“Hands across the sands” rallies target multinationals

Nick G.

Thousands of Australians from seventeen coastal communities have joined hands across the sands to protest offshore drilling and offshore seismic testing for oil and gas.

The annual “hands across the sands” movement began eight years ago in the USA following BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Australian focus is on the Great Australian Bight where first BP (in association with Nowegian state-owned Statoil) and then US Chevron sought exploration licences.  An alliance of Indigenous Australians, conservationists, tourism operators and commercial fishers campaigned strongly and forced BP and Chevron to abandon their plans.  However, Statoil purchased the abandoned licences and is the new target of the movement.

What is wrong with deepwater drilling and seismic testing?

Deepwater drilling is a potentially dangerous process and oil spills have a devastating effect on marine and coastal environments. But it is the seismic testing that explores for oil and gas deposits below the seabed that really concerns environmentalists.

Seismic airguns are towed behind ships and shoot loud blasts of compressed air through the water and miles into the seabed, which reflect back information about buried oil and gas deposits. These blasts are repeated every ten seconds, 24 hours a day, for days and weeks at a time. Airguns are so loud that they disturb, injure or kill marine life. Impacts include temporary and permanent hearing loss, abandonment of habitat, disruption of mating and feeding, and even beach strandings and death.

A broad alliance

When a Liberal State Minister for Resources opposes seismic testing, you know there is broad opposition to the practice.  Earlier this year, NSW Minister Don Harwin explicitly voiced his opposition to seismic drilling off Newcastle, arguing the federal guidelines that governed its approval were more lenient than state laws. The exploration licences were held by Asset Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Perth-based Advent Energy whose board of directors has ties to a number of multinational energy corporations.

When a rural Mayor opposes seismic testing, you know there is broad opposition to the practice.  Kangaroo Island Mayor Peter Clements (above) campaigned against BP and Chevron, and travelled to Norway last week to attend the Statoil AGM and address shareholders on the dangers posed by their company to the Great Australian Bight. He had with him a letter from Bight Indigenous leader Sue Coleman-Haseldine, who visited Norway late last year as part of the group that won the Nobel Peace Prize, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

“We write on behalf of people around the world that are fighting to protect their Country, livelihoods, and water from dangerous oil drilling and climate change,” Ms Coleman-Haseldine writes in the letter signed by locals from the Bight area.

“Consent to drill the Bight has been neither sought, nor given. Together, we ask that Statoil abandon their plans to pursue risky deepwater oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight, and around the globe.

“We call on Statoil to instead invest in our country in clean and renewable energy. Statoil must respect the Indigenous custodians of the land and sea from who you wish to extract oil and gas.”

When Indigenous leaders, leaders of local government, fishing and tourism industry leaders and surfies stand shoulder-to-shoulder outside the annual conference the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA), you know you have a broad alliance in defence of the environment.  Ms Coleman-Haseldine, a proud Kokatha-Mula elder from Ceduna, joined the protest outside the APPEA conference in Adelaide on Tuesday of last week, as did Keith Parkes, the mayor of Alexandrina Council encompassing the Southern Fleurieu Peninsula and Murray Mouth.  His Council has passed a motion opposing oil drilling in the Bight. “We are concerned about the risks posed by drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight and the impact on our community should the worst happen and a spill occurs,” he said.

Semaphore sends a signal

Semaphore is an iconic Adelaide beach-side suburb, host to the equally iconic Semaphore Workers Club. On May 19, some 3-400 people gathered for the “join hands across the sands” event.  Indigenous elder of the West Coast Mirning People (the Whale People) Uncle Bunna Lawrie sang us into the event with a bracket of numbers that included “Jeedara”, his song about the White Whale. It begins with his eerily beautiful mimicry of whale calls which he said he hoped his brothers in the sea could hear. (See this Youtube clip for an earlier version of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYg7OwNtWME ).

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young recalled her meeting earlier in the week with Statoil reps at the APPEA conference.  She said they were clearly unsettled by and fearful of their loss of a “social license” (public approval) for exploration and drilling in the Bight. 

Wilderness Society South Australia director Peter Owen said that Statoil was so concerned about its image that it had rebadged itself as Equinor, removing the ugly “oil” word from its name. The name change had taken place at last week’s AGM. Statoil held its name for 46 years during which time it emerged as the largest operator in Norway, where it is 67% owned by the Norwegian Government. The move also indicates a company shift away from fossil fuels  and towards a renewable energy future.

“A name with ‘oil’ as a component would increasingly be a disadvantage,” said Eldar Saetre, Statoil’s chief executive. “None of our competitors has that. It served us really well for 50 years, I don’t think it will be the best name for the next 50 years.”

