Tag Archives: Australia

Anti-Imperialism, U.S.

OPPOSE THE U.S. & AUSTRALIAN
REGIMES BACKING ISRAEL’S TYRANNY

Photo Above: 15 May 2022, Ramallah, West Bank, Occupied Palestine: Thousands of Palestinians protest on Nakba (the Catastrophe) Day, the 74th anniversary of Israel’s murderous ethnic cleansing of three quarter of a million Palestinian people from their homes.
Photo Credit: Ayman Nobani/Xinhua

DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

OPPOSE THE U.S. &
AUSTRALIAN REGIMES
BACKING ISRAEL’S TYRANNY!

RESIST THE WESTERN IMPERIALIST
DOMINATION OF THE WORLD
UNDERPINNING THE SUBJUGATION
OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

12 May 2022: Yesterday, the Israeli military demolished several homes of Palestinian residents in the Masafer Yatta region south of the West Bank city of Hebron. This atrocity is part of Israel’s plan to evict some 1,000 residents from the area. If Israel is able to get away with this, it would be one of the biggest single expulsions of Palestinians since Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Palestinian families are being driven from homes and lands that they have lived, farmed and herded on for generations – going back long before Israel’s murderous ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was unleashed in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe). Simultaneously, Israel is accelerating the construction of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank in order to further displace Palestinian people and undermine their just demands for statehood. Today, the regime announced that it would be building an additional 4,300 Jewish-only housing units in the West Bank.

The U.S. and Australian-backed Israeli regime is subjugating Palestinian people in an ever more brazen way. During the recent Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israeli forces repeatedly carried out violent raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites. They injured hundreds of Palestinian worshippers as they unleashed volleys of rubber bullets, tear gas cannisters and stun grenades. Israeli state forces are being encouraged to commit ever more cruel acts by increasingly active fascist groups amongst the Jewish “settlers” that have gone to colonise the West Bank. These fascist mobs have not only spearheaded the attacks on Al Aqsa and threateningly marched on Palestinian villages but have beaten and murdered Palestinian residents, torched their homes and cut down their food crops. Israeli forces have murdered over 50 Palestinian people in 2022 alone.

The working class and all oppressed of Australia and the world and all opponents of national oppression must stand with the persecuted Palestinian people. We must demand: Israel and its far-right “settlers” get out of all of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza! For the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their pre-Nakba homes and lands! Let us support the Palestinian resistance against the murdering Israeli security forces and the fascist “settler” groups!

MOBILISE THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN
SUPPORT OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE

Israel is only able to subjugate Palestinian people because it receives massive military, economic and diplomatic backing from the U.S. imperialist superpower and the Americans’ closest allies, like Australia, and because of the complicity of the other Western imperialist powers likes Britain, Germany and Japan. That is why supporters of Palestinian rights in Australia must oppose the Australian rulers’ backing of Israel and must fight against the Australian ruling class’ support for the U.S. juggernaut that underpins Israel’s terror. Down with Canberra’s military cooperation and diplomatic backing of Israel! U.S. troops out of Darwin! Close the Pine Gap spy base and all the joint U.S.-Australia military bases in Australia! Down with the ANZUS Alliance! Down with AUKUS – Down with the new Cold War drive against socialistic China!

Although there are powerful pro-Israel lobbies in the U.S. and Australia, this is not the main reason why Washington and Canberra uphold Israel’s persecution of Palestinian people. The U.S. and Australian capitalist ruling classes uphold Israel’s tyranny because this is in their own class interests. The ultra-rich owners of the U.S. and Australia’s mines, banks, factories, agribusiness, transport operations and service sector firms not only exploit workers in their own countries but also exploit workers at an even more intense rate in the ex-colonial countries of the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Latin America where they also loot the natural resources and seize control of markets. To enforce this tyranny, these imperialist powers use not only their own militaries but also those of various “deputy sheriffs” who they back to enforce their interests in return for a share of the imperialist loot. Israel is the Middle East deputy sheriff of U.S. imperialism. Along with the Saudi regime, Israel was built up as the enforcer in the oil-rich Middle East of the imperialist powers’ drive against the USSR-led socialistic bloc during the Cold War. Today, Israel is both a strategically located ally of Western imperialism in their new Cold War drive against socialistic China and a henchman against local forces that dare not bow down enough to the Western imperialist tyrants, whether they be groups in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq or “disobedient” countries like Syria and Iran. For playing this role, Israel’s powerful U.S. godfathers are happy to uphold its subjugation of Palestinian people and to turn a blind eye (or more cynically, give meaningless, gentle slaps on the wrist) to its most heinous atrocities. This is similar to how Washington covers up the Australian ruling class’ horrendous oppression of Aboriginal people and its brutal persecution of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African refugees in recognition of the crucial role that the Australian rulers play as America’s deputy sheriff in the South Pacific.

Given the interests that Australia’s imperialist ruling class has in propping up Israel’s tyrannical role in the Middle East, it is unsurprising that all the pro-capitalist parties in Australia, which includes all the parties currently in parliament, defend Israel. To be sure The Greens, unlike the right-wing Liberals or the ALP, do call out Israel’s worst atrocities. However, their position of “condemning violence on all sides”, which disgustingly equates the violence of the Israeli oppressors with the just resistance of a subjugated people, is far from genuine solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Moreover, while Greens politicians do attend pro-Palestinian rallies in Australia, one can be suspicious that this is mostly a vote gathering practice, given that nowhere in The Greens official foreign policy election platform – that is in what they present to everyone as opposed to what they promise to known Palestinian supporters – do they even mention support for the Palestinian national liberation struggle. Instead, while they call to “renegotiate” Australia’s alliance with the U.S., they nevertheless uphold this alliance, and thereby uphold a pact that strengthens the U.S. imperialist superpower that props up Israel.

