Australia Post up for sale

Vanguard November 2013 p. 8
Alice M.

Australia Post, one of the last few remaining national government owned public services, is being prepared for privatisation.

The sell off means the 150 year old national mail service will cease to provide an efficient, inexpensive and easily accessible mail service to ordinary people in cities and rural communities. 

Jobs are already going and more will go as privatisation is rolled out.  Privatisation will result in higher mail costs for letters and parcels, and less accessible and efficient service to the community.  The costs to small businesses will go up whilst big business will reap the profits.

Last time the government, on behalf of big business, tried to privatise Australia Post more than 5 years ago, a groundswell of public and community protest forced it to back down and shelf it, temporarily.

Now foreign and local big business is at it again, demanding to get their hands on Australia Post’s most profitable area of parcel deliveries.

The Business Council of Australia demands the proceeds from the lucrative sale of Australia Post be ploughed into building the infrastructure of road, ports, etc. that benefits big business profit making.

The expansion of popular on-line shopping in past 3 years has resulted in huge growth of Australia Post’s parcels processing and deliveries.  Australia Post has the biggest share of the parcel delivery market in Australia.  It makes a healthy profit, with most of Australia Post’s profits in the past 3 years generated by the growth in parcels.

Its long time popular national brand, reputation for reliability, modern and efficient nation-wide infrastructure makes Australia Post a very lucrative acquisition for big local and overseas transport monopolies, like Toll.

Australia Post is ploughing capital investment of more than $2 billion into modernising and expanding the parcels processing centres, introducing latest overseas parcels processing technology, equipment and trucks. 

Whilst the growing parcels deliveries business is being beefed up from taxpayers’ funds to make it attractive for privatisation, public funds are syphoned off away from providing a reliable mail service to city and rural communities.  Australia Post is cutting back mail services to city and local communities.

Its own so-called Government Enterprise Community Obligation Charter that requires 5 day mail deliveries to city and rural communities is being amended to cut back the frequency and reliability of mail deliveries. 

More jobs in letter processing and delivery centres, retail shops and head office administration are being lined up for the axe.  Speed ups, increasing workloads, workplace injuries, bullying and harassment by the bosses and the threat of loss of jobs hangs over Australia Post workers’ lives.

The restructure of Australia Post presently underway is designed to break up Australia Post services.  Separate the hugely profitable parcels processing and delivery operations in preparation for the first stage of privatisation.  The less profitable community services in retail and letter delivery operations are being cut back and starved of funds, to die off or be sold off for a peppercorn in the future.

The wide use of the internet for communication and payment of accounts means big business doesn’t need efficient and timely letter delivery services or local Post Offices.  But it demands the takeover of Australia Post’s lucrative parcel delivery operations.

In the last financial period Australia Post made a healthy profit of $312million, and paid $244million dividend to the government.  The CEO of Australia Post, an ex-chief of the NAB, Ahmed Fahour, paid himself $4.75 million for his services to big business. 

The CEO of Australia Post and his small group of lackeys are waging a relentless war to crush Australia Post workers’ militant Victorian branch union, the CWU.  The Victorian branch refuses to bow to bosses’ bribery, threats and intimidation, but instead stands up and fights for the workers, as any union worth its name should.

Australia Post workers, their union and community fought back privatisation last time, and will do it again.

TPP - People's struggle holds back the hand of US imperialism

Vanguard November 2013 p. 9
Alice M.

(Above: Japanese farmers protest the TPP)

It is now widely accepted that Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is all about giving more power to US multinational corporations and finance capital to intensify and widen the exploitation and plunder of people and the environment in the Pacific region.

US imperialism demands the removal of the few remaining restrictions on the movement of monopoly capital (investments) to reap bigger corporate profits and tighten its control and dominance over the Pacific region.

The TPP is designed to force down the cost of labour (wages and conditions) across all the 12 Pacific countries in the TPP and restructure their economies, and to prop up the declining rate of profit for finance capital and multinational corporations based in the US.

(Above: New Zealanders are rejecting the TPP)

The only thing the TPP will offer 800 million people (including the working people of the US), is a sky rocketing cost of living; inferior and fewer health, education and public services; ravaging degradation of the natural environment; lower wages and conditions, fewer decent jobs, more unemployment; destruction of unions, workers’ and people’s democratic rights and loss of sovereignty. The TPP has nothing to do with the fair and equal trade in goods and services between countries.

