieves don’t like new legislation

Written by: (Contributed) on 27 August 2023

 

Plans by the Albanese government to introduce wage theft legislation have already met with opposition from employers' organisations. It is not difficult to establish the extent of the problem of wage theft and the urgent need for effective legislation to protect workers from unscrupulous employers. Many employers, however, continue to hide behind facile excuses: their chosen business model has served their financial interests well for many years, they see no reason to accept criticism or accept change.

A McKell Institute study based on International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysis examining the Fair Work Ombudsman business audits from 2009, has established Australian workers have been subject to massive wage theft. The report estimated workers were being underpaid by at least $847.25 million per annum. (1) It also noted that the total amount of wage theft was likely to be much higher, with other cases being well-hidden and difficult to calculate accurately. (2) Large numbers of 'zombie' agreements, long out-of-date, still exist, whereby employers merely pay their workforces small annual wage settlements without reference to other entitlements and obligations.

When taking the fact Australia only has a workforce of approximately 13 million, with about a 66 per cent participate rate, the active section of the workforce only amounts to about eight million workers.

Assessed on the state-by-state basis, the problem of wage theft has been calculated to amount to $306 million in NSW with more than 500,000 workers. Sydney, the capital of NSW, had 41,106 workers subject to $25 million wage theft. In Melbourne, 28,500 workers
missed out on $17.5 million. (3) When measured across the whole of Australia an estimated 269,728 businesses were, therefore, collectively robbing more than 1.3 million workers of $847.25 million. (4)

The analysis found an estimated forty per cent of businesses were not complying with the Fair Work Act, while more than a quarter were in breach of monetary obligations including award rates and agreements. Government departments, which are supposed to police the legislation, appear little other than toothless tigers, composed of faceless office-workers trained to turn a blind-eye to a major problem in fear of compromising their own career-pathways in the eyes of managers who form part of elite patronage systems.

Employers' organisations have continued to complain about 'the supposed complexity of the award system', although the legislation was written in standard, technical English and interpreted to the word. There are no 'grey areas' in industrial law. The facile excuses by the business-classes would tend to indicate the failure of business and management educators to provide adequate and suitable training for their students.

The report did, in fact, draw attention to the problem of what was recognised as 'ingrained negligence'. (5) The silence, on the part of the legal profession, has been duly noted, as has their 'professionalism'. A similar explanation could also be directed toward employers' organisations generally, which tend to specialise in the provision of 'help-lines' for their clientele for use to undermine existing legislation and regulations. There is a common tendency for them to parade 'legal' services on glitzy websites with free-phone facilities.

So much for the privileged education of the Australian middle- and upper-classes and the ethical standards to which they aspire and the facile nature of their hand-wringing excuses.

It should be noted as highly relevant that most Australian trade-union representatives and delegates have no difficulty reading and studying existing awards, agreements and legislation despite the fact many have failed to even finish secondary education or to have tertiary qualifications.

The findings of the McKell Institute study of wage theft highlight the urgent need to criminalise wage theft to destroy the chosen business model of the supporters of economic rationalism. Such legislation would be a major assault upon the Australian business-classes and their supporters in the corridors of power in Canberra and other provincial cities.

And, in conclusion, the opposition from the business-classes is evidence that the proposed government legislation has some positive features for workers,

The evidence is there, for all to see!

1.     Wage theft an $847 m-a-year hit, Australian, 22 August 2023.  
2.     Ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Ibid.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Why is such an inter-imperialist rivalry concentrated in a single country like Sudan?

Written by: Parti Communiste du Togo on 23 August 2023

 

(We are internationalists and want to know about and to support people's fights for liberation and socialism around the globe. Struggles in Africa have additional importance for us now that we have such a large African diaspora embedded in the ranks of AUstralian workers. This analysis from the Communist Party of Togo on the situatio in Sudan is of great assistance in helping us to understand events there - eds.)

PCTogo 15 August 2023

"If the capitalists divide the world among themselves, it is not because of their particular villainy, but because the degree of concentration already attained compels them to follow this path in order to make profits."

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Capitalism’s destructive war on nature causing ongoing extreme weather events.

Written by: Nick G. on 22 August 2023

 

(Artwork courtesy Earth Liberation Studios)

As I write today, there are still bushfires burning in parts of New South Wales after a weekend on which more than 70 bush or grass fires were being fought.

The official start of the NSW fire season is October 1, but the NSW Rural Fire Service says that the season has already started in six areas in the north of the state.

Globally, there has been country after country in which wildfires, some unprecedented in scope and intensity, have occurred – some still not under control.

Canada still burning

Canada is in the midst of its worst wildfire season, with more than 5,700 fires recorded so far this year. 

More than 137,000 square kilometres have been burned from one end of Canada to another, twice the size of the worst affected areas in the past. At this moment, more than 1000 Canadian fires are being fought, with assistance from overseas fire fighters. 

Just two days ago, thousands of residents from Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands had been evacuated as a wildfire authorities deemed “out of control” raged on for a fourth day.

The Canary Islands emergency services said more than 26,000 people had been evacuated by Saturday afternoon, according to provisional estimates, a sharp rise from 4,500 on Friday. Some 11 towns have now been affected.

The fire was at a scale never been seen before in the Canary Islands, Tenerife Council President Rosa Davila told reporters.

The Tenerife evacuation mirrored that of the Greek island of Rhodes. Multiple wildfires in Greece started on 17 July 2023. They resulted in at least seven deaths and injured more than 20 people, and burned dozens of areas in parts of Greece. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from Rhodes as firefighters struggled to deal with the blaze. Many had to flee the fires on foot.

The current heatwave engulfing Greece is set to be the longest in its history, lasting nearly three weeks, surpassing the 1987 heatwave.

Following two deadly fire seasons in 2021 (90 lives lost) and 2022 (37 lives lost), Algeria was again consumed by wildfires this July in which 34 people died.

Italy, Croatia, Turkiye and Tunisia were also battling wildfires this July. In the second week of August, hundreds of firefighters battled wildfires in Portugal where 1,400 people had been evacuated in a 46C heatwave.

In Hawaii, the death toll from the Maui wildfires has risen to 111 with as many as 1,000 still missing.

During June, Beijing and parts of northern China experienced record temperatures, with authorities urging people to limit their time outdoors. The Nanjiao observatory in southern Beijing for the first time recorded temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius for a third consecutive day, according to the China Meteorological Administration.

If it’s not one thing, it’s the other

No wonder people are apprehensive about the proliferation of extreme weather events. Rainfall and flooding on an unprecedented scale are matching bushfires in their destructive intensity. 

In January 2022 More than 72 millimetres were recorded in Lithgow - almost a month's worth of rain in just over an hour. People sat on rooftops waiting to be rescued. Insurers have walked away from such areas. In November 2022 there was further NSW flooding, with two people drowned. Floods also occurred across Victoria.

In late July, Typhoon Doksuri, a tropical super cyclone, hit the Philippines killing 137 and injuring many more. Passing into China’s south-eastern province of Fujian, it set records for 24-hour rainfall totals, then moved north towards Beijing where, although weakened, it still caused havoc. 

At the start of August, China’s capital recorded its heaviest rainfall in at least 140 years as remnants of Typhoon Doksuri deluged the region, turning streets into canals where emergency crews used rubber boats to rescue stranded residents. The city recorded 744.8 millimeters (29.3 inches) of rain over three days. Last year’s total rainfall in Beijing did not even top 500 millimeters (19.6 inches). 

This week, Cyclone Hilary became the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years. It dumped more than half the average annual rain on some desert and mountain areas, including Palm Springs, which saw nearly 3 inches of rain by Sunday evening. Tens of thousands of people across Southern California had no power due to the storm.

Capitalism’s global warming must bear responsibility

The frequency of extreme weather events has a cause, a responsibility. That cause is the increase in global warming. It occurs because of unrestricted carbon dioxide emissions. The gluttony of fossil fuel corporations is mainly responsible. They feel no compunction in placing profits before the planet.

Cyclones and rain bombs are related to the behaviour of the world’s oceans. The oceans absorb 90 percent of CO2 emissions. A just-released report on the warming of the world’s oceans shows rising sea water temperatures that are “off the scales”. Rises in atmospheric and sea water temperatures lead to melting of polar ice caps and glaciers, reducing their ability to reflect sun’s rays back into space. 

It is the people of the world who suffer during extreme weather events. 

We must bring the fossil fuel corporations to heel. They must be forced to stop their destructive activities.

Socialism alone can develop and sustain an economy in which there can be a balance struck between people’s needs and the health of the planet we inhabit.
Together with all our other tasks, the fight against global warming must remain a priority. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

" property="og:description" />

The Labor Party? (E. F. Hill)

Written by: on

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The day after the Referendum, struggle will continue

Written by: Louisa L. on 21 August 2023

 

This is the first of five statements that the Party will release on the Referendum to change the Constitution. They will be printed on successive Mondays as from today - eds.

Once again decisions about First Peoples’ lives will be made by others. 

Despite some First Peoples’ input in the lead up, the 97 percent of non-Indigenous Australians will decide the Referendum. 

As Murrawarri man Fred Hooper says, the Australian Electoral Commission could have organised a plebiscite or referendum of First Peoples to decide what they want. 

For those willing to listen, this year has been full like never before of the lives, experiences and views of First Peoples, no matter where they stand on the Referendum. 

Throughout the whole constitutional recognition process, well before the current Referendum proposal, we have helped promote the views of those demanding treaties and fundamental change. That remains our preferred position, but we have no right to impose it on First Peoples. 

Palawa leader Michael Mansell said the Voice would marginalise not empower Aboriginal Peoples, that as an advisory body it would be ineffective, that its underlying ideology is assimilationist and that it was used by the prime minister to block Treaty.

He said its powerful proponents – the PM, media and big business – portrayed those questioning the Voice as racist or unthinking, instead of answering questions raised. Speaking in March, before increasing public action by First Peoples’ opponents increasingly broke through, he criticised one-sided media coverage.

He voted for the Statement of the Heart, but at the meeting delegates had no right to separate the four key elements, sovereignty, truth telling, treaty and voice. They had to vote for all or none. 

The government allocated $66 million for the Voice, but just $5 million for Treaty. 

His full speech is essential listening, available here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U0qrjJLMJ0
 
State Voice and other voices

South Australia created a Voice to the state parliament by legislation. It was the first State to do so. It placed First Nations in the State into six geographical groups, each to have two elected representatives serving on the State Voice.

It was widely welcomed as a great step forward by many – but not all – First Peoples in SA. 

Goreng Bibullman (Nyoongar) man Keith Thomas, editor of the SA Native Title Services paper Aboriginal Way, writes that SA will now have “two voices: A Voice that is funded by the government, and provides advice to the government, and a Voice by the people, for the people, to maintain lore and custom for Aboriginal people at the grassroots level.”

“SA Native Title Services (SANTS),” he said, “has been vocal about the concerns of the native title holders we represent across the state. While we do support the principle of a Voice to SA Parliament, our major concern is that the State Voice will become a separate entity with the potential to erode and undermine existing First Nations leadership and cultural authority…Only Traditional Owners have the responsibility and right to speak for issues impacting them, their Country, their community and their culture…no-one else should be given the authority (especially by the Crown) to perform functions or make decisions about issues over that Country.”

