“The situation is becoming increasingly dire”: Report from Gaza

Written by: ICOR on 11 November 2026

 

The following report on discussion by ICOR Main Coordinator Monika Gärtner-Engel and doctors from the Al-Awda Health and Community Association in the Gaza Strip has been made available.  ICOR, the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations, is raising funds for the rebuilding of the Al-Awda facility - eds. 

 

Report on a video call with Dr. Rafaat, Dr. Mhanna, and Jehan, the fundraising director of the Al-Awda Health and Community Association in the Gaza Strip.

A Conversation Across Language Barriers
On November 2, 26, ICOR Chief Coordinator Monika Gärtner-Engel met in a small, impromptu gathering with Dr. Rafaat, Dr. Ahmad Mhanna, and Fundraising Director Jehan from the Al-Awda Health and Community Association in the Gaza Strip. A meeting with numerous supporters from around the world had to be postponed several times due to dramatic events in Gaza. Monika Gärtner-Engel was therefore happy to accept the offer of a last-minute meeting: “We’re so curious to hear how you’re doing.”

Another spontaneous guest was Irtefaa from Yemen, an environmental and women’s rights activist currently visiting the German Council for Women’s Policy. She said: “Our hearts are in Gaza; we hope that peace will reign in all countries, including Palestine.” The doctors responded with solidarity: “Yemen, too, is suffering from an unprecedented war and a difficult humanitarian situation.”

The Health Care System: “There Is No Way Out”
Nearly 13 months after the ceasefire began, the doctors say: “The health situation is steadily deteriorating. There is currently no way for us to ensure health care.” Medications, supplies, and medical equipment are not reaching the hospitals; reconstruction is not taking place because building materials are either lacking or their import is being blocked. The doctors criticize the strict import bans on medical devices and equipment. For example, the import of catheters is on the list of “dual-use” goods that Israel cites to justify import bans. This implies the claim that these devices can also be used in the manufacture of weapons and therefore must not be imported. Her response: “What reasonable person would claim that a piece of fabric, a sheet, or a medical blanket could be used for hostile acts?” Cotton, sponges, solar panels, batteries, and medical devices are also on this list.

All 35 hospitals that were operational before the war have been completely or partially damaged. A large portion of the health centers has also been destroyed.
There is a shortage of medical professionals. Many have died, been detained, fled, or been poached by hospitals controlled by the Trump connection with exorbitant salaries. About 16 medical specialists, primarily orthopedic surgeons, have been held by the Israeli armed forces for more than two years. The consequences: “There are signs of misdiagnoses and botched surgical procedures.”

However, the Gaza Medical Association is not giving up; instead, it is training new specialists. Over the past 25 years or so, it has produced about 600 specialists; some of them have since been killed in military attacks or are currently in detention.
More than 20,000 patients are on waiting lists due to critical conditions. Over 60,000 people need treatment outside the Gaza Strip, about 21,000 of them urgently.

There is not a single MRI machine in the Gaza Strip. According to doctors, such a machine could prevent more than 6,000 evacuations.
300 to 400 laboratory supplies, medications, and medical consumables have not reached the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. A new shortage has emerged for insulin. At least 600 children with diabetes need it. Medications for heart disease and cancer are also in short supply.

Electricity and Fuel: Generators at Their Limit
The healthcare system in Gaza relies on solar panels and generators to remain self-sufficient. Doctors report that even the import of solar panels, batteries, oils, and spare parts from Israel is strictly restricted. The Gaza Strip’s power supply has been cut off since the start of the war and has not been restored.

Since the start of the war, Al-Awda has spent more than two million U.S. dollars on power generators, including over 650,000 dollars in the past two months. According to the doctors, the organization pays between 200,000 and 300,000 dollars a month for fuel. “This is unreasonable. This is unacceptable,” says one of the doctors. About a month ago, hospital operations came to a standstill for a week because the generators had failed. Their assessment: “Three months at most. Then there won’t be a single functioning power generator left in the Gaza Strip if these measures continue. And that is exactly the intention.” Al-Awda can no longer cover these costs next month or the month after.

As a countermeasure, the organization is seeking dialogue with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the World Health Organization (WHO). The U.S. is systematically attempting to dismantle and starve UNRWA. The network of civil society organizations, led by one of the doctors, has also agreed to a cumbersome documentation process imposed by the Israeli side for oil deliveries—“reluctantly, but we are forced to do so.” Otherwise, there is a risk of “a complete paralysis of the healthcare system.” By way of comparison: According to the doctors, the shortage of oil, spare parts, filters, and solar energy weighs even more heavily than the already deadly shortage of medical supplies.

Housing and Food: Winter Is Just Around the Corner
Of the roughly two million people in Gaza, about 1.5 million live in tents and emergency shelters. These are not tents like those found at campgrounds here, but rather makeshift shelters cobbled together from tarps, some of which are torn. According to the doctors’ tally, less than 8 percent of the needed shelter materials have reached the Gaza Strip since January 1, 2026. Their assessment: “The occupying forces are deliberately exacerbating the plight of the tent dwellers.”

They describe the conditions in the tents as follows: For women, living in such cramped quarters poses particular dangers. “Physical and sexual violence occur on a large scale,” say the doctors. There is no privacy; the tent has no door that can be closed.