US-Australia Free Trade Agreement

Since the 2008 capitalist economic crisis, US monopoly capital has been desperately scouring the world for more markets and resources at home and abroad.

The US hopes to get through the TPP what it couldn’t in the earlier Free Trade Agreements, including the 2004 US-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

The strong public campaign to the 2004 US-Australia Free Trade Agreement threw out the rights of big multinational corporations and banks to sue governments of countries whose local laws interfered with their profit making, and the drug monopolies’ demands to abolish Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that ensures cheap medicines for the people.

US timetable for TPP

The US government, on behalf of its multinational corporations, initiated the TPP in March 2010 and planned to have it finalised and signed off 18 months later in November 2011. The plan was to sneak through the TPP quickly, hidden from the public and shrouded in secrecy. Strong pressure on national governments would ensure everything in the agreement would obey US demands and they would agree to everything.

But the US imperialist plans to sneak in the TPP agreement quickly and quietly have not quite worked out so far, and have been scuttled by peoples’ opposition and protests in many countries.

More than two years past the original sign off date, the agreement is still not signed and the public opposition to the TPP is growing, with alliances forming and spreading across many of the participatory countries.

US imperialism is more exposed and isolated. Broad alliances of workers, unions, farmers, health workers and professionals, academics, medical scientists, journalists, cultural workers and lawyers have mobilised a powerful campaign across the Pacific countries demanding their governments not sign away national sovereignty, local jobs and conditions, health and safety at work, manufacturing industries, destruction of the environment and access to cheap medicines and health services.

These public campaigns have delayed the signing off of the TPP. And the longer the people’s campaigns continue to delay it, the stronger, wider and more united the movement.

Malaysia jacks up

 

Under immense public pressure from a broad coalition of more than 60 non-government organisations representing different backgrounds, sectors and interests, and united in their opposition to any one aspect of the TPP, the Malaysian government has declared it would not be pressured and dictated to by the US to comply with its deadline for signing off by the end of the year.

The Malaysian coalition of community groups and organisations campaigning against the TPP declared that the TPP, “Promotes primarily US economic, business and geopolitical interests.”

Former Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, is also strongly campaigning against Malaysia signing the TPP. He told a large public meeting opposed to Malaysia’s participation in the TPP, held in Kuala Lumpur in August, “If Malaysia signs up for the TPPA, it will be akin to colonising the country again as we will not be able to decide our own affairs without interference.”

Abbott government about to cave in

In contrast, the previous Australian Labor Government and the current Liberal government have both been vigorously promoting the TPP, doing the bidding for US imperialism.

Some credit is due to the previous Labor government in resisting immense pressures from the US government and its corporations, in agreeing to include the rights of multinational investors and corporations to sue sovereign countries, and to destroy the PBS. However, in spite of their public pronouncements there were always concerns that the Labor government, which had embraced the US imperialist neo-liberal policies of trade liberalisation and globalisation, would in the end cave in to the dictates of US imperialism.

The present Liberal government has gone one step further and, under firm instructions from US imperialism and the Business Council of Australia, has pledged to help the US to have the TPP signed off by the end of the year. Abbott vowed Australia would not oppose the Investor Rights provisions in the TPP, in spite of strong public opposition.

Gresser or greaser?

Not long after the elections and to hasten the finalisation of the TPP, the US government dispatched its trouble-shooters to Pacific countries to sell the TPP snake oil to the rebellious natives (and put the boot in).

The US TPP special envoy, Ed Gresser, arrived in Australia spruiking the wonders of the TPP, sizing up and taking stock of the local opposition to the TPP. He sought meetings with politicians and union representatives. However, in spite of his shiny, slimy smile he was shown the middle finger by the few unionists who bothered to grace him with their presence.

Major problems with TPP

Public opposition to giving investors (multinational corporations) rights to sue national governments (ISDS), and abolition of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that provides cheaper medicines to the public, are still a major obstacles to signing off the TPP.

Privatisation, protection of local industries and requirements for local procurement that protect local jobs, are concerns for the people. There are deep concerns by workers and unions that the TPP will do away with present restrictions on importing temporary low wage labour, like the 457 overseas visa workers.