These concerns have also been raised by long-time activist for Blak rights, Gumbaynggirr man Gary Foley at this year’s Invasion Day rallies. He spoke of land rights, culture and true self-determination. 

Lidia Thorpe speaks of the invaders’ “assimilation project”. When she speaks of Treaty, she means long-term mass struggle strong enough to provide a just peace from the ceaseless 235-year war crushing First Peoples.  

Others like Gumbaynggirr woman Elizabeth Jarrett who supports a left No vote are sceptical about type of treaties capitalism will offer. Some like Fighting in Solidarity Towards Treaties-activist Wiradjuri, Badu Island leader Linda June Coe and Michael Mansell want parliamentary representatives directly elected by First Peoples to arise from treaty processes. 

High profile grassroots activists campaigning for a Yes vote include Bunuba elder and Human Rights Commissioner June Oscar who helped lead the successful battle in Fitzroy Crossing for Bunuba to control alcohol distribution and consumption; Barbara Shaw who stood firm against the NT Intervention across the country and led practical responses to protect First Peoples from its devastation on the ground in Mparntwe; native title barrister Tony McAvoy, who has always stood for treaties and whose people are the Wangan and Jagalingou opposing Adani. There are many more.

Tony McAvoy says that just as the 1967 Referendum did not cede or extinguish First Peoples' sovereignty, neither will the upcoming Referendum or the Voice. 

Michael Mansell pointed out the Northern Territory Treaty Framework designed by Tony McAvoy, provides for land without the native title process, including for those in cities, autonomous law-making providing hunting and fishing rights, health, education, land use and adequate cash. 

“It delivers a bundle of rights, binding states, police, courts, business and the public,” Mansell stated.

First Peoples’ lives are not a Yes-No proposition

It is important to distinguish between racist opposition to the Voice and the legitimate criticisms of the Yes vote coming from First Peoples.

There is undeniably a danger that the Voice to Parliament will control and defuse the voices of grassroots First Peoples, and channel their concerns into parliament making them ineffective. 

But all people learn primarily from their own experiences. Whatever the Referendum result, there will be both positive and negative effects to be built on or countered.

First Peoples want and demand more than survival. Australia is built on their lands. 

For 200 years they have fought for unity, for land rights, for culture including language, for Aboriginal control of Aboriginal lives. We continue to support those struggles.

The day after, whatever the Referendum result, First Peoples’ struggle for fundamental change will continue. Their lives are not a Yes-No proposition.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Working together "for the nation" is a class question

Written by: Ned K. on 20 August 2023

 

Governments and big business often say that business, government and workers must work together for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

In the day-to-day experience of workers, it is the businesspeople and governments that get the benefits rather the workers. Who is 'the nation" is a class question that workers face every day.

There are countless examples of this on a large and small scale. Big banks often announce that they have to "let so many thousand workers go", a euphemism for throwing workers on the scrap heap. 

Many workers thrown out of work though, never have their story told in the newspapers or on the TV news. Human Resources managers, now called "People and Culture" managers have the job of disposing of unwanted workers without any disruption to the profit-making activities of the business. 

Where workers are hired by a contractor to perform work for larger host employers, it is sometimes the host employer that is the one calling the shots.

Shopping centres owned by multinationals like Westfield and commercial property developers are renowned for this type of behaviour. Shopping centers and large commercial developments such as multi-story office towers are often owned by corporations whose entire existence is based on workers’ income in the form of managed superannuation funds.

Recently a worker (Bill) employed by a medium sized contractor performing work for a large shopping center owner complained to his contractor boss about excessive workload.

His concerns fell on deaf ears. He was a conscientious worker and was worried that his contractor boss would lose the contract and he would then be out of work himself if something was not done. The quality of work required to be done at the shopping center was deteriorating as the workers hired by the contractor were not trained properly. The worker complained again about the declining standards of work but the contractor boss still did nothing.

In desperation the worker took one of his family members in to work with him after the center had closed to the public to try and catch up on unfinished work. The manager of the center’s owner saw this "unauthorised" worker on the premises and within a couple of days, the worker Bill was told not to come to work as he had breached health and safety by bringing another person in to the center to help him catch up on workload.

The contractor told Bill the shopping center owner no longer wanted him on the site.

Bill's union got in touch with the property owner and their People and Culture manager promised a full investigation. There was hope that the center owner would overturn the decision of their center manager and recognize that the real issue was workload and that Bill's action in calling in a family member to help out was with the best of intentions.

Bill's hopes were raised when it was revealed that one of the large industry superannuation funds had money in the ownership of the shopping center. After about a week of not being able to work, the property owner said that after a full investigation, Bill had to go.

Bill the worker and his union on one side, representing the viewpoint of the workers and on the other side, the contractor, property owner and property manager with the viewpoint of the capitalists. The contractor boss was not the worst boss in the world, but fearful of losing work with a major client, fell into line at the expense of the worker. All the drivel of the People and Culture manager of the property owner and the property management about people are our greatest asset came to naught. Bill was down the road, so disgusted he did not want to go for unfair dismissal but instead took up assistance from his union in helping him find alternative employment at another worksite.
 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

E.F. Hill’s “The Labor Party?” republished.

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L)19 on 19 August 2023

 

Founding Chairperson of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), E. F. Hill, raised the understanding of Communists about the nature and role of the Labor Party to a distinct new height.

At the request of younger comrades for access to his The Labor Party?, the whole book has been retyped and placed on our website as a pdf.

It is available here.

By way of introduction to the book, we reproduce here a brief foreword to the 2023 edition: 

FOREWORD TO THE 2023 EDITION

Like a wine of exceptional quality, this book, now nearly fifty years old, has aged very well. Its analysis of the Labor Party shows its fundamental character as a party of capitalism. It explores its contradictions as a party alternating between service to imperialism, on one hand, and to Australian capitalists sometimes seeking greater capitalist independence from imperialism, on the other. It explains how internal Labor Party division is fuelled by its fundamental service to capitalism and its need to maintain the deception that it serves its electoral base in the working class and other progressive people.

The author, E F (Ted) Hill was the founding Chairperson of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), established in 1964.  Ted was a prominent and outstanding Communist leader, activist and lawyer who dedicated his life and work to working people in Australia.  His other works can be found on the E F HILL website.

Since this book was written, additional experience has arisen of Labor in office, including its attacks on the workers through the Accord, its pioneering of neo-liberalism under Hawke and Keating, its keeping the unions under control through Fair Work Australia, its further opening of Australian territory to the US military under Gillard, and the continuation of that treachery via AUKUS under Albanese, Wong and Marles. All these later phenomena can be best understood by learning from the example set by Hill in his analysis of the Labor Party.

A young comrade offered to retype this book, long out of print, so that it can be made available to a new generation of Australian Communists. We thank him for his enthusiasm and hard work.   

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

US imperialism and its attempts to control South-east Asia

Written by: (Contributed) on 17 August 2023

 

Two recent reports, written independently of each other, have both confirmed how the US is beginning to experience serious diplomatic problems in South-east Asia. The small sub-area of the vast Indo-Pacific has been a powerhouse of the global economy in recent decades; regional diplomatic organisation has become, therefore, a major global consideration.

In the half century since the establishment of ASEAN, however, the US has witnessed the eclipse of power in their regional foreign policy, to one which is now subject to challenge from its rival imperialism, China.

In late July the Asia Society, published Prioritising South-east Asia in American Strategy, a report which detailed how the US was losing the diplomatic offensive in South-east Asia. (1) The right-wing business intelligence and lobby organisation based in Washington is part of a global network and states its role is to, 'navigate shared futures for Asia'. (2)

The publication coincided with another similar report, 'Quad erat demonstandium', by a number of Japanese and South Korean academics not usually associated with either progressive or left-wing causes. (3) In fact, many of those involved in the report were part of the US university system. They, nevertheless, had a great deal to state about recent Japanese foreign policy, and noted, 'Japan needs a more autonomous foreign policy', which was not US-led. (4)

Behind the scenes both reports were drawing attention to the shortcomings of recent US regional foreign policy and the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) intelligence-sharing organisation which has elevated the US-Japan alliance to global significance. (5) It has had far-reaching implications for US regional foreign policy, particularly in South-east Asia.

The small sub-area of the vast Indo-Pacific region is placed largely in-between the first and second island chains, which are used by the Pentagon to contain and encircle China's foreign policy. The area is also one of the most economically dynamic in the global economy. Traditionally under US hegemony, in recent times the challenge from China has sent US diplomatic tensions soaring.

While US foreign direct investment into South-east Asia has reached $328.5 billion, the equivalent of that of China, South Korea, and Japan combined, it has been noted, however, 'Washington's biggest problem was the lack of a compelling trade agenda'. (6) Floods of imperialist finance capital do not are not designed to create meaningful economic development; in fact, they tend to be accompanied with strings and other considerations.

In order to monitor their finance capital, the US tends to create 'front-type companies' in the corporate sector, usually controlled by US citizens; shadowy bodies where influence is brought to bear from elsewhere inside the corridors of power of the host country, ensuring the money trail remains opaque.

Regional diplomatic organisations such as ASEAN, established during the last Cold War during the 1960s as essentially pro-US and anti-communist, now, however, welcome China. Times have changed. Modern-day ASEAN is also careful to use informal decision-making procedures as a means of establishing mutually beneficial diplomacy in a very politically and culturally diverse member environment in order to promote regional harmony.

Japan, while not officially an ASEAN member, has, nevertheless, maintained extremely close and cordial relations for over three decades; the 2008 ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement cemented already strong trade and diplomatic links. ASEAN is now Japan's second largest trading partner. Japan also regards ASEAN as the key to peace and stability in the region.

The US position of continually pushing forward the GSOMIA has, therefore, created problems in Japan and elsewhere.

Countries in South-east Asia have been allocated the position of lower-level partners inside the US-Japan global alliance; they are expected to follow the Pentagon-line of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, aimed directly at China, which is not necessarily in their own interests. (7)

The fact that Beijing is ASEAN's largest trading partner, has, therefore, raised serious questions for the eleven member countries. Their governments see no reason to offend China; they increasingly rely upon Beijing for favourable trade and diplomacy in what China describes as a multi-polar world.

The ever-increasing war-mongering by the US is regarded as problematic; while Washington remains the largest provider of military equipment and weapons for South-east Asia, governments are increasingly reluctant to be seen to antagonise China. They are also concerned at the ability of the US military-industrial complex to dictate foreign policy which they are supposed to comply with, without comment or criticism.  

US 'allies', likewise, are also increasingly faced with similar problems.

The 'Quad erat demonstadium' report, for example, also had some harsh words to say about the US-Australia alliance, with the statement, 'in Australia, meanwhile, the military brass section still dominates the foreign policy orchestra … with reference to … more US troop rotations'. (8)

The recent announcement of Australia hosting a Combined Intelligence Centre with the US, within the Defence Intelligence Organisation next year is another warning sign of the country being drawn ever closer to Pentagon military positions, with all the problems which that entails. Australian regional diplomatic initiatives will merge with intelligence-gathering, for what are, essentially, 'US interests'.