Stand up, Bight back!

“Stand up, bight back!”, a placard carried at the APPEA Conference, expresses both the determination of the alliance against seismic testing and the influence of the methods of the organised working class.  Regrettably, only one union had a visible presence at Semaphore: an Australian Education Union’s Environment Action Group banner carried by SA Branch vice-President Dash Taylor Johnson and his son.

The chief causes of the global environmental catastrophe are to be found in the capitalist system of profits-before-people.  Working people everywhere bear the brunt of its consequences. Militantly, purposefully, locally and globally they must confront the power of imperialist capital and destroy that power so as to save the world and create a real unity of humanity and nature.

VALE Ark Tribe

Nick G.

The​ Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) has learned with great sadness of the death of construction legend Ark Tribe.

Ark was a rank and file member of the CFMEU who defied an Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) demand that he present himself for questioning about a safety meeting held on site at Flinders University in 2008.

For two years he was hounded by the ABCC which demanded the bosses’ courts jail him for the mandatory 6 months that his “crime” entailed.

Ark was not an ideologue and was sometimes torn by conflicting loyalties to family, the mates he rode with, the guys he had served with, and the union which he loved. But he understood a basic class truth: injustice must be fought.  Injustice would never subdue him or make him turn his back on his own beliefs and values.

Ark’s court case spanned two federal governments, one Liberal, the other Labor.  Labor PM Gillard refused to support him.

Ark’s support instead came directly from other ordinary working class people. Rallies held to coincide with Ark’s court appearances attracted members of a wide range of unions and community organisations. Ark’s defence lawyers argued his case very strongly and effectively, but the deciding factor in his acquittal on 24 November 2010 was the fear by the authorities that things were “getting out of hand” and would be made many time worse by having  a rank and file worker jailed for refusing to answer questions related to a meeting to discuss safety on site.

In deciding to make a stand against the ABCC, Ark knew he was taking on more than just the immediate threat of jail.  He knew that he would find it difficult to find employment regardless of the outcome of the case.  The building bosses and the ABCC made sure that was the case.

Tributes to Ark have flooded his Facebook page. Their sentiment is captured in this brief post:

He defied the construction bosses, the ABCC and the government. He defended the right to hold a bloody union meeting.

Every worker in this country owes Ark Tribe a debt of gratitude. Remember him by tearing down anti-union laws, rebuilding the workers movement and fighting for a better world.

Dare to struggle -- dare to win.

We entirely endorse this comment.

We know the dangers, we know the sacrifice. But like Ark, we must fight to defend our rights and liberties.

Ark will live forever in our hearts.

Tough cop, soft cop

Nick G.

“One law for the rich, one law for the poor” is an aphorism that every worker knows by heart.

Its truth arises from the lived experience of those kept as wage slaves in capitalist society.

Yet it is denied by capitalist academia, strangled in our schools and suffocated in our media by the continuing falsehoods of “equality before the law” and the “impartiality of the justice system”.

Regulatory authorities, the police and the courts do a great job of keeping the workers in their place.

In the old days, an arbitration system imposed crippling fines on striking unions.  Now striking itself is virtually outlawed and crippling fines are applied not only to unions, but also to individual workers.

Was Clarrie O’Shea a criminal when he was jailed 50 years ago?  He had stolen nothing and assaulted no-one. Yet he was jailed for refusing to hand over his union’s financial records to the Arbitration Court which sought to seize its assets.

Criminals allowed to “negotiate” their penalty

By contrast, the continuing Royal Commission into the banks has revealed, in the words of analyst Ian Verrender, that “Between them, the four banks and AMP in recent years have gouged more than $220 million from clients for services they never even intended to provide.

“And the penalty for this theft? Just over a week ago, a few days before all this blew up in the royal commission, ASIC had the CBA, the worst offender by far, sign an enforceable undertaking for overcharging clients $118 million.

“No court case. No-one personally held to account.

“And it's part of a repeating pattern.”

The “enforceable undertaking” referred to be Verrender is a negotiated penalty.  ASIC and an offending financial institution sit down and do a deal to keep the criminals, who have stolen people’s money, out of jail.  The penalty for the CBA, for this common thief, this criminal organisation?  It has to give the money back and pay a fine of $3 million to a community organisation. (Most commonly, these fines are paid to Financial Literacy Australia to “teach consumers about finance.”  The CBA is represented on its Board!)

In its latest half-yearly after-tax profit result, the CBA raked in $4,895 million. For the previous full financial year, it pocketed $9,928 million. Its $3m fine is around .01 percent of its annual profit.