Alongside the geostrategic interests that the U.S., Australian, Canadian and New Zealand ruling classes have in backing Israel, all these capitalist rulers feel a connection with Israel’s rulers because, like the latter, their own rule was also founded on the colonial dispossession and murderous subjugation of the peoples living on the lands that they now lord over. If one sees the way that Australian state forces brutalise Aboriginal adults and children in custody and then cover up these crimes – like how a racist white police officer killed an unarmed Aboriginal man Kumanjayi Walker by shooting him three times at close range yet was two months ago acquitted of murdering the Aboriginal teenager by the Northern Territory courts – it has many similarities to Israel’s heinous persecution of Palestinian people.

Given their ideological affinity with the Israeli ruling class and more significantly, the interests that they have in upholding Israel’s strength, it is impossible to make the capitalist rulers of the U.S. or Australia an ally of the Palestinian people. However, what we can do is to force these imperialists to back off their level of support for Israel. Such a perspective is, however, undermined to the extent that many supporters of Palestinian rights continue to believe that it is possible to win over Australia’s ruling class to the side of the Palestinians. For the latter notion falsely implies that what we need to do is to appeal to Australia’s capitalist rulers when what we must do is the very opposite: we need to punish the ruling class for their backing of Israel’s reign of terror. One cannot appeal to the conscience of Australia’s capitalist class as they are not driven by conscience but by the drive to expand profits and to shape the world order in such a way that their profits both at home and abroad are secured and maximised. Instead, we must threaten the profits and political authority of Australia’s capitalist rulers to such an extent that the harm that they would thereby suffer outweighs the geostrategic benefits that they gain from upholding the Israeli, Middle East deputy sheriff of their American godfathers. The key force for achieving this perspective is the organised workers movement. Trade union political strikes here in protest at the Australian regime’s support for Israel would hurt the profits of Australia’s capitalist rulers and could, therefore, arm-twist them to dial back their support for Israel.

Union action against Israel’s tyranny is possible because not only is such struggle vitally needed it is also in the very interests of the workers movement. By striking economic and political blows against a key deputy sheriff of U.S. and allied imperialism, the workers movement would be landing punches against the U.S. and Australian imperialist ruling classes themselves. In other words they would be weakening the very same capitalist rulers who at home are driving down workers’ real wages, jacking up rents and prices, pushing ever more workers into precarious gig and casual jobs and who in their efforts to prevent the masses uniting to resist their ever greater exploitation of working class people are scapegoating Aboriginal First Peoples and people of Asian, Muslim, African, Middle Eastern and Islander backgrounds. Any damage done to the strength of the Australian ruling class by weakening its international position will necessarily aid the struggle against exploitation and racism at home.

A small number of the left-wing led unions have indeed shown some solidarity with the Palestinian cause by attending pro-Palestinian rallies in Australia. However, such acts are undercut by the fact that the workers movement in Australia is currently led by the Labor Party, a party that from its support for anti-strike laws, to its fulsome backing of the Cold War drive against socialistic China to its defence of Israel is determined to prove to Australia’s ruling class that it is as reliable a defender of the capitalist class’ key interests as the right-wing Liberal-National Coalition are. The struggle to mobilise the working class in support of the Palestinian people is thus closely bound up with the struggle to reorient the workers movement onto a new truly anti-capitalist agenda – an agenda that is needed to not only ensure working class support for oppressed peoples like Aboriginal people and the Palestinians but which is essential to the fight for the working-class’ own rights.

STANDING WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE MEANS OPPOSING
WESTERN IMPERIALISM’S MASSIVE BACKING FOR ITS UKRAINIAN PROXY
IN EUROPE’S LATEST WAR

An example of just how emboldened Israel is right now to crush the Palestinian people was seen yesterday when the Israeli military murdered American-Palestinian, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in a targeted assassination. Of course this is hardly Israel’s first murder of journalists and certainly not of Palestinian people more generally. However, Abu Akleh was not only a Palestinian journalist but a citizen of the United States, the main country that is propping up Israel. Moreover, unlike American student Rachel Corrie who was a leftist opponent of U.S. imperialism when she was murdered by the Israeli military in 2003 while courageously helping to protect Palestinian homes in the Gaza strip from demolition, Abu Akleh worked for a news organization that while covering Palestinian issues more fairly is overall a rabid promoter of U.S. imperialism – from its support for the Western imperialist agenda in the Syrian and Ukraine Wars to its retailing of anti-China, anti-communist propaganda.

Part of the reason why the Israeli regime thinks it can now get away with acting even more brazenly than in the past has to do with the context of the Ukraine-Russia War. In order to prevent Russia emerging as a potential capitalist competitor and to push her back down to the humiliated position that she had in the first decade after the destruction of the USSR, the U.S.-led Western imperialists are throwing huge amounts of arms, money and propaganda into supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. The Western imperialists are so driven by this agenda that they are more than willing to abandon any minor disputes they may have had with any force that contributes to this anti-Russia campaign. For example, the Western mainstream media had in the past occasionally reported on the influence in the Ukrainian state of brutal fascist paramilitary groups like the white supremacist Azov Battalion. Even as the U.S. military trained the Azov forces, Washington was worried that too open support for such avowed neo-Nazis would constitute a bad look. However, today such misgivings have been totally abandoned. Western regimes and media openly hail the “resistance” of the Mariupol-based Azov regiment and completely whitewash both its ultra-racist, Nazi character and its torture and murder of pro-Russia civilians. Similarly, in the past, the likes of France and Germany had made mild criticisms of the extreme hostility to dark-skinned refugees, persecution of LGBTIQ+ people and authoritarian repression of dissent by the hard right government in Poland. The EU powers were worried that the openness of these repressive policies was undermining the EU’s claims to uphold “democracy.” However, today as the Polish government has put itself up as an extreme frontline opponent of Russia, these mild rebukes of her by her Western allies have softened into total silence. Israel is now also a crucial part of the anti-Russia campaign. Not only do the far-right infested Ukrainian and Israeli regimes enthusiastically support each other, Israel has also recently played a headline role in the propaganda campaign against Russia by accusing Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine and by fanatically attacking Moscow’s basically correct point (albeit distracted by her foreign minister Lavarov’s false and hurtful claim – for which Putin later apologised – that Hitler had Jewish roots) that just because Ukrainian president Zelenskyy is Jewish does not change the fact that the neo-Nazis play a significant role in the Ukrainian regime. Aware of its importance to the anti-Russia campaign of its Western imperialist backers, Israel knows that its allies will tolerate it acting in an even more heinously cruel manner than usual. And the Palestinian people are the victims of this.