A comment from an informed source that Australia will also be hosting the deployment of US missiles, and that Canberra had been regarded as failing the US diplomatic position to accurately assess China's role in the Pacific, show how the increased wave of militarism has affected Australia. (9) But even the best of the Pentagon's plans have gone astray.

It is interesting to note the Asia Society report drew specific attention to the claim that 'US engagement in the region was failing … and … many disliked its lectures on adhering to the rules-based order'. (10) And for good reason. Studies of the problem have concluded that, 'an imperial lens provides a more precise explanation of how the rules-based order operates and in whose interests'. (11) ASEAN members, furthermore, have tended to regard the US diplomatic position as hypocritical over a number of issues in light of Washington's continued refusal to sign the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention. (12)

In conclusion, government personnel in Canberra could do well to study the two reports and assess the likely outcome in years to come, particularly in light of a recent statement that Australia was designing a new aid program for South-east Asia for use with ASEAN. An official media statement said that 'the new aid policy will aim to connect Australia more closely to the region'. (13)

Those concerned in Canberra might like to consider in whose interests the new aid program is being formulated and implemented, and just who is actually pulling the strings to challenge the emerging multi-polar nature of regional diplomacy:

                                          We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     US diplomacy off the boil in South-east Asia, Australian, 3 August 2023.                 
2.     Official website: Asia Society, Washington.
3.     'Quad erat demonstandium', Inside Story, National Affairs, 31 July 2023.
4.     Ibid.
5.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 3 August 2023.
7.     Hankyoreh, op.cit., 12 November 2019.
8.     Inside Story, op.cit., 31 July 2023.
9.     Vale Sovereignty, change.org., 7 August 2023.
10.   Australian, op.cit., 3 August 2023.
11.   Sub-Imperial Power, Clinton Fernandes, (Melbourne, 2002), page 45.
12.   Australian, op.cit., 3 August 2023.
13.   Regional aid plan to restore relations, Australian, 4 August 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party business model

Written by: (Contributed) on 11 August 2023

 

(Above: Opposition leader Peter Dutton   Photo: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

A parliamentary move by opposition leader Peter Dutton to allow registered unemployed workers to be allowed to earn up to $300 a fortnight without losing welfare benefits has clearly shown the Liberal Party preferred business model, based on undermining awards and other regulations together with enhancing further casualisation of employment.

As the federal Government seeks to raise benefits for unemployed workers and finalise legislation to challenge casualisation of employment, the coalition appear hell-bent on pushing other agendas which reveal the type of business model they prefer without providing too many details. To say they play their cards close to their chests, would be an under-statement.

Peter Dutton has already stated the coalition will propose unemployed workers be allowed to earn $300 a fortnight before losing their benefits. (1) No comment about wage theft, however, has accompanied the coalition position. A major cause of wage theft in Australia can be attributed to cash-in-hand payments and refusal by employers to pay penalty rates together with wages level below national minimum levels.

Studies of the problem have revealed it is widespread and estimated to total around $1.35 billion per year. When studied in the context of Australia only having a workforce of about 13 million, it has been estimated approximately a third of all workers experience the problem. (2) Other studies have found estimated wage theft an even greater problem, at around $5 billion, but affecting only 3 million workers. (3) The Working Women's Centre in Adelaide recovered over $500,000 recently, in one financial year. (4)

Fair Work Australia increased the national minimum wage from 1 July 2023 to $23.23 per hour. Taking the Dutton proposals into consideration, an unemployed worker would be allowed to work 12.9 hours a fortnight, or 6.45 hours a week during the present financial year.

Casualisation promoted

One can but question what type of employer would offer employment on such a limited basis and what type of contract of employment would be offered; unless they intend flooding workplaces with large numbers of short-week workers to undermine Awards of other, permanent members of workforces by creating a sub-class of workers obliged to accept the back and call of employers, if, and when, required. Problems, therefore, arise.
The Manufacturing Award, for example, states a part-time employee must be engaged and paid for a minimum of four consecutive hours per shift … although by mutual agreement the parties may agree … to an engagement of no less than three consecutive hours per day or shift. (5) The employee and employer, also, 'before commencing part-time employment … must agree in writing on … hours worked … the days … starting and finishing times … and … the classification'. (6)

Manufacturing has traditionally been associated with widespread labour-intensive duties and practices which include sorting parts and components, re-work and numerous activities conducted to comply with annual stock-takes of large volumes and capacity. Whether the moves by the Liberal Party are aimed at cutting manufacturing costs, remains, as yet, to be established. The industry has long been targeted by successive Liberal administrations.

Other industries which have, historically, had relatively high levels of casualisation include construction and hospitality. They, likewise, remain in clear focus of Liberal leaders.

Awards and the National Employment Standards, however, specify a standard working week is 38 hours, while other, part-time work, is also still held by similar contracts of employment, which are supposed to legally provide all workers with:

information concerning the nature of the employment;
the name of the employer;
the classification level and rate of pay;
the number of hours a worker is required to perform.

Whether an employer would bother to undertake such legal requirements for 12.9 hours a fortnight is highly unlikely. It would also involve other obligations on their part which include payment of Superannuation.

Undermining of superannuation

Australia already has a serious problem with employers using fraudulent and creative accounting techniques to not pay Super, which is now amounting to eleven per cent from 1 July 2023. While eleven per cent of $300 does not amount to much of a Super investment for a worker, it would, nevertheless, be expected to be paid by employers.

A study conducted by the ABS last year found underpayment or non-payment of Super in Australia already amounted to an estimated $6 billion a year, even with Super being policed by government departments. (7)

A far more likely option, under the Dutton proposals would be employers to use a worker for general labour and payment by cash-in-hand. And to do so discretely, and being non-accountable. The Australian Tax Office may have a few comments to make in due course about such practices, if the Dutton scheme is ever implemented.

But there are also other important considerations, with far-reaching implications.

Safety risks increase

Safety regulations, for example, involve a worker being covered by safe working conditions while on an employer’s premises; an injured worker is expected to sign a legally-binding Statutory Declaration, detailing the nature of the injury, the date and time it took place and where it happened. Whether an employer would undertake such requirements for 12.9 hours a fortnight by a worker, remains a matter for serious consideration, particularly if other relevant documentary requirements had not been fulfilled with non-compliance of Awards and regulations.

When the Liberal Party announced they were opening a new battlefront over work or welfare, the slogan may be appealing to those who accept their political spin without too much scrutiny as most of their members and supporters regularly do. (8) It is, in fact, nothing new: union-bashing on their part has a long, sordid and under-hand history.

While workers rely upon unions as their only insurance against unscrupulous behaviour on the part of employers, a recent statement from Australia Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox, continued the Dutton political line with included references to proposed industrial relations changes as 'anti-productivity and driven by outdated union fixations'. (9) So much for 'good faith' industrial relations practices by the leader of a major Australian employers' organisation. He is supposed to set an example for his underlings.

Willox, furthermore, remains well-known in business circles for his curious views and denial of even the most basic reliable data from official sources: he does not accept, for example, that recent and present high inflation rates are the product of price/profit inflation, which is easily substantiated from banking statistics and the Forbes list. Rather, he cites other, non-substantiated reasons for the problem, carrying the hallmarks of sub-rational belief systems. (10)

Willox, nevertheless, also sits comfortably alongside other counterparts, including Scott Morrison, who, likewise, resides inside a cocoon of denial, as revealed by his response to the Robodebt. (11) The recent commission report on the problem, for example, revealed the grey area between government bureaucracy and downright and unacceptable illegal behaviour was, indeed, very blurred in the mind of Morrison. Or even non-existent.

And not only in the case of Morrison.

Other counterparts and those associated with the corporate sector, including Woolworths, have been charged with over a thousand criminal charges linked to wage/leave theft. (12)

And finally, there remains the issue of Australian employers taking advantage of recent arrivals and immigrants who are unaware of their rights, and some of their associates. Non- payment of correct wages, overwork, non-payment of penalty rates, overtime and non-payment of Super, all feature in a recent study conducted by the Australian Border Force. The findings generated fines of in excess of $300,00 in just two weeks. (13) It was noted officially from the government department that, 'in some instances exploitation of workers might also be an indication of organised crime and money-laundering'. (14)

For those on the receiving end of such business models, the bigger problem is how to organize these workers, especially ones on visas and now overseas students who can only work 24 hours a week on the books, forcing them to seek more money in cash-in-hand jobs or on ABNs where it is more difficult to trace actual hours worked. 

Wage swindling is growing. Wage theft legislation proposed at federal level will not stop it. However big employers may not risk it themselves but turn a blind eye to it being rampant in their supply chains.

Some unions have done a good job of supporting casualised workers.  More needs to be done. 

See the CPA (M-L) booklet on organising service sector workers for an example of what can be done.

1.     Battlelines drawn over dole queue, Australian, 31 July 2023.
2.     Wage theft – the new model for big business, Australian Unions, 8 September 2019.
3.     Australian wage theft laws,  AKYRA., 22 February 2023.
4.     Wage theft in South Australia, The Working Women's Centre.
5.     Manufacturing and Associated Industries and Occupations Award, September 2020, Part 2, Types of Employment, Clause 10, 10.2.
6.     Ibid., 10.3.
7.     Senate Inquiry,  ABC News, 30 March 2022.
8.     See: Dutton plays work versus welfare card as it fuels antipathy to dole, Australian, 1 August 2023.
9.     'Union fixations' hold us back, Australian, 2 August 2023; and, Big Business slams better wages push, The New Daily, 2 August 2023.
10.   Australian, ibid.
11.   ScoMo's 'well of Robodebt self-pity', Australian, 2 August 2023.
12.   Woolworth accused, The New Daily, 2 August 2023.
13.   ABF hits bosses for fleecing migrants, Australian, 21 July 2023.
14.   Ibid; and, New migrants the key victims of wage theft, Australian, 24 May 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Whistleblower Richard Boyle Needs Support

Written by: Nick G. on 9 August 2023

 

A small crowd of 30-40 people gathered outside the SA Supreme Court at 9am this morning to support Australian Tax Office whistleblower Richard Boyle.

On March 27, 2023, Boyle lost a bid to be declared immune from prosecution as a whistleblower, meaning he could face the prospect of life in prison.

Today’s appearance was to appeal the March decision.

Boyle had worked as a debt collection officer at the ATO's Adelaide office and accused the ATO of covering up serious maladministration and lying to Senate Estimates about his accusations.

He first made a public interest disclosure to the ATO itself, and then made a complaint to the tax ombudsman. He felt he had been fobbed off and that the injustices he had uncovered were not being taken seriously, so he took his revelations to the media as a part of a joint Fairfax-Four Corners investigation.

Although the ATO was forced to concede that its practices were unjust, especially in relation to small businesses, and subsequently changed parts of its policies on debt recovery, it has not commended Boyle, but acted to punish him as revenge for “blowing his whistle”.

