For Australian Independence - No More US Bases!

On February 15 2007, Australian Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson announced that Australia would host a new US military satellite communications base at Geraldton, in Western Australia.

Various capitalist media spinelessly followed Nelson’s own press report and wrote it up in these terms: "The base will be built at the existing Australian defence facility at Geraldton and will be used by the Americans to monitor regions like the Middle East."

Notice the passivity of the role assigned to the base in this language: it is related to our "defence" and will passively "monitor" various regions. Defining those regions as "like the Middle East" is intended to close the discussion and let us all go to bed safely at night.

But first of all, what is the existing facility at Geraldton?

Here’s Wikipedia’s explanation:

The Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station (ADSCS) is located at Kojarena, inland near Geraldton. The ADSCS is part of the US signals intelligence and analysis network ECHELON. The station has four satellite tracking dishes which intercept communications from Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Pakistani regional satellites[1] and international communications satellites (INTELSATs and COMSATs), throughout the Indian Ocean and South-East Asian regions. Staff are drawn from the American National Security Agency and the Australian Defence Signals Directorate, and the site is operated under the UKUSA Agreement.[2]
On 15 February 2007, it was announced that a new US military communications base would be built in Geraldton, after three years of secret negotiations between the US and the Australian Federal Government.[1]

It’s worth following the link to ECHELON, also on Wikipedia, to get a complete picture of how the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are working together like five fingers on the one hand to intercept electronic communications everywhere in the world, and how, when this is not being done for political or military purposes, the U.S. has been able to utilise it for industrial and commercial spying.

So what will the new U.S. base really do?

In an email to Perth’s Indymedia.com, Loring Wirbel who studies space intelligence systems in the US, based in Colorado Springs writes: "There's a difference between Pine Gap and Geraldton, in that the US will be using its portion of the base for a largely unclassified (but dangerously first-strike) warfighting voice communications system, MUOS."

There’s also a Wikipedia description of MUOS (Mobile User Objective System) if you want to check it out, but this report, from Aviation Today, puts it into very clear terms.

The deal further enmeshes Australia in the web of its military relationship with United States imperialism.

Visiting fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy Philip Dorling said that once the base was operating, it would be almost impossible for Australia to be fully neutral or stand back from any war in which the US was involved.Dr Dorling said the base would have direct military significance and would be a military target, similar to the submarine communications base at North West Cape and the joint facility at Pine Gap with its missile early warning system.

"You knock out the ground station and you knock out the system," Dr Dorling said. "Once again the Howard Government is extremely eager to add another strand to Australia's alliance with the US. If the Americans are involved in conflict anywhere in the Indian and Pacific oceans, basically our half of the hemisphere, Australia will be directly involved by providing vital intelligence and communications links."

He said the Geraldton base would be the link through which the United States would control the satellites. "Geraldton is as far west as you can get on the Australian land mass. That means they can put the satellite as far west as possible so that the Middle East, particularly the Persian Gulf, and south Asia will fall within its footprint," Dr Dorling said.

A couple of years ago, then Assistant Secretary of State for the U.S., Rich Armitage, lectured Australians on how they would have to shed blood alongside the U.S. if it went to war with China over Taiwan Province. Armitage cited the Anzus Treaty. However, bases like North West Cape (the Omega navigation system), Pine Gap (see previous post) and Geraldton (MUOS) indicate that Anzus or no Anzus, Australia cannot be neutral in any act of aggression perpetrated by US imperialism

Foreign military bases on Australian soil violate our national independence, undermine our national sovereignty, and violate our territorial integrity.

We must revitalise the Campaign Against Foreign Military Bases in Australia, which was such a strong movement in the early 1970’s and bring new legions of young people into the struggle against imperialism, and for an independent and socialist Australia.

A Letter Worth Reprinting

Two significant events have occurred in the last week or so. Firstly, "How high?" Howard, Prime Monster of Australia, took Barack Obama to task for announcing a withdrawal date from Iraq. Secondly, Australian "Defence" Monster Senator Brendan Nelson announced that we would be hosting a brand new US military base at Geraldton, in Western Australia. More of that later. In the context of these two announcements, the following letter appeared in Adelaide's The News newspaper (Friday Feb 16, 2007). Three cheers for the honesty and guts of people like Edward Cranswick:

Lethal Allies

Strikingly conspicuous by its absence in the argument between US Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama and Mr Howard about Australia’s contribution to the war in Iraq is any mention of Pine Gap, the United States/CIA military base just outside Alice Springs.

In the lead-up to the attack on Iraq, Michael McKinley, a strategic analyst at the Australian National University said: "The Pine Gap contribution is very much more significant than any sending of Australian soldiers."

As a geophysicist and former U.S. government employee, who was found guilty in the Alice Springs Magistrates Court last week for protesting against Pine Gap, I know that Pine Gap is one of the most critical components of the U.S. space-based global war machine and it is Australia’s essential contribution to the war.

Pine Gap is the telemetry/control ground station for an array of U.S. military satellites in the eastern hemisphere that both image targets and guide weapons which destroy those targets. Recent technological and U.S. policy changes have reduced the distance from "sensor to shooter" and Pine Gap is now directly responsible for initiating the selection and destruction of targets.