Unfortunately, the murdering Israeli regime’s calculation has thus far proven correct. It was striking how the U.S. State Department responded to the questions about the impartiality of the “investigation” into the murder of Abu Akleh announced by Israel. State Department spokesman Ned Price kept on insisting that Israel has the “wherewithal and the capabilities to conduct a thorough, comprehensive investigation” and rejected calls for an independent probe. In other words, the U.S. imperialists are willing to accept the whitewash of the murder of their own citizen by the Israeli regime even though she worked for a thoroughly pro-Western news organisation in Al Jazeera. Earlier, as anti-Russian propaganda ramped up in the tense days leading up to the Ukraine-Russia War, the Australian government further boosted its support for Israel by outrageously designating Hamas in its entirety to be a “terrorist” organisation (in contrast to the previous stance that only recognized the group’s military wing as such).

Some pro-Palestinian groups in Australia, like the Socialist Alternative group, claim that the West is not being consistent by supporting Ukraine against Russia while refusing to support the Palestinian cause. However, the truth is that the Palestinian people’s completely justified resistance against Israeli occupation has very little in common with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. For one, a major trigger of the Russian intervention was Ukraine’s brutal persecution of Russian-speaking people living in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine over the last eight years. The post-2014 Ukrainian regime threatened these peoples’ language and cultural rights. When the Russian-speaking people protested, they were brutally attacked by fascist Ukrainian paramilitary groups that have many similarities to the far-right settler groups in the West Bank. In the eight years prior to the current escalation of the conflict, Ukrainian state forces and their fascist paramilitaries killed around 10,000 of the Russian speaking people in the Donbass who were struggling for their self-determination. In that sense, it is more Ukraine rather than Russia that has been mirroring the oppressive terror of Israel. To be sure, in sending Russian forces into Ukraine, Moscow’s agenda is more than merely defending the persecuted Russian-speaking populations in the East and South of Ukraine and pre-emptively pushing back NATO’s threatening eastwards expansion to her borders. Moscow also seeks to quench the capitalist thirst for ever greater access to guaranteed markets by grabbing more territory and simultaneously advancing her quest to become a new imperial power. However, by violently resisting the wish of many Russian-speaking people in the south and east of Ukraine to either join Russia or have closer ties with her, the Ukrainian regime is also driven by the capitalist push to maximise their own country’s territories.

The Western imperialists say that Russia’s intervention into Ukraine is “threatening the rules-based international order.” But this order is a brutal, oppressive one where the U.S. ruling class and its allied counterparts in the likes of Britain, Australia and Germany set the “rules” which they then make everyone else follow … except themselves! This “rules-based” order has seen the U.S., British and Australian imperialists brutally invade and ravage Iraq twice, devastate Afghanistan during a cruel twenty year occupation, NATO destroy Libya through a bloody 2011 regime change invasion, the devastation of Syria in a Western proxy war, the killing of large numbers of Pakistani people in U.S. drone strikes, the brutal U.S./Australian colonial occupation of Somalia, the 1999 NATO terror bombing of Yugoslavia, the bloody Western-backed Saudi war on Yemen, etc, etc. Moreover, it is this Western imperialist-dominated “rules-based world order” that sustains Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinian people.

The significance of the Ukraine-Russia conflict to the Western-dominated “world order” and therefore to the Palestinian cause has grown markedly over the last two and a half months. When the Russian troops first intervened, the Western powers, while supporting Ukraine, shied away from providing her with the heavy weapons needed to really take on Russia. However, drunk with their own war propaganda, the Western imperialists have now drastically increased their level of military support to Ukraine – including the provision of heavy weapons, direct training of Ukrainian soldiers and the actual presence of Western special forces’ advisers in Ukraine. Having now invested far more in this conflict than they previously had, the outcome of this war will in turn affect far more the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialists. Should their Ukrainian allies triumph it would embolden Western imperialism and thus intensify the subjugation of Palestinian people, increase the Cold War threats to socialistic China and North Korea, increase the dangers faced by “disobedient” countries like Iran, Venezuela and Syria and intensify Western imperialist exploitation of the developing countries. On the other hand, while a Russian military victory would encourage reactionary nationalism within Russia and boost the authority of Russia’s capitalist exploiting class, it would weaken the U.S., British, Australian, German, Japanese and other Western imperialists who have so avidly backed the other side. This would be a good thing for all those subjugated by Western imperialism and its proxies, including the Palestinian people. Therefore, while Russian anti-capitalists would have to oppose their own ruling class while explicitly opposing NATO and refusing to ally with pro-Western pacifists, opponents of imperialism and capitalism in the rest of the globe, especially in the Western imperialist countries themselves, must campaign for the defeat of the Western imperialist-backed side in this war and oppose the growing intervention of the U.S., Australian and other imperial ruling classes into the conflict. That is why we in Trotskyist Platform say: Let’s oppose all the economic sanctions on Russia! Let’s campaign to stop all Western military supplies to the Ukrainian military! Let’s undermine the Western-imperialist controlled “world order” that underpins Israel’s brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people!

