servethepeople

Hands Off Kim Sattler!

2012-01-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

(John McTernan and The Thick Of It's Malcolm Tucker. See below for the link...)

Kim Sattler is Secretary of Unions ACT and is the person who is being hung out to dry by Julia Gillard in the wake of the stupid decision by her security staff to rush her in a wedge of copper heavies to her car.

Sattler had been tipped off by Gillard’s press secretary Tony Hodges to the effect that Opposition leader Tony Abbott had made remarks indicating that there was no future for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy which was celebrating its 40th anniversary. She was also told that Abbott was at a function with Gillard at a nearby restaurant.

Kim is well-known to have close links with the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. The information she was given by the Gillard staffer was obviously meant to be passed on to the hundreds of people at the Tent Embassy with the aim of making Abbott a target of their complaints and that expressed in the form of some sort of anti-Abbott protest.

Kim took the advice she was given in good faith and passed it on as any supporter of the Tent Embassy would have.

As intended, a group of people from the Tent Embassy rushed across to the restaurant and demanded that Abbott come out and speak to them about his comments.

When Abbott declined to do so, they began hammering with the hands on the windows of the restaurant and chanting.

The capitalist press whipped this up into reports of a “riot” and deplored the “violence” directed, as a result of the security over-reaction, at Gillard who was photographed minus a shoe and stumbling – not from the actions of any protester – but because of the way her security was bustling her to her car.

I wasn’t there, so I can’t give an eye-witness account.

But these people were, and here is what they say. From a contributor to Inymedia:

Not for the blink of an eye were Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott so much as threatened, even less endangered, on the 26th of January by demonstrators from the 40th anniversary Aboriginal Embassy camp in Canberra.

The only violence came from a young copper who punched and choke-gripped a young painted up Aboriginal man, a young Aboriginal woman, an SBS cameraman and I believe one other person standing harmlessly near the restaurant side exit through which clumsy security men rushed out Gingeralla, causing her to lose that now famous blue suede shoe. The only “violence” from the demonstrators I’m aware of was a punch by an activist to the copper who had roughed up the woman without cause. “I won’t stand for any man doing that to a woman,” he told me, showing me bleeding chapped knuckles that must have connected with something metallic on the copper. Nothing would have been easier than to just form a corridor of two lines of coppers for the PM to calmly walk though to her car.

It went the rounds of the protest encampment that that choke-gripping copper is the son of Canberra’s police chief. True or false – I don’t know. But one can imagine that someone from such a stable might think they’re above the law and can do anything with impunity.

Violence from us? Rubbish. I stood close to a handful banging for a while with their hands on the about 2cm-thick glass walls of The Lobby restaurant, part of a group of about 50 making a lot of noise. A bit of noise is enough to spook our two top political leaders and agents guarding the prime minister? No wonder the Americans commented gleefully, can’t they even protect their prime minister?

Violence? How about this for potentially disastrous violence: One copper in the line pushing us back was seen unbuttoning his pistol holster. Another copper had his hand on his taser weapon. A third had his truncheon extended. We heard no order given for any of this. We did, though, see a lot of frightened young faces in that blue-black line advancing on us. The Australian Federal Police said its officers lost control and had no choice but to bustle Gillard and Abbott away in the prime minister’s car. Lost control over 50 noisy but otherwise peaceful demonstrators with almost the same number of police there?

And the story above is corroborated by this account from a website covering current affairs in the ACT:

Rod and I were at the Embassy and I must explain what happened to counteract the fantasy many in the media have created regarding the so-called riot. Media in Australia are often pathetic in their requirement for the sensational - if it isn't, they will make it up.

We were all listening to the speeches by the elders when they were interrupted by the news that Tony Abbott was at a function close by and had called for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to be torn down. This, of course, did not win him many friends in the gathering. From what I gather, a group of five or six walked across the rose garden to the restaurant that was called The Pork Barrel Café on the sandwich board outside but was really called The Lobby. The group asked to speak to Tony Abbott but he wouldn't come out so the group told him through the surrounding windows how they felt about what he'd said.

It was at that point that Julia Gillard's security people began to panic. Instead of formulating a plan to get her and Abbott out of the restaurant with as little fuss as possible which would have been quite easily done, they instead called the police - local and federal - and then pushed and dragged the PM in a flying wedge toward her car. The crowd of people they pushed and dragged her through consisted of media and security. That's when the PM lost her shoe. Michael Anderson was knocked to the ground on the same steps and several others in the group were manhandled by the police.

The PM was never in any danger, there was no riot. By the time the rest of the people came across to see what was going on, the PM was long gone and Abbott too. Rod and I arrived to see a police cordon across the street - blocking it as well as police cars at the other end blocking that. If a riot had occurred they would have had us like fish in a barrel. There was a bit of shouting by individuals but the police never moved - just looked grim and menacing - no one was arrested. I saw a cop unclip his gun holster and put his hand on his freed gun and it occurred to me that the police might not need much to lose their cool. Rod was just walking forward and I warned him about the gun and the mood of the police.

The leaders from the Tent Embassy called for everyone to go back to the site and people began straggling back.

So much for a “riot”!

Then it was revealed that Gillard’s press secretary had resigned.

That was a bad look for Gillard and her office - that the so-called “riot” had been initiated by her team to get at Abbott.

So someone must have suggested that the blame be placed elsewhere. Anything to take the heat off Gillard.

That was when Kim Sattler received a phone call from John McTernan, the former Blair adviser appointed to manage Gillard’s communications strategy.

I give some background on McTernan in an earlier blog post here: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2011/09/gillards-spin-doctor-wont-cure.html .

Elsewhere (see: http://www.thepowerindex.com.au/power-move/gillard-to-get-media-makeover-from-a-whip-cracking-spinner/20110925455 ) he has been linked with the character Malcolm Tucker, from the excellent BBC series The Thick Of It.

According to Sattler, McTernan phoned her to say that she would be named as the person who had given the information about Abbott to the Tent Embassy people.

Sattler told McTernan she had a right to privacy.

“He said, ‘Well, we are going to release your name’. He said, ‘We’re going to have a press conference and we are going to name you’”, reported Sattler.

The she accurately described herself as the meat in the sandwich, as the messenger that was being shot.

Now, I’ve got to admit that I knew Kim a long time ago when she was living in Adelaide.

I haven’t seen or spoken to her for years, but I hear of her from time to time and I know that she is an absolutely genuine supporter of the working class and of progressive causes, which is more that can be said of either Gillard or Abbott.

So I say “Hands off Kim Sattler”.

She doesn’t deserve to be sacrificed to the capitalist media by Gillard’s team of spin doctors just to get a totally unprincipled traitor to whatever the Labor cause might mean these days, off the hook.

Long live the Aboriginal Tent Embassy!

For a Treaty and a new Constitution!

Great news: capitalism to lurch to new crises in 2012

2012-01-09T21:31:00.000-08:00

The world crisis of capitalism will continue and deepen in 2012.

This is not the view of Marxists alone, but of many bourgeois economists and finance capitalists as well.

For example, Bill Gross, co-founder and co-Chief Investment Officer of the US multinational PIMCO (Pacific Investment Management Company) stated on January 6, 2012 that the “financial markets and global economies are at great risk” (Gross, Paranormal Economic Activity).

Gross should know: PIMCO oversees investments totaling more than $1 trillion on behalf of a wide range of clients, including millions of retirement savers, public and private pension plans, educational institutions, central banks, foundations and endowments, among others.

While world attention continues to focus on the eurozone countries, the fact that the United States is a geographically separate entity can no longer mask the intricate web of financial ties between it and Europe. Ultimately, the buck still stops in the USA.

Contradictions within the eurozone will continue to unravel. As economic commentator Stephen Bartolomeusz commented on January 9, “If the eurozone were to splinter, deep holes would be gouged in bank balance sheets across the region, requiring more massive taxpayer bailouts from economies that can’t afford them.”

The logical inference of his observation that capitalist “economies” can no longer “afford” to bail out the rich is that further attacks on the people are on the agenda.

Karen Maley, writing in the same day’s Business Spectator, pointed out that “eurozone countries will not be able to fall back on government stimulus packages to get their economies moving. Instead, economic activity will contract sharply as governments embark on a draconian tightening of budgetary policy aimed at eliminating budget deficits that range between 2 per cent and 12 per cent of GDP.”

“Draconian” indeed! As if the belt tightening imposed by the speculators and their governments have not already been draconian enough.

But with repression comes resistance. Rich lessons have already been learned throughout 2011 in all areas where capitalism and imperialism are in control. Or, based on the above, out of control.

Bring on the further unravelling of the crisis.

Away with the private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange…..

Cleaners Rising Up

2011-12-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

Cleaners around the country are some of the most lowly paid and precariously employed members of the working class.

For several years, United Voice (formerly the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union or LHMWU) has been organizing these workers in its Clean Start campaign, winning impressive victories around some of the capital cities’ CBDs.

Now the campaign is getting out to major shopping centres in the suburbs.

A case in point is the Chadstone Shopping Centre in suburban Melbourne.

Like workers throughout the cleaning industry, Chadstone workers have been subjected to an intensification of their labour by their profit-hungry bosses, putting the public at risk as short-cuts are taken particularly around toilets and food courts.

Gamal Babiker(above) has been a cleaner at Chadstone since 2000 and said conditions had got worse over the last five years.

He said the budgets for training and health and safety had been cut as shopping centres pushed for tighter and tighter contracts.

What happened yesterday is that cleaners went on strike at lunch time only for an hour or two and as they went out a large group of community supporters went in. Those in the photos include United Voice delegates who held their annual convention yesterday. As part of their training and skills development they were bussed down to Chadstone shopping centre to get some practice in community support action!

Apparently Westfield locked the doors to the Centre after about 80 community supporters had walked inside, leaving about another 80 demonstrating on the outside. In other capital cities including Adelaide, cleaners are taking short strike action supported by community including sit-ins, cavalcades around the centres, balloons, leafleting shoppers etc.

Spotless, backed by the Shopping Centre Council are showing no public signs of giving in, so it could be a long fight. The Shopping Centre Council is actually arguing for a reduction in retail workers’ wages through ‘freeing up’ penalty rates on weekends.

So it is not surprising to see them pushing a hard line on cleaners’ demands which include increasing the base rate from the award $16.57 per hour to $21.17 per hour which is the rate cleaners in the Clean Start CBD have won.

The irony is that Spotless are a party to the CBD Agreement and major players in the Shopping Centre Council like Colonial First State, Stockland and Dexus are ‘funding’ Clean Start rates in their commercial cleaning contracts in the CBD.

The difference between the CBD and retail shopping centres is that most of the workers in CBD offices are salaried or on EBAs and well paid compared with cleaners who clean those buildings.

But retail, thanks largely to the tame cat union Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Union (SDA) is a low wage industry with many workers on $17 per hour or less as junior rates apply in retail. There are no junior rates in the cleaning award.

The SDA, led for years by a right-wing Catholic clique, spends most of its time and a large chunk of membership fees in factional influence inside the ALP.

The biggest ‘threat’ to the big retailers is they don’t want an organized workforce and that is what campaigns like Clean Start give, an opportunity to organize.

A far sighted big retailer would have settled already, but maybe their reduced sales and retail slump over-ride their thinking.

Business Council set to continue reactionary agenda

2011-11-24T18:48:00.000-08:00

The Business Council of Australia is the representative of the biggest local and overseas companies.

In early November, it elected a new President, Transfield Services Chairman Tony Shepherd.

Transfield is an Australian company but Shepherd will speak as BCA President for the interests of imperialist capital – just over half of BCA’s members are foreign companies or their subsidiaries, and more are local companies in which foreign private and institutional investors have a controlling influence.

In any case, Transfield’s business and investment practices place it at the centre of the infrastructure development required by the multinationals to enable them to squeeze more and more profit out of the Australian people.

It has contracts with coal seam gas operators in the Surat Basin south-west of Gladstone, has major defence industry contracts for "garrison support services" at military facilities throughout the country, runs some of the biggest Public Private Partnerships projects in Australia, and was a major player in 1999 in the privatization of Australian Defence Industries which opened the war supplies sector to the US, French and British companies which now operate in Australia.

Shepherd is no shrinking violet.

He has spoken out strongly against the carbon tax ("We are a carbon-intense economy…we should do everything in our power to protect that"), and strongly supported Rudd’s "Big Australia" proposal for a population of 36 million. "Our domestic consumption base is too narrow to support the industries we need," he told the Australian Financial Review on 25 November. It was a fairly blunt statement that the basis for determining the size of our population is the need for capital to continuously accumulate. More people, more infrastructure, more Transfield profit.
What else does Shepherd have in his sights?

The big ticket item is industrial relations. He hankers for the days of WorkChoices and says that Fair Work Australia is flawed. Actually, FWA works pretty well for the ruling class as the Qantas and Victorian Nurses’ disputes have shown. But having the power to fine and jail unionists who dare go beyond "protected" industrial action is not enough for Shepherd - he wants individual work contracts back!

"I certainly have no problems if companies want individual contracts and employees want to do that," he told the AFR.

He also wants the Federal budget back in surplus "as quickly as possible", even if it means "cutting the cloth" to decrease government expenditure.

Education comes in for a big serve from Shepherd who complains of its "abysmal failure" to provide industry with a skilled workforce.

But what about a social vision for the country, for something that goes beyond the greedy demands of big business?

With more and more people outraged at sky-rocketing CEO salaries, Shepherd is simply dismissive. "Who cares? It’s irrelevant," he told the AFR.

That’s small consolation for the "overwhelming majority of the Australian community (that) is sensible, frugal and hardworking". Noses down, bums in the air and keep slaving folks while those who wallow in wealth praise you for your "frugality"!

But at least the social democrats can be pleased with the praise Shepherd heaps on Hawke, Keating and Kelty. They knew how to use class collaborationist policy to achieve an "integrated" populace without division "into a political class, a business class, and a working class".

Shepherd is not going to go away, but neither are the Australian people.

There are very good signs of an increasing awareness of the injustices of mega-wealth on one side for a tiny handful, and of "frugality" and "cloth-cutting" for the "overwhelming majority of the Australian community".

And that is leading to a rising tide of struggle, and to a willingness to defy rulings and injunctions against the very actions that are needed to address the yawning gaps between rich and poor in the country.

Let the Business Council be warned - the people are on the move!
　

Murdoch’s Australian spruiks the US line

2011-11-17T21:56:00.000-08:00

The Australian is a disgusting rag. It’s made up of about 20% distorted news and 80% open or disguised opinion pieces and editorial columns justifying the spin.

As if it’s not bad enough that it has its own stable of hacks like Greg Sheridan, Janet Albrechtsen et al, it has a coterie of former Labor politicians and tame-cat academics who can be relied upon to keep the discourse within the parameters of safe discussion.

The framing of discourse around the stationing of US troops on Australian soil is a case in point.

It is obviously aimed at China, so China has to be demonized to make the betrayal of our independence and sovereignty into a "response" to a China "threat".

For example, comprador academic Paul Dibb was given column space on November 15 to explain how the US troop invasion of Australia protects our sovereignty. His explanation was based on a deficit view of Beijing: "it is open to Beijing to contribute much more to maritime security concerns in the region by supporting the universally recognized Law of the Sea convention…"

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is widely recognized: 161 member states have ratified it.
　
But it cannot be said to be "universally" recognized while ratification is refused by a major player.
　
And no, that is not China, which has signed and ratified the Treaty.
　
It is the United States.
　
Perhaps the good professor had a senior’s moment and put in "Beijing" where he really meant to say "the United States"….but I think that’s being a little to kind to him.

He knows what he’s doing.

Likewise, on the front page the following day was an EXCLUSIVE (their highlighting and capitalisation) exposure by reporter Cameron Stewart of the "fact" that a "satellite ground station in the West Australian desert is being used by the Chinese military to help locate Australian and US navy warships in the region."

A close reading of the article shows nothing factual at all - just a series of speculations and half-truths emanating from Professor Des Ball, described as "the nation’s foremost expert on space-based espionage".

Despite an Australian government denial of the claims, buried towards the end of the article, this crap piece of pimp journalism was picked up by the likes of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age and given further prominence.

A spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, Miao Miao, had to submit a letter to the Australian to get the Chinese side of the story into print – not on the front page, but tucked away on p. 15 where it was the last letter printed.

Miao Miao found it "difficult to agree with" Cameron Stewart’s article.

"I note his claims," she wrote, "that a satellite ground station at Mingenew is being used to locate US ships.

"In fact, the Australian government recently confirmed that the station is entirely for commercial purposes. It identified no security concerns with operation of the facilities.

"People cannot but wonder the purpose of publishing such an article at this moment.

"China is Australia’s largest trading partner and has never posed any military threat to Australia. Any attempt to spread Cold War remnants is against the trend of the times."

But can we trust a Chinese denial?

It is not a newspaper on the national stage, but the Geraldton Guardian sent out a reporter to discover the truth.

Here is his article:

Chinese "spies" at Mingenew were the flavour of the US presidential visit week, judging by reports in a range of capital city newspapers.

They were excited by President Barack Obama’s declaration that the US would step up its military presence amid "growing fears about the rise of China".

And the satellite tracking station 20km west of Mingenew was claimed to be the target for nefarious Chinese military activities.

Australian National University Professor Des Ball was quoted as saying the federal government may have unwittingly acted against the national interest by allowing China to use the station to track its Shezhou satellite launched on November 1.

The satellite "was not just part of China’s space program but was used to collect electronic emissions from warships", it was claimed.

Geraldton Newspapers decided we had better get on to this, so a reporter and photographer were dispatched to investigate.

There the station’s manager, Vince Noyes, said the original story in a national newspaper was as far from the truth as its observation that Mingenew — in the middle of the Wheatbelt — was in "the WA desert".

"There’s no kerfuffle between the Chinese and the Americans about using the station," he said.
"They both signed international traffic in arms regulations and entered into a technical assistance agreement so China could use the station to track satellites associated with its proposed space station."

As well, Mr Noyes said, everything done through the station — now owned and operated by the Swedish Space Corporation — was overseen by the corporation’s onsite staff.
Mr Noyes works for Electro Optic Systems, which is subcontractor for the corporation’s Mingenew satellite tracking operations.

He said there was nothing secret or sinister about the station, which had been operating in various forms since 1979 before the Swedish Space Corporation became involved.

"Under the arms regulation agreement, required by the US because the corporation is using a satellite station owned by them but built by the Americans, there’s no way the Chinese can use the equipment for anything but scientific purposes," he said.

Mr Noyes said the "kerfuffle" arose because China had taken a lease on satellite station time and had recently placed tracking equipment in the station.

This was being used for tests to ensure correct docking of parts being assembled for the Chinese space station.

Mr Noyes said there were no guards or restrictions on visits to the satellite station, and its facilities were used by the United States, Geoscience Australia and the University of Tasmania as well as the Chinese.

"It’s even on the route for grey nomad wildflower tours," he said.

Mingenew Shire CEO Ian Fitzgerald also discounted claims that it was being used by the Chinese as some form of spy base.

"This has gone viral and I’ve been interviewed by the BBC and a Chinese newspaper about it," he said.

"Happily, the latest publicity simply places Mingenew at the centre of the universe, just where it should be," he said, adding that there might be an opening for a Chinese restaurant in the town.

There’s another reason China might have an interest in Mingenew.

The husband of local baker Michelle Boylands makes the fireworks used in big events in Geraldton.

"I guess we could sell some of them to the Chinese," she said.

So let me get this straight.
　
The US President stands in an Australian Parliament to lecture China on "playing by the rules" and "upholding international norms".
　
At the same time, he encourages us to sell uranium to India, one of only three states not to "uphold the international norm" of being a signatory to the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the others are Pakistan and Israel).
　
This is after he and Gillard have agreed to disregard "international norms" of political independence, state sovereignty and territorial integrity by stationing US troops on our soil who are answerable only to their own military command.
　
The purpose, as outlined by Hillary Clinton most clearly in an article in the November edition of Foreign Policy magazine, is to enhance the meddling by the United States in China’s waters under the banner of "defending freedom of navigation in the South China Sea".
　
There is bipartisan support for this from Gillard and Dr No although China, our top foreign direct investment destination and largest trading partner, is a country that has "played by the rules", having ratified the UN Law of the Sea, whilst the US has not.
　
For the US to dictate the terms of our subservience in disregard of international norms is a disgrace.

And the comprador journalists, like the comprador academics, are simply willing servants of imperialism to be named and shamed.

No to US troops in Australia!

2011-11-16T22:18:00.000-08:00

("Cartoon by Mark Rhodes - www.markart.com.au")

The Australian bourgeoisie is totally servile to the interests and needs of US imperialism.

The struggle for the redivision of the world into areas for the most profitable investment of export capital has direct implications for the Australian people.

We are cemented into a subservient political and military relationship with US imperialism on the basis of an economic situation that is fluid and changing. Part of that change involves the only significant potential challenger to US "full spectrum domination", and that is China. "Australia is China’s top foreign direct investment destination...China is Australia’s largest trading partner and will remain so for the foreseeable future" (see
http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=1616 ).

However, China is no longer free of the contradictions and crises of capitalism, its Gini coefficient is one of the highest in the world, and there is an underlying social discontent amongst its working and peasant classes. It is exporting capital to areas from which the US imperialists would dearly like to exclude it.

These circumstances mean that the current struggle for economic redivision of sources of raw materials and markets between the US, Western Europe and China (with smaller but significant input from India, Russia, Brazil) is directly involving Australia and that the political and military loyalties of the Australian bourgeoisie will sharpen contradictions at a potentially huge expense to our people and our class.

Thus, we have the news of the permanent stationing of US troops on Australian soil under conditions in which they are only answerable to the US.

The following comment was released today on the website of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist):

No to US troops in Australia!

In a shameful abdication of responsibility for the protection of Australian national independence and sovereignty, the Australian government has agreed to the permanent stationing of US troops in Australia.

US imperialist President Barak Obama announced the permanent stationing of 2500 US marines at Darwin’s Robertson Barracks on his mid-November visit.

In a cynical manipulation of media spin, the announcement was leaked the day after the annual misuse by the ruling class of people’s genuine remembrance of war dead on November 11.
In order to deflect popular opposition, the base will not be identified as a "US base" and the US Pacific Command troops will be rotated on a "pre-positioning" basis which one assumes means before being sent to other areas in the Pacific region.

Robertson currently houses 4500 Australian soldiers, and will have to be expanded to accommodate　the desired　US　deployment size.

Obama also indicated that a greater number of US war planes will use RAAF bases in the Top End including for live bombing training exercises, and there is talk of the Curtin naval base near Perth becoming virtually a permanent dock for ships and nuclear-powered submarines of the US Pacific Fleet.

US imperialism struggling to control the region

The Asia-Pacific Region is seen by the US imperialists as crucial to their continued economic, military and cultural domination of the globe. Establishing a much more prominent "forward presence" in the Pacific and Indian ocean regions is seen as central to out-manoeuvring China and keeping India under control respectively. (Gillard’s proposal to reverse the ban on sales of uranium to India has also been made on US instructions and is part of the same plan.)
This new development was the thrust of a revealing article in the November 2011 edition of Foreign Policy magazine, by Hillary Clinton.

Under the heading, "The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action", Clinton articulates a vision about being "smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values."
Central to that vision is positioning the US militarily to vie with China, or as she puts it, "defending freedom of navigation in the South China Sea".

The so-called "freedom of the seas" has been a bone of contention between colonialist and imperialist powers since at least the mid-1600s when Holland and Britain struggled over the issue.

It is ironic that the US purports to champion the principle, now embedded in article 87(1)a of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, since it is the only major power to refuse to ratify the Convention. China, on the other hand, has signed and ratified the Convention.
Clinton went on to define the new US regional strategy. "For starters, "she wrote, "it calls for a sustained commitment to what I have called ‘forward-deployed’ diplomacy. That means continuing to dispatch the full range of our diplomatic assets -- including our highest-ranking officials, our development experts, our interagency teams, and our permanent assets -- to every country and corner of the Asia-Pacific region."

We will, we will rule you!

It is not difficult to see that the dominant imperialist power will stop at nothing to deny sources of raw materials, access to labour, opportunities for investment and political and cultural influence to its competitors. In this respect, an imperialist power led by a Nobel Peace Prize winner is nothing but an imperialist power.

"We have to guarantee that the defense capabilities and communications infrastructure of our alliances are operationally and materially capable of deterring provocation from the full spectrum of state and nonstate actors," declared Clinton. It is almost like she has rewritten the old Queen lyric and is singing "We will, we will rule you!"

And Obama has made it clear that only the US can make global rules and that China must abide by them.

US imperialism redefines Australia’s subservience

Clinton again: "We are also expanding our alliance with Australia from a Pacific partnership to an Indo-Pacific one, and indeed a global partnership. From cybersecurity to Afghanistan to the Arab Awakening to strengthening regional architecture in the Asia-Pacific, Australia's counsel and commitment have been indispensable."

This is the US imperialist state machine dictating the terms of the service it expects from the client traitor class running Australia. It is not necessary to consult the Australian people on the role they wish to play internationally as they do not hold state power and are under the class dictatorship of a bourgeoisie that aligns with US imperialism.

Noting that "we have resumed joint training of Indonesian special forces units," Clinton observed that "The stretch of sea from the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Malacca to the Pacific contains the world's most vibrant trade and energy routes."

Hence, in addition to basing US forces at Robertson, there will be a significant permanent naval presence in Singapore. "The United States will be deploying littoral combat ships to Singapore, and we are examining other ways to increase opportunities for our two militaries to train and operate together", wrote Clinton.

All of this adds up to what Clinton called "a more broadly distributed military presence across the region (which) will provide vital advantages".

We Australians must reject the imposition on us of even greater subservience to US imperialism.
We must demand of our government that it develop and maintain a capacity for independence in foreign policy.

Ultimately that noble goal can only be achieved when we take state power into our own hands and formally establish national independence on the basis of a socialist economy.

Nationalise Qantas Now!

2011-10-31T21:12:00.000-07:00

Just days after receiving a 71% pay rise of around $2m, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, without warning, grounded the entire Qantas air fleet in an employee and customer lockout.

His tactic was to create a crisis which threatened the Australian economy thereby requiring the intervention of the Australian Government which convened a compulsory conference of Fair Work Australia, the national workplace relations tribunal.

In a marathon sitting, FWA rejected the option of a 21 day suspension of industrial action and took the harsher decision, supported by the Gillard Government, to terminate the disputes between Qantas and three unions.

The FWA decision underscores the lack of industrial and workplace rights enjoyed by Australians. It grants limited rights to “protected” industrial action, but only during and related directly to a bargaining period. And as Qantas workers now know, even those limited “protected” rights can be taken away at the whim of FWA.

Joyce is the front man for Qantas and the Qantas Board’s decision to up his pay to $5.1m per year was quite rightly taken as an affront by working class Aussies. Imagine earning $50,000 per year – quite a good wage, and many are below it – and then doing your sums and working out that it would take a full 40 years of slaving your guts out to amass what Joyce has been handed as an annual pay increase! That’s close enough to an entire lifetime of work. To earn the equivalent of Joyce’s total annual salary, that same worker on $50,000 would have to start working the day he/she was born, and not stop for 100 years!

We’ll come back to this disparity a little later.

Qantas: A private company loyal only to profit

Qantas badges itself as the ultimate Aussie icon. It boasts the flying kangaroo symbol, the Spirit of Australia slogan, and the I Still Call Australia Home theme song.

In 1993 the then government-owned flagship carrier was privatised by the neo-liberal wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating.

Foreign investors were allowed to own up to 49% of the ASX-listed company and today control about 38% of its shares.

The top four shareholders are giant multinational investment corporations (JP Morgan Nominees Australia, HSBC Custody Nominees Australasia Limited, National Nominees Pty Limited, Citicorp Nominees Pty Ltd) through whom most foreign equity in Qantas is channelled. These four big institutional investors control 71.06% of Qantas shares. The top twenty shareholders (0.014% of total shareholders) control 80.36% of the shares.

At the other end of the scale are the “mom and dad” shareholders who protested at last week’s AGM about Joyce’s management tactics and the failure of the company to provide dividends over the past two years.

The smallest shareholders – owning up to 1,000 shares each – number 51,449, or 38% of all shareholders. This 38% owns a mere 1.03% of Qantas shares. In the next category, there are 63,734 people owning between 1001 and 5000 shares. They constitute 48% of shareholders but only own 7.03% of shares. These two categories of small shareholders constitute 86% of all shareholders but only control 8.06% of the stock.

This is the reality of so-called “people’s capitalism”. The vast majority of shareholders can be totally opposed to Joyce’s tactics and the financial rewards which come his way but their will is frustrated and blocked by the tiny handful of big institutional investors who align themselves with foreign capital and its plans to bust Australian unions and relocate the company offshore.

The Qantas Board: hand-picked for the class struggle

It would be wrong to concentrate on Alan Joyce alone. He can be sacrificed if he remains on the nose. It is the composition of the Qantas Board that shows how its personnel have been selected with an eye to waging a vicious class struggle against its employees and against what might be loosely described as the Australian national interest.

The full list of the eleven Board members and their other directorships and interlocking corporate and social interests can be found here: (http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/board-of-directors/global/en )

First there is Qantas Chairman Leigh Clifford who was first appointed to the Board in 2007. He had been with mining giant Rio Tinto for 37 years. The multinational giant waged industrial and political war against the mining unions in Western Australia's Pilbara region and then attacked the coal unions in the Hunter Valley. One of its tactics, under Clifford who personally broke union picket lines, was to impose a lockout and threat to sack 430 striking miners.

No wonder an October 31 report in the Murdoch rag, the misnamed “Australian” states: “Qantas's lockout looks to have come straight from the playbook of accomplished union-buster Rio Tinto, where Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford spent his executive career.”

Another former Rio Tinto Director is Richard Goodmanson, born in Australia but with dual Australian and US citizenship. Goodmanson was President and CEO of America West Airlines, a budget carrier, from 1996 until April 1999. During his tenure at America West, the airline achieved the highest rate of growth of any hub-and-spoke major carrier in North America, but at a cost to employees and to maintenance standards.

Operational problems reared their ugly head throughout the summer of 1998. Mechanical problems increased, unfavourable press ensued, and employee stress reached a breaking point. Union issues were becoming more and more common, for the flight attendant contract was still open. Mechanics elected the Teamsters as their representative, and were negotiating their first contract. Dispatchers had just concluded their first contract on April 13.

A well-publicized FAA fine was imposed on the airline in June. The record $5 million fine was imposed over maintenance issues, primarily oversight and changes in recommended procedures. America West admitted no wrongdoing, and half the fine was forgiven after a restructuring of the maintenance oversight procedures. Eventually, this would lead to yet another change in heavy maintenance contractors.

