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.

Vanuatu: Military Exercises and Real-Life Dramas

 

Google Maps/Christopher Woody

Written by: (Contributed) on 30 August 2023

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.

 

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."

This quotation is the basis for the ideas developed by the Russian revolutionary LENIN in his work "Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism". In this work, LENIN explains, on the basis of precise economic facts, that the capitalism of the 19th century was characterized by the export of goods (...) and that when this capitalist system reaches its imperialist stage, the export of capital will predominate, starting from the industrialized countries, which will divide the world among themselves through colonial domination.

 

This short summary clearly shows that LENIN's ideas are still relevant and instructive to recognize and understand the predatory and economic war that is taking place before our eyes! And this fierce competition that exacerbates the centuries-old rivalries between the imperialist powers on the African continent, especially in Sudan.

 

• Sudan is the second largest country in Africa in terms of area, and its geographic location is one of the main factors behind its political instability. The country is located in a key strategic region for the various imperialist poles, which are fiercely fighting to strengthen their influence while protecting their economic interests by any means necessary. On the map of the continent, it is located between the Red Sea, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Sudan also borders countries such as South Sudan, Somalia and Libya.

 

• On the economic level. The agricultural question is of paramount importance in Sudan. As in most neocolonies in Africa, the land does not belong to the peasants. It is in the hands of foreign corporations and semi-feudal or capitalist landowners. In Sudan, the UNITED ARAB EMIRATES and SAUDI-ARABIA have gotten their hands on more than 500,000 hectares of agricultural land. Of this vast area, 12,000 hectares are exclusively for the cultivation of livestock feed destined for the Gulf States and the Middle East. This seizure of land by the oil monarchies is a real brake on the industrialization of the country.

 

• Also in the economic sphere: besides the exploitation of gas, oil, and gold, the bourgeois experts cite, "About 12% of world trade passes through the Suez Canal and 10% through Bab El-Mandeb. By 2050, the GDP of the Red Sea region is expected to rise to $6.1 trillion and the volume of trade to about $4.7 trillion." Another economic fact reported to us by "Ecofin Agency": Perseus Mining, an Australian group, had announced in January 2022 that it would acquire a stake in Orca Gold, the owner of Sudan's Block 14 gold project. (...) Under the agreement with the Canadian company, Perseus must pay CAD 198 million ($155 million) to acquire the 85% stake it does not already hold. Together with the 17 million Canadian dollars paid to join the company, this consideration increases the value of Orca to 215 million Canadian dollars ($168.5 million).

 

• In this relentless economic war between different capitalist groups, we also find the Moroccan group MANAGEM, which is present in nine countries in Africa. In particular, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Mali and Burkina-Faso. The Moroccan group is developing various projects in the gold sector. In Sudan, MANAGEM has a partnership with the Chinese company WANBAO MINING. The aim of this partnership is to develop a gold project in block 15 of the Gabgaba mine. The aim is to produce almost 5 tons of gold per year in the medium term. To this end, 250 million US dollars have been invested in the modernization of the production facilities.

 

• In summary, the Sudanese economy is geared to the systematic export of raw materials and agricultural products to the world market, which means a considerable transfer of value, in plain language: an overexploitation of the country for the benefit of industrialized countries.

 

• Given all this fierce economic competition on Sudanese soil, it is understandable that U.S. imperialism grasped the ouster of autocrat Bechir early on as an opportunity to improve its relations with the coup plotters and the transitional government. HAMDOK and its government had received $700 million in emergency financial assistance from the U.S. government and substantial financial support from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in particular. All of these direct or indirect financial interventions by the U.S. government served no philanthropic purpose. Rather, they served to devalue the Sudanese pound against the dollar and subsequently open the Sudanese market to U.S. companies and multinational corporations.

 

• The EU bloc and German imperialism in Sudan. The state visit of German President FRANK WALTER STEINMEIR in February 2020, when the people's struggle against the coup plotters was at its peak, was a great symbol of German imperialism trying to gain an advantage over its British and American rivals three years ago. Although Germany is among the three countries (China and Qatar) that invest the most in Sudan, its diplomacy in the Red Sea region and the Middle East remains discreet. It goes without saying that this discretion is basically just a maneuver to conceal the incessant activities of its military industry in this region of the African continent.

 

• In fact, the German government has repeatedly signed gigantic arms contracts with regional powers that intervene in Sudan. SAUDI-ARABIA, the UNITED EMIRATES and EGYPT have formed an alliance to sabotage the popular struggle by strongly supporting the coup plotters. Today, these three countries, which are customers of German arms factories, are supporting opposing camps in this reactionary civil war. Egypt is an ally of General ABDEL FATTAH AL BURHAN. The country led by the tyrant AL SISI was able to acquire in Germany various war material (surface-to-air defense guns and missiles, four U-209 submarines and four Meko corvettes) worth more than 3 billion euros. For the last eight months, OLAF SCHOLZ and the heads of the arms industry have decided to lift sanctions against SAUDI-ARABIA and the UNITED ARAB EMIRATES in connection with the import of weapons from the countries of the EU. Thus, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is intervening in Sudan, is allowed to buy spare parts and weapons for TYPHON and TOMADO fighter aircraft from the German defense industry for a total value of 36.1 billion euros. The trade press also reports the sale of six A400M tactical transport aircraft to the UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, the contract for which has not yet been confirmed. These regional powers include Qatar, which had already ordered 165 million euros worth of armaments from the German defense industry in 2019. Parallel to the intervention of its arms industry in the Horn of Africa and with the Gulf monarchies, German imperialism had mobilized its notorious "Team Europe", which includes the EU institutions and states, to provide an enormous 770 million euros in development aid.