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the Left in Australia have taken the opposite position. The Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance groups are all backing the U.S., Australian and Israeli-backed Ukraine side in this war. The Australian Communist Party (ACP) formally takes a position of opposing both sides in the conflict but by proudly stating that “the ACP condemns the attack by the forces of the Russian Federation on Ukraine” the ACP in practice gravitates towards supporting imperialist-backed Ukraine. Although the members of all these groups sincerely hold their support for the Palestinian cause, by backing the side of the Western imperialists in the Ukraine-Russia conflict they are supporting the forces that uphold Israel’s tyranny over Palestine. Most of these groups – in particular the Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance groups – similarly backed the side of Western imperialism during the Syrian war when they supported imperialism’s Syrian proxies against the Syrian government; and in doing so also put themselves in a de facto military bloc with the Israeli regime that launched hundreds of airstrikes against Syrian government positions.

We insist that true solidarity with the Palestinian people and all those suffering under the direct and indirect tyranny of Western imperialism means slashing back at the U.S., Australian, British, German, Japanese and other Western imperialist ruling classes in every single field where they extend their claws. That means that as well as opposing Western imperialist intervention into the Ukraine conflict and their support for Israel, we must stand for: All U.S. and allied forces out of Iraq, Syria and all the Middle East! Down with the imperialist threats to Iran! Down with all imperialism’s proxies in Syria! U.S. troops out of the Korean Peninsula! Australian imperialist rulers: Get your bullying hands off the Solomon Islands and the rest of the South Pacific! Down with the cruel imperialist-driven sanctions against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Afghanistan!

STANDING WITH PALESTINE MEANS STANDING WITH SOCIALISTIC CHINA!

The U.S., Australian and other imperial ruling classes see a far greater threat to their domination of the world than the one posed by their would-be Russian competitor. And that is the threat to imperialist domination of the world posed by the rise of China. Unlike Russia, which is today just another capitalist country, China is a workers state formed when the toiling classes grabbed state power in a giant anti-capitalist revolution in 1949 and which continues to have an economy centred on socialist, public ownership of key sectors. Of all the main powers in the world, including Russia, the Peoples Republic of China currently takes the strongest position in support of Palestine. However, China’s support remains far below what it should be. China’s compromising leaders take a narrow, national-centred approach to foreign policy where they seek to build socialism only in China while trying to ensure “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist world by avoiding any aggressive involvement in any issues abroad that do not very directly affect China’s interests. This policy is a flawed response to the immense hostile pressure that China faces from the capitalist powers. China’s leaders hope that should they avoid threatening capitalist interests abroad, the capitalist powers will in turn avoid attacking China. However, this policy has been a failure. Whereas, China indeed does little to actively promote anti-capitalist struggle abroad, the imperialist powers are doing everything possible to strangle socialistic rule in China. However, should greater solidarity with Red China from working class people around the world arise, stauncher communists within China would get a greater hearing when they push for China to take a much stronger stance in opposing capitalism and imperialism abroad. This can only be a good thing for the Palestinian people.

Moreover, even though the current Beijing leadership does not seek to challenge Western imperialism’s domination over the world, the mere existence of China as a socialistic power is slowly undermining the grip of imperialism over the ex-colonial countries. China’s mutually beneficial cooperation with the Global South is allowing countries in the Pacific, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to access capital, modern technology, training and a large market in China without having to subordinate their country to the imperial powers or their agencies like the IMF. This is what is driving Australia’s capitalist rulers mad as countries in the South Pacific like the Solomon Islands and Fiji slowly exert greater independence from their Australian imperialist overlords. Eventually, some Arab countries may even finally start exerting greater independence from Washington and its allies, which can only be a good thing for the Palestinian struggle.

Furthermore, the capitalist powers are terrified that even though Beijing does nothing to explicitly promote socialist revolution, the mere example presented by the most populous country in the world continuing to adhere to a socialistic course, while successfully lifting her people out of poverty and providing rapidly rising real wages, wide access to low-rent public housing and ever improving infrastructure, public transport and cultural opportunities for her masses, will encourage working class people in the capitalist world to themselves start agitating for socialism. That is why the Western ruling classes see the rise of socialistic China as an “existential threat.” Of course, if their worst fears are indeed confirmed and the working classes in the West, inspired by socialistic China’s successes, overturn capitalist rule in their own countries that could very quickly open the road to the liberation of Palestine.

More immediately, if solidarity from the masses around the world is able to protect socialistic China such that she is allowed to continue to rapidly rise, this will inevitably loosen the grip of the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialists over the world. That will in turn naturally weaken the Washington-propped up Israeli regime and bring more opportunities for the Palestine liberation cause as well as for the struggles of all people living under the tyranny of the imperial powers. Therefore, all consistent supporters of the Palestinian struggle, all opponents of imperialism and all supporters of working class interests must stand for the unconditional defence of the Chinese workers state against imperialist threats and internal pro-capitalist forces. Down with the lying propaganda war against Red China over Taiwan, Uyghurs, Tibet, Hong Kong, the COVID response and the Pacific! U.S./ British/Australian navies get out of the South China Sea! Oppose the Australian capitalist regime’s anti-China military build up: no to nuclear submarines, no to missiles! For the right of the Solomon Islands and any other country to engage in military and economic cooperation with Red China to the extent that they see fit!