As Andrew Fowler of the ABC’s Investigative Unit said five days before the attack: "Right now what’s paying off for the Americans is a secret spy base, which has moved the front line in the war against Iraq to Pine Gap."

Hundreds of American nerds sit at computer screens in airconditioned bunkers in the middle of Australia and choose targets to be destroyed – heavily armed Iraqi resistance groups and happy family wedding parties.

This makes them and their Australian allies directly complicit in U.S. war crimes.

This is Mr Howard’s substantive contribution to the war in Iraq, something about which Senator Obama is apparently not yet familiar.

Edward Cranswick
Hawthorn

Tom Waits: Observer Along the Road to Peace

Tom Waits has long been one of my favourite singers. He’s in a class of his own, like Dylan, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf. He’s the antithesis of commercial pap, has a voice that’s been scraped off the sidewalk of some gritty industrial suburb, but he can still growl with tenderness and compassion.

One of my early favourites of Tom’s was Jersey Girl, a love song for a girl in New Jersey. I’ve never been to New Jersey, but it’s the anti-hero of the urban American (US) landscape. It symbolises the eked-out existence of the US proletariat. Tom doesn’t name the girl he addresses in this song; rather he states:

"Nothin’ matters in this whole wide world
When you’re in love with a Jersey girl."

By identifying his girl with the tough landscape in which she lives, the song becomes an anthem to the working class, a rejection of the world of Eighth Avenue and the glitz and glamour of those who are successful under capitalism.

(Listen to Springsteen’s live version of this song, sung to a New Jersey audience, to appreciate what I mean by "anthemic".)

For the most part, Waits has been an observer at the arse-end of capitalism. Invariably, reviewers and journalists refer to the flophouses, bowery bums and assorted low-life that inhabit his songs. He’s put in the same literary tradition as Kerouac and Bukowski.

He is an honest observer and shows his understanding of the world in his works. He has the same respect for the reality of unrewarded life as Brecht or Lu Xun, and the same gift for description. He is part of that progressive middle ground of people who have not yet, but may some day, realise that the point is not so much to understand the world as to try and change it.

I still think that one of the most accurate portrayals of the mood whipped up in the US in the aftermath of 9-11 is his monologue What’s He Building? on the Mule Variations CD. It’s Senator McCarthy meets Boo Radley, an inquisitive neighbour developing irrational fears on the basis of scant information. Its final line is the chilling "We have a right to know".

And in the stifling climate of rampant Christian fundamentalism in the post 9-11 Bush-bashed United States, Waits has a lovely lament on the same CD, Georgia Lee, inspired by the death of a ten-year old black girl who lived near his own home in California:

"Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there
For Georgia Lee?"

On his latest release, the Orphans CD (which, incidentally has his readings of works by Brecht and Weill, by Kerouac and Bukowski), Waits has the song Road to Peace - his take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The song errs in that it equates the Palestinian resistance with the Zionist lebensraum in a sort of "plague on both your houses" stance, but it clearly identifies and attacks US foreign policy from Kissinger to Bush, and echoes Georgia Lee in suggesting that God has turned his back on those who suffer. Here are the lyrics, but please try and listen to the song to capture its cadence and mood:

Road To Peace(Waits/Brennan 2006)

Young Abdel Madi Shabneh was only eighteen years old
Was the youngest of nine children. He’d never spent a night away from home
And his mother held his photograph up in the New York Times
You see the killing has intensified along the road to peace

He was a tall thin boy with a wispy moustache disguised as an Orthodox Jew
On a crowded bus in Jerusalem, some had survived World War Two
And the thunderous explosion blew out windows two hundred yards away
With more retribution and seventeen dead along the road to peace

Now, at King George Avenue and Jaffa Road passengers boarded bus 14A
In the aisle next to the driver, Abdel Madi Shabneh
And the last thing that he said on earth is, "God is great and God is good"
And he blew them all to kingdom come upon the road to peace

In response to this another kiss of death was visited upon
Yashir Tehah, Israel says he is an Hamas senior militant
And Israel sent four choppers in, flames engulfed his white Opal
And it killed his wife and his three year old child leaving only blackened skeletons

They found his toddler’s bottle and a pair of small shoes and they waved them in front of the cameras
But Israel says they did not know that his wife and child were in the car
There are roadblocks everywhere and only suffering on TV
Neither side will ever give up their smallest right along the road to peace

Israel launched its latest campaign against Hamas on Tuesday
And two days later Hamas shot back and killed five Israeli soldiers
Though thousands dead and wounded on both sides, most have been Middle Eastern civilians
They fill their children full of hate to fight an old man’s war and die upon the road to peace

And this is our land we will fight with all our force say the Palestinians and the Jews
Each side will cut off the hand of anyone who tries to stop the resistance
If thy right eye offends thee then you must pluck it out
And Machoud Abbas and Sharon have been lost out along the road to peace

Once Kissinger said we have no friends, America only has interests
And now our President wants to been seen as a hero and he’s hungry for re-election
But Bush is reluctant to risk his future in the fear of his political failure
So he plays chess at his desk and poses for the press ten thousand miles from the road to peace