 

• For their part, PUTIN and his oligarchs make no secret of their goals. RUSSIA has positioned itself as the main arms supplier to the Sudanese government. In 2019, Sudan became the second largest buyer of Russian arms in Africa. Sudan's rich and valuable natural resources remain a lucrative business that attracts Russian businessmen. The continent's third-largest gold producer, the nebulous paramilitary group Wagner, has continuously participated in the looting through Yevgeny Prigoshine's company M Invest and its subsidiary Meroe Gold, which set up shop in Sudan in 2017. Most of the mines are in the hands of FSR of HAMDAN DOGOLO alias HEMETTI. Meroe Gold, the so-called subsidiary openly collaborates with ASWAR, a company run by Sudanese military intelligence. Despite an alleged economic embargo against RUSSIA, the Sudanese gold industry is secretly strengthening the Russian economy during the military confrontation with the NATO bloc in UKRAINE. But this is not all! In addition to the training of officers by Russian instructors, there are also Russian experts in the Sudanese military apparatus who secure communications for the General Staff of General ABDEL FATTAH AL BURHAN and analyze emails, information websites and social networks.  In addition to these military experts, it is necessary to mention the construction of a Russian military base in Port Sudan near the Red Sea. According to some military experts, the Russian military base can house more than 300 troops and nuclear-powered warships. The main goal of this naval base is to cut off the way to the American and French fleets escorting Iranian and Syrian oil shipments.

 

• Although China and Russia have conflicting interests on the African continent, the two emerging powers in Sudan agree on one thing: unrestricted control and exploitation of the country's natural resources. Thus, in 2020, the Chinese government signed an agreement with Sudan. This economic agreement gives Chinese companies the unrestricted right to explore and mine gold, chromite, black sand, marble and cobalt in Sudan's subsoil, which is full of them. In addition to natural resources, Chinese companies are also active in agriculture, industry, construction, transportation, and energy. In the energy sector, the international press reported that ʺ China, through its national company China National Nuclear, was involved in the construction of a nuclear reactor ʺ and the Merowe Dam, located 350 km north of Khartoum. The power of the dam is 1250 kW.It is the second largest dam on the Nile. From another economic register, it is learned that the total loans granted by Sudan to the Chinese government for energy projects are estimated at more than US$5 billion. Today, Chinese investments amount to more than $20 billion.  The least that can be said is that all these investments by the Chinese capitalists confirm that Sudan has been at a standstill for several years! This is the reason why the Chinese government cynically has two irons in the fire since the beginning of this ultra-reactionary civil war, namely: as long as business is stable and positive, the better - of the two fascists - will win!

 

• Businessman Oktay Ercan, the undisputed head of Barer Holding, now stands alone in representing Turkey's political and economic ambitions in Sudan.  Barer Holding includes various business sectors such as mining, aviation, livestock, and military and ballistic textiles. In addition to the activities of his famous holding company, Oktay Ercan had established another international company called SUR (International Investisment Group), of course for the purposes of the cause in Sudan. Strangely enough, there are shareholders in the SUR company who cooperate with the Sudanese army in the production of military textiles, a large, lucrative sector. In addition, there are various investments in infrastructure on the Red Sea and, most notably, the construction of a new airport 40 km from Khartoum. Qatar, Turkey's ally in Sudan, has also invested 4 billion euros in infrastructure.

 

• In the military field, the German defense industry had supplied battle tanks "Leopard" and technical assistance in the construction of six submarines U-214 in Turkey. Since 2014, Turkey has conducted several military maneuvers in Sudan, and there are Turkish buildings in the port Sudan near the Red Sea. The Turkish press reports Erdogan's ambitions in Africa: ʺ Turkey's ambitions in East Africa are not limited to Sudan and the Red Sea. Turkey has built its largest foreign naval base in Somalia, at a cost of nearly $50 million, with the goal of training thousands of Somali and Turkish soldiers.ʺ

 

• In this political, economic and military war between predatory powers ruling Sudan, Erdogan's Turkey visibly appears as a weak link, because since the fall of autocrat Béchir, who was a strong ally of Turkey, the balance of power has changed with new actors taking over. To prepare their revenge, the former regime's henchmen fled to Turkey to unite, organize, and prepare to take back power in Sudan. This struggle for the return of Béchir's men further exacerbates the political contradictions between the army and the paramilitaries. All of this is at the heart of this reactionary civil war.