In March 1999, struggle broke out between America West Airlines management and its 2,400 flight attendants. The latter were arguing for the suspension of a pay freeze instituted along with a 10% pay cut in 1995 when the carrier was battling to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to the Knight Ridder newsagency the ultimate threat “is that the company will simply shut down”.

“Such a move -- described in a Feb. 12 memo to all employees from President and CEO Richard R. Goodmanson -- would idle 12,000 workers, ground 300 daily flights and could occur as early as Friday. It also could cost the airline $5.5 million a day in lost revenue.”

“If an employment contract isn't reached between the airline and the flight attendants by 10 p.m. Friday, the workers have threatened a series of random, last-minute strikes designed to create chaos for the airline …”

A last minute agreement between the carrier and its cabin crew did indeed “avert chaos”.

Goodmanson has had to wait until October 2011 to enjoy a good old-fashioned lockout.

Then there is Garry Hounsell, appointed to the Board in 2005. Hounsell provides a direct link to legal firm Freehills of which he is also a Board Member. Freehills are leading activists in the class struggle and were the advisors to Patrick Stevedores during its 1998 campaign to bust the Maritime Union of Australia. In April of that year, Patricks sacked its workforce and imposed a lockout enforced by balaclava-wearing thugs, dogs and coppers. Freehills has a long history of developing campaigns for some of the worst employers in Australia. It is an enemy of the working class of Australia.

Dr John Schubert is a former President of the Business Council of Australia and provides a link between that organisation and the Qantas Board. It is through such links that the ruling class constantly discusses its tactics in the war on working Australians. The BCA represents the core of the mainly multinational corporations that generate the most extreme reaction against the rights and liberties of Australian people. Schubert is also a Director of foreign multinational BHP Billiton.

Other Board members include a former Senior Ministerial Adviser to the architect of Qantas privatisation, Paul Keating, as well as persons with interlocking directorships with banking, construction, transport, finance, mining, retail….

The Qantas Board is a war cabinet of the most reactionary, best organised and openly aggressive sections of the ruling class.

Executive salaries: the great divide

The outrage over Alan Joyce’s 71% pay rise is an indication of the mood of the people. From Tahrir Square to Wisconsin, from London is Burning to Occupy Wall Street, there is a growing anger about the obscene levels of private wealth and the insecurity and uncertainty of life for those at the bottom.

The following graphs are based on US data but are indicative of international trends:

The first shows that corporate profits are at an all-time high. This is despite the economic crisis of 2007-08 and represents a half-century high point not seen since the economic boost of the Korean War. Precarious employment is on the rise, entire nations are being rescued from bankruptcy at the expense of their people’s living standards, but corporate profits are safe!

The second shows that whilst the CEOs, the board members and the giant institutional shareholders are wallowing in wealth, the working class that creates that wealth is getting a smaller and smaller share of the growth. The rapidly-falling blue line is wages’ share of the economy. Every picture tells a story!

The third shows that CEO salaries, once a mere 50 times that of the average worker’s salary, are now 350 times as much. Economically and socially, these parasites live on a very different planet to the rest of us!

The last one shows the terrible reality of the last 15 years as CEO salaries and corporate profits have sky-rocketed, whilst production workers’ wages have remained more or less static, and the US Federal minimum wage has actually gone backwards.

Occupy Wall Street indeed!

Nationalise Qantas!

The disgraceful performance of the social democrats in privatising Qantas (Keating) and using Fair Work Australia to take away workers’ rights to industrial action (Gillard) can only be righted by renationalising the company.

For most practical purposes, the only way into and out of Australia is by air. The interests of our people require a national carrier, owned and operated by the Government. If it needs to be subsidised to provide a safe and reliable service, then so be it, although there is no evidence that such a government carrier would necessarily run at a loss. Management must include the unions representing all categories of employees.

If anything is to be sent offshore, let it be Alan Joyce and his reactionary Board.

Nationalise Qantas and empower the workers!

Zhengzhou residents support "Occupy Wall Street"

2011-10-13T16:31:00.001-07:00

All around the world people are being inspired by the US people's courageous campaign to Occupy Wall Street. In the belly of the beast, US citizens are saying that they have had enough of finance capital's exploitation and of its free ride on the backs of people everywhere.

The people of China have experienced a world free of imperialist finance capital but are now faced with the growth of privatisation and of capitalism. Occupy Wall Street has provided a unique opportunity for them to both express solidarity with the US mass movement, and to restate their support for socialism over capitalism.

I have translated the following report from a Chinese website. It is an action taken in the heroic proletarian city of Zhengzhou, home to the monument to the February 7, 1923 railway strike.

(Above: Main banner at the Zhengzhou rally reads "Firmly support the US people's great "Wall Street Revolution".)

The Chinese people support the Wall Street Revolution

On the afternoon of October 6, several hundred Zhengzhou residents gathered at the Zhengzhou City Provincial Workers’ Cultural Palace to support the recent mass movement to “Occupy Wall Street”.

Everyone had made a rational analysis, observing this fiery eruption in the back yard of the United States. A cadre from a state-owned enterprise said that the United States does evil everywhere in the world: whoever it wants to hit, it does; it interferes in the internal affairs of other countries; it subverts the political power of other countries; it brandishes the big stick of freedom and democracy with which to beat other people – and now it is its own turn and its true colours have been exposed.

(Above: working people donning armbands supporting Occupy Wall Street.)

A young man then took over from him and said that capitalism had already set off on a dead end road, and the people of the capitalist countries have started to awaken; a middle-aged man from Shandong working in Zhengzhou said that socialism must not only save China, it must also save the world.

The crowd then loudly shouted: “Long live the socialist system of public ownership! The private ownership system of capitalism will not last!”

Although Chairman Mao is no longer with us, the internationalism he taught us lives on!

Notes on May 7 Cadre Schools

2011-10-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

(Above: "Going to live and work in a productionteam and settle in the countryside to wage revolution".)

In 1974 I went to a May 7 Cadre School outside Beijing, saw high school students waiting at train stations to go "up into the hills and down to the countryside" to learn from the peasants about the conditions that had produced the momentous Chinese revolution. In Nanjing I spoke to a student, in his school, about going out to the country - he had been and had put in a request to go again. On the Shanghai wharves, I saw two young female doctors driving cranes - doing their required rotation of manual labour so that they would understand the conditons of the workers they might have to treat.

All of these socialist initiatives were wound down after Mao's death. Under Deng Xiaoping, intellectuals ("cadres") were allowed to complain about such "demeaning" practices and a whole market for whinging about the Cultural Revolution opened up in the West.

The author of this piece, which I have translated from Chinese, looks back fondly on his time in a May 7 Cadre School. Mao Zedong's instructions to Lin Biao about the creation of cadre schools is attached at the end for reference.

(Above: Advance courageously along the great and glorious road of Chairman Mao's '7 May Directive' )

Li Minyi: Notes on "May 7 cadre schools".

43 years ago today, Chairman Mao issued the “May 7th Directive"; 34 years ago --- that is, from April till September of 1975, I spent a few months as a “May 7 soldier” at the May 7 Cadre School of the General Staff Communication Department at Xuchang in Henan.

As far as entering the "May 7 cadre school" is concerned, because times then were different, and people’s situations were different, then each person's experiences were naturally not the same. For example, some people thought it was the “cowshed” where “cow demons and snake spirits” were locked up, and that they were no different to labor camps and prison sentences; some others thought that it was a labor-training school, conducive to the improvement of individual ideological consciousness and have always cherished the memory of that part of their life experience. There may people who had other experiences as well, but you can say for sure that I would like to belong to the latter group.

On the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of the issuing by Chairman Mao of the May 7th directive, with individuals remembering their experiences of May 7 cadre schools, and in so far as mine is a commemoration, and in so far as there are people who do not have experience or an understanding of that history, then we should not lose sight of such a beneficial resource.

Early cadre

In 1975 at the age of 29, I was a publicity officer in the first communications station of the General Staff of the Ministry of Communications in Beijing. In April, my work unit decided that I should go with four other people to a "May 7 cadre school." They were: deputy political commissar of the troops Wang Furang, in his fifties; Ding Wensheng, chief of security in his early 40s; the public health logistics section chief and a 30 year old assistant from the logistics department (I can’t remember the last two people’s names).

Although I don’t clearly remember the date, we took a train and got off at Xuchang in Henan province. A car sent by the cadres came to meet us and took us to our residence about 20 km outside the town. After arriving, we were quickly put into teams that had been arranged in advance by the school personnel. The head of the team was a 50 year-old cadre school cadre named Lu. He was the assistant to the head of the residential district. We and five comrades from the engineering headquarters (hereafter called EH) were put in one class and the section chief became class leader with young Assistant Wang from the EH as deputy class leader. Little Wang and I shared a room with two others from the EH. One of the latter was an acquaintance of mine, Liu Dingcai. During our time at Fudan University he was in the journalism department, and because one of my small group of classmates, Liu Guangsheng, was in his unit I knew him and remembered his name. Dingcai was younger than me by four or five years and was promoted to a cadre after graduation, and became the secretary charged with propaganda work in EH after he went to the cadre school. There was also someone called Liu Daozhu who was two or three years older than me who was a staff officer at EH. Our dormitory was on the second row of the Southern building and nearby, if you went east across Getiao Street, there was a big fish breeding pond.

The "May 7 cadre schools" was a division-level unit of the General Staff under the Ministry of Communications. Principal Liu Mingsheng, who lived a plain life and was approachable, was an old Red Army man. The cadre school was located about 20 kilometers south of Xuchang, surrounded by flat terrain. Less than a kilometer south of our dormitory was a river more than 10 meters wide flowing from east to west, although when the depth was around one meter or so, it did not flow. According to legend, it was the Yunliang River excavated by Cao Cao during the Three Kingdoms period. The deputy team leader would take us to catch fish by hand along this river. Once or twice each year, using this method, he would catch fish.

The actual procedure is to block up the two sides of the opening under the bridge, drain away the water inside, and you would be able to catch several dozen jin (one jin is equal to 0.5 kilos) of fish, mostly carp, and sticky fish. Bathing in the river I caught a small soft-shelled turtle, weighing about two to three liang (there are ten liang per jin so each liang is 50 grams). It was brought back to Beijing by Deputy Political Commissar Wang, and placed in his fish tank at home where I have seen it.

The whole "May 7 cadre school" had over 2,800 mu of land (one mu is equal to 0.165 acres). The main crops are wheat and rapeseed. After arriving at the school, we divided our time roughly equally between studying military administration and doing productive labour. Whilst at the cadre school, we also arranged to spend a week visiting the Red Flag Canal in Linxian (Lin County), and had two weeks in nearby rural areas, implementing the "three togethers", ie living, eating and working with the people. However, I just do not remember the name of that village.

(Above: "The university moves to our village")

Learn to farm

During our time at the "May 7 cadre school," the main types of farm work our class engaged in were: digging fish ponds, harvesting rapeseed harvesting and sun-drying the wheat, opening up wasteland to grow vegetables, construction of walls for a table-tennis room, making sun-dried bricks etc.

Because there was a relatively high degree of mechanization at the cadre school, harvesting of wheat was by machine, and there was a tractor ploughing team of around ten people. That combine harvester was an energetic fellow, reaping on one side and threshing on the other, and not long after the wheat could be transported to the site for airing and drying. We only had to cut the left-over wheat, and there was not much labor intensity involved. Building mud walls and making mud bricks were duties that only our class had to undertake. Because did it so well the first time, afterwards whenever there was this type of work, it was always done by my class. It is worth mentioning that the squad leader Lao Ding, was an expert, a genius. With a hand-held sickle, he looked like an old farmer; when he picked up the trowel, he looked like a qualified mason. He led the class in having a beautiful life, and the team cadres and the students all praised him with one voice.

All of our spare time was used up planting vegetables. Around the edges of the place where we were stationed and along the sides of several fish ponds, there was a weedy area which we dug deeply and turned into a vegetable plot. The teams and groups all competed, and after doing their best to dig out the vegetable plot, planted eggplant, hot peppers, kidney beans, pumpkin squash, and then harvested the vegetables and delivered them to the canteen, had said that registration of a certain time in the team announced the results will always be outstanding praise and encouragement.

Having said that, there is a small episode I’d like to raise. Section Chief Zhang from our class, later on divided up our group to help work in the kitchen. When he was opening up wasteland to grow vegetables, he and several companions from the canteen planted watermelon at the side of a fish pond, and they grew fairly well, and in particular, after they formed into small melons, growing quickly, a new one each day, he and his companions went there each day to enjoy some. Sooner or later some were harvested, but we had not heard of them being turned over to the canteen, and they had all been privately taken care of. However, a few of the mischievous boys in our dormitory had helped eliminate the first relatively big watermelon.

That was one night around ten or eleven o'clock, when a few in our dormitory had not fallen asleep; I do not remember exactly whose ingenious idea it was to pick a ripe watermelon and take it away, but others respond immediately. So we used the dormitory near the edges of the ponds and dressed in shorts and singlets, and quietly reached the watermelon ground, took the melon off, then holding it tightly in our arms, carried it to the table tennis room, and quickly completed our mission. To confuse the masters of melon, they then selected a large melon skin and put it back where the melon had been, camouflaging it with some melon leaves.

This method was really effective, and it wasn’t until 3 or 4 days later that we heard Old Zhao and others arguing about who ate his watermelon, causing a few of us in our dormitory to smile for quite a while! After I’d been back in Beijing, I once ran into Section Chief Zhang, and recalling the matter I asked him: "Section Chief, did you ever find out who ate that watermelon?" He said: "It wasn’t those guys from the mess squad! " It was only then that I told this upright elder brother the truth.

(Above: "Take the road of the May 7 Cadre Schools and persevere in continuing the revolution")

The officers and men are equal

If you were to ask me what was the most prominent feature of life in a "May 7 cadre school", it would be the equality between officers and men, that all were of equal standing. It should be said that this "May 7th road" had a powerful impact on the traditional hierarchy and on the consciousness of “being an officer".

On the first day of the cadre school, it was announced in the team that in order to get rid of bourgeois right, all those who had come here were “May 7th soldiers” taking the "May 7th Road", and that all were students, regardless of the level of their original positions in the army, and all were to be addressed as Old Wang or Old Li and that we were no longer to call them by their previous post and rank.

The whole team had three levels of leadership cadres, they are the Minister of the Ministry of Communications Shi Fuyin, the first deputy political commissar of the Ministry of Communications, Wang Furang and the second assistant director Wang, (I remember that he had been appointed as the head of the cadre school during this period). There were also many people who belonged to the Section Chief under the Head of Department.

The quality of these leading comrades was very high, and they could all place strict demands on themselves, could transform themselves into ordinary soldiers. They were older than us and had higher positions than us, but did not put on the airs of an officer while at the cadre school. They ate and boarded with us and shared our entertainment, and did the same farm work as us, so that they could indeed draw closer to us young people and share our intimate feelings. This kind of life makes us feel warm, free and casual, but also enabled us to learn many good ideas and many good traditions alongside the older comrades.

Take our deputy political commissar Wang Furang, in the army that’s a division-level head, and as we were usually on familiar terms, how could we not just call him Old Wang! In the cadre school it could happen that his former subordinate Section Chief Ding became his class leader and often assigned Lao Wang his tasks; young people from outside work units shouted at him, telling him to do this or that. This person, Lao Wang, was really easy-going, and he got along very well in his relationship with young people, and had lots of special stories in his head. Many times, when resting from work, they were all listening to him telling stories. Many people know that Wu Dalang (“Big” Wang) went to Japan to be king, and that to avoid the taboo on the use of the personal name of the king, the Japanese have stories about “Little” Lang, “One”Lang, “Supreme” Lang, but the first time that some of us had heard of this was from Lao Wang. My classmate Liu Dingcai later went on a work trip to Beijing from outside and made a special point of calling on Lao Wang from all those years ago.

Checking the harvest

It needs to be said that there were lots of things to point out in the cadre school’s harvest. For example, by undergoing the cadre school life, the mutual understanding of the various subordinate units was enhanced and the relations between them were neighbourly and friendly; at the cadre school we were all able to eat, sleep, build up our physique, learn to do farm work, in order to reap tens of millions of pounds of food out of the effort , sprinkled with sweat; In addition to the classroom arrangements for military and political education, we also went out of the barracks to visit and study, to broaden our field of vision, to experience and understand the hard life of the masses of peasants in Henan. This is not specifically described here, and there are only two things that left a deep impression to tell you about.

First, being involved in an emergency when on a study trip to Lin County.

According to the team's arrangements, the entire unit of one hundred people went out from the cadre school, visiting 27 commemorative monuments in Zhengzhou, Henan, and visited the Red Flag Canal in Lin County. When visiting Lin County, we ran into a rainstorm, and it is said that the area of Xuchang, Luohe, and Zhumadian in the space of 24 hours had 300 millimeters of rainfall. The rainstorm led to a flood disaster, and many farmland paths were washed away. On that day in the boarding house, we heard that several members of a certain village in the county had gone out to do farm work, but because the flood had washed out their bridge, they were caught stranded on a sandbar, and that they had already been without food and water for one day and night, and needed to be rescued. As an army made up of the sons of the people, how could we sit by and do nothing when the people faced difficulties! The leader of the cadre school political department (political work section?) Director Liu, (who afterwards moved to the Communications Command Academy in Wuhan as a teacher in the Marxist-Leninist Teaching and Research Institute where his office was alongside mine) after discussions with the team’s cadres, asked the county leaders for a combat assignment, and after authorization, formed an emergency squad of more than 20 young people who could swim, and they immediately rushed to the rescue site.

Dingcai and I were both honoured to be approved to participate in the operation. I remember that it was in the afternoon, and that we first went in a big car, but that as the distance was not far and because the asphalt had been washed away up ahead we had to get out and go off on foot. On the way to our destination, we stopped at a riverside where we could see the bridge that was destroyed, and we could also see across where the river was divided to where there were two members of the trapped. We needed to cross the first river, but although it was only 10 meters wide, the depth was unpredictable, and there was a large willow tree that had been swept into the river. The first person to jump into the water, surnamed Wang, (unfortunately I cannot remember his given name) had a rope tied at the waist and took the lead. He gave the rope a pull and a few others jumped into the water, and advanced to the bank of the second river to where the people were trapped. From the waves on the water it could be seen that the river was not deep, but the current were very turbulent and the water was also very wide, about forty to fifty meters across. In coordination with the people trapped on the other side a small stone was tied to the rope which was then thrown and the rope pulled tight. Our side of the river we tried to raise the rope high, to try and help Xiao Wang get back across the river but this was without success, and Xiao Wang swallowed a lot of water. It was very dangerous. As we were anxiously thinking of other ways, the local People's Liberation Army arrived with a rubber dinghy, which they successfully used to reach the stranded people.

The stranded people were not rescued by us, but the county highly appraised us and subsequently gave a banquet to express their gratitude to all of us. The banquet was in the main hall of the country guest house, and there was a huge variety of dishes on the table and wine glasses, as well as a variety of fruits, such a rich feast as I have never again experienced. After returning to the cadre school, Xiao Wang was awarded a merit citation Third Class for his bravery in leading the attempt to save the people.

Second, the recreational activities in which we participated during our time at the cadre school.

I would have to say that as regards cultural and sports activities, there was mainly sports. There was only one thing that could be regarded as “literary” and that was one night after there had been a forecast of rain, and the class worked more than an hour overtime to carry tens of thousands of pounds of wheat in storage bag into a warehouse before the rain came. The next day I wrote a report on it which was broadcast by the school radio station.

In quite a few sports there were those who were considered to be activists. In addition to the chess and poker competitions organized by the team, there were those who had played a lot of basketball.

The poker competition was played in ascending grades, and with my partner Liu Taozhu we progressed through several competitions in the class, district and whole unit and finally became the champions. Although the prize was only the pack of cards used in the competition, it caused us both to become targets of public criticism. After the competition, not only did many people in neighbouring dormitories want to play cards with us, but so did both Minister Shi and Director Wang of the Ministry of Communications, who lived in the row in front of us, and although I didn’t know whether they were not convinced that we were champions, or whether they were considering finding an ace to compete with us, but in any case we were invited there many times for a trial of strength.

Basketball was the most frequent activity for a few months. Besides spontaneously organized competitions within the team and between teams, there was a round robin competition organized for the whole school. Liu Dingcai and I both became enthusiasts and took part in the blue team. Our team didn’t mess around, but had standards. The team leader and captain were both 46 or 47 year-old old comrades. Every time before a game, we would have meetings to study strategy and tactics; after the match we would also sit down for serious analysis and lessons learned. So we improved with each game. During the games, individuals could stay on the court the whole time, and although I was playing guard, because the captain also played guard, he asked me to be a flexible guard and encouraged me to take the opportunity to shoot, so each game I also had a score. Hearing the commentary of the comrades in the propaganda team over loudspeakers giving recognition of our attack and defence was a a proud feeling to have. On one occasion, in a match against the tractor ploughing team, their forward and I hit our heads against each other. Above his eye was a two centimeter long gash which required 78 stitches; I had a centimeter long and half a centimeter deep gash as well. That lad was a couple of years younger than I, modest and shy, and we both laughed as we collided and later maintained a good relationship.

After the round robin had been played and a whole school team created, only me and a big man surnamed Liang from our team were selected. Unfortunately, they just announced the team, but were unable afterwards to organize training and competition with other units. Nevertheless, this incident also inspired me as when all is said and done, it affirmed my participation as an individual. The experience of playing basketball in the cadre school it can be said was the most uplifting feeling I ever had in a lifetime of playing basketball.

Attachment: Chairman Mao’s May 7 instructions of 1966

Notes On The Report Of Further Improving The Army’s Agricultural
Work By The Rear Service Department Of The Military Commission
May 7, 1966
[SOURCE: Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, a Red Guard Publication.]

Dear Comrade Lin Biao,
I have received the report from the Rear Service Department which you sent me on 6 May. I think it is an excellent plan. Is it possible to send this report to all the military districts and ask them to hold discussions of it among the cadres at the army and division levels? Their views should be reported to the Military Commission and through it to the Centre for approval. After that, suitable directives should be issued to them. Please consider this suggestion.

In the absence of a world war, our army should be a big school. Even under conditions of the third world war, it can still serve as a big school. In addition to fighting the war, it must do other work. In the eight years of the second world war, did we not do just that in the anti-Japanese base areas? In this big school, the army should learn politics, military affairs, and culture, and engage in agricultural production. It can build up its own middle- and small-size workshops to produce goods for its own use and the exchange of other goods of equal value. It can take part in mass work, factory work, and rural socialist education. After socialist education, there are always other kinds of mass work for it to do, to unite the army and people as one. The army should also participate in the revolutionary struggle against capitalist culture. In this way, it carries out military-educational, military-agricultural, military-industrial, and military-civilian work. Naturally, these kinds of work should be properly co-ordinated and a distinction should be made between major and subsidiary work. A unit can select one or two from the agricultural, industrial, and civilian combination, but not all three. In this way, the tremendous power of several million soldiers will be felt.

Likewise, workers should, in addition to their main industrial work, learn military affairs, politics, and culture, and take part in the socialist educational movement and in criticizing the capitalist class. Under adequate conditions, they should also engage in agricultural production, following the example of the Daqing Oilfield.

The communes do their main agricultural work (including forestry, fishing, animal husbandry, and subsidiary trades), but they must also learn military affairs, politics, and culture. When circumstances allow, they should collectively set up small-scale factories and take part in criticizing the capitalist class.

The students are in a similar position. Their studies are their chief work; they must also learn other things. In other words, they ought to learn industrial, agricultural, and military work in addition to class work. The school years should be shortened, education should be revolutionized, and the domination of our schools by bourgeois intellectuals should by no means be allowed to continue.

Under favourable conditions, people in commerce, service trades, and party and government offices should do likewise.

What has been said above is neither new nor original. Many people have been doing this for some time, but it has not yet become a widespread phenomenon. Our army has been working in this way for decades. Now it is on the threshold of new developments.

Gillard's spin doctor won't cure the sicknesses of social democracy

2011-09-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

(Above, John McTernan, the Man Behind Blair)

Julia Gillard’s decision to appoint British media commentator/ political strategist/ spin doctor John McTernan to the role of her personal director of communications says all that is wrong with social democracy.

Social democracy exists to facilitate a unitary, but double-sided objective: to make capitalism acceptable to the working class, and to make the working class acceptable to capitalism.

It achieves the latter by channelling the aspirations of the working class into the capitalist institution of parliament, where they can be dealt with safely by the protocols, laws and conventions established over the centuries by the bourgeoisie.

It achieves the former by confining those aspirations to the economic system of capitalism in which each minor tweaking of the system is predicated on the continuing ownership of the decisive means of production by the minority capitalist class.

Imperialism and social democratic support for neo-liberalism

From the 1970s onwards, imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism has increasingly seen the speculative component of finance capital developing into more and more advanced forms through a combination of complicated financial “instruments” such as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and nano-technological innovations that have increased both the speed and volume of speculative trading.

The requirements of speculative finance capital for barrier-free trading gave rise to neo-liberalism in the political field, championed first by right-wing reactionaries such as Reagan and Thatcher, and then by social democrats such as Hawke and Keating in Australia, and Tony Blair in the UK. Indeed, Blair’s neo-liberalism represented such a qualitative break from “old” social democracy that it was christened as “New Labour”.

Despite Rudd taking a swipe at the right-wing variants of neo-liberalism in the wake of the GFC, he firmly committed his government to the task of “saving capitalism from itself”. His recipe was for a massive stimulus package in construction and infrastructure followed by a painful public belt-tightening when capitalism had recovered.

He was sacked as Prime Minister by his own colleagues when Deputy PM Julia Gillard promised to restore relations with the mining industry by wrecking the Resources Super Profits Tax proposed by Rudd.

However, Gillard has proven to be a Midas in reverse. Everything she has touched politically has turned to shit. She has the lowest approval rating of any Prime Minister; hence her appointments of comedian Corrine Grant and spin doctor John McTernan to give her the two things she so singularly lacks: humour and substance.

So who is John McTernan?

It almost says enough of him that he was Political Secretary to Tony Blair.

McTernan is a Scot, but no friend of Scottish nationalism.

He is also currently working for the South Australian government as a Thinker in Residence with a focus on the two troubled areas of health and medicine.

He has been a keynote speaker at various forums on public service reform. His neologisms include “co-design” which essentially means that governments should no longer monopolise the process of setting goals and tasks for the public sector; these should be “co-designed by the users and providers together”. It’s a rather neat new spin on the neo-liberal privatisation agenda. McTernan is no shrinking violet in this area: “I want a revolution in public services. I want an end to the public sector monopoly on provision (The Scotsman, July 5, 2011).”

Strangely, for a so-called social democrat, he has been full of praise for Thatcher’s attacks on the public sector: “Privatisation and deregulation by the Tories saved British industry”, he wrote in The Scotsman on September 28, 2011. Oh, that the Tories should have such a stridently social democratic enemy…..

Schools: enter the market, Stage Right

Gillard’s pet project has been the so-called “Education Revolution”. She has imposed the thoroughly-discredited Joel Klein’s agenda for attacks on public education in New York onto the whole of the Australian nation. Look for more of the same with McTernan advising her. He even out-Kleins Klein.

“And as for schools: well, what an awful idea that for-profit providers could come into the market. Horror of horrors, failing schools might have to close. In other words, might be driven out of business (The Scotsman, July 11, 2011).”

This sort of sneering right-wing dismissal of the problems in and prospects for under-resourced schools in low SES neighbourhoods is precisely what we might expect of an Andrew Bolt or an Alan Jones.

McTernan castigates the Welsh and the Scots for getting rid of school league tables. “Scotland must learn a lesson and bring back league tables to salvage the credibility of our education system”, he wrote in The Scotsman, 29 June 2011.

This should reassure Labor-voting educators in Australia…NOT!!!

It is part of the disservice that social democracy does to the working class and progressive movements that it promotes John McTernan and his neo-liberal views as someone who has “worked for the progressive movement for more than 25 years” (advert for a presentation by McTernan on July 9 to the social democratic organisation, Progressive Australia).

His appointment as director of communications to Julia Gillard shows the extent to which she is prepared to distance herself from any really progressive agenda as she sees out her term of office.

Irati Wanti - the poison, leave it!

2011-09-28T19:47:00.001-07:00

(Above: Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta led a successful fight against a nuclear waste dump from 1998-2004.)

The Federal Government’s plan to use Aboriginal land on Muckaty Sation in the Northern Territory as a nuclear waste dump is being strongly opposed by elders who claim that the Northern Land Council incorrectly identified only one family as the owners of what is an important male initiation site of the Yapa Yapa people. (For background to traditional owners' opposition to the Muckaty dump, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcuNpT84Ovo&feature=colike )

Now other groups are likely to find reason to fight the Muckaty dump with the release of a Federal Government report that advises sending waste from the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney via the Riverland and South Australia.

This roundabout route has been identified because residents of the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney have strenuously opposed the passage of up to 8000 tonnes of radioactive materials through their region.

A further 67 tonnes of intermediate level waste will be shipped from Scotland and France to Adelaide for the Muckaty dump.

The last time a Federal Government identified a site for a nuclear dump was in 1998 when John Howard proposed using a site in South Australia in semi-desert country within the Woomera Prohibited Area.

For the next 6 years, Aboriginal women at Coober Pedy led a struggle to prevent the transport of radioactive waste to Billa Kalina region.

They established the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta or Coober Pedy Women’s group and united with environmentalists and unionists in an ultimately successful campaign.

They ran their campaign under the banner of Irati Wanti – the poison, leave it.

Now the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta are having to face the prospect of nuclear waste being transported through their lands to be deposited at Muckaty Station in opposition to the wishes of the traditional owners of that place.

Muckaty Station and Billa Kalina before it were regarded as “remote” and therefore “safe” as nuclear waste dumps by city-based politicians. However, the question of “for whom” must be asked of the concept of remoteness. For people living along the proposed transport route, or in the region of the proposed dump, there is nothing “remote” at all.

Huge B-double trucks are not immune from accidents either along any leg of the route.

Hopefully the traditional owners of Muckaty will win their Federal Court challenge to the dump.

In any case, opposition to the proposed route is sure to grow.

Qantas workers display the Spirit of Australia

2011-09-27T23:46:00.000-07:00

(Above: Qantas baggage handlers block an airport access road in Adelaide after walking of the job.)

Qantas badges itself as the Spirit of Australia and was once the pride of Australian skies.