In about 70 percent of the tents, several generations live in no more than ten square meters—often grandparents, parents, and five children.
There is neither electricity nor water, and no toilets in the tent. People walk 100 to 200 meters to communal toilets.

Rats and mice live in the tents. “You fall asleep and wake up alongside them,” says one of the doctors.

In the summer, the temperature inside the tent rises to 45 to 50 degrees; in the winter, it offers no protection from the cold or rain. Many tents are located on the coast and are flooded by seawater at high tide.

Most children do not attend school.
For many, their diet has shrunk to one meal a day, mostly from communal kitchens that offer only three or four dishes: rice, lentils, or beans. The World Food Program had to cut its aid by 30 percent, from providing meals for 1.5 million families to one million. As a result, around 500,000 people are losing their meals. Rations have been reduced to one meal per day. Eighty-five percent of the population cannot afford fresh fruits and vegetables; at the markets, they are sold—if at all—at exorbitant prices. Children don’t understand the word “apple” because they’ve never seen one, let alone eaten one! The doctor says, “I’m almost certain that more than 500,000 children in Gaza have never seen a tomato and don’t know what a cucumber or a banana looks like.”

As for water, according to the doctors, over 90 percent of the springs have been destroyed or are located in areas under Israeli control that are off-limits to the population. The Gaza Strip is increasingly coming under the control of the Israeli occupation due to the ever-expanding “yellow line.” The people of Gaza are dependent on just 10 percent of the resources. Filtration systems and desalination technology are not allowed into the country.

Economy and UNRWA
According to the doctors, unemployment stands at over 70 percent, and among young people and college graduates, it exceeds 80 percent. The private sector has been destroyed; even large companies such as the electricity and telecommunications companies no longer exist. “There is no longer a private sector in the Gaza Strip,” they say. The former so-called middle class has also slipped into poverty. About 50,000 employees of the administration formerly led by Hamas receive none or less than 10 percent of their former salaries. At the same time, black-market traders are making a fortune off the people’s misery.

At the UN relief agency UNRWA, which employs about 13,000 people in the Gaza Strip, more than 1,500 staff members have already been laid off. The U.S., in particular, has drastically cut or completely eliminated its funding for UN organizations. According to information from the doctors, another 3,000 layoffs are imminent. The doctors sharply criticize this: “We expect a UN agency to respect laws and workers’ rights and to take the human dimension into account.” UNRWA was founded in 1948 in the wake of the Nakba and provides education, health care, and emergency aid to over 70 percent of Gaza’s population, who are refugees or displaced persons. “This organization is on the verge of extinction,” say the doctors.

The Israeli government has repeatedly announced its intention to drive UNRWA out of Gaza.

Funding: Less Money, Difficult Challenges
Funding reaching the Gaza Strip has fallen by at least 35 percent in 2026 compared to 2025. The doctors note that donors are targeting their cuts specifically at medications, treatment costs, and medical supplies. Some donors require that these goods be purchased outside of Gaza. However, their import is blocked by Israel. “We are caught between the measures imposed by the donors and the sanctions imposed by the occupying power,” says one of the doctors. In their planning for 2027, some donors have reported budget shortfalls of up to 50 percent.

One of the doctors also offers an assessment of government development aid: Of every million dollars that large agencies such as USAID allocate for projects in the Gaza Strip, he states that 60 percent goes toward salaries, transportation, and administration outside the Gaza Strip. Only 40 percent actually reaches its destination. He bases this on a study by researcher Bassam Abu Hamad and acknowledges that exact figures are not yet available. Donations from civil society, such as those collected by the ICOR and SI, on the other hand, arrive without any deductions. The doctors repeatedly express their heartfelt and explicit gratitude for this.

Assessment of Politics
Regarding the elections in Israel, the doctors say: “The people in Gaza are hoping for an end to Netanyahu’s rule.” Nevertheless, they do not expect any fundamental change, as Netanyahu and opposition leader Eizenkot are “two sides of the same coin” representing Israel’s interests. Netanyahu has a coalition base of at least 53 members of parliament and can attempt to form governing majorities. A strong showing by the Arab lists in Israel could make them a strategic player. However, the doctors do not believe this will become a reality or that the situation in Gaza will change significantly under a new government in Israel. They anticipate either a grand coalition or new elections.

They call the demand for Hamas to disarm a pretext. Their statement: “The occupying power basically does not want Hamas to surrender its weapons at all. If it did, it would invent dozens of other justifications.” As examples of restrictions, they cite travel bans, the denial of education and internet access, frozen bank accounts, blocked money transfers, and the destruction of cash.

Their personal conclusion: “The real death and the real war began after the signing of the so-called ceasefire.” In the past, tanks and planes killed people directly; today, people are dying from hunger, thirst, a lack of medication, and denied medical evacuations. According to her, for more than two years, not even 5 percent of the healthcare system’s basic needs have been met.

Solidarity and Outlook
Monika Gärtner-Engel appeared shaken but determined: “You swing between tears and anger. We’re passing this information on immediately through every platform we have.” She reports that demonstrations worldwide have indeed declined since the so-called ceasefire, and in some cases it’s becoming more difficult to collect donations. However, she emphasizes how awareness of solidarity with Palestine remains alive and, in some cases, is even experiencing a significant upswing. As a sign of international solidarity, she pointed to the strike by dockworkers and seafarers in 113 ports across five continents last Friday, during which many explicitly opposed arms shipments to Israel and, in some cases, actively blocked them. In February, there were only six ports involved. Her message to her colleagues in Gaza: “You are not alone.”