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.

 

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. 

 

Australian armed forces – guardians of the Bushido

 Written by: Nick G. on 29 August 2023

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.

The current Japanese Constitution came into effect after Japanese imperialism’s defeat in the Second World War.

 

Drafted by the occupation US armed forces under General MacArthur, it imposed non-belligerence on the Japanese when it took effect in 1947. Article 9 of the Constitution states:

 

1)    Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 

2)   In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

 

Article 9 was well-received by the Japanese people whose major cities had been fire-bombed to oblivion by Allied aircraft, followed by the dropping of the two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

However, the US imperialists and Japanese militarists soon regretted imposing a pacifist constitution on the defeated nation.

 

The Japanese attempted to sidestep the Constitution in 1954 by creating an armed force under the name of the Japan Self-Defence Force, but it was still forbidden from engaging in fighting outside of Japan.

 

During the 1960s and 70s, when US imperialism was seeking allies for its war on Asian liberation movements, led by Communists, attempts were made to revive Japanese militarism and the Self-Defence Forces were expanded and various “security” arrangements were entered into by the two countries. Despite the stationing of large numbers of US troops and naval vessels in Japan, the Constitution remained in force with the support of the Japanese people.

 

A more aggressive push for amending Article 9 arose during the time of Shinzo Abe as Japanese Prime Minister between 2012 and 2020. The JSDF's first postwar overseas base was established in Djibouti (July 2010). On 18 September 2015, the National Diet enacted the 2015 Japanese military legislation, a series of laws that allow Japan's Self-Defence Forces to defend allies in combat. The JSDF can now provide material support to allies engaged in combat overseas, as they did with the US in Iraq.

 

Since 2018, Japanese forces have increasingly participated in joint military exercises with the US and countries loyal to it, including India and Australia.

 

US imperialism has made it known that Australia and Japan are its southern and northern outposts for the maintenance of its declining hegemony over the Pacific.

 

The Australia-Japan Reciprocal Access Agreement – were you consulted?

 

Under former Australian PM Scott Morrison, negotiations for a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) were begun, and signed in January 2022. The RAA came into effect on 14 August 2023.  The RAA creates a framework for the two cooperating countries to move their military force whenever required through access to one another’s military bases and ports, and also provides a pathway for goods to be imported and exported from one country to the other through following the movement of visiting military forces.

 

Specifically, its measures will include:

 

• Japanese F-35s will deploy to Australia, to RAAF Base Tindal for the first time at the end of August;

 

• Exercise Bushido Guardian, where Australian F-35s will be deployed to Japan for the first time in early September; and,

 

• Australia will participate in Exercise Yama Sakura as a full participant for the first time with more than 150 personnel travelling to Japan in December.

 

This means that Tindal will not only host US nuclear-armed B-52 bombers, but also Japanese fighters under the sort of “rotation” fig-leaf that now makes US marines a permanent presence in the NT. The first two Japanese planes, and 55 personnel, arrived at Tindal on August 26.

 

The reference to Exercise Bushido Guardian was not well-received by some in the Australian armed forces community. Bushido was the “way of the warrior” expounded in the Japanese feudal-era text the Hagakure, which guided the behaviour of Japan’s Imperial Armed Forces during its aggression, firstly against Korea and China, and then during the Pacific phase of WW2.

 

The following comment was made by a reader of the online Australian Defence Magazine, relying to an earlier comment:

 

A little unfortunate you made no mention of the 8th Division 2A.I.F. and their experiences with the Japanese Military.

 

Or even the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 9th Divisions might possibly exist in your World of Australian/Japanese Lovefests?

 

My Grandfather and his mates from the Thai – Burma Railway might have some news for you regarding ”Aussies repaying debts”.

 

Still, who cares anymore about the Diggers used for bayonet practice, the machine-gunned Nurses, the decapitations, cannibalism, the mass rapes, executions, torture and innate cruelty of the Japanese Military?

 

Bygones can be bygones I guess, yeah in fact, f*ck those Diggers!

 

As long as we follow the U.S. into yet another senseless slaughter for Freedumb and Dumocracy, we can enjoy that warm fuzzy feeling of gathering in mobs, getting pissed and singing. . . . . . .

 

Aussie Aussie Aussie. Oi Oi Oi !!!

 

Makes ya proud, don’t it?

 

The current generations of young Japanese do not have to carry the guilt of their WW2 warrior ancestors. They are amongst the foremost defenders of Article 9. Nevertheless, many Australians will find the deployment of “our” F-35s to “guard” the Bushido as offensively insensitive as did the author of the comments above.

 

Albanese-Wong-Marles are in lock-step with the aggressive war plans of US imperialism.

 

The Australian and Japanese people must enhance their cooperation and work together to prevent the co-opting of their respective countries into another unwinnable US war of aggression.

Capitalism’s destructive war on nature causing ongoing extreme weather events

 (Artwork courtesy Earth Liberation Studios)

 Written by: Nick G. on 22 August 2023

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.