In the video that they found at the home of Abdel Madi Shabneh
He held a Kalashnikov rifle and he spoke with a voice like a boy
He was an excellent student he studied so hard it was as if he had a future
He told his mother that he had a test that day out along the road to peace

The fundamentalist killing on both sides is standing in the path of peace
But tell me why are we arming the Israeli army with guns and tanks and bullets?
And if God is great and God is good why can't he change the hearts of men?
Or maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help
Maybe God himself is lost and needs help, he's out upon the road to peace
Maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help and he's lost upon the road to peace
And he's lost upon the road to peace, out upon the road to peace

The Inspiration of Stalin

In a recent post on his Seek the Truth-Serve the People blog, Cde Haisanlu has an extensive quote from a book by a soldier who participated in the German attack on Soviet Russia during WW2. There is a link to this blog from here, so check it out. The unnamed and unknown Soviet soldier represents the best qualities of a Communist: steadfast optimism in the future despite his own perilous circumstances, and an unshakeable conviction in the justness of the cause he supports.

As a complement to this wartime memoir, I am putting up an excerpt from Curzio Malaparte’s The Volga Rises in Europe. Malaparte was an Italian journalist who accompanied German and Romanian troops in the invasion of the Ukraine through to the outskirts of Leningrad, from June 1941 to November 1942. On August 7, 1941, Malaparte writes of an "enemy, who is not fleeing in disorder but is retreating slowly, disputing every yard and punctuating his withdrawal with frequent counter-offensive thrusts by strong rearguards." He notes that the Soviet army leaves nothing on the battlefield in its retreat, taking everything from the corpses of its troops to abandoned helmets, strips of gauze bandages, pieces of paper – anything that may provide the Nazis with clues as to its organisational framework and combat circumstances.

It is only on the following day that Malaparte come across a mile-wide battlefield on which the Soviet soldiers had been hit by Messerchmitts and artillery, and had conducted a battle against German infantry from ten in the morning until sunset, and where the dead and mortally wounded and the detritus of their encampment were still in place. Malaparte notices a copy of Pravda, dated June 24, crumpled and mud-stained, its headlines announcing the outbreak of war. A little further along, he comes across a note-book and a large album illustrating the Third Five Year Plan "formulated by Stalin and still in course of realisation." He flicks through the album, and is interrupted by a German soldier who has noticed something in a tree: a loudspeaker, with wires trailing to the ground.

"A few yards from the tree, in a hole in the ground, we come upon the crumpled body of a Russian soldier. The dead man is leaning forward, covering with his chest a large metal box – a radiogram. Scattered all around in the grass are fragments of gramophone records. I try to piece together the fragments, to read the titles on the labels: The Internationale, the March of Budenny, the March of the Black Sea Fleet, the marches of the sailors of Kronstadt and of the Red Air Force. There are also some educational records dealing with social, political and military subjects.

"On the red label of one record I read the following words printed in black letters: "Na Podmogu Aghitatoru – Vidannaya Ts.K kp/6/U/No. 5 - 1941". It is a kind of phonographic catechism, a sort of manual of the perfect "agitator". The articles of this catechism were repeated by the deep, imperious voice of the loudspeaker with the aim of inspiring the soldiers to do their duty to the end. On another record are the words Poyasnityelni Text. This is undoubtedly another species of catechism, a kind of vade-mecum of the Communist soldier. A third record bears the inscription "Teche Ryechka Nyevyelicjka". It is the title of a "factory song", one of those songs to which the Bolsheviks have given the name tsavod.

"But my most interesting discovery is an album of twenty-four records, the cover of which bears this title: "Doclad Tovarshcha Stalina na Chrezvichainom VIII Vsyesoyuzom Syesdye Sovyetov 25 Noyabrya 1936 G. O Proyektye Konstitutsii Soyuza SSR." On the forty-eight sides of the twenty-four records is recorded the whole of the marathon speech delivered by Stalin in the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, on the occasion of the promulgation of the Soviet Constitution in 1936. The German soldier, who has been helping me to collect the fragments of the records, gazes at me in silence. Then he looks up and sees the loudspeaker hanging from the branches of the tree. He stares at the body of the Russian soldier, slumped over the metal casing of the radiogram. The German soldier’s face is serious, almost sad, with the sadness that in simple men is the companion of bewilderment and incomprehension. He is a peasant, this German soldier, not a worker - a Bavarian peasant from the Augsburg district. He does not possess what I would call "industrial morale", still less that of its principles, its abstractions, its violent and fanatical realism. (During the fighting, the words of Stalin, magnified to gigantic proportions by the loudspeaker, rain down upon the men kneeling in holes behind the tripods of their machine-guns, din in the ears of the soldiers lying amid the shrubs, of the wounded writhing in agony on the ground. The loudspeaker imbues that voice with a harsh, brutal, metallic quality. There is something diabolical, and at the same time terribly naïve, about these soldiers who fight to the death, spurred on by Stalin’s speech on the Soviet Constitution, by the slow, deliberate recital of the moral, social, political, and military precepts of the "agitators"; about these soldiers who never surrender; about these dead, scattered all around me; about the final gestures, the stubborn, violent gestures of these men who died so terribly lonely a death on this battlefield, amid the deafening roar of the cannon and the ceaseless braying of the loudspeaker.)"