Occupied East Jerusalem, Friday, May 13, 2022: Israeli police horrifically attack mourners as they carry the casket of slain Palestinian-U.S. journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin last Wednesday. Under the cover of the war in Ukraine, the brutal, occupying ethno-nationalist Israeli regime has been given the green light from its big brother in Washington to even more brazenly attack the long suffering Palestinian people and their brave struggle of resistance. Working class people of all colours, nationalities and religions must join together with all oppressed peoples to resist the bloody, U.S.-led capitalist world order & extend sororal & fraternal comradely hands of friendship and encouragement to the workers state in China which – despite capitalist encroachment into her economy and imperialist pressure from abroad – remains, alongside the international working class, the only world power that can truly stand up to the imperialists and stop the dead hand of Washington and Canberra et al dragging us all into an ever broadening, greed-driven downwards spiral of oppression, poverty and racism.

ISRAEL = DEADLY OPPRESSION OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
+ NO FUTURE FOR JEWS EITHER

Recent weeks have confirmed that while Israel spells murderous subjugation for Palestinian people it cannot even deliver on the main promise that Zionist leaders use to sell Israel: that it will be a secure homeland for Jewish people. The building of an ethno-religious state through murderous ethnic cleansing of another people and through ongoing murderous terror against the dispossessed people inevitably provokes resistance and violent responses. Most of the Palestinian armed resistance takes the form of completely justified blows against the Israeli security forces and fascist settler groups. A small number of desperate Palestinians also lash out in pointless and harmful to their cause attacks on Israeli civilians. That is the byproduct of the brutal Israeli subjugation of Palestine. Although far more Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli security forces, 19 Israelis have also been killed in 2022 in occupation-connected violence including several police officers, a security guard, two Israeli troops killed in an accidental attack by a nervous fellow soldier and several civilians. Moreover, although massive backing from Washington allows Israelis to enjoy a higher standard of living than neighbouring peoples, life in an ethnic supremacist garrison state is not exactly great: youth are required to undergo long periods of forced military conscription and the reality of Israel’s brutal subjugation of Palestinian people means that Israelis are sometimes consigned to life in bomb shelters to protect themselves from counterattack. Yet Israel’s capitalist ruling class does not have the interests of the Jewish masses as their real concern… and never did! What they really want is a guaranteed market and a state compacted together by extreme nationalism that will allow them to exploit the labour of fellow Jewish, Hebrew-speaking people and to con such Jewish working-class people into feebly accepting this exploitation out of nationalist devotion to the ethno-religious state. Indeed, Israel’s most dramatic intervention into the Ukraine-Russia War has confirmed how little its rulers are truly devoted to the well-being of Jewish people. In slamming Moscow for pointing out that Ukrainian president Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage does not prevent neo-Nazis from playing a significant role in the Ukrainian state, the Israeli regime covered up the large presence of neo-Nazi groups like the Azov and Aidar regiments in the Ukrainian paramilitary forces and inhabitation of virulently anti-Semitic, fascist individuals in parts of Ukraine’s military and police top brass; while whitewashing the reality that the Ukrainian state glorifies as national heroes two Nazi-collaborating, anti-Soviet, Ukrainian World War II paramilitary groups (Stepan Bandera’s UPA and OUN). During World War II, the UPA and OUN between them murdered tens of thousands of Jewish people and over 100,000 Polish people, while helping their Nazi allies to carry out the Holocaust.

It is crucial that a far-sighted section of the Jewish working class in Israel sees the futility and injustice of the Zionist project and comes over to the side of the subjugated Palestinian people. There are some brave Israelis who do protest the worst excesses of the regime’s anti-Palestinian terror but these individuals need to come over fully to opposing the Israeli state and to standing squarely in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s resistance. They must see that the implicitly ethnic supremacist ideology of Zionist nationalism serves to obscure the fact that Jewish working class people in Israel are being exploited by Jewish capitalists and that Israeli capitalism has left the masses with a poor welfare system, the single highest rate of poverty in the OECD and unaffordable rents and house prices (which the regime has cynically manipulated to encourage people to become West Bank settlers with the promise of cheap land in a strategy typical of all settler colonialist regimes). What is needed is for a slice of the Jewish working class to break from Zionist nationalism and unite with the Palestinian people in toppling the Israeli capitalist state. Such a socialist revolution would produce a binational workers state that would ensure equal rights for people of all ethnicities, would annihilate the fascist Settler forces and would guarantee the right to return of all Palestinian refugees.

Given the national chauvinism that currently infects much of the Israeli population, such a solution presently remains distant. By allowing them a relatively privileged economic position in comparison with neighbouring Arab peoples, massive imperialist aid to Israel has tied much of its masses to the illusions and prejudices of Zionism. But any weakening of Western imperialism and its domination over the world would cut the ground from under the feet of Israel’s capitalist rulers and necessarily stir upheavals amongst the Israeli masses. So let us relentlessly resist the Western imperialist domination of the world that underpins Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinian people! Down with all Western imperialist military aid and sanctions over the Ukraine-Russia War! Stand with socialistic China against imperialist threats and anti-communist forces! Oppose the ANZUS and AUKUS alliances that strengthen the imperialist powers that back Israel’s tyranny! For workers’ industrial action to oppose U.S. and Australian backing for Israel! Let’s resist the U.S. and Australian regimes that support Israel’s terror! Let us make the nest of Zionist expansionism fall by vigorously shaking the imperialist branches on which it is perched and which give it support!

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

强制企业使用他们膨胀的利润来增加雇佣员工!

为所有劳工都有稳定的工作而斗争：

强制企业使用他们膨胀的利润来增加雇佣员工!