The doctors replied: “We need support and genuine solidarity. We need real pressure on the occupying power.” And: “We are absolutely certain that this bleak reality will not last.” They are following the actions of dockworkers and unions in Europe and see a shift in public sentiment within American society as well.

In conclusion, Monika Gärtner-Engel suggests trying to set up the next live video call, if possible, during the volunteer meeting or the solidarity concert on December 5.

Time and again, our Palestinian friends express their appreciation for the work of ICOR and “Palestine Must Live”: “We deeply appreciate the time you devote to this, your ongoing solidarity, and your unwavering, steadfast support. We look forward to future collaboration and closer contact,” reads the email from Gaza following the conversation.

Report from comrades in Afghanistan to the CPA (M-L)

 Written by: Afghan comrades on 11 November 2026

 

We are very pleased to have established contact with an underground network of Communists in Afghanistan, and have agreed to share analytical materials with them. Here is one such analysis from our comrades on the political economy of Taliban rule – eds. 

 

To: Comrade Nick G., Chairperson, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) – CPA (M-L)
From: The International Relations and Coordination Committee of the Akhgar and Rustakhiz Study Circles (Afghanistan)
Subject: The Political Economy of Afghanistan Under Taliban Fascism: Structures of Exploitation, Class Contradictions, and the Horizon of Struggle

Theoretical Introduction: The Nature of the Political Superstructure and Economic Base

Following the strategic political shift in August 2021 and the chaotic withdrawal of US-NATO imperialism, the political superstructure in Afghanistan transformed into a clerical-fascist, totalitarian, and semi-feudal colonial regime. Contrary to bourgeois propaganda and imperialist media narratives that frame this transition as the "end of occupation and achievement of national independence," a critical critique of political economy reveals that the Taliban is not an independent entity. Rather, they act as an instrument to stabilize an even more naked phase of economic bondage and reproduce pre-capitalist relations tightly linked to the global circuit of capital.

The rule of Taliban fascism is the objective intersection of "comprador (bureaucratic) capitalism" in urban centers and "decaying semi-feudal relations" in the countryside, locking the vast masses of the urban proletariat and poor peasantry within a vice of brutal exploitation. This document delineates the four specific structural axes of exploitation within this geography.

1. Extractive Industries: Plunder of Minerals and Direct Dispossession

• Objective Empirical Data: The Taliban regime secures the vast majority of its military and intelligence budget through the unregulated concession and aggressive extraction of coal, copper, iron, and lithium deposits. Coal extraction in the northern region (Sar-e Pol and Samangan provinces) has grown exponentially, with annual exports to neighbouring countries reaching over 4 to 5 million tons. The regime's direct share from royalties and mining customs duties has risen to over 35% to 40% of total domestic revenues. Conversely, the wages of coal miners have catastrophically dropped to less than $50 to $80 USD per month. Laborers toil inside non-standard extraction shafts completely devoid of basic safety and life-support systems, leading to the annual deaths of dozens of mining proletarians due to tunnel collapses and asphyxiation.

• Theoretical Analysis (Karl Marx): In Volume 1 of Capital (Part VIII: Primitive Accumulation), Karl Marx explains that capitalism, during crises or in sub-developed contexts, relies on the naked plunder of natural resources and the absolute exploitation of raw physical labor . By usurping public ownership over national resources, the fascist regime has engineered the contradiction between "labor and capital" in its crudest geometric form. The bureaucratic capital of the Emirate extracts "absolute surplus value" by relentlessly extending the daily working hours of the miners.

2. Predatory Fiscal Extraction and Parasitic Accumulation

• Objective Empirical Data: According to official data from the World Bank, the Taliban regime has driven domestic revenue collection to approximately 19.8% of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This surge is not the byproduct of industrial growth or infrastructural production, but the result of an aggressive, multi-layered fiscal extraction system. Customs tariffs on basic commodities and food items for the masses have increased up to 30%. Shopkeepers, small informal workshops, and urban petty-traders are forced to pay double taxes and corporate fees under religious pretenses (such as forced Ushr and Zakat), marking a 200% increase in fiscal extortion compared to the pre-2021 period. This occurs while 90% of the population languishes below the absolute poverty line, and the real unemployment rate hovers near 75%.

• Theoretical Analysis (V. I. Lenin): In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin illustrates how reactionary states become instruments of extortion to serve a ruling minority and comprador relations . The Taliban's fiscal system is a prime manifestation of "parasitic accumulation." By draining the last financial drops from the urban proletariat and the decaying petty-bourgeoisie, the regime centralizes wealth into its military-clerical bureaucracy to maintain the state repressive apparatus against potential mass uprisings.

3. Gender Apartheid: The Economic Function of Female Exclusion and Enslavement

• Objective Empirical Data: The structure of religious fascism has physically excised half of the living social body from the public sphere:

• Exclusion from Education: 100% of women and girls are barred from education beyond the 6th grade and higher education in universities (affecting more than 1.4 million female students and hundreds of thousands of university undergraduates).

• Exclusion from Employment: Over 92% of women previously employed in civil service, textile factories, healthcare sectors, and civic organizations have been forcibly confined to their homes.