(NB - the second poster ,embedded in the text, celebrates the release, in 1936, of the Stalin Constitution - then the world's most democratic and progressive national constitution.)

Imperialism without comment 1

Chinese Marxist-Leninists Oppose the Sale of Xu Gong

Chinese Marxist-Leninists want to protect state-owned industries and fight the restorationists’ plans to hand core state assets to foreign and local capitalists. The Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group (Xu Gong) is a major player in China’s construction and civil engineering industries.
Instead of defending the socialist ownership of a core state industry, the restorationists placed Xu Gong on the market, inviting tenders from home and abroad. The two main contenders were a private Chinese market rival, the Sany Group, and the US private equity giant Carlyle Group. Carlyle offered to pay US$375 million for 85% of Xu Gong in October 2005. Sany countered with what they said was an offer to pay 30% over and above the Carlyle bid. Apparently this offer was not favourably received, so in June of this year, Sany Executive Xiang Wenbo put the details on his blog, drawing attention to the dangers of "selling a big and important company like Xu Gong to a foreign company." Of course, he didn’t say anything about the dangers of selling Xu Gong to a private Chinese company! The issue was then taken up in November on the Chinese-language website www.maoflag.net (see image from main page above) which provides a forum for Marxist-Leninists in China to discuss issues of importance to the working class and its allies.I have translated the lead article on this issue, and a selection of responses, so that comrades internationally can see the issues facing Chinese Marxist-Leninists, the enthusiasm for engaging the restorationists in struggle, and the difficulties of organisation and practical activity. Whether it was related to this wave of opposition from the Left, or not, the restorationists revised the sale terms and it has now been announced that the sale of a 50% stake in Xu Gong has been approved by the Congress of Employees, as well as the Xuzhou City Government (the nominal owners of Xu Gong) and the Government of China’s East Jiangsu Province. Chairmanship of the new company’s board will remain with Xu Gong. The Carlyle acquisition is believed to be China's first leveraged buyout (i.e. financed by loans).
Final approval from China’s Ministry of Commerce is being awaited.

The voice of the Chinese proletariat follows:

Defend the Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group, Protect the Constitution, Take the Socialist Road

"A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism".

In 1848, Marx and Engels published the "Communist Manifesto" and solemnly announced to the world: the Communist Party can summarise its theory in one sentence – the elimination of the private ownership of the means of production. The "Communist Manifesto" opened the way for the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, for the establishment of public ownership of the means of production, for the liberation and development of the productive forces, for an end to social polarisation and the elimination of exploitation, for the realisation of prosperity for all, and finally, for the realisation of the grand era of the liberation of the proletariat of the whole world by Communism.

From the first salvoes of the October Revolution, Lenin led the Russian people to carry out the October Revolution. The spectre of Communism produced an historical giant who opened up the great era of the transition from capitalism to socialism. After Lenin’s death, Stalin led the people of the Soviet Union to establish the Soviet socialist system, and established the pattern of Soviet socialism suited to conditions of war and to the revolutionary times. He opened the way for the October Revolution to advance from capitalism to socialism, and for the improvement and development of socialism.

In 1949, Mao Zedong led the Chinese people to carry out the New Democratic Revolution and founded New China. After that, according to the actual conditions and at the right time, he introduced the socialist transformation and the socialist industrialisation of the whole nation, established the socialist system in China, brought about the first stages of China’s socialist industrialisation and made a powerful display of the superiority of the socialist system of public ownership in its initial stage.

Since the Third Plenary Session of the 11th National Party Congress, Deng Xiaoping, practicing the theme of an era of peace and development, put forward the reform and opening up of socialism, emphasising persisting in the system of public ownership as the main part, comprising more than 75% of the national economy, and implementing the unity of the planned and market economies. However, under the influence of the wrong trend in international and domestic ideology, since the 90s, much Government-led large-scale privatisation has been carried out, social polarisation has accelerated so that Deng Xiaoping’s serious warning of September 1993, "We propose that we must prevent polarisation, and in reality, the natural emergence of polarisation." In his "Selected Works", Deng Xiaoping stressed time and again, that if polarisation occurred, our reforms could be counted as a failure. Therefore, in 1993, Deng Xiaoping was already clear about the success or failure of the reforms and had concluded: Our reforms have failed. The failure to maintain the majority portion of the system of public ownership has caused polarisation, and the reality of the polarisation indicates that there is nothing left of majority public ownership. All the regulations in the Chinese Constitution regarding the system of the public ownership of the means of production entered an unprecedented crisis. This has produced for our country’s working class a great ideological weapon in knowing about the reform and the carrying out of the reform.

However, since 1993, Deng Xiaoping’s warning and conclusion certainly have not played the role that they should have. The transfer of state-owned enterprises to private ownership, and the moves for selling off to foreign investors has proceeded vigorously and rapidly and the evil consequences of this polarisation grow more and more rotten. This clearly indicates that the Party’s basic line of socialism in the initial stages is in danger, the basic system of socialist public ownership is in danger, the socialist Constitution of China is in danger, and the future and the fate of the Chinese nation and people is in danger!