Australia taken over

However, when the Hawke-Keating Labor government, following the IMF imperialist instructions, started deregulating and restructuring Australia’s economy and the financial sector in the middle of 1980s, they set the stage 30 years ago for wider takeover of Australia by multinationals and finance capital.

This laid the ground for wide sweeping privatisations of Australia’s public assets by foreign corporations in the power industries, water, freight and public transport. Foreign capital poured in, and the Australian economy became even more a hostage to imperialist domination and control by overseas capital. It resulted in much of Australia’s manufacturing and value added industries and jobs going overseas to countries with cheaper labour.

Around the world US imperialism is increasingly isolated and exposed. Everyday it’s finding it harder to impose its imperialist agenda on the rest of the world, meeting growing resistance from people and smaller countries. Its capitalist economy rots internally, and resistance to its schemes to control the world is growing. It is doomed to failure.

Don’t Sign the TPP!

Fight for Australia’s Independence!
.................
Further Reading:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/protest-against-the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-secret-negotiations-behind-closed-doors/5352012 

https://philebersole.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/anti-tpp-movement-growing-in-japan/

 http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2013/03/16/report-from-shady-global-trade-talks-in-singapore/

http://www.aftinet.org.au/cms/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement

http://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/abbott-set-to-sign-highly-secretive-tpp-agreement-this-month,5787 

Book review: Big Coal - Australia's Dirtiest Habit

Vanguard November 2013 p. 10
Alex M.

 

We should all read this book by Guy Pearse, David McKnight and Bob Burton. Real insights into the political skulduggery and profit maximising behaviours of those associated with what the authors call ‘Big Coal’ can be found within its 257 pages.

The authors show, amongst other things, that big mining corporations as well as individual ‘coal barons’ have an inordinate level of influence on federal and state governments. That is perhaps no real surprise for the more critical amongst us, but the writers back up their arguments with substantial research.

‘Big Coal’ and its costs

The costs to Australia and the global environment of the coal mining and coal seam gas (CSG) extraction bonanza are revealed in the book.

Coal burning and its extraction make up the largest source of greenhouse gases in the world. What is more the consumption of coal in industrialising countries such as China and India, and even the advanced capitalist countries, is increasing.

On the basis of the increased global demand and surging exports of Australian coal the writers state that ‘Australia will help produce more CO2 emissions than Saudi Arabia currently does with its current massive exports of oil.’(Pearse et al 2013, p.6)

The emission of greenhouse gases worldwide is exceeding the worst-case scenarios previously postulated. The catastrophic prospect of 4 - 6° C warming by the end of the century is an alarming possibility. The mining and export of Australian coal is ‘making the dirtiest energy easily available and encourage[s] the developing world to industrialise in the worst possible way.’ (Pearse et al 2013, p.6)

Aside from the environmental costs, there are other costs to Australia that spring from ‘Big Coal’. In Chapter One the writers examine what they call ‘the real price of coal’. In setting up their analysis of the real price of coal our three writers provide some historical context regarding the importance of coal in Australian development. Coal has been pivotal in this country’s industrial development, particularly in electricity generation after the Second World War. Coal burning power stations however, produce more than electricity. They also produce air pollution:

Perhaps the most alarming effect of pollution composed of material produced by burning coal is on children. Burning coal produces pollutants like nitrous oxide and particles as small as 2.5 microns wide (a human hair is 18 microns) , and both of these adversely affect lung development … Air pollution triggers attacks of asthma, and children, … are highly susceptible to pollutants such as those emitted by coal fired plants. For adults, exposure to nitrous oxide and tiny particulate matter is correlated with the development of lung cancer. (Pearse et al 2013, p.27)

In the Hunter Valley in NSW, a region which has had long experience with coal mining and coal fired power stations (and most recently with CSG drilling), the impact on people’s health has been marked.

A 2012 Sydney University report Health and Social Harms of Mining in Local Communities: Spotlight on the Hunter region found increased levels of ‘cancer, heart, lung and kidney disease and birth defects.’ A previous study in 2008 found ‘that 113 tonnes of toxic metals (such as antinomy, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury) were emitted into the air of the Upper Hunter, along with over 13,200 tonnes of sulphur dioxide and 62,000 tonnes of oxides of nitrogen.’(Pearse et al 2013, p.28)

The environmental and health costs of the current coal boom are just part of the problems associated with ‘Big Coal’. Another problem that comes with ‘Big Coal’ is its distorting effect on Australia’s political economy.