It speaks volumes about the class nature of capitalist justice that a diligent worker with the public interest at heart is facing life in prison, while the ATO executives come and go as they please.

The same may be said about the disclosures of illegal and unethical corporate behaviour by the likes of PwC and KPMG.

Workers are made to live in fear of police charges and jail for speaking up in the public interest while those from the big end of town who cheat, practice corruption or break the law, undermining the public interest for selfish gain, are adept at using the law to escape its consequences.

Labor Attorney-General Mark Dreyfuss pretended to be an advocate of whistleblowers when he enacted the Public Interest Disclosure Act (2013). Yet it is the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions that has laid the charges against Boyle, and Dreyfuss has refused repeated requests to use powers under section 71 of the judiciary act to stop the prosecution. 

As it stands, four decent Australian citizens are having their rights and liberties trampled upon. They are Boyle, ADF whistleblower David McBride, and the two facing extradition to the US – Julian Assange and Dan Duggan. 

They could be any of us. 

Each of them should be at the top of the Australia Day honours list for their courage and commitment to truth and justice. 

We should celebrate whistleblowers, not send them to jail.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

University protests: welfare not warfare!

Written by: Nick G. on 9 August 2023

 

The National Union of Students (NUS) is holding a nationwide protest today against the increasing militarisation of tertiary education and its complicity in the US drive to war. 

Ironically, the protests come just days after the University of Adelaide announced a new partnership with British multinational Babcock, which has the contract for the maintenance of British submarines.

Babcock Managing Director (AUKUS & International) Sir Nick Hine and University of Adelaide Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Høj AC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work closely together on August 6.

According to a University press release, Babcock and the University will “work together on developing Australia’s defence workforce and skills through new initiatives and projects to support current defence programs and the AUKUS program, including the delivery of the nation’s first nuclear-powered submarines”.

It is hoped that those skills will enable Babcock employees to do a better job than the ones who were reported last January to have used glue to fix broken bolts in a nuclear reactor chamber.

The repairs to cooling pipes were discovered on HMS Vanguard after a bolt fell off during checks.

It was reported that the heads of bolts had sheared off after being over-tightened but, rather than fix the broken shafts, workers for Babcock allegedly glued the heads of the bolts back on instead.

It makes a joke of Babcock’s claims to being “a proven, trusted leader in sustainment, nuclear safety and stewardship”.

The NUS is demanding that universities stop relying on funding from the big merchants of death whose profits come from the drive to war.

They are opposed to what Professor Peter Høj enthusiastically referred to on 21 July as “research commercialisation initiatives that will strengthen Australia’s defence capabilities and assets”. This was part of his announcement that the University of Adelaide and the University of NSW had joined a Defence Trailblazer program which “draws together industry and academia to create the workforce and technologies” that support the drive to war. WA’s Curtin University is also part of the program, with other universities expected to join.

The Trailblazer project has a government commitment of $50 million in cash over four years, which will be matched by $50 million of funding from the two universities. More than $140 million will be invested in the project by over 50 industry partners located around the country bringing the total value of the program to approximately $250 million.

Links between armaments and weapons manufacturers and universities have proliferated in recent years. Between them, the three SA unis, Flinders University, University of South Australia and University of Adelaide, have, or have recently had, ties to BAE Systems, Thales, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and SAAB Systems and more.

The links follow a Morrison government initiative which saw fees for STEM subjects reduced by 20%, but fees for humanities courses in some cases doubled. Courses which could encourage critical enquiry are being made to subsidise courses in vocational training for the military.

At Adelaide University about 50 students rallied and marched into the Engineering Building to demand that this faculty stop prostituting itself to commercial and military interests. A large number of cops and university security followed them, a far cry from Moratorium days when cops were kept off campus. No arrests were made.

The NUS demands are correct and must be supported.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The crisis in Russia

Written by: Union of Maoists of the Urals on 8 August 2023

 

We continue our series of reports from ICOR’s webinar on the United front Against Imperialism and Fascism. This report is from the Union of Maoists of the Urals – eds.

The crisis in Russia

The Russian Federation is going through a severe political crisis. After the almost complete defeat of all opposition forces at the beginning of 2022, the ruling group of the imperialist bourgeoisie achieved a complete monopoly on power and complete domination in all spheres of society. However, the hopes of this group for a quick victory in the war with Ukraine and large economic gains did not materialize. The corruption-riddled army failed to win the war quickly, and the failed diplomacy of Russian imperialism led to international isolation. Competent economists were able to save the economy for almost a year, but they were not omnipotent, and in recent months the economic situation began to deteriorate. Contradictions between nations are growing in Russia. The protests of migrants and non-Russians in large cities have become more frequent, they are fighting against the lawlessness of the police and Russian nationalists.

Against the backdrop of military defeats, the struggle between the two lines among the grouping of the bourgeoisie that had completely seized power became sharper and sharper. Finally, towards the end of last year, against the background of failed mobilization and resounding defeats at the front, Putin's grouping of the imperialist bourgeoisie split into two parts. The first part of it is trying to accumulate political forces for military success and not greatly disturb the masses, hiding their cannibalism behind initiatives distracted from the population. The main slogan of this group of imperialists was expressed by a deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with the words “Please look like the people!”, said during a debate in the State Duma. 

The second group, on the contrary, is trying, out of ideological motives, to carry out the most anti-people initiatives without regard to public opinion. From these people, calls are regularly heard for the massacres of opposition-minded citizens, for the prohibition of all other ideologies and for the recognition of any non-Putin movements as terrorists. These groups are non-partisan and a split permeates all the ruling parties in Russia. They are now fighting within the authorities, sabotaging each other's initiatives. On the other hand, the Russian army is seriously decomposed, which is why the Russian imperialists are starting to run away from the front and from Russia. The most striking example is Prigozhin's pseudo-rebellion, which was aimed at the Wagner PMC escaping from the Russian-Ukrainian war. This example is not the only one. We are witnessing a serious crisis and the actual collapse of the statehood of Russia as an imperialist state.

Russia's main contradiction is war. This is a contradiction between the entirely narrowed ruling class and all other classes of Russian society, except for the labour aristocracy. One side of this contradiction is the crisis. The other side of this contradiction is a number of repressive laws and initiatives that are constantly introduced and regularly adopted. We consider the question of which side is the main one in the main contradiction still open and we are conducting further analysis. In practice, we believe that the main side of the contradiction is precisely the crisis, and the non-main side is repression. However, at the same time, we are preparing for the worst scenario, where the main side of the contradiction will be repression and the regime will stand.

About repressions and other measures to support the ruling regime. In Russia, laws against "foreign agents" were again tightened, which are used in our country for mass repressions against citizens and public organizations. Against the backdrop of last year's failed mobilization, the penalties for failing to appear at the military registration and enlistment office for conscription and mobilization have now been seriously increased, total restrictions have been introduced for draft evaders for military service, and the boundaries of those subject to conscription have been expanded. Previously, they promised to raise the lower limit of conscription from 18 to 21 years old, but did not raise it and now everyone is called up from 18 to 30 years old. 

The militarization of schools is growing, the school subject of the Basics of Safe Life has been renamed the Basics of Protecting the State. Previously, special subjects were introduced at school with state propaganda, the so-called "Conversations about the important". Under the new laws, a police officer can be “scared” because someone threatens his acquaintance and this will be a crime against a police officer. Independent psychiatry has been abolished, and conversion therapy for homosexual people has been introduced. All conditions have been created for the return of political punitive psychiatry. New restrictions on women's reproductive rights are constantly being introduced, abortions are being gradually banned in the regions, and a fight has begun against emergency contraception and the distribution of abortion drugs. All this is happening along with spy mania and calls for rallying under the state ideology of combating "Western values". The authorities have entered under "Western values" absolutely everything that prevents the fascist regime from continuing to exist.

In our daily work, we try to follow the line of the masses and create all the prerequisites for the imminent fall of the fascist Putin regime and the creation of prerequisites for the creation of a large Marxist-Leninist party. Our main enemies today are the Putin regime and the heirs of Soviet revisionism.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

No Job Security For Security Workers Under Capitalism

Written by: Ned K. on 5 August 2023

 

(Photo: Titanium Security Facebook page)

The capitalists who own the thousands of businesses across the country and their governments at federal, state and council levels have created armies, police forces and private security companies to protect their property and to maintain the operation of capitalism on a day-to-day basis.

The workers who constitute the armies, police forces and private security companies are employed in a scale of decreasing wages and job security. 

At the bottom of the scale are workers employed by private security companies. Most are lucky to be paid even the minimum Award rates of pay and many have minimal job security due to contract changes and insecure hours of work.

The private security industry employs many new migrant workers and older workers displaced from other industries such as the car industry that no longer exist.

Security companies come and go as they compete on price to win contracts in both the private and public sector.

Like the building industry, their insecure work is made even more insecure by companies going belly-up. The latest one is Titanium Security in SA which went into liquidation on 1 August leaving workers without pay for work performed and with loss of entitlements such as annual leave, superannuation   and long service leave. Titanium served a similar fate in 2021 when it was saved from liquidation by a Deed of Company Arrangement which enabled it to keep trading.
Titanium had won some large security contracts including SA Government contracts to provide security services for SA Water, the water utilities body in SA. 

Their website also states Titanium are a member of the Defence Industry Security Program (DISP) which allowed them to provide government defence department cleared personnel.  

When Titanium went belly-up on 1 August, their security officers kept working at their usual workplace not knowing who they were working for, who was paying them and who would be their next security company employer, if any.

Meanwhile the Director of Titanium was enjoying the good life in the Greek islands.

How governments of the Labor type can continue to treat workers this way by exposing them to contracted out private for-profit employers shows how embedded Labor governments remain in the capitalist system.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

On Fascism in Lyon

Written by: Unité Communiste on 8 August 2023

 

Below we publish a recent contribution to an international webinar on the United front Against Fascism and Imperialism. The contribution was made the day after more than three hundred anti-fascists confronted Nazis in Melbourne who were on a recruiting drive. We publish the contribution from French comrades so as to encourage anti-fascists to be aware of, and give support to, each other’s struggles – eds.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Port of Darwin upgrades for military and commercial interests

Written by: (Contributed) on 5 August 2023

 

The following article was submitted to us before yesterday’s disclosure – from US budget sources and not from the Australian puppet government - that another US Air Force base is to be built outside Darwin. This latest spending push follows the US outlaying around $270 million to build 11 giant jet fuel storage tanks near Darwin's main port. The US has complete control over the Australian government and its Department of Defence. Albo, Wong and Marles are enthusiastic cheerleaders for the US warmongers – eds. 

Port of Darwin upgrades for military and commercial interests

A plan to develop the Port of Darwin would appear part of other, Cold War military and security provision, designed to strengthen northern Australia. The plan was tabled at the same time as US-led attention has been increasingly focussed on the South Pacific, where fears have been raised about China's longer-term investment and development programs.

Australia's historical focus on the South Pacific has been primarily based on that of a sub-imperial power, acting under US tutelage, with neo-colonialism an important consideration. The same forces appear to be the main factor to upgrade the Port of Darwin; and moves appear well under-way.