2021年3月1日： 公司老板们在利用瘟疫流行来削减劳动力，并强迫仍然在工作的员工更艰苦劳碌…只是为同样的薪水(或有时甚至减少薪水!)。 所以，那些公司尽管狂热的砍掉工作岗位，它们自己的赢利却扶摇直上。莫里森的自由党政府继续公款派钱给富有的资本家企业主。 

 然而，为工作者争取工作不是要促进老板们的利润，而恰恰相反： 强迫企业主保留比他们在获得最大的利润时更多的工作岗位。 我们需要集体斗争，包括劳工运动，来停止企业削减工作! 让我们团结有工作的和没工作的工人们一起来要求：

  • 不管企业大小，只要有利润，就得禁止裁员。
  • 任何公司如果他们的CEO年度总收入超过$1百万，那么禁止裁员。
  • 强制要求任何有利润的公司如果每季度（三个月）有每一百万元的利润增加必须新增至少二十五名全职工作者。
  • 所有签证工作者、国际学生和难民都享有公民的权利(包括失业救济金和无限制的工作小时的权利)。
  • 所有临时工作者给予永久工作岗位。 临工者必须成为永久员工，并给予可保证的最低工作时间，小时工资和有薪假期。
  • 禁止所有的把工资和轮班补贴从瘟疫流行前的水平降低的行为。
  • 违犯这些措施中的任一项的企业要被没收和转成公有财产。
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做为对自由党公开的反劳工议程的回应，工党和绿党以及赞成工党领导的我们中的大部分工会长期要求通过一个把签证工作者排除在外和反对进口以保护本地企业的保护主义议程来促进本地就业。但近几个月来，签证工作者不能入境，并且进口物品变得更困难。 但本地老板们仍然随意解雇员工，他们让劳工来支付大流行的代价! 保护主义议程没有保护到任何人的工作。 它只把本地工人和他们真实的盟友分割开来： 世界上所有其他劳工。 同时，它非常错误地使劳工们相信他们与他们“自己“的贪婪的本地老板们有着共同的“国家利益”。

所以我们需要一个新的议程指引我们的工会和更加广泛的工人阶级。 一个基于理解只有赢取对资本家剥削的斗争才能为所有工人获得稳定工作的议程。 指导这个进程的是这样的事实 ： 和强大的资本家进行这场斗争，我们的工会运动必须与所有那些因被资本家控制的“秩序”所受伤的群众团结起来 – 深受严重种族迫害的土著人，严重缺乏稳定工作的妇女劳工，没有公民权利的签证工作者和国际学生，华人，其他亚裔，穆斯林和受到猛烈攻击的非裔。当资本家剥削者喊道强迫他们雇佣超过他们所想要的员工数量会导致经济滑坡，我们必须这样回应道：如果你们的体系不能包容为所有工作者力求稳定工作的必要而且明显的措施，那么你们的资本主义体系就应该直接滚蛋!

Anti-Capitalism, Social Democracy, Unions

Force Companies To Increase Hiring at the Expense of Their Bloated Profits!

Above: A familiar sight in today’s Australia. Unemployed workers endure a huge queue outside a Centrelink office. Photo Credit: ABC News/RON EKKEL

FIGHT FOR SECURE JOBS FOR ALL WORKERS: FORCE COMPANIES TO INCREASE HIRING AT
THE EXPENSE OF THEIR BLOATED PROFITS!

30 October 2020: Bosses are using the pandemic to cut their workforce and force those still employed to toil even harder… all for the same pay. That is why even as corporations are frantically throwing workers out of jobs, their own profits are skyrocketing. They soared by 15% in just three months! Sure, some businesses are doing it hard. But overall, even small business total profits have risen. Yet the Morrison government keeps on doling out public money to the rich capitalist business owners. True, Jobkeeper did help some workers keep their jobs. That is why we demand that it be extended to cover casuals, guest workers and international students. However, the scheme has not saved the jobs of even many workers covered by the program. Moreover, the scheme has helped business owners far, far more than it has helped workers. In the long term, the huge flow of public funds into the hands of rich capitalists will lead to working class people having to pay for the resulting debt. We will be made to cop cuts to public services and welfare. And now, the Liberals’ latest budget is giving still more handouts to its capitalist mates!

However, winning jobs for workers requires not boosting bosses’ profits but the very opposite: forcing business owners to retain a bigger workforce than the level that makes them the greatest profits. We need mass struggle, including industrial action, to stop bosses cutting jobs! Let’s unite employed and unemployed workers to demand:

  • A ban on job cuts by any firm making a profit, however small.
  • A ban on job cuts by any company whose CEO has an annual package in excess of $1 million.
  • A ban on job cuts by any business whose profit over the previous seven years exceeds any current losses.
  • The forcing of any company making a profit to increase its number of full-time employees by at least twenty-five workers for every one million dollars of quarterly (i.e. three monthly) profit.
  • A ban on all cuts to wages and shift penalties from pre-pandemic levels.
  • The granting of permanency to all currently casual workers.
  • Any business that violates any of these measures to be confiscated and transferred into public ownership.

Instead of such a program, the ALP and Greens “opposition” parties and the pro-ALP leadership of most of our unions have accepted Morrison’s deceitful mantra that workers and their bosses “are all in this together.” They only differ with the government on the details. Additionally, Greens and ALP politicians and Laborite union leaders have long called for promoting jobs through protecting businesses from imports, backing local manufacturing companies and keeping out guest workers. But over the last several months, importing goods has become harder, local businesses have been subsidised and guest workers can’t come in. And still local bosses are throwing workers out of their jobs left, right and centre as they choose to make workers pay for the pandemic! Protectionism fails to save anyone’s job. It only divides local workers from their true allies: all the other workers of the world. Meanwhile, it very mistakenly makes workers believe that they have a common “national interest” with their own local bosses.