At the present time, incidents of the transformation of state-owned enterprises to private ownership, including sale to foreign investors, are occurring one after the other without let-up. What is shocking is the large-scale foreign purchase of state-owned enterprises, namely, the purchase of the Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group (Xu Gong - see Xu Gong bucket lift trucks at a trade display above). This incident is the logical conclusion and ultimate outcome.

The experience of the privatisation reform is the disintegration of China’s equipment industry. Xu Gong was the well-spring of China’s engineering machinery industry and underpins this industry, and even China’s industrial and economic independence, as well as its strategic position. If Xu Gong is sold to foreign investors, it will definitely lead to a series of large-scale privatisations of state-owned enterprises that will tremendously damage Chinese economic and national independence. This is unconstitutional and in violation of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, is contrary to the concept of scientific development, contrary to the Party’s basic line, contrary to the strategic goal of a harmonious society. It is a foolish move bringing disaster on the people and the nation. The whole nation must come to understand this, unite, raise high the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, protect Xu Gong, defend the Constitution, get active and take this opportunity to open up the whole nation’s struggle to restore majority public ownership of the means of production, and to firmly take the socialist road.

The Chinese nation has once again reached its most dangerous time! Therefore, I solemnly propose: rise up, unite. The Chinese proletariat and working people and all advanced people, jointly defend the Xuzhou Construction Materials Company, protect the Constitution, and take the socialist road!

The Marxist scholar,
Author of "New Socialist Theory"
Ceng Zhaoyu

Responses:

1. I support you, but can’t do anything about it. Power is not in the hands of real Marxist-Leninists.

2. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, and I’m also worried about the current situation in China. The change from public to private ownership indicates that we’ve been shaken from the road to socialism, and our Party’s ruling status has been shaken. Ours is a Party of the workers and peasants. The privatisation of state-owned enterprises threatens the interests of the workers and also threatens the class and mass foundations of our Party. Capitalist development is proceeding apace and a capitalist clique has emerged within our Party. They are corroding our Party, wishing to usurp the Party’s leading position. We must be careful. The National People’s Congress is no longer the people’s but the capitalists’. The NPC has lost its original character. It is the rich who occupy the General Assembly rather than the workers and peasants. We must resolutely eliminate capitalism, support the Communist Party, and take the socialist road.

3. I agree. We must unite. We must establish a "defending socialism" group and continue to struggle against capitalism. We must rally around the Party and respond to the Party’s call. Although the Old Man Chairman Mao has gone, I must hold high his flag and enter the struggle. Compatriots unite! For our country and people, for our Party, and for our Communist cause!
Respectful greetings to Comrade Ceng Zhaoyu!!! I’m willing to take part! Please inform me of the arrangements. (NB The Chinese term "laorenjia", or "Old Man", is a respectful term frequently applied to Chairman Mao". Mike-servethepeople).

4. Elder Brother Zhaoyu: I support your "Defend Xu Gong, Protect the Constitution". However, I think your article is too flattering towards the Great Deng and Deng Theory. Can those dirty things be compared to Chairman Mao and Mao Zedong Thought? Can they be equated?

5. "The Chinese nation has once again reached its most dangerous time! Therefore, I solemnly propose: rise up, unite. The Chinese proletariat and working people and all advanced people, jointly defend Xu Gong, protect the Constitution, and take the socialist road!"

6. A great initiative! I support you!

7. Unite! Struggle! Struggle! Destroy capitalism!!! Overthrow the capitalist- roaders!! Take the socialist road of Chairman Mao!!!!!

Lei Feng 雷锋

(Sorry to be a smart arse, but this one's for any Chinese

readers who stumble across my blog)

"Learn from the good example of Lei Feng.

Wholeheartedly serve the people."

昨天，我陪我妻子去阿德莱德中心市场买菜。买菜以后我们去了市场东边的一家小服装店看新来的衣服。服装点是我朋友的，她是上海人。当我们俩进去了，她是通电话对朋友。 她一看我，就对她朋友说：“一个外国人进来了，穿着雷锋汗衫“。 打完电话， 她对我笑着说：“雷锋。。。？” 我说“对，雷锋精神！” 她还笑着，半英文，半中文地说： You know, these days we think Lei Feng is a 傻瓜！“
“知道， 知道， 可是我还喜欢雷锋精神， 是 “为人民服务”的。”
“你喜欢吗？”
“喜欢”
我想了一会儿， 就说： “全世界人民都需要雷锋精神，要不资本主义会使他们很自私，很小气的。只有很少人能当大款，多数人民无法受益于资本主义。”
我妻子随便看了新的衣服，什么都不太喜欢，不想买。
我们出门时， 我对中国朋友叫了：“下一次见”
我们三个人,雷锋，我妻子和我一起出去了。

"Learn from Comrade Lei Feng

Develop the moral character of Communism"

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

My previous post on Bob Dylan’s Senor (see "Chavez Tells Us Where We’re Heading" in the September archive) brought an interesting response from Lucien in the Czech Republic. Where I saw a political and anti-imperialist landscape, he saw one of drugs and dependence.
It’s an interesting phenomenon that different people will interpret the same thing in different ways.

The Soviet philosopher Vygotsky created a school of learning called Constructivism, according to which a learner constructs his or her own meanings based on the whole of their prior experiences and understandings.