A plan to upgrade the Port of Darwin was presented in mid-July by the Aurizon Holdings Ltd business organisation. The ambitious plan included transforming the existing facilities to create Darwin as a major Australian port; diagrams of the plan show Darwin feeding other Australian ports across land. (1) Rail links between Darwin and Adelaide were also included, together with a large amount of data outlining trade volumes and logistics for containers. (2) No reference was made to 'dual use' infra-structure whereby the military can take control of useful facilities in time of national emergency: Adelaide, for example, is the 'defence state', and home to numerous defence industries.

In a diplomatic statement about the 2023 AUSMIN meetings, the defence industries were regarded as particularly useful for developing AUKUS technologies; an indication the issue was an agenda item for the high-level diplomatic meetings. (3)

In recent times Canberra has also pushed the idea of upgrading northern Australia as part of military and security provision; a number of military facilities have been targeted for upgrades, in line with increased US troop rotations for rapid deployment into the wider Indo-Pacific region. (4) The moves have also included closer diplomatic links between Australia and New Zealand for plans 'to work more actively in the Pacific to counter growing Chinese influence'. (5)

Both countries are dominant players in regional diplomacy through their membership of the elite US-led Five Eyes intelligence networks. Their membership of the British Commonwealth, likewise, has provided them with close diplomatic links with counterparts across the Indo-Pacific region.

It is also not coincidental that Darwin is already regarded by the US as a support centre, with an arc swinging through Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Guam in Micronesia, which host regional and global intelligence facilities for the Pentagon. (6)

The South Pacific countries of PNG, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, have also long been regarded as belonging to Australia’s zone of regional influence While they have their own intelligence facilities and defence and security provision, they have historically been over-ridden by Australian facilities and, in turn, by US-led facilities. Australia has had the role of a sub-imperialist power, operating along guidelines for the protection and extension of 'US interests'. (7) The economic development of the South Pacific countries, furthermore, has never been a serious agenda item for Canberra.

Concerns, therefore, have been raised, in recent times, about the Solomon Islands and the administration of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare's and their, 'increasingly close relationship with Beijing and his attacks on Australia and the US'. (8) It has been noted, for example, that, 'Chinese aid is attractive to the Solomon Islands because it largely stays in the Solomon Islands; Australian aid does not … it is … a form of boomerang aid that simply returns to Australia'. (9) Diplomatic relations between Canberra and Honiara have, therefore, proved problematic, with Sogavare portrayed in an unfavourable light.

The announcement of the plan to upgrade the Port of Darwin has also coincided with the International Seabed Authority agreeing to a two year 'road map of adoption of deep-sea mining regulations'. (10) It was noted that mining companies have been assessing the financial viability of rare earth minerals used for clean energy technologies including electric car batteries, on the abyssal plain reaching from Hawaii to Mexico, at 37 degrees north, 160 degrees-110 degrees west; the vast region and deep oceans are now possible to mine with autonomous underwater vehicles to extract minerals from the seabed. (11) The wider oceanic area covers more than half the planet, three kms underwater, or even deeper.  

The so-called critical minerals are considered a serious matter for the US, who compete with China for access across the Indo-Pacific region. The fact China has recently increased its diplomatic presence across the Pacific to countries which possess enormous Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), has become a major factor in explaining the frantic nature of US diplomacy during the past few years. China now has about eighty per cent of diplomatic relations with the Pacific countries and their EEZs, as opposed to only about twenty per cent retaining links with Taiwan and the US. (12) It is, therefore, important to note that AUSMIN media releases state the US is seeking expanded co-operation in the Indo-Pacific. (13)

And if there is any controversy over the role of the US and what they regard as their regional interests and foreign policy, a diplomatic statement issued about the 2023 AUSMIN high-level talks, gave reference to 'Australia's backyard', in relation to the Pacific, and, that, 'critical minerals provide a particularly good example of an area in which Australia can make an out-sized contribution to the resilience of the US alliance and region'. (14)

No reference, however, was made to 'US interests': We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Aurizon's ambitious plan for Darwin's port, Australian, 19 July 2023.
2.     Ibid.
3.     'Stay Tuned', The New Daily, 28 July 2023.
4.     See: Defence – Special Report Supplement, Australian, 25 May 2023.
5.     Anzacs to be 'more active' in the Pacific, Australian, 26 July 2023.
6.     See: Peters Projestion, map of the World, Actual Size.
7.     See: Sub-Imperial Power, Clinton Fernandes, (Melbourne, 2022).
8.     Anzacs, Australian, op.cit., 26 July 2023.
9.     Sub Imperial Power, op.cit., The South West Pacific, pp. 94-7.
10.   Forget mining, unknown biodiversity is the true treasure of the Pacific floor,  Australian, 26 July 2023.  
11.   Ibid.
12.   US v. China, Japan Forward: Politics and Security, China now controls 80% of the Pacific EEZ., Dr. Rieko Hayakawa and Jennifer L. Anson, 14 February 2020.
13.   'Stay Tuned', New Daily, op.cit., 28 July 2023.
14.   Ibid, and, Economics, security and our critical minerals, Australian, 26 July 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Computerised war games and US imperialism’s regional decline

Written by: (Contributed) on 1 August 2023

 

(Above: Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik)

The outcome of a computer simulation military exercise has sent shock-waves into the Pentagon, as the US recognise their declining traditional regional hegemonic diplomatic position across the Indo-Pacific. Other related factors have also raised serious questions about the continued viability of their US Indo-Pacific Strategy, as a workable regional foreign policy aimed at encircling and containing Chinese influences.

Earlier this year the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington staged a computer simulation military exercise over the threat by China to retake Taiwan: the outcome was that the US required the support of regional allies, Japan and Australia, in order to, 'block a Chinese takeover of Taiwan'. (1) The findings follow similar concerns by the Pentagon in 2019, that the US were no longer the dominant power in the Pacific and required, 'further relying on traditional allies, including Japan and Australia', following an in-depth study conducted by a Congressional Committee the previous year. (2)

The University of Sydney, United States Study Centre, likewise, has provided a regional assessment along the lines that the US could potentially lose a war with China, if Beijing conducted a wide-scale missile attack on military facilities based on Guam. (3)

The US has pushed both Japan and Australia to provide more assistance for the Pentagon's regional warmongering. It has caused certain concerns.

While US assessments regard their 54,000 armed forces based in Japan to be in the forefront of any forthcoming military conflict, it has been noted, 'Japanese leaders publicly shun discussion of a role in any Taiwan war, in part because public opinion is generally against getting ensnared in a conflict'. (4) A public statement from Professor Satoru Mori of Keio University in Tokyo, said that in the event of Japanese military involvement in defence of Taiwan 'ninety per cent of Japanese people would say no!'. (5)  

The US would also require official approval from the Japanese government in order to deploy their troops from Japanese bases. (6)  It was noted, furthermore, that under the circumstances, 'the US is seeking more clarity from Japan as the two sides try to develop a combined operational plan for a Taiwan conflict'. (7) Studies conducted elsewhere have also noted how Japanese people have a, 'zero appetite to engage in direct confrontation with China over Taiwan'. (8) Instead, attention has been placed upon forthcoming presidential elections in Taiwan next January, where a KMT victory may occur, which would effectively undermine the US support for present DPP administration of President Tsai Ing-wen, many of whose supporters seek Taiwan's independence. The KMT has long sought cross-straits relations, and peaceful co-existence with China. Such an outcome is clearly regarded by the US, however, as, 'a potential threat to Washington's plans in the Asia-Pacific'. (9)

In local elections across Taiwan late last year, the ruling DPP lost key seats in Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, and only secured five from 21 posts of city mayors and country chiefs, while the KMT took 13. Whether the results can be projected onto the next presidential elections will be known early next year.

Similar assessments of the role of Australia have also found a marked difference between traditional support for the 'alliance' and other outcomes: it is not particularly difficult to access the US position; the Australian newspaper publishes several every week by Greg Sheridan, a well-known Pentagon sycophant and court jester. One of his recent articles, for example, noted that while US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin were about to visit Australia for high-level diplomatic talks with the Australia-US Ministerial meetings, the Pentagon was deeply concerned about Canberra recently removing $1.5 billion from defence over the next four years. (10) Hundreds of millions of dollars have also been reallocated from the defence budget to other government departments and less support than expected has been forthcoming for the Ukraine, together with fears arising about further reallocations in order to finance the building of submarines with inter-operability with US counterparts. (11)

Behind the scenes the US is concerned about the viability of their Indo-Pacific Strategy, where the alliance with Japan has become a global alliance and central to US military and security provision. (12) It rests upon the 'Quad', consisting of the US, Japan, Australia and India, and couched in terminology which has included reference to, 'modernised long-standing alliances … forged innovative links'. (13) It also relies heavily upon lower-level partners, in networks linked to the Quad: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and others. (14)

While the defence and security provision has kept the US-led military industrial complex financially secure with huge arms budgets, the centrality of Japan on which it all hinges, is problematic: in fact, Professor Mori has been quoted as stating that in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, 'political chaos … would occur, and … the government would struggle to manage the US alliance while dealing with public concern'. (15) Namely, Japanese institutions of state, including its central and provincial governments, would experience a serious legitimacy crisis in the eyes of civil society.

With 30,000 troops brought together for the present Talisman Sabre military exercises off Queensland, all it would appear, is not what it seems. In fact, we are witnessing the gradual decline of US traditional regional hegemonic positions and the very real likelihood of 'real-war' scenarios in the Indo-Pacific region, conducted on the basis of reckless, swashbuckling bravado:

                                         We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     US pushed Japan on Taiwan question, Australian, 17 July 2023.
2.     Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Australian, op.cit., 17 July 2023.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Japan doesn't want to fight for Taiwan and neither do other US allies, Sputnik, 23 July 2023.
9.     Ibid.
10.   See: Defence emergency hiding in plain sight, Australian, 25 July 2023.
11.   Ibid.
12.   The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
13.   Ibid, and, The Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States, The White House, 11 February 2022.
14.   Ibid.
15.   Australian, op.cit., 17 July 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

CPA (M-L) contribution to ICOR webinar on united front against imperialism

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 1 August 2023

 

On Sunday 30 July, a comrade from the CPA (M-L) made a short contribution to the discussion. As there were many participants from countries around the world, each person was limited to a 3-minute presentation. The comrade spoke without notes but has made the following written recollection of his comments.

 

........................

Greetings comrades,

Firstly, let me begin by acknowledging the more than 300 people, many of them young, who confronted Nazis at a Nazi recruitment event in Melbourne yesterday. Their defiance of these right-wing street thugs is a very good thing.

Secondly, I can report that in common with workers in other advanced capitalist countries, Australian workers are facing declining living standards as the ruling class seeks to control inflation by using the levers of unemployment and interest rates. As a result, more and more are finding it difficult to meet mortgage repayments and rent increases, adding to the crisis of homelessness. They are yet to find the path to organised resistance, partly due to the repressive industrial relations laws that make all but “protected” industrial activity illegal. Even so, outbreaks of struggle are taking place.