That is why we need a new agenda to lead our unions and the broader working class. An agenda based on the understanding that jobs for all workers can only be won through struggle against the capitalist exploiters. Such a program would be guided by the truth that to wage this struggle against the powerful capitalists, the workers movement must unite with all those hurt by the capitalist-dominated “order” – Aboriginal people suffering intense racist oppression, women workers disproportionately copping insecure jobs, guest workers and international students denied the rights of citizenship and Chinese, other Asian, Muslim and African people hit with redneck attacks. And when the capitalist exploiters scream that forcing them to hire more workers than they want will cause economic collapse, we must respond: if your system cannot tolerate the obvious measures needed to ensure secure jobs for all workers then your system has simply got to go! We working class people and our allies will take over the economy and run it based on socialist collective ownership for the benefit of us all.

*****************************************************************************

For those who want to print out this article to distribute to potentially interested work mates, fellow union members and friends, here is a PDF version of this article in leaflet form (one single-sided A4 page):

Short leaflet against job slashingDownload
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Anti-Imperialism, DPRK

Australia’s Authoritarian Regime Denies Socialist Political Prisoner Medical Care

Photo Above: More than 40 people marched through the streets of Sydney on 13 April 2019 demanding freedom for Chan Han Choi and an end to the brutal sanctions on North Korea.

Australia’s Authoritarian Regime Denies Chan Han Choi Medical Care

Socialist Political Prisoner’s Health Deteriorating at Long Bay Prison

September 6, 2020 – Recently, left-wing political prisoner Chan Han Choi’s health has severely deteriorated after he was repeatedly denied medical care by the Australian regime. The Australian regime has jailed Chan Han Choi since December 2017 on charges of trying to help the people of North Korea to evade UN economic sanctions. Even if the claims against him turn out to be true, he is no criminal from the working class standpoint. Quite the opposite! It would simply prove that he is a great humanitarian aiding people who are being ground down by the most severe sanctions ever imposed on any country. Two and three quarter years after his arrest, Choi is imprisoned without conviction. He is yet to go to trial and Australia’s “legal system” has denied him bail.

On several times since May, Choi submitted written forms to request to see a doctor at Long Bay Prison. However, authorities at the prison refused the requests. Desperate, last month, 61 year-old Choi, with the assistance of fellow prisoners (his English is limited), sent a protest letter to the director of Justice Health noting that his health is deteriorating rapidly and that he is suffering from severe weight loss. This political prisoner also stated that:

“I’ve put in request form after request form and receive no care for my illnesses. I have rashes all over me and have issues going to the toilet and put medical forms in with no reply. Whatever I ask for gets no reply. I have no human rights here so I am [of the] strong belief that they are trying indirectly to murder me.”

It was only after authorities received that letter that, finally, on the very last day of last month, Choi was allowed to see a doctor. The doctor found that Choi’s diabetes had worsened greatly and he now needed to be injected daily with insulin. Choi had been a diabetic prior to being imprisoned but was only a mild case requiring no insulin treatment. The symptoms that he had complained about while being denied treatment – severe weight loss, rashes all over his body, skin infections – are all classic symptoms of diabetes. The fact that this was left untreated for months and he was not given insulin when he needed it months earlier is deadly dangerous and, indeed, potentially fatal. It is possible that the insulin treatment he is finally receiving may be too little, too late. At last report his blood sugar levels had still not stabilized. It is still touch and go whether or not the serious delay in giving Choi insulin treatment will cause permanent serious damage to his health … or even worse!



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Excerpts from the letter that political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi, sent protesting against the authorities’ refusal to allow him to be treated by a doctor

We should add that the part of Long Bay where Chan Han Choi is imprisoned, Long Bay Prison Hospital, was the scene of the gruesome December 2015 murder of Aboriginal man, David Dungay. David Dungay was suffocated to death after being crushed in the facedown position by five big burly prison guards. The guards ignored Dungay’s desperate pleas that he shouted out over 12 times, “I can’t breathe.” The infamous police murder of George Floyd in the U.S. in May has drawn more attention to the very similar killing of 26 year-old Dungay. Like Chan Han Choi, Dungay was also a diabetic. It is ironic that Dungay was killed by guards claiming to be trying to “protect” him from diabetic-induced complications when they stopped him eating biscuits by suffocating him to death while today the very same prison authorities have endangered Choi’s life by for months denying Choi urgently needed treatment for his own worsening diabetic condition.  

What Chan Han Choi is today being subjected to is a cruel saga of a political prisoner simply being denied his legal and human rights in Australia. Chan Han Choi has been detained as a “National Security Interest” prisoner, which means that he is treated as a “High Risk”, “High Security” inmate. This despite Choi having no criminal record and despite not even being accused of killing anyone, bashing anyone, sexually assaulting anyone or even stealing from anyone. Assisted by this “National Security Interest” pretext, the Australian ruling classes’ state has obstructed Choi’s lawyers access to him, denied him further Legal Aid coverage for legal representation and even obstructed his right to speak to family members. Then they effectively even took away Choi’s right to see a doctor when ill, which amounts to a form of torture. Meanwhile, the restricted visitation rights to his family/friends/lawyers, the curbing of his right to make phone calls to his family, the outright denial of his right to make phone calls to his friends, now mixed in with the COVID-19 ban on all prison visits have added further to his social isolation and to the decay of his well-being.

Choi at the time of his arrest was a humble hospital cleaner living in the migrant working-class suburb of Eastwood. Choi was born in South Korea where he obtained a technical engineering qualification. He is an Australian citizen. Despite the political influences he has been subjected to in both South Korea and Australia – most notably the barrage of Cold-War propaganda against North Korea – Choi felt compelled to help the people of North Korea. Prior to the toughening of U.N. sanctions over recent years proscribing many exports from North Korea, Choi organized many legal deals to assist North Korea to export commodities like iron ore. He was motivated by both humanitarian concern and by sympathy for North Korea’s socialistic system. Notably, according to the very words of the Australian Federal Police, Choi was helping North Korea for personally profitless motives and out of loyal sympathy for the North Korean state.