‘Big Coal’, the state and the distortion of the Australian economy

At present, five companies account for more than two-thirds of black coal mined here. These entities are: BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Xstrata, Anglo American and Peabody. (Pearse et al 2013, p.61) The first four are multinationals with diversified mining interests, whereas Peabody is solely concerned with coal mining. All of these companies are ‘overwhelmingly owned by institutional investors, most of them foreign owned.’ (Pearse et al 2013, p.63)

A sizeable number of the institutional investors are banks. Both Australian and overseas banks have been providing billions of dollars in financing to fund port extensions, new mines, rail and road infrastructure and sundry other services. As Pearse, McKnight and Burton point out, institutional investors such as banks operate to maximise returns, not to worry about harm to the health of workers, short and long term environmental damage and the like. Consequently, decisions are taken ‘that are not about what’s good for Australia, and even less about what’s good for the environment.’ (Pearse et al 2013, pp.66-7)

Also subjected to scrutiny are individual ‘coal barons’ such as Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest and Nathan Tinkler. Others such as Peter Bond and Chris Wallin who choose to remain out of the public eye feature in the book too. Plenty of information is supplied about the investments and backgrounds of the ‘coal barons’ whose number includes overseas or ‘offshore barons’. The background information here is almost worth the price of the book on its own.

The power of the coal industry is detailed in the chapter called ‘King Coal’s muscles’. In this chapter the authors spell out how ‘Big Coal’ gets its way with federal and state governments. The strategy has changed recently:

After the best part of two decades, where the mining industry had grown accustomed to setting out its agenda publicly and following up behind the scenes to ‘work things through’ with federal governments of both major political persuasions, the game had changed. In just three years the mining industry had waged and largely won three bitter fights with the federal Labor government where they relied on big-budget advertising blitzes to turbocharge their behind-the-scenes lobbying campaigns. (Pearse et al 2013, p.133)

The coal industry and its lobby groups have seen off the emissions trading scheme (ETS), helped topple Rudd, weakened the Carbon Tax and ‘gutted the extension of the Resources Super Profits Tax’ amongst other things. (Pearse et al 2013, p.134) The three writers show that ‘Big Coal’ is too powerful, and its pursuit of coal mining and export at all costs has seriously distorted the Australian economy. The chapter also highlights how shallow bourgeois democracy is in this country.

Much more can be found in the book. It is to the credit of Pearse, McKnight and Burton that in researching and writing their book they bring to light the costs to Australia and the world of the current coal boom.

 

Read this book.

Basque activists face show trials

Vanguard November 2013 p. 11
Jim H.

Over the last two years the Basque nationalist (independence) revolutionary struggle has made significant gains. The Basque territories are in northern Spain and southern France. It is in Spain where the struggles are most advanced and where this article is concerned with.

Over this time there has been a huge rise in the organised movement and the level of mass support for it. Many thousands of new activists have stood up and the young are the core. Coalitions under the names of Bildu and Amaiur have won enough votes in local regional and national elections to make themselves into major players. However these are not primarily parliamentary movements. Parliament is utilised to lift the legal struggle on the ground. There is a new political party called Sortu pledged to winning independence and socialism.

Attack has purpose

The reaction of the ruling class and its state has been vicious. Under the cover of anti-terrorism laws, it has systematically gone about apprehending people and often subjecting them to torture. Under the law detainees are held for a period without charge, let go and picked up again. No contact with lawyers, family or anyone else is permitted. The state will not admit that someone has been picked up. A number of victims have just disappeared. There have been a few assassinations.

This is what happens when the ruling class is sufficiently alarmed by the strength of the opposition to it. There is an important lesson to this that extends well beyond the plight of the Basques.

Three major court cases that have either just started or are about to start in the Spanish National Court. The first began on 14 October and the second on 17 October, where 150 people are on serious charges that involve significant jail sentences. They are members of the youth wing of the organisation giving support to and promoting the interests of political prisoners. They are accused of providing support for terrorism. The third case is that of the 80 people arrested for administering the 110 social centres that have been closed down by force.

Each trial is expected to last about 6 months.