Thirdly, on the international situation.  In our region we are acutely conscious of the danger of war as the competition develops between Chinese social-imperialism and US imperialism. Even those who are friendly towards the US are increasingly worried by the government’s surrender of sovereignty to the US. Mass organisations with broad popular appeal are organising resistance to the US stranglehold over Australia. The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) is one in which we work with former diplomats and politicians, with peace activists and others across a range of differing viewpoints, all wanting the Australian government to possess greater capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy. Alliances are being built across our region. An IPAN conference on the theme of a peaceful Pacific was held on July 29 with speakers from Australia, Okinawa, Guaham (Guam), Samoa and New Zealand.

Australia has recently joined the US and UK in the AUKUS alliance. This saw the cancellation of a contract for France to build conventional submarines in Australia in favour of a $368 billion contract with the US and the UK for eight nuclear-powered submarines. Even within the “defence” establishment there are criticisms of this arrangement. The submarines will not be based in Australian coastal waters, but will be “seamlessly interoperable” with US submarines off the coast of China. A new organisation, the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition is bringing together the rank-and-file of the governing Labor Party, unions and peace activists. A common demand is for the scrapping of AUKUS and the direction of the $368 billion towards the social problems of the working people.

A further consequence of AUKUS is that Australia must take responsibility for the disposal of nuclear waste from these submarines once they are decommissioned. For sixty years, the government has tried to impose a nuclear waste dump for intermediate and low-level waste on communities that have successfully resisted these proposals. Inevitably, they are proposed for “remote” locations on the lands of the First Peoples. We campaigned with the Barngarla people of South Australia, and the local farming community, to successfully block the latest dump proposal. The prospect of a future high-level nuclear waste dump will further boost the anti-nuclear movement.

Finally, let me acknowledge that many comrades at this ICOR meeting face far greater difficulties than those of us in countries like Australia. We pledge to do what we can to assist them in our joint struggle against imperialism.

Thank you.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The spineless puppets must be defied!

Written by: Nick G. on 31 July 2023

 

 

The visit to Australia by our imperial masters, Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State, and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin III, has revealed just how spineless Australia’s political “leaders” are.

Not only have we “agreed” to purchase 20 C-130 Hercules heavy transport planes from Lockheed Martin for $10 billion at what defence insiders complain is a vastly inflated price; not only have we “agreed” to manufacture and export missiles to the US war machine; not only have we “agreed” to further upgrade air bases in northern Australia so they can be used for training exercises by both Australian and American troops; not only have we seen the spectacle of a cut-out kangaroo daubed in the Stars and Stripes on board the USS Canberra in a gratuitous display of ownership of our sovereignty; not only are we to have US military spies embedded within “our” Defence Intelligence Organisation in Canberra, but Albanese and Wong have nothing to show for their representations to the US for the dropping of plans for the extradition of Julian Assange to face trial in the US.

Acknowledging that the matter had been raised at the AUSMIN meeting, Blinken publicly humiliated Wong by declaring that he thought it “important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter.” In other words, stuff you, we are out for revenge and we’re not going to be swayed by the opinions of our puppets. 

Albanese and Wong have come away from their latest round of obsequious pleading with nothing in their hands.

Their failure to secure the release of such an internationally famous icon as Assange, whose only “crime” was to have shattered the imperialist monopoly over, and control of, information does not bode well for any action they may be persuaded to take in the case of Australian citizen Daniel Duggan, currently held in a maximum security Australian cell while the US makes out a case for his extradition. The US believes it can use Duggan as an exhibit in its case against China, although he has done nothing illegal under Australian law. Attorney-General Dreyfus is deaf to pleas made on Duggan’s behalf.

The desire for revenge is not just a US imperialist character trait. The Australian government is still proceeding with its persecution of David McBride, the former Australian Army lawyer who blew the whistle on Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, and Australian Tax Office whistleblower Richard Boyle.

Labor Party rank and file are showing their displeasure at the Labor Government’s crawling to the US by passing motions at local branch level to pull out of AUKUS and cancel the $368 billion purchase of nuclear-powered submarines.

Along with other Australians, they will fight for the right to assert our sovereignty and independence.

More and more unions are passing resolutions against AUKUS. Common to their demands is that the money wasted on submarines be spent on meeting the people’s needs.

None of us want to be dragged into another unwinnable US war.

But to prevent that happening, we must rely on our own determination to struggle against US imperialism. 

The spineless puppets in the Coalition and in Labor will not do that for us.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Greetings from Ukrainian revolutionary

Written by: Andriy on 31 July 2023

 

(Above: Bucha main street after Russian invasion.    Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak  Creative Commons Share Alike 4.0)

A webinar held under the auspices of the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR) was held recently. Contributors from Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Palestine, Australia, Turkiye, South Africa, Uruguay, Tunisia, and Cameroon shared 3-minute presentations on the situation in their respective countries. The following contribution came from Andriy, a socialist Ukrainian. We publish it for our Australian readers – eds.

 

I greet everyone on behalf of the working people of Ukraine, who have been fighting the hardships of a bloody war and imperialist aggression for the second year already. Every day some people are killed by missile and bomb attacks by Russian imperialism. Houses, cities, and the environment are destroyed. Huge territories are mined, and people are dying from this as well. And a crime that affects not only our country, but the whole Europe, and the Black Sea region, is the destruction of the Kakhovka reservoir dam, which led to the flooding of large territories and the death of dozens of civilians, collapsing thousands of residential buildings and other civil infrastructure.

In addition, dangerous accidents are possible at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the largest one in Europe. This can lead to more serious consequences for the country and the entire region than even the Chernobyl disaster. Putin's interventionists can easily arrange such an accident, and the Western imperialists are interested in this issue only from the point of view of their plans in Ukraine and Europe, and not in terms of harm to ordinary people. The bourgeoisie cares about their "business", their pocket, and not about millions of workers.

In such conditions, the majority of workers are busy with the problems of everyday survival – many of them have lost their homes, and unemployment is high, real incomes of the people have fallen significantly.

And some words about the war. The interventionists still have great power, and the supply of Western weapons is also growing. It is difficult to say how long the war will last, but, apparently, at least one year more. One of the factors is the US elections: both the pre-election campaign and the election results can affect Washington’s activity in Ukraine, the dynamics of military support etc. In any case, even now, after one and a half years of the war, this is a bloody horror in the middle of Europe. And this is a direct consequence of imperialist contradictions and capitalism as it is.

There is no doubt that the danger of war on a world scale is growing before our eyes. The imperialists are endangering the lives of entire continents and of all mankind for the sake of their selfish interests. Therefore, the United Anti-Imperialist Front is of particular importance, and meets the real interests of the working people worldwide, in whatever country they may be. This will make it possible to coordinate the struggle on a global scale, the struggle against imperialism and militarism.

Down with any imperialism!

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Inter-imperialist rivalry and the Niger coup

Written by: Nick G. on 30 July 2023

 

(Photo: VCG)

The military coup in Niger is proof that without genuine anti-imperialist independence, neither bourgeois democracy nor socialism can be secured.

Four days after Niger’s democratically elected President Mohammed Bazoum was detained and removed in a coup led by members of his presidential guard, details of the rivalry for influence and control between various imperialist powers is emerging. 

Background

This relatively large and landlocked African nation has a population of 25 million, nearly all of whom are Muslims. Nearly 80% of Niger is Saharan Desert country. It was a French colony until 1960. 

Niger's armed forces have a long history of military cooperation with France and the United States. As of 2013, the capital Niamey is home to a U.S. drone base. The country has had close ties to France since independence, and relies on French and US military support against Boko Haram jihadists from neighbouring Nigeria. 

At Sochi in October 2019, Putin announced that Russia would supply Niger 12 Mi-35 attack helicopters to use against Boko Haram. 

However, Niger also decided to take on board much of the French force expelled from Mali, and this has not gone down well with everyone. In September 2022, demonstrators took to the streets of Niamey carrying Russian flags and placards attacking the French. This was very similar to the pro-Russian rallies earlier in neighbouring Burkina-Faso. 

Niger is also of interest as it is one of only a few African countries to have an arms deal with Turkey. The latter only supplies 0.5% of Africa’s weaponry, but is keen to expand its influence on the continent. In June 2022 it was reported that Turkey had delivered six Bayraktar TB2 drones to Niger. The deal includes armoured vehicles and Hurkus light attack aircraft, the first Turkish manned aircraft to be exported.

The European Union earlier this year launched a 27-million-euro ($30m) military training mission in Niger. The US has more than 1,000 service personnel in the country. France has 1,500 soldiers, which conduct joint operations with the Nigeriens. 

However, urban residents in Niger’s bigger towns, faced with continuing threats from Boko Haram, have called for intervention by Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries. 

In the capital, Niamey, an opposition stronghold, according to an Al Jazeera report, several hundred people on Thursday gathered to chant support for the Russian military group Wagner while waving Russian flags. Later, they burned cars and ransacked the headquarters of the president’s political party.

One of the protesters was quoted as saying, “We are tired of being targeted by the men in the bush … Down with the French people. We’re going to collaborate with Russia now.” 

This explains the demands by the US imperialists for the restoration of the Niger government, and their threats to withhold financial support for Niger.

Imperialist rivalry promotes regional instability

Niger is part of Africa’s unstable Sahel region which has seen eight coups in three years, and a growing presence of Wagner group soldiers in places like Mali, Burkina-Faso and the Central African Republic.

US Secretary of State Blinken visited Niger in March saying he wanted to promote stability in the region, imperial-speak for imposing US dictate to the exclusion of competing imperialist powers.

The Niger coup has corresponded with the opening in St Petersburg of the Second Russia-Africa Summit. Just 17 heads of African states are attending this year, less than half of the 43 heads of state that attended the 2019 conference. Russia has lost some influence across the continent in the wake of its aggression against Ukraine, a major grain supplier to African countries, and is keen to recover some of that lost influence.

The great African continent has suffered more than any other from the ravages of imperialism. 

We stand with all African peoples struggling for liberation and socialism.
……………
For further reading on Africa, see our Russia’s New African Adventure.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Superpowers court PNG, Solomon Islands as regional tensions intensify

Written by: (Contributed) on 26 July 2023

 

An announcement from Port Moresby that the PNG Defence Force were considering establishing an elite military grouping has raised concerns about wider issues arising in the South Pacific. The small area to the north of Australia remains riven with ethnic and inter-ethnic rivalries, exacerbated by fierce hostility with US-led regional operations directed toward perceived Chinese influences, particularly in the neighbouring Solomon Islands.