What Choi has done is truly remarkable and heroic not only for the sanctions-crushed people of North Korea but from the standpoint of the oppressed working class of Australia. For by standing by the DPRK (the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea – i.e. North Korea), which for all of its bureaucratic deformities is a workers state, Choi is standing by the interests of the working class and most middle class people of Australia. The Australian and American capitalist-imperialists’ hostility to the DPRK is part of their Cold War drive against the world’s most powerful socialistic country, the Peoples Republic of China, which is the DPRK’s ally and neighbour. This Cold War drive is aimed at securing the capitalist order at home at the expense of 90% of Australia’s population. The more that their system is unable to meet the needs of the masses, the more that the capitalist rulers here attack the socialistic countries so that working class people here do not see any alternative to the capitalist order. The U.S. and Australian rulers have another reason for targeting the DPRK. They are still today angry about the fact that they were not able to defeat the DPRK in the Korean War and that the DPRK remains unbowed in the face of all their subsequent threats and diktats. So by standing by the defiant, ex-colonial DPRK, Choi is surely also on the side of all the underdog masses in the post-colonial countries that are still so ravaged by Western imperialist crusades  
– the crusades that murderously kill and subjugate people for the ambitions of empire and capitalism (as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia etc).

Today, as the pandemic globally gathers more victims at the hands of careless capitalist governments, as greedy bosses throw workers out of jobs even as their profits and stock prices soar, as inequality increases during the pandemic and as poverty and unemployment rises, the need for a socialist solution to society’s problems – that is, a solution based on public ownership of the economy and working class state power – becomes clearer and clearer. By standing by the DPRK’s system based on such public ownership and working class state power – despite the imperfections that must necessarily exist in a country like North Korea that is so cruelly sanctioned and strangulated and so threatened by nuclear armed U.S. bombers and by the over 70,000 American troops that surround her – Choi is in effect aiding the struggle for that badly needed socialist solution to the masses’ problems here in Australia as well as in the rest of the capitalist world. In doing so Chan Han Choi is standing by 90% of Australia’s people. We and, in particular, our most politically conscious core – including working class radicals, trade unionists, socialist political dissidents, black rights activists, anti-imperialist activists, public housing advocates and anti-racist activists – must now in our turn stand by Chan Han Choi. We must demand his immediate freedom and the dropping of all charges against him.

Anti-Imperialism

Defend Syria against U.S./Australian Imperialism & Their “Rebel” Proxies!

On 7 April 2017, the world’s biggest killing machine went into overdrive. The U.S. unleashed a barrage of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a Syrian airbase. The strike killed nine civilians – including four children. The right-wing Turnbull government could not wait to proclaim that it “strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States.” Meanwhile, the ALP Opposition was no better, calling the U.S. attack “appropriate and proportionate.”

The U.S. claims that its missile strike was retaliation for an alleged chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib Province which they have pinned on Syria’s Assad government. U.S. president Trump claims that he was motivated to attack Syria by concern for children killed in the alleged attack. What a load of rubbish! For the U.S., Australian and other imperialist rulers, the masses in the ex-colonies are completely expendable in their drive to secure control of natural resources, markets and spheres of exploitation.  Due to their barbaric willingness to disregard dangers to civilian lives in their war on ISIS, a March 17 airstrike by the U.S./French/British/Australian Coalition killed over 200 civilians in the residential Jadidah neighborhood of the western part of the Iraqi city of Mosul. Meanwhile, the racist Trump regime has shown how much concern they have for the people of the Arab and Muslim world by attempting to ban people from seven Muslim majority countries from entering the U.S. and by stopping all refugees from the war in Syria. Trump’s offensive diatribes against Muslims, Mexicans and other non-white people has incited a terrifying increase in white supremacist attacks throughout North America – including the 29 January massacre of six people at a Quebec City mosque by a fascist Trump supporter. Here in Australia, the Turnbull regime, with the support of the ALP, shows its “concern” for the well-being of children from the Middle East by imprisoning dozens of them in hell-hole detention centres in Australia and Nauru and hundreds more in community detention centres. Meanwhile, Australian regimes of various stripes oversee a racist “child protection” system that has cruelly ripped hundreds of Aboriginal children from their families in an ongoing stolen generations outrage. Continue reading Defend Syria against U.S./Australian Imperialism & Their “Rebel” Proxies! →

Anti-Imperialism

Defend Syria From Imperialist-Imposed Regime Change!

Sydney, June 15: Hundreds march through the streets of Sydney to oppose the NATO-backed Syrian “Rebels.” Secular Syrian community members united together in the action with supporters originating from other parts of the Middle East as well as a core of anti-imperialist leftists. Trotskyist Platform had a contingent at the rally carrying the banner shown on the opposite page. There is also a slowly growing number of leftists who are not part of any group but are joining the Hands Off Syria rallies. What are the side effects of kamagra pills? Like every powerful medication, check for more now cialis wholesaleso inflicts some side effects. They’ll help in the need You purchase levitra online are emotionally affected because of ED and its symptoms. This condition can ensue from both physical and psychological best online cialis factors. Drugs used to cure depression may also cause serious damage viagra cialis achat to the blood vessels and the penile muscles .It also increases the blood flow to the genital organs, it turns the sexual act exciting. This is despite most of the left groups in Australia – including Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance – supporting the imperialist-backed “Rebels.” Especially as the massive scale of imperialism’s drive to impose regime change on Syria becomes increasingly clear – via their “Free Syrian Army” proxies, their extreme religious fundamentalist allies and directly through U.S. and British special forces/intelligence operatives on the ground – any left group that either supports the “Rebels” or takes the cowardly position of neutrality is betraying the struggle against imperialism and thus also the struggle for socialism.

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