As a gross over-simplification, and by way of a pretty poor example, if a teacher walks into a class of 25 students and hopes to impart a certain body of information, it is possible that there will be 26 different sets of understandings in the room: the teacher’s original understanding, and each student’s own interpretation of that meaning.

In this simple scenario, the teacher is like a jug of water, hoping to pour a particular understanding into 25 little glasses, but these little glasses bring with them a little cordial mixture of prior understandings, prior cultural development, so that around the room we have not 25 little glasses of water, but a mixture of orange, lime, lemon etc flavoured waters.

Am I getting off the point?

OK, so Dylan’s jug of Senor gets poured into Lucien and me, and what we each end up with is a different, but for each of each, perfectly reasonable, interpretation of the song. By the way, I still prefer mine, but I can see where Lucien is coming from.

With that in mind, I want to have a look now at another Dylan song that I’ll probably have interpreted differently to Lucien, and any one else, for that matter.

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue is the last song on 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home album.
The conventional wisdom is that the song is addressed to either Paul Clayton, David Blue or Joan Baez. Others say it is Dylan "saying goodbye to his old self" (The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, p 270).

I’m not going to argue against any of that. Dylan’s writing is so layered, so replete with wheels within wheels, that any or all of the above interpretations might be true.

But the little residue of cordial inside the glass of my mind has produced an understanding that resonates more with the politics that I imagine to be in Senor.

Now, Dylan may have decided by 1965 that he did not want to be the "spokesman of a generation", but he did want to speak, and the fact that his language was so surreal, and that he was in the process of adopting different masks and disguises through which to speak, is what makes his lyrics so intriguing and so open to a variety of constructions of meaning.

To me, Dylan is addressing the United States of the 1960s and singing its death knell.
He warns that its doom is fast approaching, that it "must leave now", grabbing whatever it thinks it will need. This is followed by a gesture in the direction of "your orphan with his gun, Crying like a fire in the sun".

Dylan sees orphans as those whom the US of the 60s had turned its back on, as those whom it had made outcasts and had disenfranchised. There is even an echo of this on his most recent album, Modern Times:

Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches

I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages

(Thunder on the Mountain)

The orphans of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue could have been Afro-Americans, youth, labour unions and anyone else whose rights were being trampled by the US ruling class, but the reference to crying like a fire in the sun evoked for me at the time, and still does today, those nightly news shots of Vietnamese villages, and Vietnamese villagers, burning with napalm.
Napalm was synonymous with the US war of aggression against Vietnam, and in our anti-war leaflets we always pointed out that napalm burnt at 3060 degrees fahrenheit, or half the surface temperature of the sun. (I’m not sure if that was true, but it was pretty bloody hot all the same, and, after 1972, the image of that little naked girl running down the street from her village, her skin burning from napalm and her crying face distorted in pain, was clear enough for me to see it over and over again in Dylan’s lyric).

Dylan’s next line is "Look out the saints are comin’ through" followed by "And it’s all over now, Baby Blue". Whilst this references the old jazz standard When The Saints Come Marching In, the saints for those on the Left in the mid-60s were clearly the Vietnamese National Liberation Front soldiers. We marched with their red, blue and yellow flags and chanted "Victory to the Viet Cong" and "Ho, Ho. Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese Are Gonna Win".

And if the Vietnamese were going to win, it would be all over for US imperialism, in that conflict at least.

But the Vietnamese were not the US imperialists’ only problem. At home, a counterculture had developed out of the youth movement. Rejecting the materialism and consumerism of their parents, young kids were tuning in and dropping out. Dylan captured this further threat to the establishment, singing:

The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.

The psychedelic culture of the times was particularly characterised by crazily patterned album covers, concert posters, clothing and other paraphernalia. Everytime a current rock music magazine indulges in a bout of 60s nostalgia, it covers itself in the swirling patterns of psychedelic 60s artwork. It truly seemed at the time that "This sky too, is folding under you, And it’s all over now, Baby Blue".

Some nice alliteration follows:

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
All your reindeer armies, are all going home.

It doesn’t take much to see this as a reference to the US soldiers, who were beginning to become disillusioned with the Vietnam War. By the late 60s, this would develop into the phenomenon of "fragging" . "Reindeer armies" works as a really surreal image: GIs being flown across the sky to supposedly deliver the benefits of US imperialism to the childish Vietnamese. Works for me, anyway….

The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.

The founding ideal of the US state combined anti-colonialism, freedom and democracy. Dylan’s symbol of this founding ideal is the lover who has rejected what the US state has become: the world’s most oppressive and aggressive imperialist power. Why would it stay around? "The carpet, too, is moving under you, And it’s all over now, Baby Blue".

The fourth and last verse begins with the warning that it’s too late for US imperialism to retrieve the situation. Something is calling out to it. Dylan mysteriously identifies it as follows:

The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.

Like the orphan, the vagabond is the Other, the realisation of all those whom US imperialism makes into outcasts, the rejected, and now, in the context of the war, the enemy. But this enemy, strangely, is dressed in the US’s own discarded clothing.