In March 1993, under the Labor Government of neo-liberal adherent Paul Keating, this once proud symbol of the nation was privatised, with British Airways taking a 25% stake. The remaining shares were disposed of in 1995–96 and 1996–97 with other foreign investors taking a further 20% of the stock.

Spirit of Australia? That’s blatantly false advertising. It has brought in a foreign CEO to break the Qantas unions and outsource jobs to low-wage Asian countries.

Qantas pilots last took industrial action 45 years ago. It is not part of their culture to think in terms of having to wage struggles against management. However, earlier this year they sought permission from Fair Work Australia for protected industrial action. So far, this has been limited to pro-union in-flight announcements.

Maintenance engineers who are members of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association have been undertaking a rolling series of one-hour strikes against Qantas during the past four weeks. After October 10, this is likely to escalate to rolling four-hour strikes.

Qantas also has a third front of disputation with 28 Qantas flights cancelled across Australia recently after four-hour strikes by thousands of baggage handlers and catering staff belonging to the Transport Workers Union.

All groups of Qantas employees are incensed at the company’s arrogance and refusal to engage in serious negotiations.

Even the shareholders are unhappy, having had no dividend in the 2011 financial year, and having watched the share price fall 16% so far this calendar year.

Now shareholders and employees will be told that CEO Alan Joyce received a 71% pay rise to $5 million. On top of this, the airline's profit doubled in 2011 from the 2010 financial year to $249 million.

Even the bourgeois press has had to comment on the company’s effrontery.

“So this is an airline that has pleaded poor mouth with its international business, which lost a claimed $200 million, wants to cut 1,000 jobs, and is fighting with its unions,” said an article in the online Australasian Investment Review (see: http://www.aireview.com.au/index.php?act=view&catid=8&id=13098&setSub=1 ).

The company’s disregard for the interests of its customers and its workforce, its deteriorating reputation as a safe airline, its use as a golden calf by senior executives all show that privatisation has been a disaster.

Qantas should be renationalised without compensation and restored to its former position of pride of place among the airlines of the world.

……………………

And by the way, back in 1989……

The last major dispute in the air was between the now defunct Ansett Airlines and its pilots.

It was one of the most dramatic industrial disputes in the country's history, and led to a massive fine of $6 million being imposed on the Pilot’s Federation.

The slimy Labor Hawke Government called in Air Force pilots to help break the Pilots Federation.

Hawke demonized the pilots, playing on their privileged position as part of the aristocracy of labour. It was hard for low-paid workers to feel much sympathy for the claims made by the Pilots Federation, but the pilots were employees and the Federation was their union.

Hawke was a former head of the peak union body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions and had a track record of betraying workers’ struggles.

Disgusted by yet another confirmation of the capitalist nature of social democratic parties and governments, I wrote the following in support of the pilots (Australian coins have the face of the English Queen on one side!):

On the fining of the Pilot’s Federation

I have 6,000,000 new reasons for hating the bourgeoisie
And every one of them a dollar
Six million new monarch-faced reminders
Issued in the currency of conflict.

And I have 6,000,000 new reasons for detesting the bourgeoisie
Each a bitter mouthful shared with pilot families
Six million new sinewed angers
Wrench at my gut like some disease

And 6,000,000 new reasons for loathing the bourgeoisie
Each one a lash across the back
Driven forward to the past of the convict dream:
To organise, to fight, to act

And in acting, 6,000,000 multiplied strengths
And every one of them a worker
The lash-backed, bitterness-baited, capital-less throng
Who, by such punishments unite, and know they are strong.

20/2/90

Humanitarian bombs

2011-09-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

This short article from the Telegraph dated September 16 2011 reveals the incredible generosity of the imperialist coalition that is providing humanitarian support to the anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya.

On a daily basis the effluent capitalist nations are using up large amounts of weaponry and armaments at great cost to ensure that the evil Gaddafi is not killing Libyans.

The article reads:

Libya: RAF carries out biggest raid yet on Gaddafi forces
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
4:55PM BST 16 Sep 2011

The RAF has stepped up it attacks on Col Gaddafi's forces carrying out its biggest ever raid on Libya, destroying more than 20 targets in a day.

The strikes come as defence sources suggest that a "final push" is beginning to develop to remove the former Libyan regime troops from their last strongholds.

SAS troops are now operating close to the front line helping coordinate attacks on the last four areas held by Gaddafi's troops.

They are also operating alongside MI6 and CIA officers who are attempting to hunt down Col Gaddafi, his sons and other former regime leaders.

As part of the intensifying attacks for the first time the RAF used a salvo of two dozen Brimstone missiles firing on multiple targets.

A formation of tanks and armoured vehicles was spotted shelling civilian areas in the regime held town of Sebha, deep in the desert 400 south of Tripoli.

A flight of RAF Tornado GR4s was sent to carry out a dawn raid on laden with dozens of the tank-killing missiles that are normally only fired individually.

"Brimstone has the capacity to be fired in a large salvo utilising millimetric radar to simultaneously guide each missile to a separate target," said Major Gen Nick Pope, the Armed Forces spokesman.

"Since a large concentration of former regime armoured vehicles had been located by Nato, this mission saw the salvo firing technique used for the very first time in action, with some two dozen missiles fired." At least eight tank and armoured vehicles were seen to be on fire with several others severely damaged.

The assault came hours after another formation of Tornados took off from RAF Marham in Norfolk, loaded with Storm Shadow cruise missiles which were fired on a military vehicle depot and military buildings.

"Surveillance analysis by Nato had confirmed were in use as a base for those Qaddafi troops and mercenaries who continue to suppress the local population," the MoD said.

As rebel ground forces continue to move towards the coastal town of Sirte their progress has been helped by a joint forces of Typhoons and Tornados that used Paveway and Brimstone bombs to destroy one tank, four multiple rocket launchers and four other armed vehicles.
………………

The URL for the article (which contains a beaut colour photo of a humanitarian RAF Tornado GR4 searching for people to save) is:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8768976/Libya-RAF-carries-out-biggest-raid-yet-on-Gaddafi-forces.html

Major General Nick Pope, quoted above, loves the big words he can use to describe the Brimstone bombs. Brimstone is named after a brand of ice-cream sold by a little street vendor just inside the Pearly Gates. People who receive Brimstone bombs fired at them from those big Tornado GR4s say that they are soft and sweet and bring some welcome relief from the desert sun.

Each Brimstone costs £105,000. That’s a lot of money to save Libyan people’s lives. Luckily Mr Gaddafi still has some old tanks and armoured vehicles, ‘cos the good Major General said they could practice “the salvo firing technique… for the very first time in action”. How’s that for exciting! Two dozen were used…that’s £2,520,000 worth of humanitarian assistance in one…er…hit.

You can read about the people-saving Brimstones and who makes them here, at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brimstone_(missile)

Brimstones are made by those nice French people who put extra sparkle into the seas around Muroroa Atoll down our way a while back. They have a company called MBDS. They are helped out by the British, Italians and the Spanish. There’s hope for the world yet when countries can cooperate in ventures for humanitarian purposes like this. Here’s a nice little bit on MBDA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBDA

Our nice friends at Raytheon (and Lockheed Martin) are helping the Libyan people too by providing the British and the French with some lovely Paveway missiles. They look pretty coming down out of the sky. It’s really a cheap way of getting rid of some old “armed vehicle” (sic). There’s a cute picture of a Paveway missile here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paveway

The article also refers to “another formation of Tornados (which) took off from RAF Marham in Norfolk, loaded with Storm Shadow cruise missiles which were fired on a military vehicle depot and military buildings.” Loaded with them eh? See what I mean? This is noble generosity for sure. ‘Cos they cost £790,000 each and what’s money after all when you’ve got some old building to blow up? Much more entertaining than putting threepenny bungers under jam tins like we did when we still had Guy Fawkes Day. You can read about them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Shadow

Celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the defeat of the Anti-Communist Referendum

2011-09-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

September 22, 2011 marks the 60th anniversary of the defeat of the attempt by the Australian Government to ban the Communist Party of Australia.

The reactionary government of Sir Robert Menzies had sought to crush the Australian working class in the interests of British and US imperialism by destroying its most far-seeing and genuine voice: the party of the working class.

Menzies first tried to introduce legislation to ban the CPA and to proscribe affiliated organizations such as peace committees and trade unions. He sought to reverse the onus of proof, a foundation of Western bourgeois democracy, by granting the secret police (established by Labor) the power to declare a person to be a communist.

So reprehensible were the contents of his Communist Party Dissolution Act that the conservative High Court of Australia made a 6-1 determination to strike down the Act.

This was after the vacillating leadership of the social democratic Labor Party had agreed to allow the bill to pass through the Senate, then under Labor Party control.

Menzies refused to accept the High Court decision and decided on a referendum to ban the CPA. In the 6 months between the High Court decision in March and the September referendum, a colossal campaign was waged by communists and other democratically-minded forces to defeat Menzies.

Those forces included the ALP’s deputy leader, Dr H.V. Evatt, and many rank and file members of the Labor Party. Real credit goes to the courageous members of the Eureka Youth League and the Communist Party who door-knocked, held street corner and factory gate meetings, and travelled to country towns to address farmers and rural labourers in defiance of the slander that they were “traitors” and “Red rats”.

A substantial contribution was also made by then leader of the Victorian state committee of the CPA, the barrister E.F. Hill. Ted Hill later led the movement to reconstitute the Communist Party after it succumbed to revisionism, emerging as the first Chairperson of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) in 1964.

Evatt’s personal contribution to the campaign stands in stark contrast to the neo-liberal warriors in the leadership of today’s Labor Party.

Addressing a Wikileaks support rally in Canberra last December, Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen referred to the High Court defeat of Menzies’ anti-communist bill, saying: “ What happened next is unbelievable in terms of parliamentary performance today. The leader of the Labor Party, ‘Doc’ Evatt, led the campaign against banning the Communists. He took up this cause with the support of only 12 percent of the population. Where were the focus groups? Evatt won the popular vote after tens of thousands of supporters turned that 12 percent into a slender majority. Where is an ALP leader today with the guts to follow Evatt’s example? Moreover, the taking up of an unpopular cause did not harm Labor’s popular support. At a half Senate election in May 1953, the Labor vote increased by more than 5 percent on the poll in April 1951.”

Under the Australian Constitution, a referendum must have the support of a majority of voters and a majority of the six states in which they vote. Menzies lost on both counts - narrowly – but still lost. Only 49.5% of voters supported the “Yes” proposition whilst the states voted 3-3 which did not count as a majority vote. Nevertheless, it was a humiliating defeat for Menzies and his imperialist masters. To have lost the vote having had such strong support only months before showed just how effective was the mass campaigning which largely focused on drawing parallels between Menzies and the fascist tactics of Hitler and Co.

We Australians can rightly celebrate the events of 60 years ago today alongside the great struggles at Eureka, Barcaldine, Port Kembla and around the great issues of defending Aboriginal rights, of fighting for the equality of women with men, of anti-conscription and the Vietnam War, of Clarrie O’Shea’s stand against penal powers, and of Ark Tribe’s defiance of the ABCC.

There are more struggles we can celebrate, and there will be more in the future.

Long live September 22, 1951!

Cheering the prospect of death

2011-09-21T00:28:00.000-07:00

The ugly NATO war to destroy Libyan independence was launched as a “humanitarian act of assistance” for the people of Libya.

As it grinds on the farce is maintained that the 23,248 sorties conducted by NATO war planes between 31 March and 19 September are somehow protecting Libyan life, rather than pounding the hell out of it.

I say it is a farce because no-one complicit in this war of aggression really believes in humanitarianism.

The rabid right does not even extend humanitarianism to people of its own country.

Witness the following exchange between the US CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Republican Representative Ron Paul during last Monday’s debate between Republican presidential candidates.

Blitzer asked what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six months of intensive care.

Mr. Paul replied, “That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks.”

Mr. Blitzer pressed him again, asking whether “society should just let him die.”

And the crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of “Yeah!”

And this is the country that is behind giving “humanitarian assistance” to the Libyans???

All kinds of thinking are stamped with the brand of a class; the consciousness of people is determined by their conditions of existence or social being.

Those who enjoy great privilege and wealth, generally speaking, are devoid of humanitarian feelings and compassion.

Whether death comes from a Raytheon-built Paveway missile or from the poverty that precludes health care cover, that death is cheered if it helps maintain class privilege.

Please don't ask Rio Tinto to pay their way...

2011-08-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

(Source: News Corp)

Rio Tinto has chalked up a record first-half profit of $7.6bn as it cashes in on surging resources prices and powers ahead in the fast lane of Australia's increasingly polarised economy.

This is a giant multinational company that is at the forefront of opposition to a tax on the super-profits of mining monopolies.

The record super-profit comes at a time when there are massive government debts in developed capitalist countries, when whole countries face bankruptcy, when there is renewed capitalist global economic crisis, loss of thousands of jobs, cuts to people's services, impoverishment, etc.

A country like Australia, with a small population and massive natural resources, has no excuse for poverty and precarious existence. Its national assets should be used for the benefit of the people to whom they belong. In the first place, this is the Aboriginal custodians of the country.

Instead, over a six-month period, an amount equivalent to $347 for every man, woman and child in Australia has been poured into the coffers of an overseas-owned company.

This is from an earnings base of $29bn, or $1325 for every person in Australia.

The revenue for the company is up 18.4%, but the profit is up 30% or nearly twice the rate, revealing the hypocrisy of the company’s opposition to a super-profits tax.

Meanwhile, its mainly overseas shareholders are doing well at the expense of the Australian people.

Dividends are up 20%, whilst earnings per share (generally considered to be the single most important variable in determining a share's price and a major component used to calculate the price-to-earnings valuation ratio) are up 36%.

So let’s pass the tissue box to Rio Tinto. Times are tough and a super-profits tax is obviously just too awful to contemplate!

(Above: Please don't ask Rio Tinto to pay their way....rich people defending the multinationals)

London burning: situation excellent!

2011-08-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

The past several days have seen the financial capital of the world in flames. It is a striking illustration of the contradictions between a tiny handful of super-rich parasites and derivatives traders whose greed knows no bounds, who are at the heart of what it means to be rich in London, and an entire underclass of unemployed, under-employed, precariously employed and low paid workers and youth who have lost faith with the system.

The capitalist media universally decries the spontaneous violence unleashed in the wake of what can now only be described as a police assassination. Isolated cases of thuggery are highlighted to condemn rioting.

However, nothing can hide the fact that these are the actions of disenfranchised and marginalized communities who have no stake in the system and no interest in behaving according to its rules and its values.

There is no doubt that the blind fury on display creates unintended victims. But overall the situation is excellent. From the immediate community reacting against the police killing, the rioting has spread across London and to other cities in the ignited kingdom. This alone shows that the system is in crisis of unprecedented depth and breadth, that the social tinder is so dry that a single spark has indeed ignited a prairie fire.

As Mao Zedong said of the peasant uprisings occurring in his native Hunan Province in the mid-1920s, our attitude can either be “It’s terrible, it’s terrible” or “It’s fine, it’s fine”.

There will be lessons to be learned about how to organize consciously around demands for change, how to avoid blind lashing out and to more effectively direct the anger and select appropriate targets that have a political significance. Already there is a wealth of experience coming out of the young people’s use of social media to concentrate their forces for quick assaults on symbols of the system and for rapid dispersal in the face of police response. Police have already said that the use of water cannons, threatened by the British Prime Minister, are of no use against such highly mobile groups.

The situation is excellent!

Appendix 1: A term which has become current over the last decade to describe that section of the working class, the proletariat, whose employment circumstances are particularly precarious, is the precariat. See Guy Standing’s “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class”.

Appendix 2: Mao Zedong’s “Report on an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan” can be read here: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm . In addition to the question of “it’s terrible” vs. “it’s fine”, Mao also discusses the question of “going too far” and the “movement of the riff-raff”.

Rupert Murdoch: chip off the old block

2011-08-04T19:17:00.000-07:00

The phone hacking scandal that continues to dog Rupert Murdoch has its importance in exposing how a major corporation can violate bourgeois ethics for commercial gain.

However, there is a larger issue in respect of the monopoly capitalist media and its ability to shape and direct the political agenda, even down to ensuring the outcome of bourgeois elections.

Rupert Murdoch sees himself as the “king maker” in a number of advanced capitalist countries including the US, Britain and Australia.

But he has had to eat humble pie because of the phone hacking revelations, including evoking the ethical standards of his parents, Sir Keith Murdoch and Dame Elisabeth Murdoch in a private meeting with the parents of murdered British schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Murdoch told Bob and Sally Dowler and their daughter Gemma that the News of the World's hacking into Milly's voicemail after she went missing in 2002 betrayed the values of his father, a pioneering journalist and editor, and his mother, the 102-year-old philanthropist.

However, the following excerpt from Duncan Clarke’s 1962 Communist Party of Australia 50-page booklet Meet the Press shows that Sir Keith indeed pioneered much of what has become the legacy of News Limited.

Clarke was at the time a copy boy on Sir Keith’s Melbourne “Herald”. He was later editor of the Victorian Branch of the CPA’s paper “The Guardian”, and following the reconstitution of the CPA in 1964 after it had succumbed to revisionism, became the editor of the CPA (M-L)’s paper “Vanguard”.

......................................

(Front cover of Duncan Clarke's "Meet the Press", showing Melbourne wharfies during the wharf dispute of 1956. They protested inside and outside of the Melbourne "Herald" offices against monopoly capitalist press distortions of their case, and forced Murdoch to publish a statement issued by their union.)

The Prime Minister said “Yes, Sir!”

As a copy boy in the Melbourne “Herald” I received my first lesson in the power of the monopoly press, and the “classroom” was the office itself of Australia’s biggest press lord, Sir Keith Murdoch.

The year was 1935. I was seated in the Boys’ Room on a long form, facing a row of bells. I was at the head of the form and it was my turn to answer the next call. Sammy Sampson, our boss, was reading proofs at his desk and young Jimmy Aldridge, the now famous author, was sitting in the tube room, where telegrams were received from Russell Street Post Office through an air tube. Waiting for a “call” was always exciting business. If it came from the Chief of Staff you never knew where you would finish up – in the Stock Exchange, at the scene of a murder, on a ship or at the airport.

A bell rang and up flew the shutter. It was from the Big Boss himself.

“Hurry,” said Sammy, without looking up from his proofs. He knew every bell by its sound.

In a flash I was at the door of the Managing Director and, without knocking, entered.

Murdoch had two secretaries in those days. Miss Demello did all his personal and confidential typing, and Mr Ian McDonald, who later became a senior executive of the Newsprint Mills in Tasmania, was the first secretary, as it were. They occupied an ante-office through which you had to pass to get into the inner sanctum. When I entered, both McDonald and Miss Demello appeared to be in a flurry. I could hear Murdoch shouting, and the door to his office was open. Murdoch shouted quite a lot, despite his apparent shyness. He always spoke very loudly into a phone.

I remember the scene well. I stood there for some seconds, waiting for instructions. Murdoch was shouting: “Get Lyons down here – at once. Tell him I want to see him.”

He seemed angry.

Miss Demello called me over and in hushed tones said: “Sir Keith wants his afternoon tea. You had better get two cups as the Prime Minister will be here soon…”

So off I went to get afternoon tea for Sir Keith and the Prime Minister.

Sir Keith's afternoon tea came from his private dining-room which, in those days, was looked after by a kindly woman cook. Whenever we went up there she would give us hot scones with loads of butter on them, or expensive cake and a cup of tea or a drink of cordial. I told her what was required, and added that Sir Keith's guest for afternoon tea would be no less a person than the Prime Minister.

"Oh, goodness," she said. "I had better get the best cups out." She followed me half way down the stairs, telling me to be very careful.

Well, by the time it took this dear old soul to prepare the cakes and tea and for me to go down two flights of stairs, Joseph Aloysius Lyons, Prime Minister of Australia, was in the office of his boss.

(Lyons pretending to listen to Brisbane wharfies - if only they'd seen his craven behaviour in front of Sir Keith!)

Miss Demello signalled me through Sir Keith's door. Murdoch '"was still shouting and J. A. Lyons was standing before the desk. I put the tea down on the big desk and went out through the door. As I went through it I turned and there, with his hat in his hand, like a man seeking a job, stood the Prime Minister before Murdoch's desk.

As I shut the door, I heard the leader of the nation say: "Yes, sir." Many years later I was to learn that the "Herald" had played a big part in paving the way for Lyons to rat on the Labor Party and become leader of the United Australia Party, the forerunner of the Liberal Party. (My own father, who was one of Sir Keith's confidants, was drawn into this job).

When the bribes and the negotiations - part of them was a pension of 500 pounds for Dame Enid - were over, and Lyons made his decision, Murdoch assumed personal control of the turncoat.

It was during Lyons' term of office that Keith Murdoch achieved one of his dearest ambitions - to become a Knight of the Realm. The incident I have quoted illustrates, in perhaps a specially vivid way, the grip ALWAYS held by the monopoly Press over parliaments and governments.

The big, mass circulation, daily newspapers are the main instruments of propaganda of monopoly capital. It is through them that monopoly capital maintains a mass, daily contact with the people. From the newspapers branch the national weeklies, specialised magazines, book printing houses, the radio stations, and now, television.

Monopoly capital guards its big daily newspaper chains jealously.

Chinese blogger: What sort of “harmonious society” is this?

2011-07-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

Drawing on the reactionary theories of the “sage” Confucius, the Chinese government has adopted the ideal of a “harmonious society”. However, contradictions between capital and labour are never “harmonious” and the restoration of capitalist relations of production in much of China has been a disaster for the working class.

This article draws on several sources, English (see here ) and Chinese, to explore a “mass incident” that occurred last June in Guxiang Township, Chaozhou Municipality, Guangdong Province.

Tendons slashed after seeking back pay

In late May, Xiong Hanjiang, a 19-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan visited his township labour bureau in the hope that officials there would help him get his two-month’s salary back from his employer, Hua Yi Porcelain (see photo above).

The bureau ordered the factory to give Xiong his 3,400 yuan salary and on June 1 at 9am the young man, accompanied by his parents, went to Hua Yi factory to see the boss about payment of the arrears.

Although the boss had agreed to pay the wages, he was nowhere to be seen. At midday, his wife went off to lunch, telling Xiong that he would be paid at 4pm.

At 4pm an altercation broke out when the boss told Xiong that he was not going to be paid. Xiong picked up a stool with which to hit the boss’s head. Xiong’s father tried to stop him but was himself assaulted by the boss’s men. Xiong chased after the boss but was overpowered by the boss’s men and had the tendons on his hands and feet severed.

After receiving a report of the incident, police from the Guxiang police station rushed to the scene where they found the victim unconscious. They sent him to the People’s Liberation Army No. 188 Hospital in Chaozhou. In the meantime, the boss had disappeared, but, according to eyewitnesses, his family later in the afternoon took 3000 yuan to Guxiang police station.

On June 2, Xiong’s family went to the police station demanding the arrest of the boss and assistance with their son’s medical expenses. The Guxiang Party and government leaders tried to calm the situation, visiting the injured worker and offering to assist with his expenses.

However, the Xiong family wanted compensation for their son’s injuries and the arrest of the boss and his accomplices. Between June 3 and June 6 there were various incidents including the smashing of the police station door, the destruction of a plaque outside the police station, and assaults on several police. Some of the migrant workers were subsequently arrested as “troublemakers”. Claims that the local police had admitted being paid to ensure that the boss went free did not help, and were subsequently denied by higher-ups in Chaozhou.

The June 6 incident

On June 4, the boss was arrested and two more were taken in on June 5. However, June 6 was a festival day, and by evening a large crowd of Sichuanese migrant workers had gathered outside the police station demanding the punishment of the assailants.

Around 6pm, the migrant worker crowd cheered when a car was involved in a minor traffic incident. The car was then attacked and burned, thus starting a four hour riot which saw more than 100 vehicles, including a luxury Buick and a couple of BMWs, torched.

Guxiang locals considered this an attack on themselves and gathered for a counterattack. They concentrated on destroying the homes of migrant workers.

It took a month for tensions to subside and for work at some of the factories to resume.

Harmony cannot exist in the presence of capitalism

The cause of this dispute is undoubtedly the restoration of capitalist property rights and the accompanying reappearance of the ideas and habits that accompany capitalism.

The class component of justice under capitalism is revealed through the inadequacy of the new Labour Contract Law to ensure the just treatment of a worker denied his wages. “What is the point of this law after the Guxiang incident?” asked a Chinese citizen online.

Corruption in the service of the rich is manifested in the ability of the boss’s family to initially bribe his way out of trouble. “What kind of a deterrent is the so-called criminal law?” asked the same person.

The problemsof the poor in a society rapidly transitioning to all-out capitalism is seen in the victim, unable to pay his medical expenses and not having received any compensation. “What kind of functions do government departments have?”

The unity of the Chinese people has disappeared under the pressure of economic and social inequality: many of the better-off coastal peoples treat rural migrant workers from inland provinces as uneducated and fail to respect them as humans.

Of the 80,000 residents of Guxiang, 20,000 are migrants workers from Sichuan mainly, but also from Anhui and elsewhere. Some of the locals have taken to expressing regret at having sent donations following the Sichuan earthquake, accusing the migrant workers of being “ungrateful” and completely forgetting that a young worker remains in hospital possibly crippled for life.

As one blogger put it, referring to the severing of Xiong's tendons, "What sort of harmonious society is this?"

What sort of "revolution" was the Cultural Revolution?

2011-07-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

(Above: A scene from a painting depicting Yu Gong, the Foolish Old Man, and his sons moving the mountains)

What sort of revolution was the "Cultural Revolution"? What, in the end, is constitutional government?

Author: Anzi

(Translator’s preface: This is an article from the Chinese website Cultural Revolution Research http://www.wengewang.org/ . Very little material that appears on this and other Chinese websites supportive of Mao Zedong’s efforts to continue the revolution after 1949 are translated and made available to non-Chinese readers. My Chinese isn’t fluent and I have limited capacity to translate documents like this, but I think that it is important that we have access to them. The original author had added a very short PS and the text of Chen Yongmiao’s article. They added nothing and I did not translate them. I have added a few translator's notes where I thought it appropriate. Mike)

I’ve recently read two articles on Mao Zedong Thought and the "Cultural Revolution", Guo Songmin's "When Heaven and Earth are not in favour, there is not much even a hero can do" and Chen Yongmiao’s "If there is Mao, there must be Deng, if there is Deng there must be Mao". The former was written based on the latter. After reading them, I was moved. These were the questions that I have been thinking about all along. After reading them, I suddenly saw the light.

There have been many disputes about Mao Zedong Thought and the "Cultural Revolution”, from the anti-communist, anti-Mao Zedong Thought "constitutional activists" to "In relation to Mao Zedong, I have a certain admiration in that, alone and by himself, he created an opposition between the political party and state apparatus. In this regard, I am grateful to him.” Since ancient times, China has never treated the emperor, sovereign political parties and bureaucracy, as potential and real enemies. The effort to experiment with a clash of opposites to realize an ideal makes Mao a symbol and embodiment and thus Mao became a legend for the masses, which also provides inspiration for those who think. This provides ideologists with an explosive topic. Hence, Guo Songmin has a well-founded interpretation of the "Cultural Revolution" with “When Heaven and Earth are not in favour, there is not much even a hero can do ".

On August 5, 1966, "the big-character poster of Mao Zedong" read: "‘China’s first Marxist-Leninist big character poster and Commentator’s article on it in Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) are indeed superbly written! Comrades, please read them again. But in the last fifty days or so some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels have acted in a diametrically opposite way. Adopting the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie, they have enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the great cultural revolution of the proletariat. They have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, encircled and suppressed revolutionaries, stifled opinions differing from their own, imposed a white terror, and felt very pleased with themselves. They have puffed up the arrogance of the bourgeoisie and deflated the morale of the proletariat. How poisonous! Viewed in connection with the Right deviation in 1962 and the wrong tendency of 1964 which was ‘Left’ in form but Right in essence, shouldn’t this make one wide awake?”

(Big character posters were large sheets of paper on which articles were written for mass discussion. They were pasted onto walls of buildings where anybody could read them. Mao Zedong approved of this practice and encouraged it by writing his own at the start of the Cultural Revolution - Trans.)

(Above: "Bombard the Headquarters" - the big character poster of Mao Zedong)

Without naming or accusing Liu Shaoqi, it made it clear that there is a bourgeois headquarters in the CPC Central Committee. Under the influence of the manufactured signboard of “tragedy” our people today have started to hate the “Cultural revolution”, and have even started to hate Mao Zedong. As everyone knows, behind the back of this poster there was "more than fifty days" of the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie": on June 3, 1966, the CPC Central Committee under the direction of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, decided to send Work Groups to Beijing's universities and secondary schools to lead the work units’ "Cultural Revolution." Liu developed a "Central Committee Eight Directives," including "differentiating between the inner and the outer" and other policies to restrict and suppress the spontaneous movement of students which occurred throughout the country, such as the confrontation between the students and the work teams and the phenomenon of the work teams labelling the students counter-revolutionary in the Xi'an Jiaotong University’s June 6 Incident, Qinghua University’s June 7 Incident, the Guangxi June 8 Incident , Beijing Geology Institute’s June 20 Incident, Beijing Normal University’s June 20 Incident, the Forestry Institute’s "Summary of the Minutes of the Talk" Incident and others.

On July 24, 1966 after Mao returned to Beijing, he convened meetings of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee and the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group, criticized Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, and made a decision to withdraw the Work Teams. Since then, from early June 1966 to the end of July has been known as the "more than fifty days of the bourgeois reactionary line." See, the "bourgeois headquarters" fired the first shot with "the phenomenon of students labelled as counter-revolutionary", but so far no one had been accused. Consequently, these impetuous youths afterwards were exhausted and just wanted to forget whether they were “counter-revolutionary” or not. Consequently, afterwards, whether something was “capitalist” or “socialist” was not worth worrying about, and under the principle of "no debates", they calmed down.

People should read Guo Songmin's "When Heaven and Earth have equal strength, there is no freedom for the hero", and then reflect on it a bit. Mao Zedong's ideas on the "Cultural Revolution" should to some extent be apparent before the CR took place. Before he entered the cities, Mao took Guo Moruo’s "'Commemoration of the Three-Hundredth Year since Jiashen [1644]' " as the party's rectification and educational document. The reason why Mao Zedong Thought became a systematically scientific theory is that it has consistency.

(Guo Moruo was in KMT-occupied Chonqing when he wrote this article on Li Zicheng’s peasant uprising that ended the Ming Dynasty. It was published on March 19, 1944. Mao Zedong arranged for its republication in Yan’an as study materials for the drive for Party rectification - Trans.)