In mid-July the PNG government in Port Moresby announced it was seriously considering establishing a special operations force modelled on the British Gurkha regiment. (1) British defence officials had already had formal meetings with their PNGDF counterparts on the basis that PNG 'struggles to strengthen its armed forces at a time of increased tension in the region between China and the US'. (2) It was noted the 'South Pacific has become a theatre for strategic competition between the US and China' (3)

The Gurkhas, historically, have been associated with elite military traditions and jungle warfare; in May PNG signed a Defence Co-operation Agreement with the US, paving the way for US forces being exempt from taxes and criminal prosecution, unimpeded and rent-free access to bases in PNG, and stationing troops and equipment for deployment. (4) The move forms part of the stated intention of PNG to increase the size of the PNGDF from the present 3,650 personnel to 10,000 by 2030, together with a reservist force of an extra 3,000 personnel. (4)

The moves coincided with a bi-partisan diplomatic statement from the Biden administration that, 'NATO's expansion into the Asia-Pacific region … was … inevitable, arguing that the AUKUS security pact, of which Australia is a key member, is the first step into turning the growing military into a global bulwark against China and Russian power'. (5)

The moves, however, are far from straightforward: France, for example, vetoed a push by some NATO members in June to open a diplomatic office in Japan to increase liaison with Indo-Pacific nations. (6) While the reasons explaining France's diplomatic decision were merely noted as, 'a big mistake … amid concerns it could antagonise Beijing', a far more likely explanation was that France retains major diplomatic links with Vanuatu as a former part-colonial power, New Caledonia and the wider Polynesia. (7) The Macron presidential administration does not want outside interference in what they regard as essentially their French regional interests. 
 
The fact that Japan was chosen for the NATO office would also indicate the recent moves rest upon the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) whereby the US-Japan alliance has been upgraded to a global alliance, resting upon the so-called 'Quad' composed of the US, Australia, India and Japan. (8) The IPS also has lower-level partners, including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and others. (9) Whether PNG has now been included remains to be verified, although its defence agreement with the US in May would tend to indicate the decisions have already been taken with this goal in mind.

PNG has, historically, been the dominant player in the South Pacific due to its size and population: it has about 10 million people compared to the Solomon Islands 611,340, and Vanuatu only 307,815. PNG has also been a dominant player inside the British Commonwealth. Moves, by the US, to expand their IPS, have to be assessed in this light. And the fact the Solomon Islands does not even have its own defence force, likewise, is also an important consideration. The Solomon Islands relies upon its police force for defence and security provision, and outside assistance, if required.

Under these circumstances it is not particularly difficult to establish the fraught nature of Australia-Solomon Islands diplomacy. The Solomon Islands has been noted as of 'vital strategic importance to Australia'. (10) There is little doubt, however, that the US are pulling the strings as a puppet-master: while Sogavare was visiting Beijing, the US National Security Council raised the matter as a concern. (11) The Solomon Islands would appear to be regarded by the US intelligence services as a country of some considerable interest.  

The recent visit by Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare to Beijing, therefore, also saw diplomatic tension between Honiara and Canberra escalate: while in Beijing, Sogavare signed nine agreements with China, which Australia have requested are published immediately. It was noted with alarm, from Canberra in the meantime, that 'exact details are yet to be disclosed'. (12) Fears exist that while the Solomon Islands have discussed the prospect of creating their own army with Canberra, Honiara also has a defence agreement with China, which may complicate the matter. (13)

Those inside the corridors of power in Canberra would appear to have forgotten the Solomon Islands are a sovereign independent state, as ratified by the United Nations, not a neo-colonial outpost from yesteryear ruled by the Australian Colonial Administration. The continued response from Canberra has also been symptomatic of the colonial and Cold War politics of yesteryear, and has left little to the imagination: two editorials in Murdoch’s the Australian, for example, have portrayed Sogavare as seemingly an agent of influence; one was titled 'Sogavare kowtows to Beijing', and the other included references to 'Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has been singing from the Chinese Communist Party's anti-Australia songbook'. (14)

Such diplomacy and media comment would hardly qualify as professional or conducive to harmonious relations between Australia and the wider South Pacific. It would, to the contrary, be typically symptomatic of US-led Cold War positions, based upon neo-colonial relations.

                                        We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     PNG, UK discuss 'Gurkha' regiment, Australian, 14 July 2023.
2.     Ibid.
3.     Ibid.
4.     We won't be pawns in global game: PNG., Australian, 18 July 2023.
5.     PNG, UK discuss 'Gurkha' regiment, Australian, op.cit., 14 July 2023.
5.     NATO sets sights on Asia-Pacific, Australian, 18 July 2023.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Ibid.
8.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
9.     Ibid.
10.   China-Solomons pact 'wake-up call', Australian, 17 July 2023.
11.   China, Solomon Islands sign policing pact in upgrade of ties, Reuters, US News, 10 July 2023.
12.   Sogavare hits Canberra over budget delay, Australian, 18 July 2023.
13.   Ibid.
14.   See: Sogavare kowtows to Beijing, Editorial, Australian, 13 July 2023; and, Sogavare rant is fooling no one, Editorial, Australian, 19 July 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Greece is on fire and the system of profit is responsible.

Written by: Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist) on 24 July 2023

 

 

Our thoughts go out to the people of Greece, currently suffering the consequences of capitalism’s war on nature and its consequence of global warming and extreme weather events. Greek people will rally today, Monday July 24, at Syntagma, the central square of Athens. The statement below was released by the Communist party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist) on July 18.  Although there are several references to particular matters that we do not know abut, the general thrust of the analysis is clear – eds.

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

The Rojava Revolution and the leadership of women

Written by: YPG (Women's Defence Forces) on 20 July 2023

 

The role of women is central to the successes of revolutionary movements in the Philippines and in India. Women have also played major roles in recent struggles in Iran and Afghanistan. The following statement was recently released by the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), an armed force of Kurdish and other peoples fighting for liberation from ISIS, the Assad regime, and the Turkish invaders in the northern and eastern sectors of Syria. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Report on the Australian political situation to the ICOR Asia Conference 22-23 July 2023

Written by: Nick G. on 20 July 2023

 

The following country report has been sent to the Asia Conference meeting of parties and organizations affiliated to ICOR, the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations.

Our Party is affiliated to ICOR through the Asian Continental grouping, along with parties and organizations from India, Sri Lanka, Bangla Desh, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iran and Nepal.

The ICOR Asia Conference is being held in India on 22-23 July.

The report follows:

First Peoples

We open this report by commenting on the circumstances of the First Peoples of this continent and its islands. The First Peoples claim to have been here “since time immemorial” which, in calendar years, is around 60,000 years of occupation and ownership. The invasion of their lands by British unsettlers, whose history books for years spoke of “peaceful settlement”, was everywhere accomplished by force and violence or the threat of force and violence. Colonial racism justified attempted genocide, and violent occupation and exploitation of the First People’s lands and country. Indeed, one authoritative “history” published as late as 1890, equated the First Peoples with the “beasts of the field” who “sowed not, nor did they reap”, and whose nakedness indicated that they “pre-dated…even Adamic times”. That is, they were not created by the Christian God in his image, and should not therefore be treated as humans, but rather as a lower race of savages destined to be exterminated off the face of this Earth. Their lands were not regarded as populated in the European sense of having privately owned territories, so no attempt was made to “justify” colonial occupation by way of treaties.

The First Peoples resisted and survived and are determined to take back what is theirs. Never having ceded the rights to their lands by way of treaties with the unsettlers, they have since the 1970s, won through their own efforts, recognition in colonial law of land rights and, after the 1992 Mabo Decision, of their continuing occupation and ownership of traditional lands.

However, their battles are far from over. First Peoples are still subjected to daily racism and systemic disadvantage which results in huge gaps between their health, housing, education and employment levels and those of non-Indigenous Australians. They are the most incarcerated people on Earth. First Peoples continue to be displaced from their lands by the multinational mining corporations.

This year there will be a nation-wide referendum to alter the Australian Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the Constitution and create a permanent representative  Voice for First Peoples to the Australian Parliament.  Although this demand has been driven by conservatives among the First Peoples and is rejected by more militant First Peoples as an attempt to divert their struggles into the quicksand of parliamentary reform through a powerless advisory-only mechanism, it has prompted a racist Vote No campaign led by the conservative Liberal and National Parties. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, the momentum behind First Peoples’ demands for self-determination will continue and grow.

Australian workers

In the Asian region, the Australian working class has had the benefit of living in an advanced industrial nation of imperialist-dominated capitalism. The Australian working class creates enormous surplus value from the exploitation of its labour power and natural resources on the stolen lands of the First Nations people, appropriated by mining monopoly corporations.  Since the 1980s,  imperialist globalization has destroyed much of the local value-added manufacturing industrial base.  No longer does Australia have car manufacturing and tool making industries, shipbuilding, clothing and footwear, pharmaceuticals, steel production.  We are often described as a quarry for multinational mining corporations (minerals and gas) exporting natural resources and profits.

Although the Australian working class’s living standards are relatively high, so is the cost of living and many are threatened by insecurity through a combination of a decade-long inability to improve wages, through ongoing threats of unemployment or precarious employment, huge rises in rents and purchase prices for housing, rising medical costs and education expenses. As a result, more and more people are homeless, forced to seek accommodation with friends and family, and failing that, sleeping rough in the streets, or living in the family car. These conditions are exacerbated by some of the most restrictive and punitive industrial laws in the advanced capitalist world: strikes are illegal except when granted by permission of the authorities during enterprise agreement negotiations, which means that employers are given plenty of warning and preparation time, and the strikes are of limited duration and effectiveness.  Very little has changed with the election of the social-democratic Australian Labor government, and with Labor governments in 7 of the 8 state and territory jurisdictions. Workers are learning that they must fight for their own independent working class agenda, and not rely on parliament or the authorities.

The US-Australia Stranglehold

The major parliamentary parties are dyed-in-the- wool supporters of US imperialism. Australia is part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, is part of the Quad (with India, Japan and the US) and of AUKUS (with the US and UK). Its history post-WW2 is one of willing subservience to the US imperialist global order, and it has joined imperialist wars in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. At the present time, attempts are made to prepare the Australian people psychologically and politically for a US-led war with its main rival, Chinese social-imperialism. However, there is growing momentum behind opposition to AUKUS and the decision to equip the Australian Navy with US and British nuclear-powered submarines. The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) and the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition (AAAC) are the driving forces behind this public grass roots campaign which has been supported by a growing number of unions and by many rank-and-file members of the Labor Party.

There is evidence of small divisions within sections of Australia’s ruling class some of whom are aligning themselves closer to China.

Successive Australian governments, both Liberal and Labor, slavishly uphold and promote U.S. global imperialist policies, turning Australia into a major U.S. military base, a launching pad for U.S war with China.  At the same time as ICOR Asia Conference is taking place major military exercises on land, air and sea are being held in North Queensland (North Australia).  Talisman Sabre is the largest US-Australia military training exercises in the region, held biannually in Australia.   This year more than 30,000 military personnel from 13 countries are taking part in these war preparations, most from the U.S.     Nuclear weapons carrying US B51 and B 52 bombers, US warships and US and UK nuclear powered submarines will be regularly based in Australia.

However, recent polls show more than 50% of Australia’s people want Australia to be neutral if war breaks out between US and China.   Support for neutrality is strongest amongst women and young people.

Opposition to Australia’s involvement in U.S. wars and calls for sovereignty and independence are growing.

A movement for peace and nuclear free Australia is being re-built.