• Objective Status Within Our Circles: It is with profound revolutionary grief, yet intense class rage, that we declare that exactly 7 of our active female comrades within the Akhgar and Rustakhiz Study Circles are direct victims of this gender apartheid. These dear comrades have been stripped of their right to university education and social employment; they now continue their theoretical struggle underground within our secret cells amidst this suffocating terror.

• Theoretical Analysis (Mao Zedong): In his analysis of semi-feudal societies, Comrade Mao Zedong demonstrated that women are bound by four thick ropes of oppression: political authority, clan authority, religious authority, and masculine authority . Taliban fascism has turned these four ropes into iron chains. From the viewpoint of historical materialism, this exclusion is not merely a cultural prejudice; by functionally transforming women into domestic captives, the regime relies on them as a "free reproductive labor force" to bear the burden of mass survival under structural poverty, sparing the state any expenditure on social welfare or public health.

4. The Strategy of the Akhgar and Rustakhiz Study Circles and Alignment with the CPA (M-L)

Your party, the CPA (M-L), has consistently maintained a firm stance against the exploitation of the masses by monopoly capital and imperialist interventions. Recognizing this, we declare that the economic structure of contemporary Afghanistan is a stark example of bureaucratic-comprador capitalism and warlord-feudalism, functioning within the global imperialist chain to supply cheap raw materials (minerals) while executing the violent suppression of labor.
In the face of this total fascism, our circles have organized our fighting strategy along two primary axes:

• The Urban Front (Akhgar): Building clandestine cells among the industrial and workshop proletariat in cities, raising the historical and theoretical consciousness of the working class, and secretly guiding small bread-and-survival protests toward understanding the primary contradiction of society.

• The Rural Front (Rustakhiz): Penetrating the peasant masses who have been economically devastated by the regime's agrarian extractions and consecutive droughts, exposing the semi-feudal nature of the Taliban's rural backers, and promoting rural class solidarity and methods of self-reliance.
The active presence of female comrades in our underground cells proves that the revolutionary movement in Afghanistan cannot triumph without the total class and gender liberation of women. Theoretical and media cooperation with your party serves as a vital step toward exposing this fascist machinery globally and reinforcing the internationalist proletarian front.

Down with Taliban Fascism and Its Imperialist Backers!
Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!
The International Relations and Coordination Committee
Akhgar and Rustakhiz Study Circles (Afghanistan)
November 2026

Scientific and Internationalist References

1. The World Bank (2025-2026): Afghanistan Economic Monitor: Reports on Internal Revenue Extraction Frameworks and Structural Poverty Indices.
2. United Nations Development Programme - UNDP (2025): Socio-Economic Appraisals on Unemployment, Food Insecurity, and the Impact of Gender Apartheid on Unpaid Domestic Reproductive Labor in Afghanistan.
3. Marx, Karl (1867): Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Volume I), Part VIII: So-Called Primitive Accumulation and the Theory of Absolute Surplus Value Extraction.
4. Lenin, V. I. (1916): Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Elaborations on the Parasitic State and Comprador Looting in Oppressed Nations.
5. Mao Zedong (1927): Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan & Selected Works on the Four Thick Ropes of Oppression Binding Women in Semi-Feudal Social Formations.

HungryPanda murder: The gig economy must be strongly regulated and its workers protected.

Written by: Nick G. on 10 November 2026

 

(Above: Hundreds attended the rally for Feng Jianming.  Source: Instagram)

The murder of HungryPanda delivery rider, and serious wounding of another, has again raised questions about both the vulnerability of delivery riders to personal danger, and the inadequacy of mental health services.

In February, we covered the case of HungryPanda delivery riders who were taking strike action in Sydney over wages and conditions. There were allegations that Chinese police had intimidated the families of some of the delivery riders back home in China. Our article included extensive details of the ownership of HungryPanda and the role of international finance capital in its ownership and organisation.

Feng Jianming, 54, was stabbed to death by 51-year old Robert Urbano following his interference with the bikes the two delivery riders had left outside a Melbourne restaurant.  It is alleged that he was homeless and tried to take food from the bikes' carriers bags. Feng and his co-worker intervened to stop damage to their bikes and the theft of food when Urbano turned on them with his knife.

Urbano has now appeared in court to face charges relating to the death and injury. The court was hearing details of Urbano’s schizophrenia diagnosis when he stood on a chair in his holding room, pulled his pants down and exposed himself to the camera.

Urbano’s mental health is symptomatic of the lack of support for persons who require professional health and psychiatric support. His actions come in the wake of the attack on Helen Haines MP. In our article on that event, we accused the government of gutting mental health services and echoed criticisms by 2010 Australian of the Year Professor Pat McGorry:

Even if the tooth fairy could wave a magic wand over the empty heads in government and opposition benches and see a release of needed funding, the fundamental approach to mental health under capitalism will not improve.

The ethics of bourgeois psychology upon which mental health services rest, treats patients at the crisis stage. As McGorry said, it is the “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff” approach which has been allowed to develop through the absence of preventative approaches which could have prevented the reaching of the critical stages.  

It deals with crises as the failings of the individual and as the personal problem of the individual, rather than as the failings of capitalist society and the social problems of the system as a whole.

The answer is not to institutionalise those with manageable mental health problems, but to ensure they have professional support, preferably within the families and communities in which they live.