There is currently a very interesting phenomenon on the Internet. Opposition to Mao Zedong Thought and the Communist Party can provide a platform for the murderous chill-to-the-bone wind of malicious attacks and even suspected illegal abuse by "democratic personages”. However if the insignificant masses criticize the bureaucracy they often run into a brick wall. Although those "chill-to-the-bone” “dissidents” who can “make malicious attacks" are often spat upon by Chinese people with a conscience, I am often uncomfortable and always feel it is bad manners.
　
What’s even more laughable is that at the same time that I thought our bureaucrats were satisfying their own selfish desires, protecting the honourable “capitalist-roaders” who would receive the support of this protection, that is not, in fact, the situation. Were they unaware, as they immediately cast their greedy eyes on the sceptre of the bureaucracy, that they were raising a tiger only to court disaster? And is it any wonder that they advertised themselves as researchers “seeking the truth" and “constitutional socialism”, taking the essence of Marxism -" emancipating oneself and seeking the truth from facts” as faithful Communists, and as Chinese who feel proud to be an ordinary citizen of the Republic." Anti-Communist Party and anti-Mao Zedong Thought "constitutionalists” like Hua Xiaobing and his ilk all try and fit into the same pair of pants, yet they’re all too fat. Chen Yongmiao and Chen's “If there is Mao, there must be Deng, if there is Deng there must be Mao” is a living resource. They are a group of ungrateful fellows, discussing this without being either “Left” or the “Right”.

What sort of revolution was the “Cultural Revolution”? In the end, what sort of thing is constitutional government? Look at two articles I have recommended!
“When Heaven and Earth are not in favour, there is not much even a hero can do “(Guo Songmin, original title, "Foolish Old Man Mao Zedong").

Since Mao Zedong closed his remarks at the 7th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party with a report entitled "The Foolish Old Man Who Moved the Mountains", the story gradually became a household name in China, expressing in typical language the gritty, relentless fighting spirit of the Chinese people. What people probably had not realised is precisely that Mao Zedong considered himself to be a kind of “Foolish Old Man” and that a foolish old man moving the mountains clearly describes Mao Zedong’s lifelong experiences. Because throughout his whole life Mao Zedong was just like the Foolish Old Man, constantly engaged in projects to "move mountains" – he kept digging away without stopping, not slackening off, not giving up, and not failing.

To be fair, Mao Zedong did most of the projects to “move mountains" very successfully, and older Chinese people are familiar with the successes in moving the “three big mountains of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism”, (their reappearance now is another matter), but the last project to "move mountains", by which I mean the Cultural Revolution, he did not do very successfully, and after his death, followed by a cowardly coup, the Cultural Revolution suffered a disastrous defeat.

Now, we have to ask: what sort of society did Mao Zedong want? Who was the “mountain” that he wished to remove in the Cultural Revolution? Why did the Cultural Revolution fail? Mao Zedong pursued thoroughgoing democracy. Early in July 1945, in his Yan'an cave, Mao Zedong asked the visiting Huang Yanpei what were his impressions. Huang Yanpei said that what he had seen and heard in more than sixty years can be described as "Quick to rise, and quick to fall," – there’s not one person, one family, one group, one place, nor even a country, that can escape being dominated by this cycle. In every period of history there are "lazy government officials”, there’s “When the leader dies, so do his ideals” and there is also "seeking glory but finding shame" and in short, no-one can jump out of this cycle. He hoped that the CCP could find a new path and jump out of the control of this cycle. Mao Zedong said: "We have found a new way, we can escape this cycle. This new way is democracy. Only by allowing people to supervise the government will it not dare to slacken; only when everyone begins to take responsibility will we avoid the ideals dying with the leader”. Huang Yanpei nodded: "I tend to agree that democracy can break the cycle”.

(Above: Huang Yanpei and Mao Zedong in Yan'an in 1945)

This "cave dialogue" story has been cited at a very high rate in recent years. Some people would like to remind the ruling party to fulfil this historic commitment, some people want to prove that Mao Zedong went back on his words, or even just used impressive words to deceive the world. However, in my opinion, Mao Zedong was very conscientious in relation to this very serious commitment, and always made great efforts to find what he called “this democratic new way", until he finally launched the "great democracy" as the main feature of the Cultural Revolution. The main way for Mao Zedong to explore "this new way of democracy" was to mobilize the masses in "political campaigns", to mobilize those who for thousands of years had been excluded from the political process, and therefore get the politically apathetic masses of the people to “all take responsibility”.

Today, thanks to the long-term demonization of the main target of previous "political movements" - the bureaucracy - political movements and “crazy" seem to be synonymous. But the reality is not the case, the historical truth is: "political movements" to a large extent enforced the two basic democratic functions of a "people's supervision of government" and "everyone exercising responsibility together", which can explain the first thirty years of New China, and why the contingent of cadres is basically clean, why there did not emerge an unwieldy leadership of "vested interests" (in the late 1970s, with the restoration of the college entrance examination system, almost all of the candidates felt that they faced the possibility of infinite wealth, the reason being that, due to absence of monopolisation by interest groups, students of lower classes felt that opportunities to go up in life were fully open).

Logically, the legitimacy of political movements should coexist with the legitimacy of the ruling party, and the denial of the legitimacy of the one is tantamount to denial of the legitimacy of the other. Because in the case of one-party rule, supervision of the elite by the elite is no longer possible, then it is only through the channel of opening up mass political movements to monitor the elite that is it possible to prevent the deterioration and corruption of the ruling elite. A ruling party that persists in negating political movements is in effect denying any supervision. How can it be no accident that since the ruling party announced that " there will be no political campaigns in the next 20 years" in the 1980s, while at the same time explicitly rejecting indiscriminate Westernization, and not engaging in the separation of the powers, we have evolved today to the point of “the nation will perish if we do not oppose corruption, the party will perish if we do "? If political movements prior to the Cultural Revolution stressed party leadership of the movement, and therefore those in power often used power in a bureaucratic way, taking advantage of the opportunity to silence dissidents, then as the Cultural Revolution drew closer, Mao Zedong obviously wanted to rectify this kind of mistake, calling for "the people themselves should rise in revolution, should educate themselves, manage themselves, and liberate themselves" (August 20, 1966).

However, the bureaucrats were well aware of the implications of this slogan and what it means, and in the "February Adverse Current", Chen Pixian, an official holding power in the party, came to Beijing to launch an attack on the question of this slogan: "We do not want the party's leadership, all day long always going on about the masses, the masses! The masses should liberate themselves, educate themselves, kick aside the party committee to make revolution, this is metaphysics! “Of course, we’re also now well aware of the actual meaning of the “dialectics” of those party people in power. What is beyond comprehension is that the mainstream intellectual elite, in opposing the "political movements", maintained a high degree of bureaucracy and were completely unwilling to acknowledge that political movements were in anyway democratic, and that this and their oft professed love for democracy were quite out of step. Why were they like this? Looking at the reason for this, I think there is a connection between them becoming temporary supervisors of the masses during political movements, losing their supreme status from bygone days, and becoming birds of a feather with the bureaucrats (especially during the Cultural Revolution). It seems that democracy was not the real love of the mainstream intellectual elite, that they had a capacity for leadership, and that only “democracy” under their leadership was their real love. Mao Zedong's efforts resulted in recognition of another side to Huang Yanpei in the “cave dialogues”.

On August 4, 1952 Huang Yanpei attended the CPPCC Standing Committee presided over by Mao Zedong and praised the country's achievements in construction. After dinner that day, Mao Zedong sought the opinions of people from the various parties and Huang said: "The victorious results of the Three Antis and the Five Antis prove that the reply by Chairman Mao in Yan'an in 1945, that the CPC can use democracy to break the cycle of the repeated rise and fall of historical tradition is correct." At the time Huang was already 74 years old, and he and Mao had an unusual personal friendship, and it is unlikely that he would simply pretend to flatter him. On democracy, Mao Zedong also had a more thorough discussion than the “cave dialogues”. In the last century, at the end of the fifties and start of the sixties, after the storm of the "Lushan conference", Mao Zedong had a special time with some "scholars" to read the Soviet Union's "political economics textbooks", and had made a large number of comments and held many conversations, and a book "Mao Zedong’s comments and talks on reading socialist political economy” was published later According to the record in the "comment and talks,", in Chapter 23 of the Soviet textbook, it spoke of the new constitution in 1936 which discussed the rights of Soviet citizens and Soviet labourers, including "the rights to labour, the right to rest, the right to education, and the guaranteed rights of the elderly, the ill and those incapacitated and unable to work”.

Mao stated prominently alongside this text: "The greatest right is to manage the state", and made the comment that: "When referring to the rights enjoyed by Soviet workers, there is no mention of the workers’ right to manage the state, to manage the military, to manage enterprises, or to manage culture and education. In fact, this is the greatest right of Soviet workers under the socialist system, their most fundamental right. Without these rights, there is no guarantee of the workers’ right to work, rest, education, etc.”

From the "cave dialogues" to "comments and talks," we will find Mao Zedong’s interpretation of democracy has undergone significant changes, that he is no longer simply satisfied with "people supervising the government", and is no longer just generally talking about "everyone taking responsibility ", but rather sees the" workers’ rights to management of the state, management of the military, management of all types of enterprises, and management of culture and education” as the main content of democracy. From these comments and talks, we can already see some clues to a number of major initiatives that he has taken during the Cultural Revolution.

In 1965, Mao Zedong reascended Jinggangshan, and in the mountains he again had an important conversation about democracy, which the director of Jiangxi Provincial Public Security Bureau, Wang Zhuochao later recalled: "I remember that afternoon the Chairman asked teachers and students alike what they thought was the Jinggangshan spirit. We said hard work and arduous struggle and he laughed, and told us to think again, that hard work and arduous struggle is only one direction, it was a minor point, that there were still two points and that we had to think from the direction of the system. Wang Dongxing added a comment about organising party branches on the basis of companies in the army. The Chairman nodded and continued: During our time in Jinggangshan, we explored a good system, good style, and now what we advocate is hard work and arduous struggle, and what we pay attention to is organising the branch on the basis of the company, but at the expense of the soldiers' committees. Along with our coming to power, and with the branch on the basis of the company, all walks of life have now built party organizations, and these are now the leading organs. The party's strength has increased. However, the conscious acceptance of supervision by the masses, the implementation of political democracy, and ensuring that our party is not divorced from the masses, has many shortcomings compared to the soldiers’ committees of the time on Jinggangshan. Nationwide democracy has not taken shape as a system, as an effective method, and the soldiers’ committees of the Jinggangshan period have a major role to play. The Chairman proposed that the role of the Jinggangshan soldiers’ committees have major status, as shown in the words at the heart of his article “The Struggle in the Jinggang Mountains” where he wrote: 'In China the army needs democracy as much as the people do. Democracy in our army is an important weapon for undermining the feudal mercenary army.’”

(Above: Mao Zedong back in Jinggangshan)

Mao Zedong’s return to Jinggangshan, right on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, was not simply nostalgia, which itself is a compelling political gesture. This conversation shows that Mao was considering "a nationwide political democracy" as well as how democracy could be shaped into a system, and how an "effective method" of democracy could be found and so on, and using language we are familiar with today, that Mao was already considering the problem of political reform. In Mao's view, things such as "soldiers' committees" can exercise checks and balances on Party branches, together with the involvement of mass organizations in the management of companies in the military and that these were capable of becoming important ways of implementing democracy in China.

The difficult problem for the Foolish Old Man Mao Zedong, i.e. Mao Zedong on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, was what was the situation with the social structure he was up against? In general this was summarised as "two classes, one stratum", that is, the working class, peasantry and the intelligentsia. However, this generalization ignored the most powerful social stratum, the bureaucratic social stratum (or "party - state elite"). We should say that this social stratum is a "byproduct" of the Chinese revolution – owing to the fact that the Chinese revolution was forced to choose the path of armed struggle, in the long years of war , thousands upon thousands of professional revolutionaries were nurtured, and that after the establishment of New China they naturally developed into a bureaucracy at all levels, they enjoyed a high prestige in the community, they had rich experiences of struggle, had a strong commitment to defending the regime, and had a monopoly within the country over all the natural resources including the party, government, military, human, financial, and material.

At that time in China, after the long and large-scale violent storm of revolutionary baptism, from the bottom to the top, the original vested interests and elite groups had gone - the landlord class has been eliminated; the national bourgeoisie had accepted socialist transformation to the beating of drums and gongs, and had already been “bought off”; Western forces had already been forced out of China; the intellectuals had expressed their support for socialism, and were in the state of having been remoulded – the only organized strength was the bureaucratic social stratum . In this Chinese Garden of Eden, this giant bureaucratic monster had no natural enemies: the workers and peasants expressed support for them and the intellectuals were also very submissive.

The Foolish Old Man Mao Zedong's project to "move mountains" had thus come up against its final mountain. For him, the trouble was that this bureaucratic social stratum was his personal creation in the long years of revolution and war, and it had been led from victory to victory under his personal leadership, but now it had become the biggest obstacle to his leading China towards democracy. If Mao could successfully find a way to deconstruct the power of the bureaucracy, or if the masses could organize effective checks and balances on the bureaucratic strata, then it would not be difficult to lead China along the easy path to democracy, and turn it into a great socialist country; on the contrary, if the control of everything was left to the bureaucracy, the Chinese revolution would be incomplete and fall short of success, and the fruits of the revolution already obtained would be wholly or partly lost.

Of course, when Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, the bureaucracy was basically "red", its revolutionary vigour and idealism had not completely faded, and under the impact of Mao Zedong’s strict supervision and the rapid succession of political movements they had not had the time to become corrupt (this point later on caused great difficulties during the Cultural Revolution), but under the circumstances of the masses’ lack of democratic rights, and their inability to place restrictions on them, their "red" could become "gray" and may even be changed to "black", so because of these points it was not possible to implement democracy. However, it is precisely because firstly the bureaucratic social stratum was still "red" and secondly they were not entirely corrupt, that not only could party cadres not understand the Cultural Revolution, but neither could non-Party cadres. At the high tide of the "Cultural Revolution" on National Day in 1967, during the ceremony on Tiananmen, the Vice President of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Guomindang Zhang Zhizhong revealed his own doubts to Mao Zedong: "Chairman, you are going too fast, we cannot keep up! I always thought that the Communist Party cadres were good, so how have so many good cadres all of a sudden become capitalist-roaders? "But history has since proven that it was Mao Zedong and not any other talented persons who had really seen the class nature of the bureaucratic social stratum and where this would lead.

Surveying the international communist movement, we will find that owing to the monopolisation of powers under socialism by the bureaucratic social stratum or the "party - state elite", that there must a condition of instability and impermanence. Its prospects is either to continue to move forward towards an "association of free peoples," to establish a people's democratic socialism where the people have the "right to manage the state, manage the military, manage enterprises, manage culture and education"; or it can go backwards and return to the "mainstream of world civilization", and restore capitalism on the ruins of socialism - it must be one or the other.

Of these two possibilities, the latter is most likely to become a reality, and it has become a regular phenomenon in almost all of the traditional socialist countries. Mainstream scholars have given a variety of reasons, and have even trotted out "global trends" as the ultimate explanation. But in my opinion, this is only because the bureaucracy in the former socialist countries had no natural enemies, and that after the death of the leaders Lenin and Mao Zedong, who were vigilant against the bureaucracy and had the ability to inhibit it, if the bureaucrats decided to use their power to pursue to the maximum their own self-aggrandizement, then there was little power to stop it. The result of the pursuit of maximizing their own interests was bound to be the break-up of all the myths about socialism, ideology, dogma and institutional frameworks, and especially to turn into an hypocrisy the slogan of the "equality of all". With the failure of socialism, capitalism seems to be "successful" and the restoration of capitalism thus becomes the "main trend." In relation to the first possibility, with the exception of the solemn and stirring experiment of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the whole history of the international communist movement is utterly silent on this, the reason being that because the bureaucrats had a monopoly of power, it was impossible for them to launch a revolution in which they themselves were the target. In fact, because it is impossible to place hopes on “the party - state elite" remaining red in the long-term, the Marxist classical writers in describing the socialist era always thoroughly insisted on democracy. In their view, of course, the economy is a necessary condition for building socialism, but it was not the only condition. Only when the people directly are the masters of the party and the state, rather than society being controlled by a new ruling group can it be called socialist. Socialism is not about a new group of people becoming the masters, but about completely changing the concept of power. So, whether it was Marx, Engels or Lenin, they have all repeatedly spoken highly of "the principles of the Paris Commune": firstly, the election of public officials by universal suffrage; secondly, the wages of all public servants being equivalent to the wages of skilled workers; thirdly, supervision of public officials by the masses enjoying the right to recall. Engels argued that only by adhering to these measures can we be assured of “preventing the servants of society in the state and state organs becoming the masters of society."

The Foolish Old Man Mao Zedong's effort to "move mountains", the Cultural Revolution, can be said to be a great attempt to "completely change the concept of power", to have had an unprecedented impact on the bureaucrats’ monopoly of power, and a great experiment in mass democracy that is fundamentally different from the elite Western democracy! In general, the big democracy of the Cultural Revolution consisted mainly of the following three aspects: First, the masses had the right to “speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write big-character posters”. The main characteristic of this right was the dismantling of all barriers to the right of expression, whether by status, property, educational level, etc. Looking at the history of all human civilization, the right to speak had been monopolized by the elite before the "four big freedoms” of "speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates, and writing big-character posters" were invented. The appearance of the "four big freedoms" meant that the lowest rung of the masses were no longer in the situation of having to get the permission of the elite to exercise the right to speak, that they could challenge the oppression of the bureaucracy, that they were in possession of the most effective political means to supervise the elite. Because this right was unprecedented, the "four big freedoms" thrust China onto the highest stage of development of world human rights, put it in the position of human rights leadership and caused a series of chain reactions in developed capitalist countries such as Europe, the US and Japan.

Today, we look back at the "four freedoms" as we stand in the era of the Internet, and we can better appreciate its great significance. On the Internet, people are forever "speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates, and writing big-character posters", and the impact of online media on China's political environment and public policy is profound, and we cannot imagine what China would be like with the abolition of the Internet. So I think those who love the Internet and enjoy its benefits should have a sympathetic and understanding attitude towards "speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates, and writing big-character posters". It is no exaggeration to say that the 1975 Constitution which contains the four big freedoms of "speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates, and writing big-character posters" is a great unprecedented legal document, that it goes beyond the "Napoleonic Code " , and also surpasses the “Mayflower Compact” which is regarded as sacred by the main Chinese elites.

(The Napoleonic Code,introduced by Napoleon in 1804, curtailed feudal privileges. The Mayflower Compact was a document governing the new colony of Plymouth signed aboard the immigrant ship Mayflower in 1620 - Trans.)

One of the most criticized aspects of using the "four big freedoms" as the means of supervising the bureaucrats is that many criticisms and accusations were not based on facts, and this became a pretext for their later cancellation. But in fact, owing to the serious information asymmetry between the public and the bureaucracy, the "burden of proof" (so-called "confession under duress") has become a kind of inevitability in the public supervision of the elite, and, to a certain extent, this will lead to some miscarriages of justice. This is correct However, political figures or those holding public authority have an obligation to hold themselves accountable in the face of questioning from the masses, and this is universal law of today's political civilization. The constantly stressed "burden of proof lies with the accuser" objectively protects the absolute superiority of the bureaucratic groups, and makes inevitable the huge amount of corrupt elements at large. Everyone may consider which of these two ways is the better. In the second, the masses have an unprecedented freedom of association.

An organized minority can always overcome the unorganized majority, which is almost an eternal truth. The bureaucracy is a minority in the general population, but they have long been able to dominate the vast majority of the total population because all they are is organized, while the public is disunited. To some extent, during the Cultural Revolution, and especially in the first three years, there was the highest degree of freedom of association in human history: there was no need to apply, to register, and the moment a few people discussed it, a new political association was created. If you take into account that only after entering the 21st century, some of the most tolerant Northern European societies have just arrived at establishing a degree not requiring registration, we can realize that the freedom of association enjoyed by the Chinese masses was something rarely seen anywhere in the world. Today, many Chinese liberals are on the one hand pushing freedom of speech and freedom of association, while on the other hand generously using the most vicious cursing of those times when the freedom of speech and freedom of association surpassed that of any Western country, and this contradiction in attitudes is puzzling, but it also allows people to doubt the sincerity of their pursuit of freedom.

The shape and inspiration of the mass organizations of the Cultural Revolution definitely came from Jinggangshan period of "soldier committees" and if, in time, it is possible to grow into a new "socialist civil society", and become the main platform for the supervision of the bureaucracy by the masses holding and exercising "the management of all affairs", it will make the “social” of “socialism” well-deserved, and create the national conditions for a genuine "small government, big society". Thirdly, it will create the system of people at the grassroots directly participating in and exercising the management rights of the "revolutionary committees".

(Above: The badge reads "Revolutionary Committees are fine"; the reverse side indicates that it was released in 1967 at a textile factory in Guilin to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the factory's revolutionary committee.)

During the Cultural Revolution, revolutionary committees were the organizational form at all levels of government and referred to as Cultural Revolutionary Committees. They were first launched in Shanghai in 1967 in the January Storm movement to seize power, through the mass organizations’ capturing the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and Shanghai Municipal Government's authority at all levels, through following the example of the Paris Commune by organizing government agencies into a great democracy, and through Zhang Chunqiao naming it the Shanghai People's Commune, which was later, under a proposal of Mao Zedong changed to "Revolutionary Committee". In the Cultural Revolution, all levels of Chinese government, from provincial level to the factory and the schools, changed their names to Revolutionary Committee.

The Revolutionary Committees implemented unified leadership and abolished the difference between the Chinese Communist Party and the government, combining them in a single system whose personnel adopted the approach of the "three-in-one combination", which included "revolutionary cadres" who had not been overthrown, the representatives of mass organizations, and the "workers' propaganda teams" and "agricultural propaganda teams" (called the “workers (the poor, and lower-middle peasants) Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team ", which in the main were representatives of the workers and the poor and lower-middle peasant stationed in the danweis or work units of offices, schools and cultural institutions) or composed of representatives of the military. In such institutions, because cadres were familiar with the business, they generally were responsible for daily operations, while the worker-peasant-soldier representatives were in charge of major policies, and the mass organizations on behalf of the staff were responsible for maintaining the interests of the lower units.

We can say that “Revolutionary Committees "were the concrete form of "the greatest right is to manage the state" spoken about in Mao Zedong's" Comments and Talks ", and that this form of organization in all levels of government and the management of institutions brought in the fresh blood of the masses, and that even in the central government there were cadres of workers and peasants from the grassroots level like Chen Yonggui and Wu Guixian . In order to prevent these people from again becoming divorced from the masses, and on the basis of Chen Yonggui’s experiences, Mao Zedong enacted the "three-thirds system," namely the principle that one-third of one’s time should be at the central work, one-third of one’s time should be back in one’s original place of work, and one-third of one’s time should be for engaging in research at the grassroots level. This system guaranteed direct ties of flesh and blood between the highest central levels and the masses people and made it very difficult for any schemes that violated the interests of the masses to get through. In short, the Cultural Revolution was undoubtedly a great attempt to implement the ideal of democracy in China, and if it is said that there were any problems during the Cultural Revolution, it was that it failed. Can the failure of the Cultural Revolution, apart from proving that democracy in China is not an easy matter, indicate anything else?

(Chen Yonggui (1914-1986) was the leader of the Dazhai Production Brigade whose experiences Mao called on the nation to study. He became a member of the 9th Central Committee in1969 and became a popular figure in his white-towelled peasant turban. He was re-elected to the 10th and 11th Central Committees and after 1975 held the position of Vice-Premier of the State Council. By 1982 he had resigned most positions and ended up supervising a farm outside of Beijing. Wu Guixian was a former textile worker from Xianyang, Shaanxi province who was elected to the Central Committee in 1969. She became the first female Vice-Premier of China. She continues to work in poverty alleviation programs and promotes education for the rural poor - Trans.)

(Above: Chen Yonggui on the cover of an illustrated booklet about the Dazhai Production Brigade)

Why did the Foolish Old Man Mao Zedong fail? A direct cause of the failure of the Cultural Revolution’s experiment with big democracy was the threat to the bureaucracy's monopoly on power, and it therefore lead to their instinctive or conscious counterattack. One landmark event was the 1967 Wuhan "720 Incident": the deliberate creation of a very serious situation, namely the kidnapping of central representative Wang Li by mass organisations and a part of the army supported by the bureaucrats, in the full knowledge that Mao Zedong was actually in Wuhan, forcing Mao to leave Wuhan in an emergency transfer to Shanghai, hence Wang Li's words, that this was an unprecedented disgrace suffered by Mao Zedong since he became a leader of the party. In a certain sense, the influence of the “720 Incident" on the history of the Cultural Revolution is comparable to the "Xi'an Incident". It made Mao Zedong realize that the desired goal of the Cultural Revolution could not be achieved, that only through much repetition could it be achieved, and in order to avoid imminent civil war, national crisis and complete anarchy, Mao Zedong had to begin the process of making significant adjustments to the Cultural Revolution.

But the "720 Incident" remains a superficial reason. In my opinion, the fundamental reason was that the "God" Mao Zedong had hoped to arouse - that is, the working class – was in fact half-hearted towards Mao Zedong’s project to "move mountains". During the Cultural Revolution, the student Red Guards were just an assault force, and could not decide the outcome of the whole of the Cultural Revolution, farmers basically stayed out of it, the bureaucracy had become the target of the Cultural Revolution, and the intellectuals opposed the Cultural Revolution, so the outcome of the Cultural Revolution depended on the attitude of the working class. Mao had issued the call that "the working class must exercise leadership over everything" and had high expectations of the working class. On the surface, the working class also warmly responded to Mao's call and had set up a variety of mass rebel organizations, and had actively participated in the leadership teams for the Revolutionary Committees at all levels and organized "workers' propaganda teams" stationed in "superstructure ", but in fact the working class as a whole did not truly understand the significance of the Cultural Revolution.

On this issue, the most obvious manifestation is that after the “uprising” of the working class it split into two factions, the rebels and the "Royalists" which were unable to extricate themselves from factional struggles, and which not only seriously undermined the workers’ class power, but also enabled the bureaucracy that had sustained heavy losses to use factionalism to stage a comeback, for even after Mao Zedong issued the “highest instruction” that "There is no fundamental conflict of interest within the working class, there is no need to split into two irreconcilable factions" the situation did not fundamentally improve. During the intense and complex political game of the Cultural Revolution, in the situation of the bureaucracy being unable to employ the military, the police and other repressive state apparatus to repress the mass revolt, the "royalists" supported by the bureaucracy objectively played the role of guards for the bureaucrats, and became the main instigators of "resorting to violence ", racing to the front in the "720 Incident ", forcing out Mao's" Million Heroes” , the basic membership of whom were the workers.

(The “Million Heroes” was a Red Guard faction loyal to Wuhan Military Commander Chen Zaidao. They kidnapped Wang Li, a member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group after Mao ordered the PLA to switch its support to the rival Workers’ Headquarters. I’m not sure why the author refers to the “Million Heroes” as Mao’s - Trans.)

(Above: Mao's quotation that there is no fundamental conflict of interest in the working class).

The most fundamental reason why the working class would show such a state of political immaturity during the Cultural Revolution is that in the 17 years prior to the Cultural Revolution the working class was the biggest beneficiary of the system - their political status was high, their social reputation was good, and their benefits were also better than many other sectors of society. From this perspective alone, they were a stabilizing force in society rather than a revolutionary force. Can you imagine that the Western middle class would become the revolutionary force of the Western system?

But what the working class did not realize is that if they could not occupy the superstructure, as Mao had hoped, as a united, revolutionary force, as well as acting as checks and balances on the bureaucracy, then their existing status and interests in the historical process called "reform" would be lost. In this sense, it is no exaggeration to say that the Cultural Revolution failed because of the political immaturity of the working class. Today we have seen that the cost of restructuring the “iron rice bowl" of 30 million workers has been easily “paid” and the working class has become a socially vulnerable group in reality as well as in name. In short, the working class, for their own political immaturity and the failure of the Cultural Revolution, has paid and will continue to pay a heavy price, and where it will all end is hard to say, but it’s certainly the case that the goddess of history will not give, in the immediate future, a second opportunity to the working class to “exercise leadership in everything”.

So the success of the legendary Foolish Old Man actually depended on two factors: first, the courage to challenge the impossible, to keep digging every day, and never give up; second, moving "God" so that "God" (ie the people as indicated by Mao Zedong) felt like joining in. This was a key element of success in "moving mountains". After the "720 Incident", Li Na and the people around Mao Zedong, often heard Mao reciting a poem: “When Heaven and Earth are not in favour, there is not much even a hero can do ". When he began, Li Na believed Mao Zedong was sighing for people like Wang, Guan, and Qi who were under investigation, but she later realized that Mao was lamenting for himself - most likely, the "foolish old man" Mao realized that in the current project to "move mountains", he could not completely move his " God ", and that the project to "move mountains " must be full of twists and turns and even reversals, and that probably in his lifetime he could not achieve the "moving of mountains ".

How should we deal with the legacy of Mao Zedong? The Cultural Revolution was not defeated in 1976, nor was it defeated in document that "totally rejected" it, rather it was defeated in that hot summer of 1967. Since then, owing to his awareness of the split in the working class, Mao Zedong was unable to deliver the last fatal blow to the bureaucracy, and the Cultural Revolution was forced to deviate from its goal of complete democracy, continuing on ambiguously in a kind of half-baked manner. The opportunity to achieve complete democracy once and for all in China had been lost, at least temporarily, and already Mao Zedong, unable to fundamentally restore the situation of realizing his hopes for democracy, had pushed them into the distant future.

In the 1960s, the subjective conditions for the Cultural Revolution were ripe, because Mao was clear-headed and knew what his own goals were, but the objective conditions for the Cultural Revolution were immature, the bureaucrats "redness" still existed, and his "God" was sceptical towards Mao Zedong efforts. The failure of the Cultural Revolution was Mao Zedong's failure, and also the failure of China's first attempt at mass democracy, and anyone hoping for democracy in China should inherit the legacy of Mao Zedong, complete the unfinished business of Mao Zedong, and not make a clean break with it.