Increasing Repression

Australia does not have a Bill of Rights, and the Australian people’s rights and liberties are subject to continual attack by the ruling class. In addition to the repressive industrial laws, anti-terrorism provided the bourgeoisie with the pretext for increased surveillance, for new crimes and for increased penalties for old ones. Most states have massively increased fines and created or strengthened provisions to jail protesters who cause obstruction in a public place. The newly-elected Labor government dropped charges against a high-profile defendant involved in the exposure of Australia’s bugging of East Timorese negotiators on behalf of Woodside, an oil giant, after a widespread mass campaign in his favour. However, they proceed with court action against other whistleblowers such as David McBride, a former British Army Major and Australian Army lawyer who exposed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan leading to a civil court ruling that one Victoria Cross winner was a “bully, a liar and a war criminal” responsible for the murder of Afghan civilians. The government has proven powerless to date to secure the freedom from extradition to the US of Australian journalist Julian Assange, who shattered the imperialists’ monopoly on information with the publication of Wikileaks, and is preparing to extradite to the vindictive and criminal US authorities yet another Australian citizen, Daniel Duggan, whose “crime” was to have trained pilots in China. At the time of writing, he has been held in solitary confinement in an Australian maximum security prison for 260 days whilst his extradition is arranged. 

80% of the Australian people want the government to stand up to the U.S. to stop the extradition of Julian Assange and bring him home to Australia.
Revolutionary Movement

Comrades, although we are far from a revolutionary situation in our country, a revolutionary movement exists and grows. Feeding into it are related movements against fossil fuel corporations and for action to stop global warming, and the #metoo women’s movement which rallied around a young Tasmanian woman who had been groomed and repeatedly sexually abused by a teacher, and around a political staffer who was alleged to have been raped in a Ministerial office at Parliament House by another staffer. Both of these women’s stories added to the campaign to stop domestic violence and discrimination and abuse of women in the workplace. On average, working women receive $255 less than men per week in wages. Young people are prominent within the climate and women’s movements.

We continue to analyse the political situation in our region where the small nations of the Pacific are asserting their independence and demanding effective action on climate change, and where people across the Indo-Pacific are struggling to prevent war between the US and Chinese imperialists. Our country is a second world, or sub-imperial power, playing a disgraceful role in aligning with the US imperialists who have the Australian bourgeoisie thoroughly enmeshed in a net of economical, political, cultural, diplomatic and military control. We the people are fighting for genuine anti-imperialist independence and for socialism.
We look forward to contributing, in a spirit of proletarian internationalism, to the advance of the peoples’ movements in our region.

Warm greetings,

Nick G.
Chairperson, CPA (M-L) 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Papua New Guinea and the US Indo-Pacific Strategy

Written by: (Contributed) on 19 July 2023

 

(Above: Signing the US-PNG Defence agreement     Photo source: ABC)

A major diplomatic statement from a well-placed source in Canberra about planned sensitive military facilities in PNG has shown how the South Pacific has become a front-line for Australian military and security with the wider region. Reference to the US and their Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) partners was also contained in the statement showing how it has become the core of US regional foreign policy.

In early July, the Strategic Analysis Australia in conjunction with the National Security College, issued a major statement about US regional foreign policy in general, with specific reference to PNG. (1) In recent times, due to the changing balance of forces with the rise of China, countries such as PNG have become more sensitive to military planners in Canberra and the Pentagon.

The timing of the statement coincided with similar moves made between Canberra and Indonesia with a high-level contact established with President Joko Widodo visiting Australia in early July. It was noted, 'in the diplomatic sphere, direct engagement is an opportunity to build on a key strategic partnership as the Indo-Pacific becomes increasingly fraught'. (2)

Reference in the PNG report, likewise, was made to the Milne Bay area being assessed for military facilities; the sheltered deep-water harbour surrounded by heavily wooded terrain has made the area ideal for covert US-led regional operations. Previous attention given to the Lombrum facilities on Manus Island have proved highly controversial with complaints from local land-owners. Milne Bay also faces Fiji, another Pacific country with a strategically-placed deep-water harbour, used by submarines for regional operations.

There is also another important reason why Milne Bay has been chosen over Manus Island for the defence and security of 'US interests'. Milne Bay faces a multitude of small island chains, including the Calvados Chain reaching to Rossel and Adele Islands. They are situated on a straight line from the Kuril Islands in the northern hemisphere through Australian military bases in Queensland, at 153 degrees east and face the western Pacific between 10 and 30 degrees south and the Solomon and Coral Seas. (3)

The Kuril Islands mark the beginning of Pentagon regional military planning with Island Chain Theory, a re-used relic of the previous Cold War now upgraded for containing and encircling perceived Chinese interests. Island chains are used for regional demarcation to restrict easy access and egress into the wider Oceania.

Of the nine military bases in Queensland, Lavarack in Townsville remains the most important, hosting the Third Brigade of the Combat Signals Regiment. It is also not surprising to find the arc from Lavarack to Milne Bay also swings through Darwin, used by the US for troop rotations into the wider Indo-Pacific. (4)

References in the diplomatic statement to the 'US agreeing to share satellite data with PNG', is also evidence of the strategic significance of Milne Bay. (5) While the US is able to spy on the entire world with their surveillance and monitoring systems, they require local knowledge to identify areas of interest from agents and 'ground human'. Local people in the Milne Bay area, for example, would have experience of islands and population movements between the small land-masses which have become more sensitive in recent times.

It is also significant to note references in the diplomatic statement to other US allies included in their Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), as lower-level partners: Taiwan, South Korea, India, and others. (6) The Japan-South Korea General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) is regarded by the US as 'essential as a military intelligence sharing framework for trilateral missile defence as a key axis in the IPS targeting China', and has four key points: the US, Australia, India and Japan, with the enclosed area including strategic assets for 'US interests', particularly in Asia. (7)

Recent regional assessments have revealed how the US has been pressurising Australia to upgrade its influences in South-east Asia to counter China's large regional aid program. (8) A total of $55.7 million was allocated in the recent federal budget to 'deepen ties with South-east Asia'. (9) At present Australia's two-way trade with the area of the Indo-Pacific only amounts to fourteen per cent of its total trade. (10) China, by contrast, has increased its regional diplomacy during the last decade by using programs based on mutual benefits with a $38 billion program launched in 2015 and completed in 2021. (11) 

When PNG signed a Defence Co-operation Agreement with the US in May, to enable the Pentagon to deploy assets to selected PNG bases, it was noted that 'PNG will become a key location to build some real influence in Melanesia', and that they were placing themselves in the front-line of US-led regional hostilities. (12)

Australia should really consider an independent foreign policy before it is too late to prevent the drift into real-war scenarios, most likely through rapid escalation of hostilities elsewhere in the region.

It is not idle speculation: a recent study conducted by the University of Technology, Sydney, and their Australia-China Relations Institute, for example, found most Australians thought military conflict with China a distinct possibility within the next three years, and fewer than half thought the AUKUS military agreement will make Australia a safer place. (13)

1.     America walks the walk in battle for Pacific minds, Australian, 10 July 2023.    
2.     Canberra-Jakarta union to bolster growth, security, Australian, 3 July 2023.
3.     See: Peters Projection, Map of the World, Actual Size.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Australian, op.cit., 10 July 2023.
6.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
7.     Ibid.
8.     China holds regional sway with $38 bn aid, Australian, 5 June 2023.
9.     Risks and rewards in Asia, Australian, 6 July 2023.
10.   Ibid.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 5 June 2023.
12.   Australian, op.cit., 10 July 2023.
13.   War with China on the cards, says poll, Australian, 11 July 2023.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

Kimba nuclear dump decision – tears of joy.

Written by: Nick G. on 18 July 2023

 

There were tears of joy outside the Federal Court in Adelaide this morning when Barngarla First Peoples and their supporters celebrated the quashing of the federal government’s decision to construct a nuclear waste dump at Napandee, near Kimba on Eyre Peninsula.

Earlier, the mood of the standing-room room only courtroom of Justice Natalie Charlesworth was solemn as she dismissed three of four grounds of the Barngarla’s case. However, the substantive fourth ground was upheld, with Justice Charlesworth finding that then federal Resources Minister Keith Pitt had shown “apprehended bias” in deciding in favour of the Kimba site, and therefore set his decision aside.

It is rare for a court to make a ruling of apprehended bias against a Minister, although the Federal Court last March made such a ruling against former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, quashing his decision to refuse to extend Asset Energy’s petroleum exploration permit, as his decision could be apprehended to have been predetermination following his overt public stance against the project.

At common law and under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977, the test for the Bias Rule extends beyond whether there is actual bias to whether there is an appearance of bias. An appearance or apprehension of bias may occur if, in the circumstances, a fair-minded lay observer may reasonably apprehend that the decision maker may not bring an impartial mind to their decision.

Leaving aside the legal niceties of the courtroom, it was the strength and courage of the Barngarla community that helped decide the issue. Uncle Harry Dare, a Barngarla elder told me as we waited for the court to open that regardless of which way the decision went, the Barngarla would continue their fight against the dump. They had strong allies among the farmers of Kimba who had their own organisation, No Radioactive Waste on Agricultural Land in Kimba or SA. However, they did not have the financial resources to fund their own court case against the decision, President Peter Woolford declaring that the system was unfair to those without such resources.

In a statement following the court decision, Woolford said that he was “extremely happy and relieved” that the court had decided in the Barngarla’s favour.

“Having also experienced the injustices and the manipulations that have occurred over the entire 8 year process, we fully understand the frustration and stress that the government’s tactics have caused. We are so pleased that the voices of the traditional owners have been heard and listened to, and that their unwavering opposition to this facility has finally been recognised.”

“What does this say about the Voice?”

Both Liberal and Labor federal governments have thrown huge amounts of taxpayer moneys to get the dump approved and to defend their process against the Barngarla’s pursuit of a court review of the process. Facilities around Kimba have benefitted from millions given to the town to entice its ratepayers to vote for the dump, with the promise of a community development package of up to $31 million once the dump was operational. 

They also spent more than $10 million on their legal costs against the Barngarla, who over the same period had only spent $124,000 on their legal costs.

Barngarla Development Aboriginal Corporation chairperson Jason Bilney described the legal battle as a “David and Goliath” battle. He said that it was a very proud and emotional day.

He also asked what the long drawn-out case said about the Voice. The Barngarla had commissioned their own vote on the dump proposal and it had been unanimously opposed by the 83 respondents, yet the incoming Labor government continued to run with the dump, and their Resource Minister Madeleine King had shown her support for the dump on a visit to Kimba and by authorising work at the site despite the Federal Court case being still underway. The previous government and the current one had both ignored the Barngarla voice. He said today’s victory was for truth-telling. 

The federal government now has two choices.  It can appeal today’s decision, wasting more money, further disrespecting the Barngarla and throwing into even more doubt the sincerity of their promise to listen to the Voice of First Peoples. Or it can initiate a new search for a stable, deep underground repository for nuclear waste. The waste will not only be low level and intermediate level waste but must now, by virtue of the AUKUS arrangement, include high level waste from decommissioned nuclear-powered submarines. The search for a new site must work with, and not against, the communities concerned. Such a process of site identification must avoid what Peter Woolford said was the “absolute disgrace” of the Kimba process. 

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

-----

Go back