No doubt chastened by the controversy over the February 2026 HungryPanda delivery riders’ strike, HungryPanda has promised to arrange visas and travel for Feng’s family to come to Australia for his funeral.

The company has been accused by its workers of fining them if the delivery is lost or stolen, forcing them to compromise their safety to protect company profits.  They are forced to get to their destinations as quickly as possible in order to make enough money for themselves, and more for the company.

The riders confronted the homeless man because they would otherwise have had to pay for the stolen food. If they had been working for Uber instead, they could have simply walked away, because Uber allows delivery riders to stop a delivery if they feel unsafe, without facing any penalties.

The whole gig economy is a ruthless frontline of capitalist exploitation.

Many Chinese people are blaming Melbourne’s public safety issues and homelessness for this tragedy. But those are only the immediate causes. The root cause is Panda Food Delivery’s extreme exploitation of its delivery riders, which pushed them into making the decision to confront the homeless man and fight over the stolen food. The fundamental problem lies in the company’s exploitation of its workers and its refusal to take responsibility for them.

Meantime, there has been an outpouring of support from all sections of the community for Feng, including a large and emotional rally outside the State Library last Saturday night, and an online fundraiser for Feng’s family which has exceeded $420,000 in donations. 

State and city authorities have lived up to Professor McGorry’s criticism of capitalism’s “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff” approach.

Victorian Premier Ben Carroll has vowed to make "whatever changes are necessary" following Feng’s fatal stabbing and Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece, who attended the vigil, said he had spoken with HungryPanda management and offered to hold a roundtable to discuss safety conditions for delivery riders in the city.

They must be held to these offers, and the actions should include a discussion of community mental health services and homelessness, as well as matters relating to traffic management and pressures on delivery workers to meet management demands on schedules and efficiency.

 

 

Osborne Shipyard AUKUS Nuclear Submarines - Are They "Done and Dusted"?

Written by: Ned K. on 9 November 2026

 

(Adelaide rally against AUKUS.  Photo supplied Fernando Goncalves)

The findings of the public inquiry into AUKUS were announced by former ALP Minister Peter Garrett at the National Press Club last week, with the question "Will AUKUS keep us safe - and at what cost?"

There was scant coverage of this in the mainstream media and not a single word about it in the Murdoch daily mass distribution newspapers of the major capital cities. This is not surprising. However, there are signs that sections of big business in Australia who support the US -Australia Alliance are having real doubts about the AUKUS nuclear submarine agreement and building of nuclear submarines at the Osborne shipyard near Port Adelaide.

The big businesses having doubts include the Murdoch empire itself. They are not concerned about the people of Osborne and Port Adelaide and Adelaide itself becoming a nuclear target. Nor are they concerned about the danger of nuclear waste and where to store it. Their concern is that rapid changes in military technologies are going to make nuclear powered submarines obsolete, both in the event of war between the US and China and for defending big business interests in Australia.

"Drone and Dusted"

Hidden away in the "Commentary" page of Murdoch Press's "The Australian" (Wednesday 4th November) was an article "Is AUKUS Drone and Dusted" by columnist Robert Gottleiebsen.

His article starts off sounding the alarm for his big business reader audience.

"Potentially, the most serious black hole in Australian government spending is AUKUS.

"Back in 2021, the AUKUS submarine agreement made sense for all three parties - the US, UK and Australia. But dramatic changes in warfare technology are making the deal increasingly dangerous for Australia and potentially less relevant to our partners. Yet we continue to spend as though nothing has changed."

The article goes on to say that nuclear-powered submarines were meant to be able to travel through deep sea waters undetected. This is what the champions of AUKUS including the likes of Morrison, Albanese, Wong and Marles continue to say makes the nuclear-powered submarines in "the national interest". 
Gottliebsen's article argues that "detection technology and artificial intelligence are potentially transforming the ability to locate and destroy older-technology submarines."

The solution put forward by this Murdoch Press article is not that the Australian government’s full support for the USA in preparing for war with China should be withdrawn. The solution proposed is that Australia contribute to the US war machine by developing "both offensive drone capabilities and effective systems for defending against drone attacks".

The Murdoch Press article also doubts that the UK has the technological capability and political certainty to provide the submarine design for Australian built submarines in the 2030s. Gottliebsen's article concludes that the shipyard being built at Osborne for yet to be designed UK nuclear submarines is looking more likely to be a wasteland of large empty buildings and destroyed natural environment.

The multinational corporations with direct economic interests in the nuclear submarine construction in Australia will not worry too much if the nuclear submarines are obsolete when or before they are completed. They have already sucked in compliant politicians at federal and state level to this profit-making project and promised a rosy career future for young people at the Osborne shipyard itself and its dependent businesses.

This is the price of servility by governments to AUKUS and the servility to big imperialist powers.

Local Osborne people and people of Australia deserve better than this.

 

This social system must go!

 Written by: Nick G. on 6 November 2026

 

In 1859, Karl Marx wrote “There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery…”

That social system was and is capitalism, and nothing much has changed in the more than 160 years since Marx’s observation.

Private wealth in Australia has increased rapidly in recent times, as has the misery inflicted on working people.

The fifth interest rate increase this year announced by the Reserve Bank takes interest rates to an 18-year high. The decision is callously intended to drive up unemployment and to put further spending pressures on mortgage holders and renters, already struggling with day-to-day living expenses. The interest rate rise means that there will be more unemployed and under-employed, more homeless families, and more people with or without jobs lining up at food charities. 

Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock knows this and makes no apology.

She also knows that the number of ultra-wealthy Australians (those with net worth over US$30 million) is climbing rapidly. Ultra-high-net-worth households grew to 16,640 in 2026, a one-third increase since 2021. Australian billionaires grew even faster, surging 77% from 48 to 85 over the same period, the fourth-fastest rate globally.

High-net-worth households (those with wealth exceeding $1 million) grew from 1.21 million to 1.33 million, with their investable wealth rising 8% to $4.6 trillion.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions offered a converter which allows wage-earners to see how their earnings compared to those of Australian billionaires:

Let's say your annual wage is $80,000 (38 hours per week over 52 weeks).

The average Australian billionaire?

They make that in 4 hours 51 minutes. You need a whole year – they need a morning.

Wanna know how long you'd have to work to make what the billionaire makes in one year?

1,803 years. Clock on in 223 AD, never take a day off, and you’d just about get there by now.

Noone is telling those millionaires and billionaires at the height of the capitalist class that they must reduce their earnings, cut their investments, stop paying for luxuries.

But the government is told to cut its spending, and will only do so where the interests of the rich will not be touched. The government’s “savings” will come from the people.

Europe is currently ablaze with the anger of the working class and the youth. They face the same problems as Australian workers and youth: inflation, interest rate rises, homelessness, high rents, poor education and health services.

New Zealand is on the eve of an election – too close to call – but where people are facing the same problems as their Australian cousins, and their government is the equivalent of the Australian Liberal and National Opposition.

It doesn’t matter what choice of colours the governing parties of capitalism garb themselves in, the rich will increase their wealth at the expense of the increasing misery felt by the rest of us.

Rather than playing parliamentary games, growing struggles in workplaces and communities will increasingly point in the direction of socialism as the only answer to capitalism. 

US pushes QUAD to counter China’s southern diplomacy

 Written by: (Contributed) on 3 November 2026

 

The surprise meeting scheduled for QUAD representatives on the sidelines of the forthcoming ASEAN and East Asia summits in mid-November would tend to indicate reassessments of the regional balance of forces have raised concerns. A formal agenda for the high-level diplomatic meeting is set to be finalised in late October. It is not coincidental that the meetings will take place in Manila; the Philippines retains a central position for US regional diplomacy, 'US interests' and a series of nine sensitive military facilities, largely in the north of the country, facing various areas of tension.

An announcement that QUAD leaders would be meeting in Manila during mid-November was met with surprise; the US-led regional defence and security body had lain virtually dormant for the last three years. (1) The QUAD was established in order to present a challenge to China in the Indo-Pacific region. It was rested upon a Pentagon updated Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) in which the Philippines had a central geo-political and strategic position. (2) It also included the upgrading of the US-Japan alliance into the status of a global alliance. (3)

Calls for Australia to strengthen its diplomatic links with Japan are, therefore, best assessed in that light: in what has been described by Canberra as 'the deteriorating regional and global environment, raising concerns over the reliability of the historic US security guarantee'. (4) Australia has, historically, been a southern hub for US regional interests; Japan has been its northern counterpart. The US has thrust greater responsibilities on both.

The announcement also coincided with a report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that global economic growth is slowing; while it reached 3.5 per cent last year, it is now set to drop to 3.1 per cent. (5) The report also warned that if the US-Iran war continued for longer that 'global growth will be significantly lower and inflation much hotter'. (6) With the Middle East entering into a period of prolonged turmoil, the war has shown no sign of ending in the foreseeable future. Fuel prices have already escalated; and will do so still further.

Despite the US-led global economic uncertainty, however, countries associated with the regional ASEAN have developed stronger links with China, raising further diplomatic concerns over related factors and considerations. China, for example, has been ASEAN's leading trading partner since 2009, and ASEAN's largest since 2019. (7)
In recent times it had strengthened trade links still further: last year ASEAN recorded China's trade had increased by 7.4 per cent over the previous year; in the period January-July 2026, total trade had reached US$744 bn, an increase of 24.7 per cent over the same period for 2025. (8) The forthcoming QUAD diplomatic meeting, therefore, is best assessed in that light, with other related factors and considerations.

It is particularly important to assess the significance of China's diplomatic relations with specific ASEAN countries and how trade considerations have merged with other factors.

Cambodia has provided a good vantage point to highlight the predicament confronting the QUAD, and the rapidly changing balance of forces.  

Cambodia, historically, part of French-controlled Indo-China, has had a troubled and traumatic and poverty-stricken history. After joining ASEAN in 1999, however, China responded with financing 132 joint projects in the following fifteen years. (9) They formed the basis of longer-term diplomatic co-operation. In April this year, for example, an official diplomatic note announced the two countries would 'deepen strategic relations'. (10)

The diplomatic initiatives also included China fostering closer relations with neighbouring Vietnam, also a former part of Indo-China, with troubled relations with Cambodia. Vietnam, furthermore, previously opted to join the US’s Indo-Pacific Strategy alongside the ROK, Singapore, Taiwan and others. (11) Vietnam's diplomatic relations with the US now appear to have become problematic and far from straightforward.