This is perhaps Dylan’s greatest and most cryptic (until Senor) endorsement of those in the Third World who stand opposed to US imperialism. Dylan had been closely associated in the early 60s with some staunchly Leftist intellectuals and activists in New York, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he woud have heard how Ho Chi Minh had travelled in his youth through the US, and how he had been inspired by the US example of fighting for independence from the British. Like many of us who grew up in the 60s, he would probably have appreciated the irony of the US going to war against a leader who had modelled his own country’s Declaration of Independence on that of the United States. Standing in your old clothes, indeed!

This is a challenge that many of us felt that US imperialism could not recover from: externally, the anti-imperialist movement with its centre in the Vietnamese people’s struggle for independence and freedom; internally, the emerging counterculture with its rejection of all that the US then stood for.

No wonder Dylan closed the song by giving US imperialism no choice other than to

Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Postscript: In a recent (Jan 2011) comment on Dylan's contract to publish up to six new books with Simon and Schuster, one commentator threw in this interesting little titbit which feeds into my claim that Dylan knew of Ho Chi Minh's experiences in the US:

At one point, Dylan said he was working on a book entitled Ho Chi Minh in Harlem:

"A while back I started writing a novel called Ho Chi Minh in Harlem. He was a shortorder cook there in the '20s before he went back to Viet Nam--it's a documented fact. That excited me there for a minute."

That book was never published either.

Very interesting!!

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Bob Dylan's new book deal - What does it mean ? - National Bob Dylan Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/bob-dylan-in-national/bob-dylan-s-new-book-deal-what-does-it-mean#ixzz1C11Dw8Vz

Rock On, Timrod!

This piece of nonsense was an earlier post that I had inadvertently deleted. Sorry if you've seen it before...

So poor old Bob has been hauled over the coals for pinching a few key phrases from the Confederate poet Timrod and various blues singers on his new CD Modern Times. And I thought we Aussies did the tall poppy syndrome the best!

Dylan has always taken lyrics and melodies from whatever suits him. That’s part of the creative process. For my part I regard it as icing on the cake when I hear an echo of a Robert Johnson line in a Dylan song. And in the history of literature, is Dylan the only person to have used a phrase or two from the Bible?

For me it’s not theft if the word or phrase is re-presented in a new or different way, if it’s used entertainingly and differently. I wrote a poem once for a comrade who had died. He was an older comrade who had come through the Depression and the War Against Fascism, and he loved Paul Robeson. I used the line "Old man river" in relation to him, and thought that it suited the context, and that he would have been flattered by the metaphor. I didn’t feel like a cheat or a thief for using someone else’s phrase.

The scholarship on Dylan is impressive and the annotation of his lyrics has resulted in many of us getting new insights into old Dylan favourites courtesy of the research of others.
I was looking through one website, in the wake of the Timrod controversy, and read an annotation of the song "Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) from the Street Legal album. This song contains the phrase "bathed in a stream of pure heat". It had not been annotated. It was mine! The perfect vehicle from which to launch myself into the world of Dylanology!

I Googled the phrase and got 277,000 results. Most were links to a bootleg of the same name. Pages of them. But then I hit pay dirt!

Udâna - VIII. Patalagami
This stream, whose waters etc. [as above] is now pure, lucent and untainted. ... stream, and when he arrived there, he entered the stream and bathed and ...www.sacred-texts.com/bud/udn/udn8.htm - 38k - Cached - Similar pages

This was it! The source! A Buddhist text…how cool was that! The only problem was that it was a bit too cool. No heat. Could there be something better out there?

I returned to the search.

English Works! Literature: Guide to Fiction
If the rose is white, the love is pure. If the rose is damaged, ... and at last, fairly overcome with heat, undressed and bathed in a stream that lay in his ...depts.gallaudet.edu/englishworks/literature/fiction.html - 32k - Cached - Similar pages

This was more like it. Dylan delving into the world of English literature. This was much better than the Buddhist source, although you wouldn’t put it past Dylan to have read both of them somewhere on his travels. But that raised the question: could there be yet other sources feeding into his great brain? On went the search….

Greek Mythology: BOREAS God of the North Wind & Winter ( also ...
... and at last, fairly overcome with heat, undressed and bathed in a stream that ... They came to the generous Troad and hit the pure, and a huge inhuman ...www.theoi.com/Titan/AnemosBoreas.html - 66k - Cached - Similar pages

Well, Dylan did spend some time in Greece. Did some drinking, and probably read this in the original ancient Greek. So what if the word order was wrong? "Heat bathed in a stream pure…" has a certain ring to it anyway. May have even gone into the first draft like that.
By now my mind was racing. How clever you are Bob to have researched so thoroughly for the said phrase.

Was there more? Could Dylan have found yet other sources? I plunged back into the search…

Culex -- Appendix Vergiliana
And whether Arna bathed with Xanthus stream ... And pleasure pure and free available, With simple cares. ... O'th'air doth echo feed, and in the heat ...www.virgil.org/appendix/culex.htm - 35k - Cached - Similar pages

Wow!! Still Greek, but this time the word order is right! Had to be the one.
But wait! There was more….