Is there no difference between Mao and Deng? If we have Mao must we also have Deng? I cannot see it. In my opinion, the biggest difference between Mao and Deng is that Mao had never been happy being a tool of the bureaucrats, he had made great efforts to make the bureaucracy "serve the people wholeheartedly" as he hoped it would. He launched previous political movements, all in order to tame the “monster” of the bureaucratic groups. But Deng on the contrary, no matter whether it was before or after the Cultural Revolution, no matter whether or not he was subjectively aware of it, was the tool of the bureaucracy to achieve their own ends, which led to him being “overthrown” twice by Mao Zedong. In the failure of the Cultural Revolution, the masses were temporarily withdrawn as a real political force in the political arena, and Deng had no choice but to become the bureaucrats’ tool. Since then, whether it is the political "cleaning-up of three kinds of people", the vindication of miscarriages of justice, or economic reform and opening up, we will find the final and biggest beneficiaries are the bureaucrats, that they are not only still in power, but also quick to get rich through the economy, developing into a high consumption social stratum living a life of luxury and dissipation. That the policy of Reform and Opening Up can be taken as the starting point for the relegation of political and democratic reform (including the abolition from the Constitution of the “four bigs” and the right to strike, and the cancellation of the Xidan Democracy Wall) is often intentionally or unintentionally ignored.

In the situation where Mao Zedong is no longer around, what should we do? The answer is simple: Let each of us become a Mao Zedong! Let each of us in the face of this "mountain" of the bureaucracy follow the model of Mao Zedong in "keeping on digging every day, never slacking off, never giving up, and never failing"! Mao Zedong has already proven that it is entirely possible to achieve mass democracy, and what we need to do is to put this possibility into reality, Mao Zedong’s historical mission has been completed, and we cannot continue to put the blame on him; on the contrary, we can only continue to forge ahead in the places where Mao Zedong failed. It is incredible that for many people the failure of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution is the reason for doubting whether mass democracy is viable - just because Mao Zedong failed can we no longer pursue democracy?

Solidarity with Swedwood IKEA workers

2011-07-25T00:33:00.000-07:00

The USA is reputed to be the “home of the brave and the land of the free”.

However, there is one brave group of 300 workers who are certainly not free to join their union.

They are employees of the wholly-owned IKEA subsidiary Swedwood in Danville, Virginia.

They have been subjected to harassment and intimidation as they try to organize into a union.

According to the latest reports, with the US in the grip of a heatwave, conditions in the plant have soared to 115° F (46° C) and in some sections of the plant, to 125° F (51.6°C), yet Swedwood management refused to open the doors of the non air conditioned building in order to keep down the humidity which is draw into the building by the massive saw dust exhaust blowers.

Workers have fainted and passed out from the heat. At least one worker received medical treat off site for heat related issues. Electronic equipment has begun to fail from the combination heat and humidity.

This is why workers need to have basic organizations of defence in the workplace.

The Building Workers International Union last week issued a call to make the week of July 19-25 “I Vote for Swedwood/IKEA Union” week, calling on activists around the world to take photos of solidarity actions outside their local IKEA plant.

In Adelaide we did just that.

Hope it helps!

Post Script
July 27, 2011

Victory news from Swedwood

In a secret ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board, an agency of the United States Federal Government, workers at Swedwood’s operation in Danville Virginia voted to be represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), and affiliate of the Building and Wood Workers International (BWI). The final vote was 221 workers (76%) who voted for the union and 69 against. The election victory marks completion of the first phase in the struggle for workers rights and social justice for these Swedwood workers.

Issues of safety and health, racial discrimination, dignity and basic human respect were the main grievances that the workers had expressed as reasons for voting to join the Machinists Union.

The workers have voted for a union but clearly the struggle is not over as the next major hurdle for the workers is to negotiate a successful collective bargaining agreement that improves worker safety, promotes respectful treatment, and puts an end to favoritism and discrimination.

“This struggle was global with support and assistance from every continent by more than 120,000 workers, various social partners, and many other global union federations” said Bill Street,Director of the Wood Works Department of the IAMAW. “There are not the words in the English language to express our gratitude and thanks to everyone who participated and made this first victory possible.”

Arkaroola - victory at last!

2011-07-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

On Friday 22 July 2011 the long-awaited announcement that mining would be banned forever in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary was delivered by premier Mike Rann.

This is a huge victory.

Marathon Resources, which holds an exploration licence within the Sanctuary, and which was aiming to mine uranium, had major connections and influence.

Its two main shareholders were the late Queensland coal mining magnate Ken Talbot and the China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC).

Talbot was a shonky operator and was facing corruption charges relating to jailed Queensland politician Gordon Nuttall just before his death. CITIC is the major state-owned investment arm of the Chinese government.

Marathon has strong ties to influential people within the Labor Party. Executive Director Chris Shacht is a former Labor Senator. Former Federal Labor MP John Quirke is a lobbyist for Marathon and has made donations to SA Labor through his company Pallidon Pty Ltd.

Nevertheless, these connections and this influence ultimately counted for nothing in the face of strong community opposition to the prospect of mining in the Wilderness Sanctuary.

That opposition came from communists, Greens, sections of the traditional custodian Adnyamathanha community, rank and file Labor supporters as well as some within the conservative Liberal Party.

The announcement is better late than never.

However, there is still a need for careful scrutiny of the Rann plan. For example, nowhere in the official Rann press release is Arkaroola correctly referred to as the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. It is simply referred to as the Arkaroola “region” and Arkaroola “area” and in one place only as the “Sanctuary”.

A Primary Industries and Resources Department map showing the area to be saved by special legislation and recommended for World Heritage listing does not entirely align with the current Sanctuary borders.

The status of brother and sister Doug and Marg Sprigg who jointly operate the Sanctuary is unclear. They are merely referred to as the “pastoral leaseholders” and the press release refers to the government “actively examining options for the future conservation management of the Arkaroola Sanctuary”.

However, we can now celebrate the end of a four year campaign of blogging, pickets and rallies secure in the knowledge that the game is well and truly up now for Marathon and its shareholders.

Klein: Murdoch brings in the spin master

2011-07-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

There’s just so much to say about this Murdoch phone hacking scandal that it might be best to get a lot of it out of the way courtesy of the prince of photoshop, Matt Walker:

(The optional response boxes at the bottom of this shot are:

I can't remember

Not to my knowledge

No, I have no recollection of that

You have to ask them

Act confused and senile)

But here’s one that Matt didn’t need to touch up. It’s hilarious, tragic and instructive in it’s own right:

Immediately behind the right shoulder of James Murdoch is the disgraced former Chancellor of Education in New York City, Joel Klein.

Klein was once the shining star of educational "reform” in the US, holding schools “accountable” for student test results through a system of publicly available school “report cards”. However, the system turned to high farce following what Diane Ravitch, Professor of Education at New York University, has called “rigged and fraudulent” reports. (See http://www.saveourschools.com.au/league-tables/high-farce-in-new-york ).

Recognising a snake-oil salesman, Murdoch snapped up Klein last November when he appointed him a vice-director of News Corporation. Murdoch was keen to use Klein to open up the education market to his publishing and online empire:

“We’re very fortunate to have a leader of such exceptional depth join the senior executive team of News Corporation,” said Mr. Murdoch on November 9.2010. “His record of achievement leading one of the country’s toughest school systems has given him a unique perspective that will be particularly important as we look into a sector that has long been in need of innovation.”

What Murdoch meant by “innovation” was spelled out more clearly at this year’s G8 meeting in France. He referred to education as “the last frontier” - a vast market waiting to be invaded, conquered and financially exploited by News of the World and other companies.

He cited approvingly what he called Sweden’s “IKEA schools”, the Knowledge Schools chain, the owner of which has said: “If we're religious about anything, it's standardisation. We tell our teachers it is more important to do things the same way than to do them well.”

What attracted Murdoch, sniffing for dollars like a dog at its neighbour’s bum, was this: “Like IKEA, a giant Swedish furniture-maker, Kunskapsskolan gets its customers to do much of the work themselves. The vital tool, though, is not an Allen key but the Kunskapsporten (“Knowledge Portal”), a website containing the entire syllabus.”

Note, students are “customers”. The chain of schools to which Murdoch referred has 700 employees and teaches nearly 10,000 pupils, with an operating profit of SKr62m last year on a turnover of SKr655m. ($A1 = SKr6.7).

Murdoch wants to take this approach internationally.

All of that is on hold for the moment.

Klein, the master of spin, has been tasked by Murdoch with heading News Corporation’s internal investigation into the phone hacking scandal.

Murdoch said Klein would provide "important oversight and guidance" as the company "co-operates with the police in all investigations".

We hope that “co-operation with the police” extends to having Mr Murdoch’s toothbrush packed and ready for when he is arrested, as he should be, and taken to the holiday home for ageing reactionaries and fascists.

Klemzig

2011-07-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

A sign on the Unley Uniting Church caught my eye as I drove to work work this morning. “Trading asylum seekers for refugees is despicable”, it said in reference to the recent deal struck between the Australian and Malaysian Governments. And I agreed and thought how far we’d retreated from the early days of the colony of South Australia when the British unsettlers welcomed German refugees into the lands they had stolen from its Aboriginal custodians. Perhaps we’d forgotten ‘cos a place name’s origins become obscured and one suburb’s the same as another.

Klemzig
undistinguished suburb within the ugly
urban sprawl of feral occupation…

Where once the Kaurna in their settled
and stable custodianship walked the riverside
in 1838 came Kavel’s boatpeople; asylum seekers
fleeing religious persecution at the hands of
Prussia’s King and Junker nobles…

Not for them a Norfolk
Island cell or a Van Diemen’s Land
solution; each an honoured guest at George
Fife Angas’s behest in a paradise
of religious dissent…

Whitewashed walls of wattle and daub; the yellowed
thatch of sloping roofs; a pair of oxen
double-yoked through a redgum collar; an open
dray and a lad stooks hay, muttering in
guttural Deutsch “Get thee
behind me Satan!” for he
has taken in the blonde-haired girl
whose thick double plaits come
across her shoulders like door snakes and fall
down her breasts like shards of waterfall to
hang in mid-air and never splash
into that dark pool below….
that dark pool below…
that dark….Oh get thee behind I say!

Only in the context of imperialist
war with the white-washed walls
now clay brick and the dirt
lane become macadamized and each house
a row of English roses and the German name all that
remains of those persecuted arrivals does the
host community assert its narrow Anglo preference
and Klemzig is no more for Gaza is gazetted; a decree
to spite the Austro-German ally
Turkey and a Palestinian place-name
obliterates the Prussian on the land of Kaurna people…

1935 and it’s Klemzig again except
at the local footy club which plays on
today under a Middle-Eastern name….

And I shouldn’t call this suburb bland but
the whitewashed walls and the guttural noise and the
girl with thick blond plaits and the boy whose
every thought the Good Lord had placed to account
are gone;

and it’s
an undistinguished suburb within the ugly
urban sprawl of feral occupation

1/7/11

Malaysian people oppose Government intimidation

2011-06-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

The Malaysian Government is headed for a major confrontation with citizens of various ethnicities and social classes in the lead-up to the 2011 July 9 Bersih 2.0 Rally.

While the government sometimes takes a progressive anti-imperialist position, it does so only from the perspective of the Malaysian big bourgeoisie. Rather than empowering the Malaysian working class in the anti-imperialist cause, it oppresses them, actively curtails their rights, and uses ethnic division to foment differences within the working class. Malaysians of Chinese and Indian ethnicity are discriminated against in many ways.

Bersih (“clean” in Malay) is a reformist movement that began in 2007. Many political parties and organizations, including NGOs, are participants although the focal point has been Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and his centrist Peoples Justice Party (PKR).

Also involved is the Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM) which is influenced by the theories of Antonio Gramsci and Rosa Luxemburg.

The reformist platform of Bersih 2.0 includes the following demands:

• The use of permanent ink to ensure that voters may only vote once.
• A clean out of the electoral rolls to remove entries that are no longer valid such as deceased people.
• The abolition of postal votes on the basis that they are easily abused.
• Perhaps most importantly, Bersih demands that all candidates and political parties have equal access to print and broadcast media.

The recent crackdown started on June 22 with the arrest of PKR Youth member Razali Abd Ghafar for selling Bersih 2.0 t-shirts in Sepang. Since his arrest, more than 80 other activists have been arrested including 31 PSM members, including Sungai Siput MP Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj, who were arrested at the Sungai Dua toll plaza in Penang on June 25. They had been travelling in a bus and were part of a roadshow and leafleting campaign for the July 9 Bersih Rally for free and fair elections.

Female activists of the PSM arrested in the bus incident were subjected to humiliating and degrading behaviour by the police. The 14 women were "kicked on the legs", "pushed and spat on", told to drink water from the toilet bowl and forced to change clothes in front of male officers.
Penang deputy police chief Abdul Rahim Jaafar announced that the group were "waging war" against the King. (King Mizan Zainal Abidin, 45, is the 13th Sultan of Trengganu state and 16th Yang di-Pertua Agong of Malaysia installed on 26 April this year. King Mizan studied at the Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia before proceeding to the Alliant International University in London where he graduated with Bachelor of Arts degree in 1988. It’s nice to know that Australia’s richest elite private college is playing its part in shaping the values of such a “democratic” monarch!)

"They were carrrying items inciting the people to hate the government. This is serious and can threaten national security. They include flyers and t-shirts with Chin Peng, Rashid Maidin and Suriani Abdullah - all connected to MCP - written on them," Abdul Rahim said.

The MCP is the former Malayan Communist Party led by Chin Peng . The Party dissolved after the signing of a ceasefire with the Malaysian Government in 1989.

However, the PSM leadership denies that it is connected to the MCP.

"We reject any claims that we are attempting to revive communist ideology in Malaysia or among our members," PSM chairman Dr Nasir Hashim told The Malay Mail on June 27.

"The government is trying to create a fake controversy by making the public believe we are communists or trying to revive communism. This is absolute nonsense."

"The only pictures on the Bersih T-shirts were Bersih 2 on the front and Bersih's eight demands for clean polls at the back. There is a possibility some of our members may have brought T-shirts with the images of Chin Peng and Rashid Maidin for their own use. Such T-shirts are on sale in KL and our members might have been carrying these or coincidentally wearing them when they were arrested," said Nasir, who is also the Kota Damansara assemblyman.
He said he did not discount foul play.

The arrests of the 30 PSM members has also served to expose the way in which the reactionary bourgeoisie of Malaysia, in common with the imperialists and their servants worldwide, use “anti-terrorist” laws to persecute innocent people.

Penang police deputy chief Datuk Abdul Rahim Jaafar said the 30 PSM members were being detained and investigated under Section 122 of the Penal Code.

The Section was used to prosecute militant terrorist group Al-Ma’unah which staged an audacious arms heist at an army camp in July 2000 that resulted in a tense stand-off in the jungles near Sauk, Perak.

The Malaysian people will persist in the struggle for democratic reforms despite the persecution of the state authorities.

Allegations of “communism” against the PSM will only serve to popularise genuine communism and lead to the rebirth of the Communist Party to lead the fight against imperialist “globalisation” and for genuine independence and socialism.

What's your excuse Garrett?

2011-06-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

Federal Minister for Education Peter Garrett, formerly the lead singer with politically progressive rock band Midnight Oil, was talking about school funding on Adelaide radio this morning.

A caller identified as Bill from Victor Harbor rang in and asked the Minister why the federal Government continues to fund chaplains in schools.

It was a fair question given that the controversial scheme was introduced by the reactionary Howard Government (see here for previous post) and that Labor, while in Opposition, had pledged to bring it to an end.

Instead, Labor had continued the scheme during its first term of office and in the 2011-12 Budget identified a further $222m over 3 years to the end of 2014 in support of its expansion.

There was no money in the Budget for greater numbers of qualified counsellors, educational psychologists, specialist welfare/learning support teachers and allied support staff, and welfare/behaviour programs to meet students’ needs.

In reply, Garrett said that chaplains are only there to provide pastoral care and are prohibited from proselytising to their faith.

If that’s the case, why have chaplains at all? If they just want a cheap labour force that is prohibited from proselytising to Christianity, then why must these pretend-counsellors be chosen by religious agencies?

The answer is that the social democrats have totally embraced the agenda of imperialist neo-liberalism and want to outshine their competitors in US arse-licking, the conservative Liberals, so as to continue to enjoy the spoils of office with the endorsement of the US overlords.

Neo-liberalism is a complete agenda for ensuring continued US imperialist hegemony. Certain principles are taken as axiomatic: private is better than public, competition is inherently good, accountability drives improved performance, testing is central to measuring improvement, motivation can be raised by individualised incentives. Throw into the mix attacks on teachers and their unions and unfettered access to schools by corporations and military, and then the only thing missing from this “Americanisation” of Australian education is a healthy dose of religious activity. The mere fact of having people identified as “school chaplains” within a supposedly secular system of education is a privileging of religion as an institution and as a fact of secular school life. They don’t even need to proselytise, although many do.

Garrett is a fool and a hand puppet of US forces.

Murdoch out to conquer public education

2011-06-01T00:08:00.000-07:00

On 24 May, Rupert Murdoch delivered a speech at the G8 Forum in Paris. You can access it here: http://www.digitallearningnow.com/?p=796

Note the title. Read with a vomit bag handy.

Education: The Last Frontier

Last frontier. An undeveloped area, a region beckoning the imperialistically-minded to explore, invade and conquer.

When they explored, invaded and conquered the lands of other peoples, the invaders first demonised and dehumanised their prey. The "yellow races" were weak, diseased, effeminate. The "black races" were cannibals, victims of their own primitive urges, ignorant and stupid.

More recently, do we remember Race Slurs: Diggers to face Probe on March 25, 2011?:

THE Defence Force has launched an investigation after Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan posted racist slurs about Afghans and insulted Prime Minister Julia Gillard on their Facebook pages.

One of the soldiers referred to Afghans as ''sand niggaz'' and ''dune coons'', and joked about running them over in a vehicle.

Another described an unidentified Afghan man in a photograph as a ''poof'' and said he should be butt-stroked - slang for beaten with a rifle.

Murdoch’s message about teachers is not this crude, but his method is: he dismisses them as people stuck in the past, people who don't know how to teach kids today (he does, of course, and he even gives an example!), people who are callously writing kids off as hopeless, who are stuck in the age of chalk and blackboards.

What they need is a good dose of privatised curriculum via Murdoch and other corporate digital leaders: "My company is determined to try - in a big way".

And guess what Murdoch cites as a great school - the privatised and for profit “IKEA” schools in Sweden!

Makes you wonder what might be happening when they say it’s time to assemble the kids!

These were described in an Economist article in 2008: “Kunskapsskolan (“Knowledge Schools”) opened its first six schools in 2000. Four more opened last autumn, bringing the total to 30. It now has 700 employees and teaches nearly 10,000 pupils, with an operating profit of SKr62m last year on a turnover of SKr655m.”

Should any company be allowed to keep money as a profit that could otherwise be spent educating the students in its schools?

What attracted Murdoch, sniffing for dollars like a dog at its neighbour’s bum, was this: “Like IKEA, a giant Swedish furniture-maker, Kunskapsskolan gets its customers to do much of the work themselves. The vital tool, though, is not an Allen key but the Kunskapsporten (“Knowledge Portal”), a website containing the entire syllabus.”

It doesn’t matter that the “IKEA” philosophy behind the school is absolutely terrible.

According to Peter Ledin, Kunskapsskolan’s boss, ““If we're religious about anything, it's standardisation. We tell our teachers it is more important to do things the same way than to do them well.”

However, the privatised “free” schools of Sweden, now buying their way into the UK and the US, do not have such a fantastic track record. See Swedish warning: do not repeat our free school errors here: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6039807 for a counter-view.

US citizen Murdoch has done enough to stuff up Australia’s public schooling through the mis-named “Education Revolution” foisted on us by his lackeys Rudd and Gillard.

His terrible speech at the G8 Forum only contains promises of worse to come.

From logo to logistics: curriculum control coming our way?

2011-05-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

South Australian principals reading through the 2011 NAPLAN (national literacy and numeracy tests) Online Student Participation Website User Manual may or may not have noticed the Pearson logo sharing equal billing with that of DECS (SA Education Department).

However, they must surely have noticed that the website, on which they had to record their Statement of Compliance confirming that they had read and understood the NAPLAN Handbook for Principals, and to confirm or update student details, was not a DECS or DEEWR website, but the website of Pearson Online, and that it is a private multinational corporation.

Further, readers of that enlightening publication, Murdoch's Advertiser, may have seen the little column on May 12 that revealed that since the 2009 NAPLAN tests, Pearson Research and Assessment has had the contract to print, package, distribute and collect NAPLAN tests and results.

Storm in a teacup, or crony capitalism?

Get onto Pearson’s pearsonplaces website, and we find that simultaneously with the development of the new Australian Curriculum, Pearson’s “national author and review teams” have already produced texts and support materials for English, Science, Maths and History.

In fact the pearsonplaces website makes the Australian Curriculum look like a commodity marketed and distributed by the giant multinational.

So, a major corporation has used its smarts to get in quick and corner the market on texts for a new national curriculum. It’s also making big bucks out of NAPLAN. What’s the worry?

Time to revisit the educational cesspit of the United States.

The US is introducing a type of national curriculum for the first time. It is called Common Core Standards.

The Gates Foundation and the Pearson Foundation have teamed up to write a K-12 curriculum that will promote online learning and instructional video gaming.

Diane Ravitch, well-known educationalist and critic of standardized tests and “school choice”, was outraged.

“It is way past time to get mad,” she wrote. “When did we vote to hand over American education to them? Why would we outsource the nation’s curriculum to a for-profit publishing and test-making corporation based in London? Does Bill Gates get to write the national curriculum because he’s the richest man in America?”

The development of national curriculums means that publishers previously working within smaller state level markets now have national markets where a reduced range of products can be “taken to scale” (produced more cheaply with increased volume).

Pearson is moving quickly to capture not just the paper text book market, but the eText and iPad markets as well. They have teamed with Apple and the State of Virginia to run the first-ever complete social studies curriculum for the iPad, which will include games and self-test apps. If it is successful in Virginia, it will go national.

The transferability within English-speaking nations of certain curriculum and support materials (a shortcut to profits) is evidenced in pearsonplaces’ promotion of the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Systems “world-class literacy learning and assessment tools”. These were developed in the US and have been developed and used for over twenty years. Pearson is currently marketing them to Australian primary schools. The authors make no attempt to hide their “one size fits all” philosophy, stating that “When everyone in the school uses the same assessment, contnua and language as they move from observation to instruction, a common conversation occurs.”

If the big corporate octopus becomes any more involved with development of Australian curriculum materials and NAPLAN tests, will there ever be any place for the innovative and creative teacher who develops resources to suit the learning needs of diverse groups of students? Or will teachers simply become instructors of corporate classroom materials?

It is worth considering the approach adopted in Finland where the Minister for Education Henna Virkkunen praises the professionalism of educators:

“Teachers in Finland can choose their own teaching methods and materials. They are experts of their own work, and they test their own pupils. I think this is also one of the reasons why teaching is such an attractive profession in Finland because teachers are working like academic experts with their own pupils in schools.”

Amen to that!

Humphrey McQueen's Workers' Memorial Speech

2011-05-04T22:34:00.001-07:00

Historian and author Humphrey McQueen (above) was a guest at the South Australian May Day celebrations last weekend.

Hundreds gathered under wet conditions on Saturday morning for the May Day march. They included CFMEU member Ark Tribe who last year won his battle against the reactionary Australian Building and Construction Commission. Ark (third left, above) proudly carried the Eureka flag during the march.

Good numbers of young people also attended.

Also at the front of the march were the red flag of the international working class, the flag of the Aboriginal Australians (black at the top for the people, red underneath for the land, and both under the yellow sun), and the flag of the Eureka rebellion of 1854 which today symbolizes working class leadership of the people’s struggles for democracy and in defence of their rights and liberties.

On Sunday, McQueen spoke at the Workers’ Memorial at Port Adelaide (below), and later that night at the May Day Dinner (second, below) at which Ark Tribe was acknowledged as a people’s hero to a standing ovation.

The text of McQueen’s speech at the Workers’ Memorial commemoration is reproduced below:

Port Adelaide Workers Memorial

(Speech by Humphrey McQueen, May Day, 2011)

One does good, neither from fear of punishment nor promise of reward, but because good is good to do. These were the sentiments of the nineteenth-century American Rationalist, Colonel Robert Ingersoll, whose writings would have been popular with some of the people whose names went onto the Workers’ memorial. We can be certain that all of them had lived according to that point of view. None of them behaved as they did with any thought that they might be honoured in any way other than through the respect of their friends, neighbours and workmates.

That is why it is an honour to be at the Port as your guest on May Day to reflect on their lives and the importance of this monument.

We gather in the shadow of Anzac Day and of International Workers’ Memorial Day. This event brings the two commemorations together. Looking back to the establishment of this memorial between 1917 and 1921 we see a period of intense propaganda in support of King and Empire.

It is often forgotten that war is work for capital. Slogging in the trenches for the capitalist state is as much a form of wage-slavery as is laboring on sites for a particular capitalist. Eight of the forty-one original names were of local workers who had been killed in the war. In one sense then, this workers’ memorial is also a war memorial. But I suggest that all the war memorials are also memorials to the working people whose lives and limbs were lost in the service of capital. Those monuments are ours too. We must reclaim them from the warmongers.

During the 1971 Moratorium March in Newcastle, the thousands of workers paused at the small war memorial outside the Post Office in Hunter Street. An elderly miner spoke: ‘When I was a lad I was silly enough to volunteer to fight for the British Imperialists. I’m proud to say that my son fought in the anti-fascist war. We’re both here today to make sure that my grandson is not conscripted for the imperialist war in Vietnam’. As anti-imperialists, part of our task is to make the experiences of three generations part of every Anzac Day.

Adding the statue of ‘Justice’ with her scales of equality in 1921 was another call to arms. Those scales can never be balanced in a class society. We have a horrible reminder of the law as a regime of injustice in the 2004 murder of Daniel Madeley. I say ‘murder’ even though Marx explained why ‘killing is not murder when done for profit’. Similarly, the escape of the directors of Hardie’s on yet another of those legal technicalities is proof that capital gets away with mass murder. As one of the asbestos widows put it: ‘There is no appeal from the grave’.

The bias built into bourgeois law is written all over the persecution of Ark Tribe by the Building and Construction Commission. It pursues workers trying to enforce Health and Safety regulations but turns a blind eye to the violators. To make matters worse, the anti-labour party government is harmonising OH&S down to the weakest common denominator.

Hence, the necessity for Justice to have a sword. Under the rule of capital, that defensive weapon is a militant union movement. The significance of organised labour was voiced in 1916 by a Hobart labourer, Samuel Champ:
Our liberties were not won by mining magnates or stock-exchange jobbers, but by genuine men of the working-class movement who had died on the gallows and rotted in dungeons and were buried in nameless graves. These were the men to whom we owed the liberties we enjoyed today. Eight hours and other privileges in Australia had been won by men who suffered gaol and persecution.

Shortly after Champ’ s speech, our liberties were protected by the defeat of the two plebiscites to impose conscription for overseas military service. The labour movement knew that industrial conscription would follow. According to the Solicitor-General, the War Precautions Act already meant ‘that John Citizen was hardly able to lift a finger without coming under the penumbra of some technical offence’. How appropriate then that we are meeting in the courtyard to the prison cells where militants were held.

Among the victims of this repression were ‘the IWW twelve’ jailed for arson. All but two got early release after a Royal Commission. That investigation was one achievement of the Industrial Socialist Labor member for Broken Hill, Percy Brookfield.

Brookfield held the balance of power in the NSW parliament. To cling to office, the Labor cabinet gave way on the IWW and on OH&S for Barrier miners
Percy was on his way to Sydney via the Port when ‘he died for his people’ at Riverton in March 1921, ninety years ago. He had often passed through here and no doubt many locals wanted to add his name to their memorial. He has his own in the Broken Hill cemetery and now Paul Adams’s biography is now available with that stunning title - ‘The Best Hated Man in Australia’.

Percy Brookfield was special. However, until 1915, he was just another miner and unionist. Similarly, Ark Tribe had been an everyday builders’ labourer for twenty-three years before he took his stand. The same is true of the Eureka rebels. They were not saints or angels before November 1854. People rose to the call in1929 here and again in 1998 against Patricks. Stories about past struggles encouraged them to say: ‘We could do that!’ And they did.

Women have always done so too. Yet only one out of the forty-one names in the first listing was of a woman, Christina Fox. More have been added, for example, the Aboriginal activist, Ruby Hammond. Yet there were many, many more who were busy behind the scenes – ‘Because that’s what women do’, to quote a line from the 2004 musical Eureka! They ‘did good because good is good to do’. Researchers are finding more of their names for you to consider adding.

Why are there not more memorials to workers? There is a marble statue of a cane-cutter at Innisfail. And there are memorials to a few of the tens of thousands killed on the job, for instance, to the Truckies at Tarcutta. And as we saw earlier there are the war memorials for the tens of thousands slaughtered to make the world safe for big capital.

However, we need to remember that we are surrounded by memorials to working people wherever we go. A plaque to the architect of St Paul’s cathedral in London, Christopher Wren, reads ‘ If you seek his memorial, look about you’. An avalanche of capitalist propaganda makes it hard for us to recognise the memorials to workers that are all around us. The first ticket-holder in the Shearers’ Union in Wagga Wagga in 1886, Charlie Sullivan, knew the truth when he wrote his memoirs forty years later:
Not one word is written of the thousands of workers who toiled in the heat, in the cold, and in the rain, who cut through rock and blasted channels, who reared great walls and buildings, not a word of the lives lost, of those who toiled with the crushed fingers of their calloused hands, dripping blood into the concrete, or staining steel. It has been thus from the time millions of straining naked slaves built that magnificence which was Babylon, and those monuments which are known as the Pyramids. The names of kings and warlords are handed down in manuscripts and in books to after generations, but few ever think of the great and humble army whose sweat and blood are mingled in the concrete and bricks as surely as if the walls were built over a framework of human flesh.

They will remain unhonoured and unsung till workers write the histories that are taught in our schools.

Gathering here today we take a stand to inscribe Charlie’s longing for a red armband account of Australia’s past.

Although I have dwelt in the past, you would not have come out this morning if you did not know in your hearts that this is a monument to the living. When you lay your flowers you commit to a future where any murder for profit is outlawed, where class bias is no more, and where every human being flourishes through social equality. Until then, organised labour as the embodiment of Justice dare not lay down our sword.

Geronimo should be honoured, not associated with bin Laden

2011-05-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

The vile creature bin Laden is dead, conspiracy theorists notwithstanding.

But what a sad reflection on the mentality of the US imperialists that he was code-named after a great indigenous patriot and warrior, Geronimo.