Mounting support for victims

The results so far has been a groundswell of support for the victims and isolation of the state. According to reports of the concerned organisations, offers of active support have been flooding in, even from quite a few who have till now been political opponents. There is widespread disgust over the trials.

While the reaction of the state is obviously influenced by their political fear, there is also a very clear strategy. They want to weaken the organised movement and set the scene to make it illegal. In this way they hope to strike a blow against the fighting spirit of the people. There is also an element of provocation, to attempt to drive some people into acts that can be used as a cover for even more vicious attacks.

The Basque struggle is a major political factor for the whole of Spain. It sets an example for all the peoples. Rebellion in the Basque land threatens rebellion in the other provinces. And is even more telling in conditions of deepening economic and political crisis overall. The fact that major government personalities are caught up in a major corruption scandals (money from developers) also contributes.

Response to attacks

In the face of the developing situation, the “left nationalist” organisations call on the people to respond by taking to the streets. Sortu has called “… on all Basques with democratic convictions to show their repulsion to political decisions disguised as legal decisions that don’t just attack the Abertzale [nationalist] Left, but try to condition the future of the Basque Country.” The aim is to not allow the attacks to get in the way of what has to be done to build a new society based on independence, socialism and a cooperative and equal relationship with all the peoples of Spain.

International support is also important. While Europe is at the centre, support is also required from other places, to help isolate the reactionary state, support the victims and to aid the people to decide and build their own future.

Fluro fighters demand secure jobs for better lives

Vanguard November 2013 p. 12
Greg C.

Hundreds of Fluro clad workers descended on Melbourne’s Southern Cross Railway Station on the morning of Friday October 18th, 2013, to highlight the correlation between insecure, precarious employment and poverty.

Converging at the steps of the transport gateway to Melbourne, the event, titled the Fluro Fightback, was the climax in the week that marked Anti-Poverty Week.

The Fluro Fightback, staged for the second year in 2013, was co-ordinated by the National Union of Workers, and is the major yearly event of the union’s Jobs You Can Count On Campaign.

The rally captured the peak hour commuters arriving into the Victorian capital, very likely that many of those workers are themselves placed in insecure, casualised employment.

The Jobs You Can Count On Campaign was launched in 2012 in response to the crisis situation in Australia, a situation which sees 40% of workers placed in insecure, precarious employment.

(Above: NUW workers rally against insecure work and poverty)

The long term campaign is geared at reversing the casualisation trend of the last thirty years, with the goal of ensuring a secure working life for all Australian workers.

Larrikin Priest Father Bob Maguire headlined an impressive line-up of speakers and paid tribute to the Union’s struggle in ensuring living standards of working people.

“I’m more concerned than ever that care, communication, compassion, concern – all those things – we have to re-establish in the centre of our communities, and at the moment that message is through the unions”, the popular figure told the fluro fighters.

In confronting the poverty issue, Fr. Bob drew on the lessons of the motto of the National Union of Workers – ‘Unity is Strength’, and urged activists not to become ‘slacktivists’. “Poverty is the same thing (in reference to bushfires) it wipes out a million Aussies just like that, it sneaks up, you don’t know it’s coming – and the only way we can survive is if we all stick together”

In the fightback against insecure work, the NUW has been at the forefront of the struggle, and in recent times the rank and file have mounted struggles, and have won these fights, against companies such as Coles, Woolworths, Toll and Baiada.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions has adopted the Jobs You Can Count On Campaign to inspire Australian workers to take up the fight against insecure employment. Highlighting the need for secure employment to live a secure life, ACTU President Ged Kearney implored to passing pedestrian traffic “We’re standing up today for decent jobs, for decent work, and for a better life; and who fights for a better life? Australian unions do!”

In welcoming the other Unions and comrades, Luke Hilakari, who will shortly take the reins at Victorian Trades Hall proclaimed “We are sending a message to every single bad boss that we are taking back our permanent jobs – we are taking them back!”

Kearney and Hilakari were also joined at the stage by Lisa Heap from the Australian Institute of Employment Rights and Miriam Lyons from the Centre for Policy Development.

The Fluro Fighters were treated to a musical performance by new Melbourne duo, the Flybz. The young men fled the poverty of their native Sudan, where they found themselves placed in‘precarious employment’, trained as child soldiers. They were complemented by the legendary Painters and Dockers band.