What happens if a worker takes so-called “unprotected” industrial action?  Is there an invitation to negotiate a penalty?  Perhaps an agreement to pay .01 percent of the worker’s annual savings (his/her “profit”) of say, $4,895?  That’d hurt.  Wow, 50 cents.  That’s the scale of the CBA “penalty”.

“Regulatory capture” and the Tax Office

Swinburne Law School corporate governance research fellow Helen Bird said there are concerns about "regulatory capture", where the enforcement agency is in thrall to the institutions it is meant to be watching over.

And it’s not just ASIC.  Even such a powerful body as the Australian Tax Office is “in thrall” to the big end of town.  It is well-known that hundreds of the biggest corporations in Australia (including some of the largest foreign-owned entities such as the anti-worker EXXON Corporation) year after year pay no tax at all on their Australian earnings.

In 2014, the Business Council of Australia and law firm Clayton Utz held a seminar on European attempts to compel companies to pay tax.

Business participants sought assurances that sections of the transfer-pricing legislation introduced by the Labor government when it held office would not be used to try to recover untaxed Australian profits.

Enter the regulator.  Deputy Tax Commissioner Mark Konza assured business that the tax commissioner would not “go crazy with this power”.  In fact, he said, the powers would be “rarely implemented” because of associated legal difficulties.

Big business was further assured that then Prime Minister Abbott’s decision to slash 3000 jobs at the Tax Office would probably hamper what little effort the ATO may have been planning to put into the task.

It was a “nudge-nudge wink-wink” joke amongst class friends that any attempt to come after the rich would be a pretence.

Imagine if a worker contemplating taking “unprotected” industrial action was assured by the unFair Work Commission that it “wouldn’t go crazy with its power” to enforce its $12,600 penalty, that such a penalty would be “rarely implemented”, and that it was slashing its own staff to further hamper any effort to penalise the worker.

No, in a society that is class-ridden, the law applies unequally to those at the top and to those at the bottom. In theory, there’s regulation and control of workers and the rich.

In practice, for workers, there is always a tough cop on the beat to match the soft cop for the elite.

That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it will always be until we change the system by taking from the rich their right to rule.

That means socialism and an anti-imperialist independent Australia.
 

Party sends solidarity message to Germany’s Rebellious Music Festival

Nick G.

German authorities are threatening to close down this year’s Rebellious Music Festival scheduled to start today at Thuringia, one of the 16 states of contemporary Germany.

About 50 bands are currently listed to appear.  The theme of the Festival is anti-fascist, internationalist and revolutionary. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany’s (MLPD) youth organisation REBELL is a prominent organiser of the Festival.

The pretext for police action to close the Festival is the presence of one of the two headline acts, the Turkish band Grup Yorum. The band’s songs are about capitalism, imperialism, anti-Americanism and the Turkish government’s policies, which they say penalise the poor. Eleven of the current members of Grup Yorum (“yorum” means “comment”) remain in prison in Turkey, after being arrested last year.  The cover of their latest album, İlle Kavga (which roughly means “struggle no matter what”), shows instruments they allege were smashed up by police during a raid last year on the cultural centre the group use.

The band enjoys widespread popular support in Turkey.  Just as Theodorakis inspired and encouraged anti-fascist Greeks during the Junta, so Grup Yorum holds a flame of resistance to the face of the Turkish reactionaries.  Much of their music is on Youtube (for example their version of the resistance song Daglara Gel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mih-SAO76Aw .

Turkish President Erdogan cites the band’s support for the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) as evidence that the musicians are supporters of “terrorism”.  The German authorities have jumped on board and say that they will not allow the band to appear at the Festival this weekend.

German police have threatened a massive police action with arrests and cancellation of the Festival if Grup Yorum goes on stage on Sunday. The managing police officer in charge already has a reputation for tolerating or even promoting fascist activities. Under his leadership a police action took place on 1 May 2015 in Saalfeld, during which fascists brutally beat up antifascist young people without the police stepping in!

Yesterday we received an urgent message from the MLPD for a message of solidarity with the Festival.  Our message (below) was sent and is on the German-language website of the Festival .

The message follows:

“The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) condemns the threat to close this year’s Rebellious Music Festival in Thuringia. 

There is a dangerous trend towards fascism sweeping Europe and the festival is a significant contribution to anti-fascist, democratic and revolutionary mobilisation of the youth. 

Provocations by the reactionary authorities, using the presence of progressive Turkish band Grup Yorum, must be resisted.  Defiance of reactionary authority is a good thing, and we wish our German comrades and friends success.   The time is right for such defiance.

Defend the Rebellious Youth Festival!

No criminalisation of progressive culture!

Yours in solidarity
Nick G.
Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

KARL MARX: Man and Fighter

Humphrey McQueen

If sculpture aspires to the condition of music then Marx’s memorial in Highgate Cemetery hits a bum note.