Are the grown men and women who comprise the inner sanctum of US ruling circles really nothing more than outgrown children, still playing “cowboys and Indians” in the backyard?

To code-name bi Laden “Geronimo” is to revel in the expansionist war crimes and land seizures of settler America, and is an insult to every living US indigenous person.

Geronimo (June 16, 1829 – February 17, 1909) was a prominent American First Nations leader of the Chiricahua Apache who fought for several decades against the expansion of Mexico and the United States into Apache tribal lands.

After an attack by a company of Mexican soldiers killed many members of his family in 1858, Geronimo joined revenge attacks on the Mexicans and later against the United States. He became known for bravery and daring feats and was revered by the Apaches as a warrior with spiritual powers.

Lisa Balk King, of Indian Country Today Media Network, wrote that the nickname sends "a disturbing message that equates an iconic symbol of Native American pride with the most hated evildoer since Adolf Hitler."

“Potentially the most disturbing fact is what this says to American Indian children. It equates being Native American with being hated, an enemy to the world, and someone to be hunted down and killed, and re-casts one of their heroes into a villainous role,” she said.

Unlike bin Laden, who was summarily executed upon capture, Geronimo was kept alive as a prisoner of war and died in captivity after being thrown from his horse in 1909.

So, the lone superpower that cooperated with anti-fascist forces to raise the standard of international justice to new heights with the Nuremburg War Trials has now descended to the depths of vigilante assassination.

This is of no surprise to anti-imperialists, but is causing concern to many democratic-minded and justice-loving persons.

All that the US ruling class can do is to smother itself in the jubilant lumpen exreta of “USA! USA!”, “Got what he deserved - the people in the Twin Towers weren’t armed either!” and so on.

Lies and misinformation typical of imperialist spin are slowly dissolving.

Yesterday, a US reporter was telling readers of our local Murdoch rag that “Bin Laden was located in an upstairs room using a woman, believed to be one of his wives, as a shield as he fired at the soldiers.”

This justified his killing and discredited him as a coward.

However, Pakistani sources are now saying there was no fire fight anywhere in the compound. "Not a single bullet was fired from the compound at the US forces and their choppers,” said the source.

And persistent questioning of the sort rarely seen these days by the kept reporters of the White House elicited a reluctant admission from the US that bin Laden was unarmed.

Now bin Laden’s 12 year old daughter, who was present when he was killed, has claimed that her father was first captured and then shot, in front of her and other members of the family.

His wife had not been used as a shield, but had rushed at the US soldiers who had shot and wounded her.

So, one pack of bastards has eliminated another bastard - the creature they created in their fight with the Soviet social-imperialists for control of Afghanistan.

No wonder they wanted him dead. What stories he might have told!

And in the process, the children of indigenous USA are defeated all over again in the continuing Apache Wars.

Bob Dylan plays Beijing and Shanghai, but not for Ai Weiwei

2011-04-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan, 70-year old veteran troubadour, played Beijing and Shanghai in early April. It was his first visit to the country and went without hitch following the cancellation of a tour originally planned for last year. While audience reviews by expats and locals were overwhelmingly positive, Western print media in particular engaged in an orgy of punning around the titles of some of his best-known songs from his early days, like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times, They Are A-Changin’”. The problem as they saw it was that Dylan had sold out by not dedicating a song to, or making comment about, Ai Weiwei, a so-called dissident artist who was arrested shortly before Dylan’s arrival in China. The accusation largely reflects the ignorance about Dylan’s long-time rejection of labels such as “spokesman of a generation” and “protest singer”. Such ignorance looks for a politics that can be reduced to a five word slogan held on a placard. Far from selling out, Dylan kept true to himself and played a set list that was consistent with what he’s been doing around the world recently. It included “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, “Desolation Row”, “Ballad of a Thin Man”, “Highway 61 Revisited” and arguably his most political song (although it depends on your own interpretation), “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. But who is this Ai Weiwei that Dylan is accused of betraying? Ai Weiwei, 53, is the son of Ai Qing, a poet whose repudiation of the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek) led him to change his surname from Jiang (i.e. the pinyin form of Chiang) to Ai in the early 1930s. He was imprisoned by Chiang Kai-shek, but also sent into exile on state farms in the northeast and in Xinjiang from 1958 to 1975. Ai Qing was a revolutionary and a patriot. Here is his 1938 poem, “I Love This Land”: If I were a bird, I would sing with my hoarse voice Of this land buffeted by storms, Of this river turbulent with our grief, Of these angry winds ceaselessly blowing, And of the dawn, infinitely gentle over the woods… - Then I would die And even my feathers would rot in the soil. Why are my eyes always brimming with tears? Because I love this land so deeply… According to the New York Times, Ai Weiwei “takes the role of China’s conscience”. The LA Times and The Economist tried to boost his prestige by incorrectly describing him as the designer of the “Bird’s Nest” stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He was a minor consultant to the architects but his ideas were not used. Ai Weiwei left for the US in 1981. He was expelled from a New York design school for chronic absenteeism in 1983 and became an illegal immigrant, gaining a US Green Card when his profile as a “dissident” associated with the downtown art world in New York grew. He returned to China in 1994 and embedded himself in the avant-garde “artists’ village” on the outskirts of Beijing. Ai Weiwei’s “art” would probably seem old hat to anyone familiar with the filth and vomit of the punk era of Western pop music, but for those who were not exposed, be warned that the following passages contain adult themes…. In 2000 during the Shanghai Bienniale Ai Weiwei was co-curator of a show called “F*** Off” which included photos of his upraised middle finger pointed at Tiananmen Square, and an exhibit that purported to show the bodies of two dead babies. For China’s 60th Anniversary in 2009 he launched a video of himself and various others standing in front of a white board with the handwritten characters “grass-mud-horse, motherland” in the background. In Chinese, the words “grass-mud-horse” are homonyms for “F*** your mother”. The phrase, or a close variant, is repeated monotonously by each of the eight people including an aggressive-looking young white American male. Ai Weiwei utters a phrase that says, somewhat impolitely, what he has done to his motherland’s genitals. Such is the “art” of the man who “takes the role of China’s conscience”. He was not arrested in relation to this role, or at least, the charges do not refer to it. He was arrested in relation to financial irregularities involving a Shanghai art studio. Dylan may or may not have heard of him. Her may or may not like his ideas. But he is not a spokesman for US imperialism and does not have to arrange his set lists to serve causes that the US government espouses.

Cometh another Superman....

2011-03-29T22:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a group of us watched Waiting for Superman, a film about the Charter school movement in the US. The Charter school movement is one of the vehicles through which “social venture capitalists “(billionaires like the Waltons, the Broads, and Bill Gates) invest in, and shape to suit their own purposes, public education. Australia does not have a history of private philanthropy comparable to that of the US, but like every American plague, it is about to be visited upon us big time.

Below is an article by right-wing economics commentator Robert Gottliebsen, published online today. (The additional gratuitous and insulting comments are mine.) The current newsletter of his organisation, SVA, provides a link to the recruitment page of Teach for Australia. The Chief Executive of SVA, Michael Traill, was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2010. He established SVA after 15 years as a co-founder and Executive Director of Macquarie Bank's venture capital arm, Macquarie Direct Investment. In that capacity he “helped rescue more than 550 childcare centres from the ABC Learning collapse”, earning him the title of “Childcare ‘saviour’” from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Duncan Peppercorn is an executive director of SVA.

Enough. Read on….

Duncan Peppercorn – an agent for change Robert Gottliebsen Published 3:21 PM, 29 Mar 2011 Last update 10:02 AM, 30 Mar 2011
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Applying the management techniques embraced in management consultancy firms, like Bain and Company and McKinsey’s, to the non-profit sector creates a very different outcome to that produced by your traditional social worker. (Now there’s a nice opening stereotype - we all know what “traditional social workers” are like!)

Duncan Peppercorn left the high corporate life for the non-profit sector (Yeah? Sounds like a good guy), with the financial backing of the Macquarie Group Foundation and a series of wealthy philanthropists (Uh oh….) . The organisation he leads, Social Ventures Australia (SVA), helps and advises groups working in education and employment for the disadvantaged. (Double uh oh!)

With the eye of a trained management consultant (Wow! That good huh? Circling like an eagle over us rabbits down below…), Peppercorn points out that the problems in education and in employment for those suffering from disadvantage are concentrated in a series of postcodes, usually on the outskirts of major capital cities (Yes, the man’s a genius! No-one else could have worked that out!!!). He is careful not to actually mention specific suburbs (Far out, all that genius and professional integrity too!), but indicates that if you are addressing the problem, your focus can be narrowed to particular areas (Did a light globe turn on above your head too?) .

And when it comes to education, is the answer huge investments in facilities? (One, two, three…all together now: “No-o-o-!!!”) They may help, (But we know they don’t - that’s why we put in the word “may”) but the only answer that works is the quality of teachers, he says (Lo and behold! Here cometh a man with the wisdom of Solomon) – that’s what makes the difference (We interrupt the sledging to make a serious comment. The research so often quoted by Julia Dullard and others in support of this contention is that of NZ Professor John Hattie. His research conclusion is that “the single greatest in-school influence on student engagement and influence” is the quality of the teacher What neo-liberals and education deformers don’t point out is his important caveat that there may be more important out-of-school influences that he chose not to look at in his study: in his own words, his book isn't about "what cannot be influenced in schools - thus critical discussions about class, poverty, resources in families, health in families, and nutrition are not included - this is NOT because they are unimportant, indeed they may be more important than many of the issues discussed in this book. It is just that I have not included these topics in my orbit” [see http://www.nzherald.co.nz/maori/news/article.cfm?c_id=252&objectid=10582708 accessed 3 June 2010]). So, if you want to help the disadvantaged, the first step is to recruit and train quality teachers (Because, of course, those idiots now teaching them are no good – worse even than those bloody social workers we dismissed earlier).

A second step is to find a way to avoid the poverty trap (Fantastic! At last we’re going to address the real issue in poor educational outcomes namely, the relatively high percentage of Australian children living in poverty), whereby working makes no sense because the reduction in social services benefits offsets the wage income (Oh bugger! This isn’t about education at all. It’s saying that heaps of working Australians prefer bludging off the dole to working. Hell, we’ll either have to raise minimum wages or lower the dole. Hmmm, I can see where this is going…).

One day politicians will wake up to that (Yep, let’s get ‘em to force people into shitty jobs on crap wages by quarantining their dole….OK, so we’re doing that to our indigenous brothers and sisters in the Territory and we plan to do it elsewhere, but what’s wrong with simply slashing the dole and starving them into wage slavery?) but it’s not easy to change because there is an army of people who want the existing system to stay as it is (That’s right, all them teachers and social workers) .

The third step is to find a way to encourage large corporations to employ disadvantaged people to help them avoid the poverty trap (How? Funny, but we seem to have run out of ideas right about here!) .

In his interview, Dr Peppercorn sets out what needs to be done with the precision of a management consultant (Oh spare me, the “precision of a management consultant???”). But he is also, in there, working to achieve change (Wow, a knight in shining armour. But change for whom? Change by whom?) in selected areas. It will be no easy task; and small steps are usually better than trying to change the world with a grand design (Don’t let “them” cotton on to what you’re up to. Stealth and caution, stealth and caution) .

Australia has enormous numbers caught in the poverty trap, and so, it is one of the most important management tasks in the nation (Hang on, it was management tasks that put most of them in that poverty trap!) . And it has a human dimension that those who work for management consultants often miss out on (Now ain’t that the feckin’ truth!) .

Imperialists Out to Destroy Libyan Independence

2011-03-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

The US, British and French “coalition” attack on Libya occurs behind the fig-leaf of concern for the safety of citizens of the country.

Meanwhile protesters in Yemen and Bahrain continue to be killed by US puppet regimes backed, in the case of Bahrain, by soldiers sent in from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

Libya’s Gaddafi came to power in 1969 when he and his supporters overthrew the pro-US regime of King Idris. Oil and other major industries were nationalised and the giant US Wheelus Air Base forced to close.

Gaddafi’s anti-imperialist credentials were established and he began supporting various national liberation struggles around the globe.

However, his Green (Islamic) Revolution did nothing to empower the strongest component of the anti-imperialist forces in his country - the workers. Reactionary political measures were taken to impose restrictions on their independent activity and to ensure that the colour of the revolution remained green (Islamist) and not red (socialist).

Not being a Marxist, Gaddafi began to embrace terrorism as a weapon against imperialism, failing to understand that terrorism is essentially counter-productive and damaging to the causes with which it is linked.

He may or may not have authorised the nightclub bombing in Germany, for example; what it provided was an excuse for the Reagan regime to invade Libyan airspace in 1986 and savagely bomb a number of Libyan cities, causing huge loss of civilian life. Indeed Gaddafi’s own compound was bombed and his daughter killed.

Condemned as a terrorist and a rogue by the imperialists, Gaddafi was forced to re-evaluate his position after the demise of the social-imperialist Soviet superpower, China’s growing accommodation to the needs of imperialism, and the subsequent change in the international balance of power.

From the late 90’s on, Gaddafi began capitulating to imperialist pressure. He scrapped his nuclear weapons program and destroyed stocks of weapons and in return, in 2003 his country was removed from the US’s list of “terrorist states”.

Multinational corporations were given access to the Libyan economy in a wave of neo-liberal “reforms” demanded by the World Bank and the IMF. The living standards of the Libyan people, once the highest in Northern Africa, began to plummet so that at the same time as he was beginning to bask in international approval he also had to confront growing internal dissatisfaction.

When that dissatisfaction boiled over into protests followed by civil war in the wake of the great Tunisian and Egyptian people’s struggles, the imperialists seized the opportunity to complete the undermining of Libyan independence and clamoured for a “regime change”.

Vision of Libyan jets striking rebel strongholds in the east of the country created a favourable public opinion environment for intervention by the imperialists.

Learning from the mistakes surrounding their unilateral aggression against Iraq, the US imperialists adopted a relatively low profile, leaving the front running to the British and French with the support of a shaky Arab League. A motion was rushed through the United Nations Security Council on Thursday March 17 authorising the imposition of a “no-fly zone” on Libya. Brazil, Russia, India, China and Germany abstained, while the Organisation of African Unity condemned the move.

Gaddafi declared his compliance with the resolution with an announcement of a ceasefire but no time was provided by the imperialists to let this take effect.

Nor was a “no-fly zone” simply a matter of patrolling the skies over Libya to ensure that Gaddafi’s jets remained on the ground.

Despite a Pentagon spokesperson’s assurance that a “no-fly zone” had been successfully imposed, the US and British imperialists launched 112 Raytheon Corporation Cruise Missile attacks from naval vessels on 20 different Libyan sites on Saturday March 19.

Included in those sites was Gaddafi’s compound – a “symbolic” gesture according to some in the capitalist press, and no doubt intended to remind Gaddafi of his daughter’s death in 1986 and therefore of his own personal vulnerability.

Not to be outdone, the British and the French sent warplanes to attack convoys of Gaddafi forces. This has been one of the more successful of the imperialists’ actions as there have been no reports of tanks and troop carrying vehicles taking to the skies since the attack.

It would be too cynical to suggest that each new act of aggression by imperialism provides opportunities to test the latest weaponry in real life…or death….situations.

But Boeing will be pleased that its EA-18G Growler, is providing electronic warfare support to the “Coalition’s” attacks on Libya. This is the first combat mission for the Growler which not only went after Libya’s surface-to-air missiles, but also helped the aggressors conduct air strikes on loyalist ground forces going after rebel strongholds.

US B-2 Stealth bombers haven't seen a lot of action since the days of "Shock and Awe" over Iraq. But with the mission to destroy Libyan radar and missile sites -- and airfields, and command posts -- in full effect, the B-2 is back in effect. The one pictured at the top of this blog, returning from a bombing run, flew all the way from Missouri's Whiteman Air Force Base.

British Typhoon fighter jets are being used in their first-ever combat missions and nations like Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands are seeing how their warplanes perform in real….well, whatever, conditions.

In May 2009, Raytheon Missile Systems proposed an upgrade to the Tomahawk Block IV land-attack cruise missile that would allow it to kill or disable large, hardened warships at 900 nautical miles (1,700 km) range, just to give you some idea of its destructive capacity. Although guided by GPS systems and able to be re-targeted in mid-air, it is apparently incapable of turning around and going back home if citizens get in its path. It’s great for Raytheon that the new Block IVs are getting a work-out.

In time it will be revealed that the imperialists never really intended to simply impose the conditions for a “fair” fight between Gaddafi and his opponents, that the “no-fly zone” had more to its agenda than just providing a level playing field between the Government and the rebels. After all, where does that argument begin and end? X has aerial superiority and we support Y, so we’ll impose a “no-fly zone”. But X also has more tanks than Y, so we’ll Tomahawk his excess tanks. But he’s also got more troops, so how about we knock a few tens of thousands of them out as well. And if he’s got more popular support, well, we’ll just have to slaughter his civilians so as to protect those supporting Y.

By coincidence, on Monday March 21 the German magazine Der Spiegel released photos of a smiling US “kill team” posing with the bodies of tortured and killed Afghan civilians from whose bodies gruesome “trophies” had been cut. (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/21/us-army-kill-team-afghanistan-posed-pictures-murdered-civilians ).

Although its early days yet in the imperialists’ war of aggression against Libya, these are the observations that can be made now:

1. Imperialism is by its very nature opposed to the interests of humanity. It cannot and will not provide “humanitarian assistance”.
2. It is the inalienable right of the Libyan people to rebel against reactionary authority, whether that takes the persona of Gaddafi and his regime, or is constituted by the aggressive coalition of the imperialists.
3. Freedom and independence can neither be imported nor exported; rather, it can only be won by each people conducting its own difficult and protracted struggle.
4. That does not mean leaving a people to its own fate. The basis of assistance to those carrying out a just struggle is proletarian internationalism. Only the people can provide assistance to each other without interfering, bullying, subverting and seeking to control – all of which characterise imperialist intervention.
5. The key to the resolution of contradictions in Libya is the emergence of the working class in an organsied, conscious role as leaders of the fight to defend the independence of their nation and the liberation of their people.

Wisconsin - the world is watching

2011-02-28T17:44:00.001-08:00

Whilst the focus of the world in recent weeks has been on the Middle East and North Africa, and the great democratic revolt shaking regimes in that region, events in Madison, Wisconsin have also come into prominence.

The State’s Republican Governor Walker is trying to push through a “Budget repair” Bill that will make public sector workers carry the burden of the State’s economic woes. Some public sector unions have already agreed to pay more towards their pension and health care funds.

However, none are prepared to give away their right to collective bargaining over wages and conditions, which is also part of the Walker package.

When public sector unions called for rallies outside the State Capitol (parliament), tens of thousands responded. They included teachers who do not have the right to strike in Wisconsin, but who phoned in sick over four successive days, effectively closing down the public school system. Huge numbers of students walked out of schools to join the protest. Heaps of amateur videos have been put up on YouTube recording this.

Walker’s reaction was to threaten use of the National Guard to arrest any public employee deemed to be “on strike”.

His problems were compounded when the State legislature’s Democratic Party representatives boycotted proceedings in the House, denying Walker the quorum he needed to get his Bill through.

To prevent themselves being seized by State Police and forcibly returned to the legislature, the whole group fled interstate, effectively going into exile while protest numbers mounted outside the Capitol.

And not only outside the Capitol. The good citizens of Wisconsin claimed the House as their own and set up sleep-ins and occupations.

On the Saturday before last, a crowd estimated at anywhere between 70,000 and 100,000 claimed the centre of Wisconsin, dubbing it “the new Cairo” and calling for “Governor Walker Mubarak” to stand down. Signs went up calling for the “overthrow of the Pharaoh”.

With protests showing no signs of dissipating, Walker was sprung discussing the possibility of planting agents provocateurs amongst the protesters to create disturbances that would provide an excuse and a PR cover for the police to smash the rallies.

According to Madison.com: Madison's mayor and police chief Thursday called on Gov. Scott Walker to explain statements he made in a secretly recorded phone conversation that he "thought about" planting troublemakers among the thousands of demonstrators at the Capitol.

"Someone in his inner circle raised seriously the possibility of hiring people to come in and apparently create violence in my city," Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said. "I find it appalling, and I want to know who that was."

Last Saturday, an even larger crowd than the previous week’s gathered outside the occupied Capitol. Walker’s response was to get his police to lock down the building, denying access to it from the outside and locking inside those who were occupying it.

This is the most recent (Monday February 28) report from the Wisconsin State Journal:

Protesters have filled the Capitol for two weeks, turning the historic building into a sort of protest village, complete with first aid centers, scheduled events and family centers. Capitol police started on Friday enforcing a new set of rules for the rotunda, most of them aimed at ending the situation.

On Sunday, Capitol police attempted to peacefully remove the remaining protesters. An ardent group refused to go and was still inside the building Monday. Most have complied with the new rules, including staying on the ground floor. A few have not, which has led to the standoff.

“My grandfather helped build this building,” said LaVorn Dvorak, a retired social worker from Brooklyn, who was stuck outside for two hours in below-freezing temperatures. “I expect to be able to get in. Now they’re telling us we can’t get in to our own statehouse.”

As Dvorak spoke, chants arose including “Let us in — please.” And “Whose house?” “Our house!”

Meanwhile, the man who is organizing a recall effort against the governor filed a hand-written request for an injunction in U.S. District Court in Madison Monday seeking to reopen the Capitol. In it, Jeremy Ryan of Defending Wisconsin PAC is seeking $10 million to be paid to the protesters for the alleged violation of their civil rights.

All power to the people of Wisconsin!

Smash Walker’s union busting!

Defend the right to collective bargaining!

The whole world is watching.

PS - See this online timeline full of interesting links: http://www.dipity.com/timeline/Wisconsin-Protests/

Egyptian independent trade unionists' declaration

2011-02-22T17:52:00.000-08:00

The great wave of struggle sweeping through the Middle east and North Africa has a common theme – freedom from oppression.

Although the characteristics of that oppression in each of the countries concerned may be quite different, it has never been more apparent that oppression breeds resistance and that it is right to rebel against reactionaries.

The significant turning point in the case of Egypt has been the emergence of organised workers. There had always been workers and unemployed amongst the vast crowds in Tahrir Square, but the US-backed Mubarak regime had used the full force of the state to clamp down on the organisation of workers at the workplace, declaring all but an unrepresentative tamecat union apparatus illegal.

Just days before Mubarak resigned, there were signs of genuine mass organisations of the workers and the beginning of large-scale strikes in defiance of Mubarak and his union collaborators.

Reprinted below is a statement released on February 19 2011 in Cairo conatining the demands whose circulation helped crystallise the determination of workers to advance their own interests within the great democratic struggle of the people of Egypt.

...................................................................................

Revolution – Freedom – Social Justice

Demands of the workers in the revolution

O heroes of the 25 January revolution! We, workers and trade unionists from different workplaces which have seen strikes, occupations and demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of workers across Egypt during the current period, feel it is right to unite the demands of striking workers that they may become an integral part of the goals of our revolution, which the people of Egypt made, and for which the martyrs shed their blood. We present to you a workers’ programme which brings together our just demands, in order to reaffirm the social aspect of this revolution and to prevent the revolution being taken away from those at its base who should be its beneficiaries.

The workers’ demands which we raised before the 25 January revolution and were part of the prelude to this glorious revolution are:

1. Raising the national minimum wage and pension, and a narrowing of the gap between minimum and maximum wages so that the maximum is no more than 15 times the minimum in order to achieve the principle of social justice which the revolution gave birth to; payment of unemployment benefit, and a regular increment which will increase with rising prices.

2. The freedom to organise independent trade unions without conditions or restrictions, and the protection of trade unions and their leaders.

3. The right of manual workers and clerical workers, peasant farmers and professionals, to job security and protection from dismissal. Temporary workers must be made permanent, and dismissed workers to be returned to their jobs. We must do away with all excuses for employing workers on temporary contracts.

4. Renationalization of all privatised enterprises and a complete stop to the infamous privatisation programme which wrecked our national economy under the defunct regime.

5.
* Complete removal of corrupt managers who were imposed on companies in order to run them down and sell them off.
* Curbing the employment of consultants who are past the age of retirement and who eat up 3 billion of the national income, in order to open up employment opportunities for the young.
* Return to the enforcement of price controls on goods and services in order to keep prices down and not to burden the poor.

6. The right of Egyptian workers to strike, organise sit-ins, and demonstrate peacefully, including those striking now against the remnants of the failed regime, those who were imposed on their companies in order to run them down prior to a sell-off. It is our opinion that if this revolution does not lead to the fair distribution of wealth it is not worth anything. Freedoms are not complete without social freedoms. The right to vote is naturally dependent on the right to a loaf of bread.

7. Health care is a necessary condition for increasing production

8. Dissolution of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation which was one of the most important symbols of corruption under the defunct regime. Execution of the legal judgements issued against it and seizure of its financial assets and documents. Seizure of the assets of the leaders of the ETUF and its member unions and their investigation.

Signed:
Workplace Name
Employee of the Meteorological Office Ahmad Kamal Salah
Health Technicians Hossam Muhammad Abdallah Ali
Nurse Sayyida Al-Sayyid Muhammad Fayiz
Al-Fayyum Sugar Refinery Ashraf Abd al-Wanis
Umar Effendi Department Store Abd-al-Qadir Mansur
Future Pipes Co, 6th October City Hafiz Nagib Muhammad
Egypt – Helwan Textiles Co. Muhammad Hassan
Tura Cement Mahmud Abd-al-Munsaf Al-Alwani
Egyptian Commercial Pharmaceutical Co. Ali Mahmud Nagi
Hawamidiyya Sugar Refinery Umar Muhammad Abd-al-Aziz
Egyptian Pharmaceuticals Muhammad Galal
Suez Fertilisers Co. Shazli Sawi Shazli
Military Factory No.45 Muhammad Ibrahim Hassan
Military Factory No. 999 Wasif Musa Wahba
General Transport Authority Gamil Fathi Hifni
Cairo General Contractors Adil Abd-al-Na’im
Al-Qanah Rope Co., Port Sa’id Ali Hassan Abu Aita
Information Centre Hind Abd-al-Gawad Ibrahim
Information Centre Hamada Abu-Zaid
Information Centre Muhammad Khairy Zaid
General Authority for Cultural Centres Hatim Salah Sayyid
National Postal Authority Muhammad Abd-al-Hakim
International Ibex Co. Ahmad Islam
Military Factory 99 Tariq Sayyid Mahmud
Military Factory 999 Nabil Mahmud
Trade unionist Mahmud Shukri
Military Factory 999 Ahmad Faruq
Military Factory 999 Usama Al-Sayyid
Future Pipe Industries Yasir Al-Sayyid Ibrahim
Tannery workers Mahmud Ali Ahmad
Future workers Abd-al-Rasul Abd-al-Ghani
Umar Effendi Department Store Ali Al-Sayyid
Property Tax Collectors (RETAU) Kamal Abu Aita
Property Tax Collectors (RETAU) Ahmad Abd-al-Sabur
Property Tax Collectors (RETAU) Salah Abd-al-Hamid
Property Tax Collectors (RETAU) Mahmud Umar
Worker Khalid Galal Muhammad
Petrotrade Co. Muhammad Zaki Isma’il

This is an impressive list of workplaces, many of which have been involved in big strikes in the past and during the last few weeks. The Mahalla textile workers are supportive of the declaration, but couldn’t send a representative to the meeting because of negotiations around their own strike. Solidarity messages should be sent to reta.union.reta@gmail.com and egypt.solidarity@gmail.com .

Arkaroola victory imminent

2011-02-17T19:18:00.001-08:00

Today’s announcement that South Australian Premier Mike Rann is expected to declare the privately-operated Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary a National Park is a huge victory for the people.

The move will ban mining in the park and put an end once and for all to the environmental despoilers and would-be uranium miners Marathon Resources.

It is a huge victory because Rann had rebadged the Labor Party as “pro-business, pro-mining and pro-growth” and because Marathon had very close ties to Rann and his ministers.

Former Federal Labor Senator Chris Schacht worked with Rann to overturn SA Labor’s opposition to an expansion of uranium mining at a time when few knew that he was a shareholder in Marathon. After the company had its exploration licence suspended by Rann following disclosure of its illegal dumping of waste from its drilling activities, Schacht was elevated to an Executive Director so as to be able to better work his government contacts. Building on the ties to Labor, Marathon appointed another former Labor Senator John Quirke as its registered lobbyist.

Opposition to Marathon’s plans to mine Arkaroola has been steadily building in the community. Shareholder AGMs have been picketed and the Greens had tried in the SA Parliament to pass a bill banning mining at Arkaroola.

Liberal and Labor combined to defeat the Green’s bill.

With opposition growing steadily, the Liberals decided that they would prevent mining in Arkaroola, leaving Rann electorally vulnerable at a time when his government is already on the nose following attacks on unions and public sector workers and services.

Rann compounded his problems by restoring Marathon’s exploration license early in February. The kiddies in the chat rooms loved it. One with the nom-de-plume of “Ohmygod” exulted in the announcement with: “Fabulous news. Licence back and exploration to start up again…Get those drills spinning. Pronto. Find more Uranium and find out about the Rare Earths... This will be a tremendous stock for 2011.”

Another, Patmad, wrote: “Looks like a bit of waste land, nothing to see. Only good for mining and seeing that it holds Australia's third largest uranium deposit, may as well let them mine it. Might have to relocate one or two species if there is anything breathing or living.”

Such are the values of Marathon shareholders!

The two major shareholders in Marathon have been Talbot Group Holdings and China’s CITIC. Talbot Group Holdings belonged to Queensland mining magnate Ken Talbot, who was facing charges of corruption following the jailing of Gordon Nuttall, a former Queensland government minister who had accepted substantial sums of money from Talbot. Unfortunately, Talbot’s death last year in an African plane crash deprived the community of seeing him dealt with by the criminal justice system.

CITIC is a Chinese state investment fund. Despite the friendly gesture of loaning the Adelaide Zoo two pandas, the Chinese were committed to mining in a wildlife sanctuary that is crucial to the survival of arguably Australia’s prettiest wallaby and other rare species including frogs, birds, fish and flora. A public appeal to CITIC’s Australian managing director (and Marathon director) by the President of the SA Branch of the Australia-China Friendship Society to divest from Marathon has gone unheeded.

As for the Talbot Group, one can only speculate as to the nature of the tip-off they may have received to have prompted the sell-off of their 19.9 per cent stake in Marathon to US-based private equity and hedge fund Mount Kellett Capital just three days ago.

Marathon shares, which had once traded at over $6 per share, had been languishing at around 40 cents, but jumped to just over 80 cents following Mount Kellet’s acquisition at around 75 cents.