While China's deepening diplomatic links with the region have included the Ream joint naval facility in Cambodia and the Ban Keun joint air force base in Laos, Beijing's relations with Vietnam have correspondingly challenged their role inside the IPS. (12) Washington and the Pentagon appear to have failed in recruiting Vietnam into the IPS as a potential stalking horse to serve 'US interests'.    

A statement from Canberra about China's diplomacy toward Laos and the Ban Keun base noted it was a 'clear win for China … and a security concern for the US'. (13)

Meanwhile an official media release from the Philippine government noted the close relations between China and Cambodia 'fuel suspicions' for the US. (14) The Pentagon, moreover, has assessed the Ream Naval Base as 'a strategic military outpost'. (15)

The Ream Naval Base has been perceived by policymakers in Washington, DC, primarily as a threat to regional security within the broader strategic rivalry outlined in the 2018 US National Defense Strategy, which accuses China of leveraging military modernization to reshape the Indo-Pacific region to its advantage.

It is also not coincidental that the diplomatic statements were issued from Manila; the nine military facilities under US control are clearly used for regional intelligence-gathering. While their main focus, previously, were the more problematic areas of the region, including the Taiwan Straits and Korean Peninsula, recent developments in Cambodia and Vietnam appear to indicate a clearly visible changing regional balance of forces away from traditional hegemonic positions enjoyed by Washington and the Pentagon.

   
1.     Quad leaders find a Manila envelope, Australian, 22 October 2026.
2.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., (Diagram), Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
3.     Ibid.
4.     'Grand bargain': The case for a Japan treaty, Australian, 15 October 2026; and,         Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2029.
5.     Global growth stalling, warns IMF., Australian, 14 October 2026.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Official websites: ASEAN; and, Towards and Equal Partnership, East Asia Forum,  Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2023, pp. 3-5; and, Japan as a diplomatic asset to ASEAN, ibid., pp. 6-8.
8.     ASEAN, ibid.
9.     Wikipedia: Cambodia-China Relations.
10.   Cambodia, China upgrade 2+2 dialogue to 3+3, The Asia News Network, 24 April 2026.
11.   Hankyoreh, op.cit., 12 November 2019.
12.   China's first foreign military air base, Australian, 15 October 2026; and, Vietnam and China get closer, The Guardian, 4 May 2026.  
13.   Australian, ibid., 15 October 2026.
14.   China's foreign, defence ministers, The Manila Bulletin, 23 April 2026.
15.   Ibid.

 

Capitalist credit Pt 2: Their word is your bond

 Written by: Nick G. on 30 October 2026

 

The bond market is not as prominent in most people’s lives as the share market.

Private companies and government can raise capital by issuing bonds which operate as IOUs. They are generally regarded as a safer investment than shares because they are issued with a definite rate of interest. 

Unlike shares, their value does not rise or fall.  What you pay, you will eventually get back. (Unless you choose to sell them, in which case you may either make a loss or a gain.) Like shares, the interest paid to bond-holders can only be derived from the surplus value created by workers’ labour power. In the case of government bonds, the government appropriates part of that surplus value through corporate and personal income taxation as well as from various fees and fines.

Bonds represent a loan from the investor to the issuer with the latter promising to repay any borrowed money, along with a set amount of interest. That promise, their word, is the guarantee of the bond’s value to the investor. Because they are regarded as safe and secure, bonds are also called securities.

Can the bond market collapse?

Safety and security are, of course, relative under capitalism. A bond market, just like a stock market, can collapse if the conditions are right. A collapse of the bond market would occur if confidence in bonds deteriorated so severely that investors rushed to sell, buyers became scarce, borrowing costs surged, and the financial system struggled to absorb the losses.

On October 9, Yahoo Finance warned of a global bond market “meltdown”, saying:

For the past month, global bond markets have been in the grips of a historic sell-off triggered by a tangle of complex economic issues ranging from the ongoing war in Iran to rising deficits to the race to build out data centers to power artificial intelligence.

Among the “tangle of complex economic issues”, Government debt can be a major cause of bond market instability. Governments, like the US, that continually run large budget deficits must issue new bonds to finance spending and refinance maturing debt. If investors begin to doubt a government's ability or willingness to service its obligations, they may demand much higher interest rates or refuse to buy its bonds.

If there is a sudden surge in interest rates, new bonds will offer higher yields than old bonds at a lower fixed interest rate, and investors holding them will find them less attractive and may seek to sell them below their value.

Two recent examples of bond market crashes occurred in the US in March 2020 and the UK in September-October 2022. In the US case, investors spooked by the Covid-19 pandemic rushed to sell US Treasury securities, normally regarded as among the world's safest assets, in return for cash. The Federal Reserve intervened on a very large scale to support the functioning of the bond market.

In the UK case, a change in government fiscal policy led to a massive sale of UK government bonds requiring intervention by the bank of England to reverse the collapse.

The global bond market is usually larger than the global share market, so its collapse could have more severe consequences for global capitalism. However, recent data suggests that there has been something of a reversal: the total value of contemporary global stock markets is approximately $160–165 trillion, while the global bond market is approximately $109 trillion. Perhaps one of the reasons for the surge of speculative capital into the share markets is the spate of IPOs launched by AI companies. Musk’s SpaceX in June 2026 was the largest ever IPO, at a valuation of US$1.77 trillion, making Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Anthropic’s forthcoming IPO is predicted to surpass SpaceX as the biggest capital market fundraising in history. The bubble is getting bigger…

How does the US dollar, as a fiat currency, sustain the US debt?