The bust focuses on the mighty thinker about whom his lifelong comrade, Frederick Engels, began his graveside oration on 17 March 1883. 

Marx was far from a disembodied brain. ‘Nothing human is alien to me’ was one of his two mottoes. His three heroes were a defier of the gods (Prometheus), a rebel slave (Spartacus) and the mathematician who overturned our picture of the heavens (Kepler). 

 

Das Kapital

The Karl Heinrich Marx who was born on 5 May 1818 was not the Marx who writes Capital. Through 25 years of study and struggle, he had to learn how to compose his masterpiece.

 

Marx’s achievements were possible because of the strength of his wife, Jenny, their three daughters, and their housekeeper and comrade, Helen Demuth. 

 

His second motto was ‘Question everything’. He criticises even his understanding of surplus-value when he finds a case which does not quite fit his concept. 

 

No one size fits all. To argue otherwise ‘is a very impressive method,’ Marx writes, ‘for swaggering, sham-scientific, bombastic ignorance and intellectual laziness.’ For instance, India, China and Japan in the 1860s are subject to colonisers. They resisted differently, Marx shows, because of the relative strength of their state machinery. 

 

Marx taught himself Russian to gauge whether the collective labour of the Russian village (mir) could open a path onto socialism. Lenin provided the answer in The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899) as volume five of Capital.

 

Dialectics

As a dialectician, Marx sought the two-sidedness in practices and in ideas.

 

He celebrates capitalism for its revolutionising of every realm of life and reviles it for crippling workers physically and intellectually. He acknowledges religion as ‘the heart of a heartless world’ and despises the servility of its organised representatives.

 

As an historical materialist, he rejoices that our species is part of nature to the wealth of which we apply our labours. Equally, he condemns capital for plundering that wealth to survive by relentless expansion.

 

Militant

The 30 volumes of Marx’s collected writings are enough work for one lifetime. Yet he organised a succession of international working-class associations. His energies poured into independence for Poland, Ireland and India. Mourners read messages from Russia, France, Spain and Germany. His defence of the Communards in 1871 make him the best-hated man in Europe. 

 

Capital is the finest work of labour history ever penned. Some of its power comes from chapters about the working-day and co-operation. Even more significant is Marx’s revealing the dual nature of both capital and labour. Once we are forced to sell our capacities, labour becomes the pivotal form of capital by adding more value than goes into its own production. 

 

Marx accepts greed as one more human characteristic. But it is exacerbated by capital’s relentless need to realise a profit by inculcating wants to absorb more of its over-production.

 

By contrast, capitalists are caught in a Faustian bargain between pleasure and accumulation. Too much fun and they lose their right to live off our labour.

 

Science

Writing about the past becomes a science only from the 1840s when Marx and Engels initiate historical materialism. They welcome Darwin for putting paid to claims that the world has been created to fulfill some purpose outside itself. 

 

Marx keeps Capital a work of science by penetrating surfaces to derive critical analyses of inner dynamics. Change is the sole constant. Hence, concepts must be jettisoned along with the social practices to which they had approximated.

 

Marx was fascinated with the calculus: how could an aggregation of quantitative changes result in a qualitative transformation. His most favoured term is ‘metamorphosis’.

 

Struggle

Capital can help us to understand UBER and Wall Street; robots and the Building and Construction Commission; global warming and the surge in Fundamentalisms. We can gain those insights only by uncovering ‘how exactly?’ in each case. 

 

Marx ties his concepts to immediate demands as with the ten points in the Manifesto. Australian revolutionaries do so around the five pillars of everyday life: housing, transport, work, health and education. 

 

The four volumes of Capital are a quest for the mechanisms behind systemic crises. They are inevitable. Capitalism will never collapse of its own accord. That demands revolutionary action. Only living breathing human beings can make and re-make our possible futures.

 

Revolution

Marx learnt that a revolution needs more than a rise in the price of bread. The past 250 years show that challenges to state power are rare.  Even less common is success at smashing the previous state apparatuses.

 

Russia and China demonstrate that carrying a successful revolution through to socialism is several times harder. We must learn from those failures as Marx did from the fate of the Commune.

 

Capitalism is haunted not by the spectre of Marx but by its own conflicting drives. He provides us with the means to understand them. With Engels, he developed a science which situates the prospects for a far better world on more than wish-fulfillment.

 

A cable of his death appeared in the Australian press. The 1887 English translation of Capital sparked a spat among the local bourgeoisie about the exploitative nature of the wage-labour relationship. By 1907, that truth had gripped militants. With the formation of a Communist Party in 1920, the International to which Marx gave so much of his life flourished as never before. 

 

The movement stands Marx’s true memorial.