Following a survey of thousands of workers on the subject of insecure work, the National Union of Workers released the results at the Fluro Fightback, which further highlighted the link between precarious employment and poverty. 68% of workers surveyed had trouble paying their rent, whilst the survey found a further 60% had difficulty with childcare.

An overwhelming 90% of workers surveyed delivered a strong message to Canberra, stating that government should be doing more to address the casualisation crisis.

Federal Labor politicians Clare O’Neal and Lisa Chesters were in attendance, along with Greens member for Melbourne Adam Bandt. Under the previous Labor Government Bandt introduced a private members bill Tackling Job Insecurity, yet was rejected by both major political parties.

The current ALP has forgotten its history, ignorant to its formation. The party was formed by Shearers in Queensland, in the year of 1891. These workers were in essence casual workers and they united all those years ago to confront the very issue the NUW is campaigning for today, and was raising awareness of on the morning of October 18.

The Federated Storeman and Packers Union, a forebear to the current NUW, was at the forefront in creating the conditions for Australian workers to enjoy a secure retirement thirty five years ago through major industrial action that won superannuation as an entitlement for working people. In 2013 the Union is leading the fightback to ensure secure and decent working lives.

Workers look for leadership

Vanguard November 2013 p. 12
Ned K.

With the demise of the Labor Government and an openly anti-worker political party now administering the political affairs of the big corporations, workers are looking for answers and leadership.

The Labor Party’s response has been to ask workers to join it and have their say on who is the next leader of the Labor Party, Shorten or Albanese. While Labor Party membership has gone up recently, not even the official trade union movement is united on who should lead the Labor Party, nor on how much relevance this has to the lives of working Australians.

A healthy trend within some unions is emerging where there is more emphasis on building their own independent political agenda and winning it through campaigning on the ground. Unions are being forced to do this because of the concerns of their members about ‘big picture’ issues like the rising cost of living, a regressive tax system where the big end of town pays next to nothing, declining but ever more expensive health care and education, and many union members’ correct perception that the parliamentary set up is no solution. 

However, the reactionary Abbott Government and the big corporations that instruct it are also forcing union members and other concerned workers to fight on other more traditional industrial fronts at the same time. Attacks on penalty rates, individual flexibility agreements which cut award conditions, restrictions on trade union rights to function, are sure to be attempted by Abbott and his backers in the near future. In fact, they have already started with the resurrection of the ABCC against construction workers.

For progressive elements in the workers’ movement, there is the opportunity to unite millions of workers against these coming attacks in the context of building an independent movement for change to set the political agenda of the country and take it out of the hands of the big business and their parliamentary spokespersons.

 
Through these struggles, new leaders will emerge, based on their own day to day experiences as workers. In the case of migrant workers, they will combine their day to day experiences with the knowledge from intense social and political struggles from their countries of birth.

Vo Nguyen Giap - hero of national liberation

Comrades and friends of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) record their sorrow at the passing of General Vo Nguyen Giap, hero of the Vietnamese people's struggle against colonialism and imperialism A brilliant military tactician, General Giap led the guerrilla war against the French occupiers, culminating in the encirclement and defeat of the main French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. This victory proved to be one of international significance, giving great encouragement to other anti-colonial struggles and wars of national liberation in many other countries. It showed that military power alone could not suppress or defeat the desire of people to control their own destiny. As Giap said, "We had to use the small against the big; backward weapons to defeat modern weapons, at the end, it was the human factor that determined the victory."    When French colonial occupation was replaced by US imperialism, the Vietnamese people once again responded to the leadership of Comrade Ho Chi Minh, and once again his close friend General Giap made the invaders pay a heavy price. Any thoughts of victory that US imperialism might have had were blown away during the Tet offensive in 1968, when Vietnamese units directed by General Giap occupied many cities and towns across the country, inflicting heavy casualties on the occupiers. Yet again, it was the human factor that shook the resolve of the invaders and gave further encouragement to the massive anti-war protest movement spreading rapidly across the world.   General Giap continued to serve the Vietnamese people all his life, and is cherished by the people as a national hero. His example will continue to inspire the oppressed people of the world in their struggles against imperialism and war. Australian communists salute Vo Nguyen Giap - hero of national liberation

09 Oct 2013