A fiat currency is one that is not convertible into a fixed quantity of gold or any other commodity. The US dollar has been a fiat currency since August 1971. Being a fiat currency means that the US Treasury can create as many dollars as it wishes, and use those to pay interest on Treasury bonds, and to pay back their cost when they mature.

The US Treasury can both issue bonds to access investors’ capital, drawing on the US dollar foreign reserves of other governments and international investors, and create the money to service the bond. But creating extra dollars does not of itself create extra value. That can only be done by the productive use of capital when it is utilising the labour power of employed workers. 

Government bonds are therefore a form of interest-bearing fictitious capital: they represent a transferable claim on the government’s future income derived from surplus value and obtained through taxes and other imposts.

While the US Treasury can create new dollars, it cannot do this indefinitely without causing inflation, interest rate rises and currency devaluation. The US dollar can sustain US debt but not forever.

China and US Treasury bonds

The market for US Treasury bonds is a potential source of crisis because the US dollar is the basis of international finance.  The issuing of US Treasury bonds keeps the US in debt to global investors. The central question is therefore not simply how much debt the US government has accumulated, but whether investors remain willing to finance that debt, at what interest rate, and whether the financial system can withstand a sudden change in confidence.

A complicating factor is the Chinese purchase of US Treasury bonds.

The US anxiety over China’s financing of the US deficit was revealed in 2010 when Australian PM Rudd met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Rudd advised Clinton to accept a Chinese presence on the world stage but to keep force as a back-up, and Clinton became exasperated and asked “How do you deal toughly with your banker?”

Within three years, China had reached the peak of its holdings of US Treasury bonds.  They were estimated to be worth $1.3 trillion in 2013. The figure has gone down since as China seeks to diversify its holdings and to use the yuan and the rouble in trade with the Russian Federation. As of August 2026, China held approximately $590.7 billion in U.S. Treasury securities.

China has no plans to plunge bond markets into a crisis for anti-hegemonic purposes

There are some on the Left who believe that China is divesting itself of US Treasury bonds to create difficulties for the US dollar in anticipation of making the yuan the currency of international trade.

This view is particularly held by those who maintain that social-imperialist China is still a socialist country, and that its divesting itself of US Treasury bonds is a progressive anti-hegemonic struggle. 

An actual estimate of China’s holdings is difficult as China has been transferring some of its US Treasury bonds to third-party custodians such as Belgium (Euroclear) or Canada, in which case the value of these assets would be recorded under the name of the custodian country rather than China, meaning China's actual exposure may be higher than official data suggests. 

The U.S. Treasury Department itself acknowledges that if U.S. Treasury bonds purchased by foreign customers are held in custodial accounts in third countries, the true ownership will not be reflected in the data.  

Just last week, the financial website Bloomberg intimated that China had placed hundreds of billions of US Treasury bonds in Canada. According to Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. Treasury official, during the period when officially recorded Chinese holdings continued to decline, the U.S. Treasury holdings recorded under the names of Canada and Belgium rose abnormally. For example, Canada's holdings increased from $169 billion five years ago to $465 billion in August 2026, and Belgium's from $228 billion to $490.5 billion.

Rather than engaging in anti-hegemonic moves, China is advancing its own hegemonic interests. It is helping US imperialism, its economy and its foreign policy, by financing its trade deficit whilst looking for opportunities to promote alternatives to US dollar global trade. 

Xu Gao, Chief Economist of Bank of China International (China) Co., Ltd., wrote of China’s game plan back in June. He said, in words that will disappoint those who believe “China is leading an anti-hegemonic bloc”, that the priority for China should not be to overturn the dollar-centred system prematurely or to make renminbi internationalisation a bid to replace the dollar. It was not in China’s interests, he wrote, to overturn the dollar-centred system of international payments. He cautions that replacing the dollar with another sovereign currency would be extremely difficult.

Xu Gao believes that the most likely direction of change is a supranational currency supported by multiple sovereign currencies. It would work in a limited sphere and alongside the US dollar. China had proposed the R5 in October 2024, a currency for trade between the BRICS countries. However, this failed to eventuate when the US threatened that if the BRICS countries did not use the US dollar to trade, the US would impose heavy sanctions on those countries. India became the first country to back out of the BRICS currency concept in December 2024. That was a big setback because India is a major player in BRICS, and without India's participation, a common BRICS currency won't be possible.

China’s purchase of US Treasury bonds is part of the collusion vs contention paradigm that marks the relations between US imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism.  

Analysts concur that the bond market is in “meltdown”, that is, it is on the way to a systemic crisis. 

So long as public confidence in the bond markets can be sustained, a systemic crisis can be postponed. If confidence plunges through the inability of the US to maintain interest payments, or a sufficient number of countries use alternative payment arrangements to avoid the erratic imposition by the US of sanctions on countries using the dollar in their trade relations, then there may be a crisis that will include Australia in its impacts. 

Workers may be in for an even rougher time that at present.

 

Further reading: 

Xu Gao: The future of money, and China’s choices  

Bloomberg:  Talk grows that China is routing US Treasury holdings through Canada: 

Yahoo Finance: Global Bond Markets Are in Meltdown—Here’s Why U.S. Homebuyers Should Pay Attention