So to Chris Schacht and the whole stinking mess of Labor crony capitalism, to the Chinese for not respecting the feelings of the Australian people, and to former Goldman Sachs partner Mark McGoldrick and his Mount Kellett capital speculators – sucked in!

Enjoy the ride ‘cos it’s all downhill from here.

It’s our environment and we’ve made our decision.

Forestry communities fight sell-off

2011-02-09T19:57:00.000-08:00

More than 3000 people and more than 60 logging trucks brought the centre of Adelaide to a standstill yesterday in protest at the State government’s plan to forward sell government-owned plantation forests in the south-east of the State to private interests.

The State Government's decision to forward sell up to three rotations of trees (each rotation representing a cycle of 37 years) to private and predominantly foreign owners has the potential to cause enormous social and economical harm to communities in the lower south east region of South Australia.

The planned forward sale of ForestrySA's plantation pine harvests threatens 5000 timber industry jobs and would trigger the collapse of hundreds of businesses reliant on the industry.

Foreign corporations purchasing logs from the state's 183,000 hectares of plantation forest will in all probability send logs offshore for processing, causing the shutdown of sawmills and supporting businesses.

Already, 10,000 tonnes of unprocessed logs each week are being exported from nearby Portland (Victoria) to Korea, and log exports out of Port Adelaide have begun.

The fight against the privatisation of SA forests via the forward sale mechanism is born of the last State Budget which has seen a massive community outcry against cuts to services, to workers’ entitlements and to public sector jobs.

Although a strong campaign by public sector unions has forced the resignation of State Treasurer Kevin Foley, his budget measures remain in place.

Different Treasurer, same policies….or different arsehole, same shit!

The struggle continues!

Egypt: “Restraint” is for slaves – lift the level of struggle

2011-02-01T17:22:00.000-08:00

The Egyptian people have exploded in struggle against the autocratic pro-US Mubarak regime.

Like the Tunisian people currently struggling against the forces of counter-revolution, the Egyptians are being “advised” by the US imperialists and their followers (Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, in our case), to “exercise restraint on both sides”.

In this way the imperialists attempt to project an image of neutrality and even-handedness, and even dare to insinuate that they are somehow on the side of people struggling for democracy, freedom and independence.

However, people who suffer oppression cannot be told by imperialists to “exercise restraint”. They have the right to rebel, to lift the level of their struggle and to overthrow and overcome all obstacles to their freedom.

The last big struggles in Egypt developed out of a demand by the poor for food at a time of rising food prices. The regime responded with murderous force. Such was the “restraint” of a regime backed by and supportive of US imperialism (see: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2008/04/support-egyptian-peopple-against-neo.html )

Inevitably, there would have been lessons learned from the great struggles of 2008, just as there will be a drawing from the more recent experiences of the Tunisians.

To correctly build unity among all the anti-imperialist and pro-democracy forces, to give full play to the initiative and leadership of the working class, and to guard against the “soft” and hard tactics of imperialism will create the conditions for utilising opportunities in the current phase of the great Egyptian peoples’ struggles.

Government capitulates to private school lobby over My School

2010-12-01T22:05:00.000-08:00

Today's launch of Version 2 of the My School website has been delayed, supposedly because the site is not yet “ready”.

My School is the lovechild of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the discredited former New York Chancellor of Schools Joel Klein.

Klein led the way with an “accountability” agenda that saw school performance in standardized tests made public. The idea was to spook parents in public schools into exercising an “informed” choice about where to send their children for schooling. It was an agenda for the privatisation of schooling and the intended beneficiaries were the corporate and financial elite behind the Charter school movement and the testing industry.

When the first version of My School went to air some 12 months ago, public school supporters were horrified at the inaccuracies and the misleading comparisons between so-called “statistically similar schools”.

They were also angry that promised disclosures about the funds available to schools had not been made. These were promised by the Government to be a feature of version 2.

The private school lobby has fought tooth and nail to prevent transparency around funding. The funding data that will be available is still skewed in favour of the privates. Their lobby has forced government schools to have included a portion of the cost for head office capital and recurrent costs – costs that never find their way into schools. By the same token, they have succeeded in preventing a requirement that private schools should disclose their total wealth, including share portfolios, bequests and bursaries.

All of this was meant to have been online as from today.

But the private Empire has struck back!

Now it is crying foul and claiming that there are major inaccuracies in the website’s data.

Melbourne's Age for example, front-paged the plight of the Beechworth Montessori School which, with some justification, vigorously disputes its ranking as Australia’s third richest school (see http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/uproar-over-my-school-rankings-20101201-18gmx.htm l )

The Sydney Morning Herald was less sympathetic to the lobby, leading one report with:

“STUDENTS at Sydney's private boarding schools are from even wealthier families than first thought. So much so, that many schools fear they will lose funding once the secret is out.

“Socio-economic scores given to every school on the federal government's My School website have been recalculated this year using enrolment information instead of the census district data used for last year's scores.

“Using the new measure, the scores for private boarding schools have risen by up to 15 per cent on the new version of the My School website, expected to be released by next week.

“The federal government, however, still uses census district data to distribute funding.”

In deciding to delay the online release of version 2 of My School, Federal Minister for Education Peter Garrett is caught in a stand-off between Gillard and the big privates over the outing they will get from the MySchool financial data, even with its in-built bias in their favour.

How can you get such a big hand-out from the Feds in $ support and have millions in bricks and mortar (including non-school), in security portfolios, in property development (here and overseas) including shopping centres and apartment blocks and be earning more interest (let alone profit) each year than most of the disadvantaged schools in the state put together get from the Feds?

And if your NAPLAN results are a bit suss too compared to local publics....!! Maybe it's time for a super profits tax on them?

They are fearful that with a review of Federal funding on at the moment, Gillard will reduce the bonus payments to the Catholics and Independents and elevate grants to the publics. Then they'd actually have to use their own $. That will reduce profits and maybe even cause an asset sell-off for some.....the balance sheets are shuddering.

Big privates are big business. Garrett's three girls went to an exclusive private girls’ school in Hornsby, NSW. Garrett came from Wahroonga (a posh exclusive suburb on the North Shore). He also went to exclusive Barker College in Hornsby. He is a lawyer. He is being lent on by the old school tie powerful lobbyists (also lawyers) whom the privates employ to cajole the Federal Government. He is a committed conservative Christian and is very active in the Uniting Church which owns many schools in Australia, including some of the wealthiest. After all, didn't they just spend $2 million trying to save Annesley College from closure in Adelaide?

Trevor Cobbold, from the public school lobby group Save Our Schools very appropriately sums up the situation:

"The delay in launching My School 2.0 exposes the hypocrisy and double standards of the Federal Government.

"When private schools complain about inaccuracies on My School, the Government caves in without a whimper. When government schools complain about inaccuracies, the Government ignores them.

"When My School 1.0 was launched a whole gamut of problems were identified which disadvantaged government schools, such as comparing the results of small low socio-economic status government schools with high SES private schools. Yet, the Government went ahead even though these criticisms were subsequently found to be justified.

"If the Government is serious about fixing inaccuracies on My School it would go back to the drawing board on like school comparisons because the new system to be used in My School 2.0 is still biased against government schools.

"My School has yet again been discredited as being unreliable and inaccurate. It should be abandonded."

Hands off North Korea!

2010-11-30T21:28:00.000-08:00

It is sometimes hard to defend North Korea.

The father-son-grandson line of succession is overtly feudal. I know that we have great Aussie Rules footballers who are the sons of formerly great Aussie Rules footballers, that Jacob Dylan is Bob Dylan’s son and that Charlie Sheen is the son of Martin Sheen. But I’m not convinced that the health of a proletarian dictatorship is established by creating a personal dynasty of the Kim family.

Leaving that aside, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (or North Korea) is entirely in the right in the current beating of imperialist war drums in that corner of the globe.

Before we go any further, just imagine how the US would react if the North Koreans declared that they were to hold annual war games with the Mexicans at Heroica Matamoros, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. The very idea is preposterous, yet the Western world takes at face value the “normalcy” of the US imperialists leading war games exercises in waters that are claimed by both North and South Korea.

Technically, the North and South are still at war. The DPRK, which is demonized by the same media that promotes imperialism’s right to its war games, has consistently called for a formal Peace Treaty with the South, for direct talks with the US and for normalization of relations with the US.

The US response is the annual preparations for war that openly take the form of simulated invasions of the DPRK.

This is irrespective of whether US imperialism wears a human face (Obama, Clinton) or a death mask (Bush, Rumsfeld).

The western sea border between the North and the South, where the war games are being conducted, has never been agreed to by the North. The so-called Northern Limit Line (NLL) was unilaterally declared by the Commander of the United Nations Command in August 1953 after the matter had been left unresolved in the Korean Armistice Agreement signed a month earlier. The North had proposed that the terrestrial demarcation line (DML) which had been agreed by both sides be extended out to sea with provision for the South to access five islands it claimed through two 3-kilometre wide waterways.

This was unacceptable to the US which used the South’s claims to the islands to create an irregular maritime boundary close to the North Korean shoreline.

Common sense would dictate that both sides avoid any military activity in or around the disputed waters that fall within both boundary proposals.

But US imperialism sees only the opportunity for provocation, for bullying and interference.

It has four main aims.

Firstly it wishes to exacerbate tensions on the Korean peninsula in the hope of destabilizing North Korea.

Secondly, it wants to reassert its superpower military status in unequivocal terms so as to limit Chinese ambitions to emerge as an economic and political rival on the world stage.

Thirdly, it wants to create regional tension so as to justify the maintenance of its huge military base on Okinawa at a time when all political groups on the island want to see it shut down.

And fourthly, it suits the needs of the US military-industrial complex to extort further funds from a worried Congress for purposes of armaments research and production.

Both North Korea and China protested that the war games scheduled for the zone of disputed water was a provocation and should be cancelled.

They pointed out that the presence of a US nuclear “super carrier” the USS George Washington was clearly in violation of agreements to denuclearize the peninsula.

Indeed, the arrogance of the US imperialists knows no bounds. Singing from the hymn sheet of gunboat diplomacy, a US Defense Department spokesperson stated: “Where we exercise, when we exercise, with whom and how, using what assets and so forth, are determined by the US Navy, the Department of Defense, by the United States government.” (Agence France Presse, July 15, 2010).

So the games began as scheduled.

Initial reports in the capitalist press acknowledged that the South had fired first into the disputed zone, and that the North Koreans had responded with shelling of their own.

After this initial slip-up, the responsibility of the South for having fired first was simply disappeared from the media and the manufacturing of public opinion was set in motion with stories of North Korean “aggression”, of North Korean destruction of island villages, of North Korean murder of two marines and two civilians. Photographs and TV footage featured exclusively “evidence” of Northern “aggression” and “attacks”.

Fearlessly departing from their responsibility to provide informed background to the dispute, gutter journalists created “contexts” that placed all the blame on the North. The North, according to this rubbish, “attacked” because of an imminent leadership transfer and the need for the grandson of Kim Il-Sung to be “blooded” before being formally anointed as the new Dear Leader.

The ruling ideas about this conflict are those created to serve the needs and interests of the ruling US imperialists. The capitalist media lazily demonises the North instead of really investigating the incident.

Peace-loving and anti-imperialist forces must unite to condemn the US imperialists and the puppet regime in the South. It is they who must be held accountable for any further bloodshed.

Smash US imperialism!
Hands off North Korea!

Crony capitalism, an assault, and the Labor assault on workers' rights

2010-11-30T17:59:00.001-08:00

At around 3am on the morning of Sunday Nov 28, the State Treasurer Kevin Foley was assaulted in an Adelaide city street.

There is no suggestion that there was any political motive behind the king hit that left him with broken glasses and a cut nose and forehead.

The previous morning, Foley had been the target of abuse emanating from more than 2000 traditional Labor supporters – mainly union and community organization members – who had rallied in rainy conditions from 8.30 am outside the South Australian Labor Party’s State Convention to demand that the government reverse its savage budget cuts and “return to true Labor values”.

Foley was a major target, both as the Treasurer responsible for cutting jobs and entitlements in the public sector, and for his arrogant dismissal of union objections. His description of unions as “dinosaurs” was responded to by unionists at huge rallies carrying inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rexes as a rebuff and a visible display of determination to take on Foley – often depicted as a Fred Flintstone-like character.

A report on the rally and whether or not the Labor Party can ever be expected to embrace the true values of working Australians can be found here

Under the leadership of Premier Mike Rann and Treasurer Kevin Foley the Labor brand has been rebadged as “pro-business, pro-mining and pro-growth” and a once reformist social democratic party changed into a grubby conservative outfit whose natural friends are now to be found amongst the corporate sector, the property developers, the miners and “defence” industries.

So high has the stench of crony capitalism risen in the fair air of the Athens of the South (a bit of hyperbole from the Dunstan era of the 70s when the ALP Premier of the day wore his pink shorts to Parliament and introduced homosexual law reform and land rights recognition for traditional Aboriginal owners of the land) that demands for an Independent Commission Against Corruption have been put forward from across the political spectrum. (See here for a Marxist-Leninist trifold leaflet on the issue).

How does this relate to the assault on Foley in the early hours of the following morning?

Foley had been at an end-of-year office party, letting off steam after surviving a call at the Convention for “generational change” or, less politely, for his sacking.

It has been suggested that the State Treasurer should not be wandering the streets of the city alone at 3am, and rumours circulated in the media about his attempts to befriend some girls half his age.

That’s his business. He’s an adult and doesn’t need to be Nanny-managed

What concerned me is that Foley was out drinking with two businessmen, one of whom has been identified as property developer Ross Makris, 40, who last year topped Business Review Weekly’s Young Rich List with an estimated wealth of $420 million. Makris is the son of the fabulously wealthy property developer Con Makris, whose influence on the ALP was covered in this blog here .

So here’s the Labor State Treasurer, who had to be escorted into his party’s State Convention by armed police just in case he was assaulted by any of the 2000 working people protesting at his betrayal of “Labor values”, in the preferred company of two businessmen, one of whom happens to be Australia’s richest “young Australian” and whose family is a major financial backer of the Government.

This, more than being out on the streets at 3am, is what should be the cause of public disquiet…even anger.

It is crony capitalism at its best, or worst. As the article in the first link, above, observes, the division between the ALP leaders and the ALP rank and file is sure to widen.

Clive Palmer’s Christmas Present

2010-11-29T15:20:00.000-08:00

Ross Gwyther, November 2010

From the Surplus Value website: http://www.surplusvalue.org.au/index.html

“..The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps..”(Shelley’s Song to the Men of England)

You may have been struck by the news in November that millionaire businessman Clive Palmer bought some of his workers a Mercedes for Christmas!

What a turnaround for the books. This slightly overweight and usually dishevelled capitalist who disdains the trappings of the suited corporate world treats his employees so handsomely. Or does he?

The story was told in the Australian on November 20th. Palmer’s nickel processing factory north of Townsville had netted him $200 million this year. In return he paid for a holiday to Fiji for each of the 750 workers at the plant. As well as this, he bought for the 50 most valued workers a $50,000 Mercedes Benz. Quite a Christmas present – or so our national rag would have us believe.

In reality what Clive did, was to give back to these workers a little of the money they had made for him. It takes only a minute to work this out for yourself.
$200 million profit created by 800 workers – that amounts to $250,000 profit created by each worker on average. This is after the cost of the raw material (nickel) and the other processing materials. It is after the cost of the electricity to make the plant operate. It is after the cost of renting or buying the factory. It is after the cost of paying each worker their annual wage.

Where did all the money – the costs of the raw materials and power and wages, as well as the $200 million profits come from? Well a moment’s thought answers the question. It came from the added value which the work of those workers created – they took nickel ore, and turned it into ingots of nickel. Each worker- whether they pulled the furnace, fixed the electric cabling, added up the company’s books, or designed the marketing brochures for selling the nickel – all were essential to this transformation of rocks into metal that could be sold to the world.

In other words it was their labour which transformed those rocks – and created the extra value which ingots of nickel have over dusty rocks from the centre of Australia.

Palmers “magnanimous” action puts him in the long tradition of the philanthropists of capital – the Carnegies and Rockerfellers. In the short run their actions endear them to the working class. They are portrayed as kind and generous, rather than as robber barons.

In the long run we can only thank them for exposing the reality of capitalism. Their actions show up in stark reality the full extent to which they exploit those who work for them. They provide a nice lesson in what surplus value really means – or as George Bernard Shaw said, “behind every great fortune, there is a great crime”
------
Ross Gwyther (PhD) works in Brisbane as an organiser with the National Tertiary Education Union, after an earlier career of more than 20 years as a research geophysicist specialising in earthquake studies. His interests centre around strategies for labour movement renewal and union organisation, and the intersection of these with community movements around ecological and peace issues.

Victory for Ark Tribe

2010-11-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

Adelaide construction worker Ark Tribe has had charges laid against him by the bosses' mongrel "watchdog" the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) dismissed.

Ark had attended a stop-work meeting on a worksite at Flinders University over safety issues on May 30, 2008. He subsequently refused to attend a secret interrogation as required by the ABCC where he would have been questioned about what his mates had said at the meeting.

For this heinous "crime" he faced a mandatory six-month jail sentence.

Every time Ark has faced the courts over a period spanning eighteen months, workers around the country have stopped work and held rallies of support. The rallies have been attended by the staff and members of heaps of other unions as well.

The ABCC was created by the conservative Howard Government to break Ark's union, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). The social democratic "Labor" Party of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, despite having promised to scrap the ABCC if elected, instead maintained it and have presided over its victimisation and intimidation of workers in the building industry.

Yesterday was the culmination of a mass campaign of support for Ark Tribe and for the defeat and repeal of the ABCC and its coercive powers. Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) national president Ged Kearney (above) spoke at a pre-hearing rally attended by several thousand workers and pledged Ark the continuing support of organised workers should he be sent to jail. She laughingly dismissed criticism of the CFMEU as a "rough and ready mob" and said that as President of the Australian Nursing Federation she had always found them to be the most reliable and supportive union.

CFMEU national president Dave Noonan (above) presented Ark a print-out of 2500 online messages of support. Messages of support had come in from friends around the world -from Asia, Europe and the United States.

SA Secretary of the CFMEU, Martin O'Malley (above left) drew parallels between the laws that had created and maintained the ABCC with the emergence of fascism in Nazi Germany and said the CFMEU would fight to "overturn the rotten laws that have spawned this evil situation".

Ark then introduced himself, as he always has at rallies, "as the proud father of Jake", acknowledging the teenage son who has stood at his side throughout. Thanking his workmates and his "family" at the Builders Labourers Federation Social Club for their support, he was embraced by SA Unions Secretary Janet Giles and then proceeded to recite the Oath of the Eureka Rebellion of 1854, saying "I swear to stand by by mates to defend our rights and liberties!"

With several thousand workers at his side, Ark took his final walk across the road to the Adelaide Magistrate's Court to hear the verdict on his case. Cheers broke out in the court as Magistrate David Whittle dismissed the charges on the grounds that they had not been laid by an authorised person!

Well, it was a technical knockout against the ABCC, but we were happy to take it!

"We got 'em!" said a jubilant Ark Tribe as he emerged from the court with both arms raised. "A victory for working Australians!"

Challenging the so-called "Labor Party" he added "To Julia Gillard and the Government - which side are you on???

SA Unions secretary Janet Giles welcomed Ark and the dismissal of charges against him on the steps of the Magistrates Court.

"However," she told the workers, "it doesn't change the fact that the laws which created this mess continue to exist, and other workers could face the same dreadful process that Ark tribe has just endured."

The ACTU's Kearney described the decision as "an important victory for the union movement in its fight against the ABCC".

"This is another nail in the coffin of the ABCC," she said, "another absolute step up in our campaign to have it abolished."

Sadly Ordinary Dishonesty - Photographs and Lies

2010-10-31T22:52:00.000-07:00

Many thanks for this small gem from Caleb Maupin from Cleveland, Ohio. There is a link to Caleb's blog at the left, or just click here.

A new anti-communist "history" book claims to tell of the horrors of Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward" and how it was not a bad economic policy, but an evil genocide against his own people. The cover photo is above. It features what is supposed to be a child starving under Mao's brutal famine.

Here's a closer look:

And this is the photo from Life Magazine, which was used. The photo in Life Magazine is dated in 1946. How did Mao starve this child, when he did not even come to power until 1949? How does this photograph have ANYTHING to do with the "Great Famine" of the early 1960s?

But remember, anyone who questions the narrative of "Mao was another Hitler" is just a lying Communist. Right?

Australian Parliament "debates" Afghanistan war

2010-10-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

(Above, Malalai Joya speaking in Canada in 2009)

It is shameful that it has taken the Australian Parliament so long to “debate” Australian involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

I deliberately enclose the word “debate” in quotation marks because the bipartisan approach of the nearly indistinguishable Coalition and Labor parties renders any chance of real debate impossible.

The honourable exception of the Greens and certain independent politicians is recognised.

Australian troops are part of an occupation rabble that oppresses the people of Afghanistan and denies them their freedom and independence.

The Karzai regime comprises murderers, drug lords and fundamentalists. The so-called elections that justify this regime are a joke.

The calls for talks with the hated Taliban, resulting from the current military impasse, shows the moral bankruptcy of our commitment to this war.

I wonder if any Coalition (Liberal-National) or Labor parliamentarian has read the book Raising My Voice, by Malalai Joya?

Malalai Joya, now 32, was the youngest woman elected to the Afghan Parliament in 2005. Faced with threats of death, and expelled from the Parliament for speaking out against the regime’s continuing oppression of women, she declined to contest this year’s elections.

Her book is available in Australian bookstores. If you put "Joya" into the search engine above left, you will get to my review of it.

Speaking in Adelaide on March 13, 2007, Joya said that “no nation can donate liberation to another nation. Liberation is not money to be donated; it should be achieved in a country by the people themselves.”

In her book, she states that the “real purpose” behind the so-called war on terror is “for the United States and its allies to establish permanent bases to serve their strategic aims…They would like to stay in Afghanistan forever, so they can keep military bases and a presence in the region…to counteract China’s influence in particular. The superpowers would prefer to keep the situation unstable so they can stay indefinitely and use and occupy our country as part of a big chess game” (p. 237-8).

Sohaila, another young Afghan woman who spoke in Adelaide on August 8, 2007, and Suraya Pakzad, who spoke here earlier this year, have also condemned the anti-democratic, anti-women and corrupt Karzai regime.

Newspaper headlines depict us as somehow bravely refusing to “abandon” the people of Afghanistan by committing our troops for another ten years. We must reject the framing of the debate on Afghanistan in these terms.

Parliamentarians must have the courage to reject the simplistic nonsense of “staying the course”, of remaining “until the job is done”.

The people of Afghanistan want us out of their country. They have good leaders and great representatives who are more than capable of mobilising popular support for a democratic, secular and independent nation.

The efforts of those people are hindered by our presence as an unwanted army of occupation.

Politicians in this country must reject the easy populism of “We won’t abandon Afghans”.

Uphold the call of the Malalai Joyas of Afghanistan:

The emancipation of Afghan women is not attainable as long as the occupation, Taliban and “National Front” criminals are not sacked!

(Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on the International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010).

Community fights Labor budget cuts

2010-10-04T22:46:00.000-07:00

SA public sector unions and community organisations are continuing their campaign to fight attacks on job security and conditions, including changes to long service leave and holiday leave loading. The video below shows a part of a rally called by the Public Service Association last week. Another rally is to be held this Friday, with yet another planned for October 14.

We reprint also an analysis of the SA Budget by Nick G in the October edition of Vanguard, organ of the CPA (M-L).

SA State Budget Report

Nick G

South Australian Labor’s experiment with outsourcing its Budget preparations has failed the test of community interest, according to SA public sector unions.

Treasurer Kevin Foley set up a Sustainable Budget Commission (SBC) in June 2009 to identify public sector programs and services that could be cut.

The Commission has been chaired by Geoff Carmody, a former Federal Treasury official who co-founded Access Economics and campaigned strongly against the Rudd Government’s abortive Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and in favour of a carbon consumption-based emissions trading scheme. The latter was designed to reduce carbon costs to Australian businesses by transferring costs, for example for coal, to places of consumption, largely offshore.

Carmody was assisted by Bruce Carter, Jennifer Westacott and the heads of the Departments of Premier and Treasury. Monsignor David Cappo, the state’s Social Inclusion Commissioner was thrown in to add a gloss of superficial decency to the process.

Who are Carter and Westacott? Carter was the head of WorkCover SA who presided over savage cuts to injured workers’ entitlements before becoming Chairman of the SA Economic Development Board and the Olympic Dam Task Force. He’s a bean counter and one of Rann’s favourite intermediaries between SA government and business.

Westacott is a senior partner at multinational giant KPMG which sells financial services and taxation advice to governments and the big end of town.

Foley: let private sector dictate public sector terms

Normally we would describe capitalist governments as mere executive committees of the bourgeoisie; in this case, government has created its own budgetary executive of bourgeois elements.

Normally we would see the social democratic variant of capitalist government protecting and extending wages and working conditions in the public sector to gain some leverage over private employers as a trade-off for the electoral support of the extended working class.

However, SA Treasurer Foley has inverted that relationship too, justifying the formation of the SBC in these terms: “Workers at big firms such as Holdens have seen their salaries cut as shifts are reduced, workers in other industries have seen their pay frozen and unfortunately other workers have lost their jobs. I don’t think it is unreasonable for the public sector to show restraint and reflect what is the reality for many South Australian workers.”

In other words, for Foley and the SBC, it is appropriate that the private sector dictates the terms and conditions for public sector employment. In so doing, it attacks private sector workers by depriving them of any comparative arguments for increases in wages and conditions.

One union official commented to Vanguard that “When Foley established the SBC, he linked it to the plight of workers at big firms like Holdens”.

“This was his justification for reducing services offered by the public sector and for attacking the wages and conditions of public service workers.

“However, SA has been a star performer in a strong and resilient Australian economy. Holdens, for example, is expanding production and adding shifts.

“By Foley’s own logic, we should be enjoying an expansionary and stimulus-oriented budget.

“Instead,” she said, “we have a budget in which the community coughs up to pay for further concessions to the big end of town.”

The Property Council of SA’s Justin Hazell, described the Budget as “a big win for the investment sector”. Business SA’s Peter Vaughan endorsed Foley’s strategy, saying “This is an essential move in reflecting the same conditions as those faced by the private sector.”

However, SA Council of Social Services’ Ross Womersley slammed the Budget for attacking low income earners generally. He pointed to motor vehicle licence and registration increases, rising public transport costs, a 25% increase in TAFE fees (already the highest in the country), and the abolition of adult re-entry to schools for persons 21 years of age and older.

And the Commissioner for Social Inclusion? He distanced himself from the SBC’s recommendations and the government’s budgetary decisions, saying that he could not support measures that reduce or diminish services available to vulnerable and disadvantaged persons or that diminish the social fabric of South Australia.

Just to completely endear themselves to South Aussie workers, politicians from both major parties spent budget day rushing through legislation that saw their own rate of superannuation increase from 9% to 15.4%!

Meanwhile, SA public sector unions arranged to meet to discuss a combined response to the issues of job security, long service leave and holiday leave loading for their members.

Bring the Australian Wheat Board back under the control of the government!

2010-09-08T19:43:00.000-07:00

(The following article is from p. 4 of the September issue of the CPA (M-L)'s paper Vanguard)

Nick G

Australian grain growers, the purported “owners” of the Australian Wheat Board (AWB), are incensed that the company could soon be controlled by Canadian giant Agrium Inc.

This follows on from the Japanese Sumitomo Corporation’s 50% purchase of Australian grain trader, the Emerald group last March, and Canadian grain firm Viterra Inc’s takeover of South Australia’s ABB Grains Ltd last year.

The AWB was founded in the wake of the 1930s Depression to save grain growers from the anarchic ravages of the domestic and international markets for wheat.

As a government-owned and operated entity it ran the “single desk” system under which it was the sole marketer of wheat for the international grain trade and the domestic purchaser of “last resort” – meaning that it always stood ready to bail out struggling farmers when falling demand or prices threatened to leave them in ruin.

Ironically, given the source of the current threat to the Board, it served as a model for the Canadian Wheat Board.

Both the CWB and the AWB were opposed by US grain producers on the grounds that government purchase and sale was unfair in a free trade environment. This is despite the latter’s heavy subsidies from the US Government, which rather undermines the credibility of “free trade” arguments.

Nevertheless, conservative Canadian and Australian governments driven by neo-liberal ideology have worked to strengthen the US imperialists at the expense of the farmers of their own countries.

In 2007, the Canadian Harper government tried to end the CWB’s “single desk” but was defeated.

The AWB’s “single desk” was abolished under Kevin Rudd despite a pre-election pledge that it be retained.

But it was the government of John Howard that had set the wheels in motion with the 1999 privatisation of the AWB.

This was sold as a move to give wheat growers ownership of the Board; indeed, the 2009 AWB Annual Report opens with the question “Who is the AWB?” superimposed over a young cocky looking over his wheat crop.

However, as a publicly listed company, the AWB is actually in the grip of a small group of local and foreign investment banks, insurance companies and fund managers. The largest single shareholder, HSBC Custody Nominees (Aust) Ltd holds around the same number of shares as the bottom 41,000 retail (or “Mum and Dad”) investors.

The threat to the AWB from Canada’s Agrium follows an announced merger between AWB and GrainCorp. The latter emerged as a competitor following the demise of the single desk, and a merger of the two would have strengthened the international competitiveness of an Australian diversified agribusiness – hence the pre-emptive attack by the Canadians.

(Incidentally, GrainCorp and the AWB may be competitors, but four of the top five shareholders in each company are the same: HSBC Custody Nominees, JP Morgan Nominees Australia Ltd, National Nominees Ltd, and ANZ Nominees Ltd. They represent 32% and 36% respectively of the total shares in each company.)

Grower dissatisfaction is emerging around the country.

President of the SA Farmers Federation John Lush warned back in 2004: “The US dominates Australia in the trading environment and we cannot afford to lose any of our advantages such as collective bargaining and single desk marketing if we are to have any chance of competing internationally.”

On August 12 2010 Mark Harrison, chairman of the NSWFA grains committee told the Weekly Times “What we are left with is Australian wheat growers struggling to compete in a world market still corrupted by subsidies.” He called for the recreation of a single marketing desk.

The AWB provided economic stability for many small and medium-sized Australian farmers for half a century.

Imperialist-serving neo-liberal governments of both persuasions, having privatized the Board and removed its single desk status, are simply engaging in nation-wrecking and the undermining of economic sovereignty.

Stop nation-wrecking by multinationals – nationalise the AWB and bring back the “single desk”!

Reject the unequal “free trade” arrangements!

Bureaucracy and its manifestations

2010-08-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

I have a friend whose wife works for the South Australian Department for Education and Childhood Services (DECS). It is a large bureaucracy and a very poor employer - even the SA Industrial Relations Commission stated earlier this year that workloads for teachers and school leaders were "excessive and unsustainable". The DECS bureaucracy is very much driven by the State Treasury headed by Treasurer Kevin Foley. The lines below were penned by my friend, and reminded me of Mao Zedong's Twenty Manifestations of Bureaucracy, issued during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, in 1970. Mao's observations, which went to the heart of the contradiction between the proletarian state as a foundation of socialism on the one hand, and as an obstacle to continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat on the other, are printed below.

Thoughts on the education bureaucracy

Out of sight and out of touch;
hidden behind an automated
telephone system they sit;
mealy mouthed and tight
fisted they make decisions
about your life.

These phantoms of the department,
warriors of the corporate creed,
they rigidly apply poor and unfair
interpretations of the rules, to suit
their corporate masters
and their own career enhancement.

With weasel words they slither and slide.
Honesty is not one of the policies
they develop or make us implement.
It does not fit their skill set.

People are forgotten
as schools, teachers and students become
a ‘client’ to be avoided
a sacrificial lamb to slaughter
if it protects from Foley’s cuts, the empire built.

Flexibility never worked in a worker’s favour.

..................................................................................

Mao Zedong

Twenty Manifestations Of Bureaucracy
February, 1970

[SOURCE: Joint Publications Research Service, (Washington, DC)]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. At the highest level there is very little knowledge; they do not understand the opinion of the masses; they do not investigate and study; they do not grasp specific policies; they do not conduct political and ideological work; they are divorced from reality, from the masses, and from the leadership of the party; they always issue orders, and the orders are usually wrong, they certainly mislead the country and the people; at the least they obstruct the consistent adherence to the party line and policies; and they cannot meet with the people.

2. They are conceited, complacent, and they aimlessly discuss politics. They do not grasp their work, they are subjective and one-sided; they are careless; they do not listen to people; they are truculent and arbitrary; they force orders; they do not care about reality; they maintain blind control. This is authoritarian bureaucracy.

3. They are very busy from morning until evening, they labour the whole year long; they do not examine people and they do not investigate matters; they do not study policies; they do not rely upon the masses; they do not prepare their statements; they do not plan their work. This is brainless, misdirected bureaucracy. In other words, it is routinism.

4. Their bureaucratic attitude is immense; they cannot have any direction; they are egoistic; they beat their gongs to blaze the way; they cause people to become afraid just by looking at them; they repeatedly hurl all kinds of abuse at people; their work style is crude; they do not treat people equally. This is the bureaucracy of the overlords.

5. They are ignorant; they are ashamed to ask anything; they exaggerate and they lie; they are very false; they attribute errors to people; they attribute merit to themselves; they swindle the central government; they deceive those above them and fool those below them; they conceal faults and gloss over wrongs. This is the dishonest bureaucracy.

6. They do not understand politics; they do not do their work; they push things off onto others; they do not meet their responsibilities; they haggle; they put things off; they are insensitive; they lose their alertness. This is the irresponsible bureaucracy.

7. They are negligent about things; they subsist as best they can; they do not have anything to do with people; they always make mistakes; they offer themselves respectfully to those above them and are idle towards those below them; they are careful in every respect; they are eight-sided and slippery as eels. This is the bureaucracy of those who work as officials and barely make a living.

8. They do not completely learn politics; they do not advance in their work; their manner of speech is tasteless; they have no direction in their leadership; they neglect the duties of their office while taking the pay; they make up things for the sake of appearances. The idlers [e.g., landlord] do not begin any matters, but concentrate mainly upon their idleness; those who work hard, are virtuous, and do not act like the officials are treated poorly. This is the deceitful, talentless bureaucracy.

9. They are stupid; they are confused; they do not have a mind of their own; they are rotten sensualists; they glut themselves for days on end; they are not diligent at all, they are inconstant and they are ignorant. This is the stupid, useless bureaucracy.

10. They want others to read documents; the others read and they sleep; they criticize without looking at things; they criticize mistakes and blame people; they have nothing to do with mistakes; they do not discuss things; they push things aside and ignore it; they are yes men to those above them; they pretend to understand those below them, when they do not; they gesticulate; and they harbour disagreements with those on their same level. This is the lazy bureaucracy.

11. Government offices grow bigger and bigger; things are more confused; there are more people than there are jobs; they go around in circles; they quarrel and bicker; people are disinclined to do extra things; they do not fulfil their specific duties. This is the bureaucracy of government offices.

12. Documents are numerous; there is red tape; instructions proliferate; there are numerous unread reports that are not criticized; many tables and schedules are drawn up and are not used; meetings are numerous and nothing is passed on; and there are many close associations but nothing is learned. This is the bureaucracy of red tape and formalism.

13. They seek pleasure and fear hardships; they engage in back door deals; one person becomes an official and the entire family benefits; one person reaches nirvana and all his close associates rise up to heaven; there are parties and gifts are presented. . . This is the bureaucracy for the exceptional.

14. The greater an official becomes, the worse his temperament gets; his demands for supporting himself become higher and higher; his home and its furnishings become more and more luxurious; and his access to things becomes better and better. The upper strata gets the larger share while the lower gets high prices; there is extravagance and waste; the upper and lower and the left and right raise their hands. This is the bureaucracy of putting on official airs.

15. They are egotistical; they satisfy private ends by public means; there is embezzlement and speculation; the more they devour, the more they want; and they never step back or give in. This is egotistical bureaucracy.

16. They fight among themselves for power and money; they extend their hands into the Party; they want fame and fortune; they want positions and, if they do not get them, they are not satisfied; they choose to be fat and to be lean; they pay a great deal of attention to wages; they are cosy when it comes to their comrades but they care nothing about the masses. This is the bureaucracy that is fighting for power and money.

17. A plural leadership cannot be harmoniously united; they exert themselves in many directions, and their work is in a state of chaos; they try to crowd each other out; the top is divorced from the bottom and there is no centralization, nor is there any democracy. This is the disunited bureaucracy.

18. There is no organization; they employ personal friends; they engage in factionalism; they maintain feudal relationships; they form cliques to further their own private interest; they protect each other, the individual stands above everything else; these petty officials harm the masses. This is sectarian bureaucracy.

19. Their revolutionary will is weak; their politics has degenerated and changed its character; they act as if they are highly qualified; they put on official airs; they do not exercise their minds or their hands. They eat their fill every day; they easily avoid hard work; they call a doctor when they are not sick; they go on excursions to the mountains and to the seashore; they do things superficially; they worry about their individual interests, but they do not worry whatsoever about the national interest. This is degenerate bureaucracy.

20. They promote erroneous tendencies and a spirit of reaction; they connive with bad persons and tolerate bad situations; they engage in villainy and transgress the law; they engage in speculation; they are a threat to the Party and the state; they suppress democracy; they fight and take revenge, they violate laws and regulations; they protect the bad; they do not differentiate between the enemy and ourselves. This is the bureaucracy of erroneous tendencies and reaction.

More Falungong lies

2010-08-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

The Falungong sect will do anything to blacken the image of the People's Republic of China.

The following expose is based on a report in the EastSouthWestNorth blog.

It reveals the lies and distortions to which the sect's newspaper, Epoch Times, is prepared to resort.

The paper seized on a terrible tragedy at the Nanjing Number 4 Plastic Factory on July 28 2010.
Workers had broken through a gas pipe, there was an explosion and 13 workers died. Another 120 were injured.

On the same day, Epoch Times published the article above titled "Disastrous explosion burned at least 100 persons to death in a terrifying day in Nanjing". The story was attributed to Epoch Times reporter Fang Xiao.

The photo had a caption, seen in the close-up below.

A translation of the caption reads: "On July 28, the scene at the Nanjing Waoshou Baijiang Liquefied Gas Factory was unbearable to watch! == In order to protect the person who provided the photo, this photo has been specially edited here!=="

But the fact is that this photo was not about the Nanjing gas explosion on July 28.

Instead, it was about an oil tanker explosion on July 2 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo!

Below is the photo that accompanied that news report:

The Epoch Times truthfully acknowledged that the original photo had been edited, but it was not to "protect the person who provided the photo" - with the implication that the nasty Communist authorities try to suppress the truth and persecute honest people.

A small portion at the bottom was cropped to remove the logo of the originating media outlet (to hide the origins of the photo) and the top third or so was cropped to remove the black-skinned onlookers whose presence would immediately expose the lie that about this having occurred at the Nanjing Factory.

The photo has now been purged from the Epoch Times website in an attempt to conceal their deceit.

The crude anti-Communism of Epoch Times has resulted in an unedifying display of contempt for the victims of one tragedy - those who died in Nanjing - and an equally contemptuous disregard for the victims of another - those who died in the Congo explosion. The multiplication of those contempts is the massive contempt reserved for the readers of Epoch Times.

For an organisation that promotes itself as cultivating "universal principles based on Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Forbearance", Falungong and its newspaper have a very poor track record.

Raytheon set to capture another SA school

2010-08-15T22:51:00.000-07:00

Rumour has it that US arms manufacturer Raytheon is about to move into yet another South Australian school.

Apparently staff at Hallett Cove R-12 School were told that the school was going to have a relationship with a “defence” company – Raytheon.

No further information was forthcoming.

Across the suburbs at Aberfoyle Park, home to one of three SA schools that host the government-funded IGNITE program for students with high intellectual potential, Raytheon entered into a 3 year partnership with the school worth $450,000.

In return for supplying the IGNITE students with personal laptops, the arms manufacturer was given access to students in order to mentor them towards maths and science studies, with a view to promoting engineering as a career path. (See previous post Masters of war invade the classroom).

According to an article on CNET News (At Raytheon, where engineering rules), engineering is “the lifeblood of the company”.

It’s a strange metaphor for a company that specialises in killing, or at least, in providing the means to do so.

The article points out that at Raytheon “more than 40,000 of the total 75,000 employees are engineers, and the company is hiring thousands more each year.”

On July 20, 2010 Raytheon announced that it had successfully tested a ship borne killer laser to knock four unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) out of the sky.

(Above, a "doctored" Raytheon photo showing the invisible infra-red ray intercepting the path of a UAV with white curving vapour trail.)

Unlike conventional weapons for which a weighty and space-consuming magazine of armaments has to be on hand, the laser weapon “offers the military a very cost-efficient and nearly unlimited ‘magazine’ for shooting down things like threatening UAVs, or perhaps airplanes.”

“Or perhaps”, indeed!

Things don’t get much better on land, either.

On July 25, 2010 middleeast.about.com reported that Raytheon had delivered three “Active Denial Systems” or heat-ray guns (see below) to the US military, which had deployed them for the first time in Afghanistan in June.

“The ray-gun is a joystick-operated computerized system linked to a large antenna that can be mounted on a Humvee or other large vehicles. It directs a focused, invisible 100,000-watt beam of energy at the speed of light across a range of up to 250 meters, or 750 feet, at human beings, burning them intolerably until they get out of the beam's way. The heat ray penetrates the skin to a depth of about 1/64th of an inch” according to the report.

Raytheon expects the technology to jump from the battlefield to civilian use. "Various commercial and military applications include law enforcement, checkpoint security, facility protection, force protection and peacekeeping missions," Raytheon's website says.

The article added: “The system was never used in Iraq because it was found to be politically risky. In light of the Abu Ghraib prison-torture scandal, the ray-gun was seen as too closely evoking a form of torture. Curiously, those issues were set aside when the weapon was shipped to Afghanistan, signaling a distance from the Abu Ghraib scandal that the military will now more likely exploit.”

In addition to pioneering the use of ray guns as weapons of modern warfare, Raytheon continues to manufacture such old technology weapons as Maverick, Sparrow, Sidewinder, Tomahawk, Hawk, Patriot and Sea Sparrow missiles.

It must surely be with an acute sense of irony that a Raytheon executive told journalist Daniel Terdiman “Our end customer is that kid in Iraq whose life may depend on what we build, so we want it to be 100 percent”.

It’s comforting to know that the kids of Australia are being groomed to work for a death merchant whose “end customer is that kid in Iraq”!

Indian tribals and Kashmiris: same enemy, same fight

2010-08-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

During the British colonial era in India, Indian princes and rajahs joined their colonial masters to hunt tigers and deer in the forests and jungle lands.

Today the Indian big bourgeoisie scour the same areas for humans, for their fellow-citizens who have dared to struggle for basic rights and liberties. The photo above shows a murdered Maoist activist trussed up to a carrying pole as if she were just another dead animal put on display as a trophy.

The latter day hunters call their current campaign Operation Green Hunt, employing the sporting terminology without any trace of irony.

Despite the massive scale of the Indian state’s war on the people of India, few reports are found in the Western media because India is a “democratic ally” and must not be allowed to embarrass the constructed distortions of who comprise the good guys and who are demonised as the bad.

The festering occupation of Kashmir, a legacy of the 1947 Partition of India, has seen recent eruptions of violence by the Indian rulers, and expressions of mutual support and solidarity between the Kashmiris and the adivasis and dalits fighting under the leadership of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Acting as a regional big chauvinist power, India is also seeking to interfere in the political changes embracing Nepal.

Updates on the struggle against Operation Green Hunt and other oppressive acts of the Indian big bourgeoisie can be found here .

Do you know?

• According to the Indian government, they have deployed 150,000 troops in India’s central and eastern states. Independent witnesses say the numbers are closer to 250,000. This is more than the number of US troops in Afghanistan. This is war on the Indian people.

• Recent statistics show 37% of the country’s people suffer from chronic malnutrition and 50% are undernourished.

• A nearly third of India is under army occupation with no democratic freedoms? All over India arrests, detentions, disappearances have increased to alarming levels since the people began resisting the corporate take over of India?

• On July 1, the Indian Maoist revolutionary Azad, a Political Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the spokesperson of its Central Committee along with a Delhi-based journalist Hem Chandra Pandey were killed by the Andhra state police.

• During the last few days at least 29 innocent Kashmiris have been killed.

• India has sent one of its ex-ambassador to Nepal to influence the election of the Prime Minister there.

The following is a brief report of the proceedings of the sit-in in Delhi on the evening of 7 August 2010 against the crimes on the people of Kashmir by the Indian State:

The evening of 7 August 2010 witnessed after a long, long time voices of freedom from the people of Kashmir. Despite the heavy repression and the draconian laws to maim and incarcerate the people of Kashmir, to subjugate their indomitable spirit for Azadi, the evening of August 7 at the heart of Delhi just half a kilometre away from the parliament witnessed unprecedented scenes of assertion of the political will, not to say genuine desire, of the Kashmiri people for freedom from the exploitative and oppressive rule of the Indian State. Around six to seven hundred people had gathered including people from various peoples organisations in Delhi to protest against the increasing repression of the Kashmiri people.

(Above: Azadi is a word known to all the peoples of the region and expresses alike the strvings for freedom of the Kashmiri people and the revolutionary women of Afghanistan. See also the link to an article in the Times of India at the bottom of this page).

Every Kashmiri—students, teachers, journalists, working people—who spoke in the meeting was unequivocal about their demand for Azadi which set the tone of the proceedings as the dharna cite reverberated with slogans against India’s occupation of Jammu and Kashmir and the demand for Azadi.

Various people’s organisations from Delhi which participated in the meeting expressed their unconditional solidarity to the struggle for freedom of the Kashmiri people. Revolutionary poet Vara Vara Rao ,who was also an emissary of the present CPI (Maoist) party in their early talks with the government of Andhra Pradesh, asserted that the people of Kashmir are not alone in their struggle against Indian occupation. He pointed out that the fighting masses of Dankaranya, Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand are with the struggle for freedom of the people of Kashmir. He said that the enemy of the both the oppressed people of Kashmir and the poorest and the wretched in India is the Indian ruling class which is a prop of US and other imperialist forces and the struggling people of Kashmir and India should join hands for the realisation of the freedom of both.

Noted film maker Sanjay Kak pointed out that the Kashmiris should stop looking at themselves as victims. While it was important for the Kashmiri people to be emotional in their struggles braving the repressive machine of the Indian State it was also necessary to have a political temperament to see the light at the end of the arduous struggle.

Mrigank from the Nav Jawan Bharat Sabha expressed his solidarity for the movement of the people of Kashmir. Narender from the Popular Front expressed his organisation’s support for what he termed as the “complete independence” of the people of Kashmir. Kavita Krishnan from the CPI (ML) (Liberation) talked about the scores of atrocities committed by the Indian army on the people of Kashmir as well as the need for a meaningful dialogue for which the Indian government should be made accountable. GN Saibaba of the Revolutionary Democratic Front pointed out that the rising struggle for freedom of the Kashmiri people will usher in the death knell of US imperialism. He also stressed that the liberation of the people of Kashmir is in the interest of the people of India who are also fighting for revolutionary transformation.

Sharmila Purkayastha from the PUDR, former Ambassador Madhu Bhaduri, Karen Gabriel from Delhi University, Banojyotsna Lahiri from DSU JNU, Om from AISA JNU, Tara Basumatary from DU also spoke expressing their solidarity for the struggle of the Kashmiri people for Azadi.
Members of the progressive cultural organisation Prathidhwani sang songs while some of the Kashmiri participants read out the poems of well known Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali. Later in the night at 10 the meeting ended at a high note amidst thundering slogans for Azadi, Demands to resolve the Kashmir issue, condemning the fake Indian Democracy, to stop the Genocide in Kashmir, when one of the young Kashmiri thundered: “The Indian government terms our struggle anti-national. They brand us anti-national. I want to ask: How can you call us anti-national. We are not part of your nation. We were never. We are Kashmiri nationalists fighting for our freedom. We want Azadi!”

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/After-56-days-of-unrest-50-deaths-azadi-at-fever-pitch/articleshow/6268667.cms

2010 federal election; reject the sham, develop the capacity to fight!

2010-08-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Some bloody choice: the openly reactionary nightmare (above) or the lies and deception (below) in pursuit of the same agenda!

The Australian working class still maintains a social-democratic illusion that bourgeois parliamentarism is genuine democracy in action.

For this sin, candidates of the major parties are currently all over electors like a rash. Babies are being assaulted with kisses in shopping malls for the benefit of TV cameras. The neglected elderly have suddenly found their nursing homes infested by condescending candidates. Once there is enough footage for the evening news, the candidates are out quicker than a country cricketer at a Test match.

“As long as the elections are in progress,” said Stalin, the candidates will “flirt with the electors, fawn on them, swear fidelity and make heaps of promises of every kind. It would appear that the (candidates) are completely dependent on the electors.”

But once the elections are over, and a candidate has been confirmed as a Member of Parliament, “relations undergo a radical change”.

The elected politician now becomes “entirely independent” of the constituency.

For the next three years, as an MP, the politician feels quite free, quite independent of the electors. The electors have no right of recall before the expiration of the particular term of office and must put up in the meantime with whatever is done in their name, no matter how far that might deviate from the policies upon which the MP was elected.

For the next three years, the politician can turn somersaults with no accountability to electors.

It is just as Indian novelist Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) says: in these allegedly democratic times, voters will get the governments they vote for, but not the governments they want (A. Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire).

“In India this year,” she wrote in 2004, “we voted the Hindu nationalists out of office. But even as we celebrated, we knew that on nuclear bombs, neo-liberalism, privatisation, censorship, big dams – on every other issue than overt Hindu nationalism - the Congress and the BJP have no major ideological issues.”

Substitute for Congress and the BJP Australia’s Liberal and Labor parties and the same observation could be made.

Our celebration was for the defeat of Howard’s reactionary WorkChoices legislation that allowed employers to force workers into individually “negotiated” contracts called Australian Workplace Agreements.

But even was we celebrated the defeat of WorkChoices, we knew that on subservience to US imperialism, participation in its war in Afghanistan, continuation of the racist “intervention” into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory and a host of other matters, that Liberals and Labor have no major ideological issues.

Labor did make its historical and welcome apology to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

But then the backsliding began.

No, they wouldn’t get rid of Howard’s Australian Building and Construction Commission which imposes the draconian regime of anti-terror laws on construction workers, and we still have Ark Tribe (below) facing six months jail under Labor for refusing to testify before an ABCC secret interrogation.

No, they would not get rid of fines and the threat of jail for workers who planned, let alone engaged in, industrial action outside of formally declared bargaining periods. This was the threat directed at teachers when they announced that they would place a moratorium on the holding of national tests of literacy and numeracy in protest against school league tables.

This is still the threat faced by 1500 FIFO (fly-in, fly-out) Woodside-Burmah workers in Western Australia who collectively face more than $40 million in fines for taking industrial action against Woodside's "motelling" plans, under which they would lose their individual private accommodation and have to stay in different rooms on each work trip.

Woodside has taken the action before the Australian Building and Construction Commission over the eight-day strike in January at the $12 billion Pilbara project.

Union and non-union workers are being prosecuted individually and could face fines of $28,000 each.

"We think it's atrocious in a democracy like Australia that workers are prosecuted to this extent for taking any form of industrial action,” said Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) WA construction division secretary Kevin Reynolds.

"But that's the nature of the governments we live under today, be it Labor or Liberal, they're all the same," he said.

So is there an alternative?

Some point to the Greens, but like Labor, the Greens are a party of capitalism. Their demands do not go beyond the economic system of capitalism, and their actions do not go beyond the political institution of capitalism – parliament. A vote for the Greens, however, is one way in the current situation, for Australian working people to say to Labor, “Enough is enough! You take us for granted, and don’t do anything for us when we vote you in!”

The Labor Party essentially serves the ruling class of local and foreign monopolies, but maintains the pretence of speaking for the working people and the pretence of maintaining a more progressive stance on a variety of social, environmental, legal and foreign policy matters.

The real alternative for workers and their allies seeking a better way of life is to set aside the illusions around the nature and role of parliamentarism and build an independent capacity for unions, community organisations and alternative political groupings to struggle around key demands, regardless of which capitalist party is elected to office.

The CPA (M-L), a minority party but representative of the best interests of the workers and their allies, has put forward the following demands around which to build united struggle by wide sections of the people. The CPA (M-L) says “We urge all comrades and friends to promote and support these demands during and beyond the election period.”

……………………………..

Immediate Demands on current issues

Workers/union rights and democratic rights

Empower workers with the right to strike!
Scrap the ABCC – Stop criminalising workers demanding decent wages and conditions
Drop charges against Ark Tribe

Guarantee workplace rights!
Right to job security
Right to a safe workplace
Right to organise
Right to collective action
Right to union OH & S representatives
Right to full entitlements when companies fail

Environment

Make the polluters pay!
Cap and tax carbon emissions – no “market solutions”
No pollution reduction costs passed on to the people
Phase out coal!
Create clean power using renewable energy
Retrain workers for new clean, sustainable industries
Water belongs to all – it’s not for trade or sale!
No uranium mining – unsafe for workers, communities and humanity!

Manufacturing, jobs, resources tax

Stop nation-wrecking by multinationals – nationalise and build the nation for the people!
Regulate and control foreign investment - reject unequal “free trade” deals!
Tax the profits of the mining monopolies! Keep the wealth in Australia!
Develop renewable energy production!
Build clean, safe, sustainable manufacturing and value-adding industries
Improve services and amenities in mining communities and regional areas

Health, education, and livelihood

Serve the people – no privatisation!
More and better public schools
More and better public hospitals
More and better public housing – implement rent controls
More and better public transport
More and better affordable community-run childcare centres

Nationalise the banks!
Regulate interest rates
Cut bank fees
More affordable private housing!
Scrap Negative Gearing!
Increase pensions and entitlements!

Aboriginal sovereignty and the ‘intervention’

End the racist Intervention now - Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs!
Stop land grabbing by mining companies!
Unconditional restoration of the Racial Discrimination Act – scrap compulsory ‘Income Management’!
Leave Land Rights alone - recognise Aboriginal sovereignty!
A just Treaty with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples!

Foreign policy

For an independent and peaceful foreign policy!
No more support for American wars – get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines!
No US Alliance – no foreign military bases on Australian soil!
Nuclear free Australia!

Social issues

Equal rights for women!
Equal pay for work of equal value
Make equal opportunity a reality

Chinese Honda workers blaze a new trail of struggle

2010-08-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

Workers at Honda plants in the south of China recently took on the Japanese auto monopoly and won significant improvements in wages.

Like workers in many parts of the country’s socialist market economy, they are having to relearn the basic principles of workplace organisation and struggle.

The main Honda assembly plant is located at Nanhai county, Guangdong province.
Formerly a centre for the production of fish and rice, Nanhai has grown in the space of 20 years to become a major manufacturing centre with a total economy of over 150 billion RMB. And yet wages have remained more or less constant for the last ten years.

The significance of the strike at the assembly plant and two component manufacturing plants is that workers have articulated their independent demands for major wage increases and also for genuine union representation.

In line with the Communist Party’s vision of a “harmonious society” the Honda enterprise union has been led by company managers and limits its role to “providing a platform for discussion between employees and the company”.

During the course of the strike, one leader of the trade union fobbed off workers’ complaints about not doing enough to support their demand for a wage rise by saying “This is a matter between labour and employees. It is inappropriate for the trade union to intervene”.

In the course of a fortnight long strike which began on May 17, workers threw off the misleadership of the official union. On May 31 the union recruited 100 unemployed youth from local villages (in yellow hats below) who physically attacked striking workers who had defied the union on a return to work recommendation.

Hence, a demand for their enterprise unions to be elected by and accountable to the workers emerged as a key demand of the strike.

Most assembly workers had a monthly take home pay of around 1300 RMB (just over 200 Australian dollars) after deductions for the “three insurances and one fund” (old age pension, unemployment and medical insurance and the housing fund). Approximately one third of the workforce was trainees recruited from local vocational colleges. Their wages are only around 900 RMB.

These wages are one twentieth of their American and one twenty-fourth of Japanese counterparts.

The Honda plant was particularly vulnerable to workers’ actions in May. China was Honda’s only growth market in the world, and May was China’s peak sales season. Given that Chinese labour rarely engages in strike action, the company had only built the one assembly plant, so when it stopped so did the production of cars.

The workers eventually won a 24% wage rise – les than what they had sought, but significantly more than the contemptuous initial offer from the profit-hungry corporate bosses of a measly 55 RMB.

They also won a mealy-mouthed apology from the union for the violence directed at strikers and, with the support of a local delegate to the National People’s Congress, the right to elect their own chairperson of the factory union. However, there is yet no right of recall - all they have is the right to have the chair subjected to an annual “vote of confidence” failing which “they will have to improve”.

The three hundred million strong industrial working class of China has a glorious revolutionary history but is having to relearn its content in the course of a new generation’s practical experiences.

Australian workers salute their Chinese comrades and urge them to persevere on the path of struggle against foreign and local exploiters.

Maggots

2010-07-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

Usually it’s the road kill
or other dead flesh
that creates the maggots -

but on our jobs
it’s the maggots that create
the kill and leave
dead flesh.

Maggots who are bosses
supervisors
stand-over merchants

made bold by the
“tough cop on the beat”:
those slimy maggots
of the ABCC.

And the dead flesh is his flesh
the flesh of my mate
the one I worked with
the one you knew

crushed by the beam
electrocuted
fallen from the height

and always the potential
that it’s your flesh
or my flesh

created to meet the deadline
the line of the dead
the shortest distance between
the two points of
here today and
gone tomorrow
the shortcut to save money
and lose lives.

When the maggot says
“I’ve got a deadline to meet”
introduce him to that line
of mates who died on the job

and say, “My body
on your deadline?
No way, you stinking
little maggot!”

And when the ABCC
comes knocking: “Oh my name
it is Ark Tribe
and I ain’t gonna
talk to you….
Maggots!”

Ark faces jail as bosses go on killing

2010-07-20T21:38:00.000-07:00

Adelaide construction worker Ark Tribe returned to the courts of the capitalist class on June 20.

He is being tried on charges that he refused to attend a compulsory and secret interrogation by the thugs of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, created to intimidate workers in the building industry.

In a tragic twist of fate Ark's return to court came just three days after a fellow construction worker was killed at the Adelaide Desalination Plant site (below).

In South Australia, bosses who kill workers may be fined. Multinational giant BHP Billiton was recently fined $75,000 for causing the death of worker Scott Rigg. It's a paltry sum for a giant corporation.

There is no law on industrial manslaughter in SA.

Hence the international consortium building the bitterly opposed desalination plant won't see any of its executives sent to jail for the death at the plant.

But Ark, who refused to be interviewed by the scum of the earth after standing tall over a safety issue at his workplace, faces a mandatory 6 month's jail!

To support Ark, rallies were held in major cities around Australia. Altogether tens of thousands of workers downed tools. For the sake of some minor disruption to the work at the Flinders University site where Ark was employed at the time he was charged, tens of thousands of work hours have been lost to some of the biggest construction comanies in Australia each time Ark has fronted the courts.

And if Ark is jailed, his union the CFMEU has pledged to stop work right around the country.

Photos of the rally follow:

(The oath of the 1854 Eureka rebels at the Ark Tribe Embassy opposite the courtroom).

(Ark Tribe, second right, listens to speeches of support).

(State President of the Australian Education Union Correna Haythorpe details how members proposing to place a moratorium on NAPLAN testing to oppose school league tables were threatened with individual $6000 fines under Gillard's FairWork Act. Gillard, now Prime Minister, also threatened to send parents into schools as strikebreakers.)

(Jamie Newlyn, State Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and President of SA Unions. His members stopped work for 24 hours nationally after a death of a member on the Melbourne wharves a week ago.)

("Ark Tribe - here to stay!")

("CFMEU - here to stay!" - with the support of comrades in the AEU, AMWU, ETU, CEPU, IEU, PSA, RBTU, MUA, LHMU present at the rally.)

(And as Ark went into court, we went off to confront the ABCC in its rats nest and vent our anger at its attacks on our class.)

A talk with Ark Tribe

2010-07-07T20:47:00.000-07:00

South Australian construction worker Ark Tribe will return to court on July 20 to face charges that he refused to attend a secret inquisition conducted by the notoriously anti-worker Australian Building and Construction Commission.

If convicted, Ark faces a mandatory six months in gaol, and Julia Dullard will try and lead the Anti Labour Party (ALP) to victory in a federal election with a rank and file worker rotting in a cell for standing up to the intimidation and harassment of the boss class.

In the video, Ark reflects on the circumstances that led to him facing charges and on the tremendous support that has been forthcoming for the stand he has taken.