[PDF] AIR-TO-AIR HEAT-EXCHANGERS FOR HOUSES
File Format: PDF/Adobe AcrobatIf room air contained only pure air--with no water vapor at all--the ... each tube is bathed in the stream of stale air and receives heat that vaporizes ...arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.eg.13.110188.000245 - Similar pages

At last, the jewel in the crown of my research! For not only are the words all here, but there is an ethereality, an ambience that transports me into that "room where the heat pipes just cough". Here was Dylan, genius poet of our Age, recycling sources like a madman, old "Viper eyes" with heat that just vaporizes so there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off.

Well, I had done it. Joined the world of literary scholarship, added to the list of annotations, brought glory on myself and my research, and all thanks to Bob and his inability to create a wonderful turn of phrase by himself.

Rock on, Timrod!

Freedom on the Wallaby

This is the text of Henry Lawson's poem, Freedom on the Wallaby, written in 1891 when the Great Strikes were in full swing. The poem is written in the Australian vernacular of the time.

"Humping bluey" meant carrying a swag, a roll of blankets used for sleeping outdoors. "On the wallaby" (or "on the wallaby track") meant to be on the move. "Cooey" was a loud call used to get attention out in the bush, or outback. A "billy" was a tin can used for boiling water on a camp fire. The wattle is Australia's national flower.

Australia’s a big country
An’ Freedom’s humping bluey,
An’ Freedom’s on the wallaby
Oh! Don’t you hear ‘er cooey?
She’s just begun to boomerang,
She’ll knock the tyrants silly,
She’s goin’ to light another fire
And boil another billy.

Our fathers fought for bitter bread
While loafers thrived beside ‘em,
But food to eat and clothes to wear,
Their native land denied ‘em.
An’ so they left their native land
In spite of their devotion,
An’ so they came, or if they stole,
Were sent across the ocean.

Then Freedom couldn’t stand the glare
O’ Royalties regalia,
She left the loafers where they were,
An’ came out to Australia.
But now across the mighty main
The chains have come ter bind her –
She little thought to see again
The wrongs she left behind her.

Our parents toil’d to make a home –
Hard grubbin’ ‘twas an’ clearin’ –
They wasn’t crowded much with lords
When they was pioneering.
But now that we have made the land
A garden full of promise,
Old Greed must crook ‘is dirty hand
And come ter take it from us.

So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We’ll make the tyrants feel the sting
O’ those that they would throttle;
They needn’t say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!

Henry Lawson
Brisbane Worker
1891

Eureka: Rebellion Beneath the Southern Cross

Today marks the 152nd anniversary of the heroic Eureka Stockade on the Ballarat goldfields in the then British colony of Victoria.

Armed miners gathered beneath a rebel flag comprising the stars of the Southern Cross, visible only in the night skies of the Southern Hemisphere, linked by firm white bars indicating the strength of unity.

They knelt together and repeated this oath: "We swear by Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties".

Although the colonial authorities stormed the Stockade and killed 22 miners, the Eureka rebellion has engraved itself on the collective memory of progressive Australians.

What then is the contemporary significance of the Eureka flag?

In the first place, there is the tradition of Eureka. A strong sense of the past, and of the continuity between past and present, adds enormously to its impact as a contemporary symbol.

It is true that the original flag was trampled in the dust of the defeated stockade and taken home by trooper John King, with whose family it remained until 1895;thereafter being kept in a back room of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery until its formal presentation as a display item in 1973 by Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

However, the events at Eureka were remembered at the founding of the Amalgamated Miners’ Association in 1874 and of the Amalgamated Shearers Union in 1886. Francis Adams, who linked the labour struggle to the Eureka rebellion, celebrated the formation of the Australian Federation of Labour (1889) in a passionate verse:

"Fling out the Flag! And let friends and foe behold for gain or loss,
The sign of our faith and the fight we fight,
The Stars of the Southern Cross!"

On 29 August, 1890, at the beginning of the maritime strike, 30,000 people gathered at a mass meeting on the Yarra bank in Melbourne and roared with approval at the speakers standing on a platform "decorated with the Eureka flag and the Eight Hours Banner".

A year later, a thousand armed shearers drilled at their Barcaldine, Queensland strike camp, wearing "blue bannerets with the Southern Cross". The Eureka flag flew high over their camp. Henry Lawson was inspired to write his immortal "Freedom on the Wallaby" (see post above) and he and other nationalist writers of the nineties drew strength from Eureka’s anti-colonialism.

During the fight against conscription in the First World War, 86-year old labour activist Monty Miller toured Australia, his rallies being promoted thus: "Eureka 1854 to IWW 1917: Sixty Three Years Fighting For You!"

At the height of the pig iron dispute in 1939, Pt Kembla wharfies burnt their Register cards and swore the Eureka diggers’ oath of loyalty.

In 1951, campaigners against Liberal PM Menzies’ anti-Communist referendum used the Eureka flag as the mast head on their paper "Liberty". In 1954, 20,000 people attended the Centennial Celebrations at Ballarat, celebrating the democratic and labour causes.

The initial stages of the anti-Vietnam and anti-conscription struggles of the 1960s saw little reference to the Eureka flag. Instead the symbolism was drawn from pacifist, and increasingly, socialist and revolutionary sources.

It was during the anti-US bases movement in 1973 that the Eureka symbolism was revived. The "Long March" protesters arriving at the North West Cape base in Western Australia burnt the US flag and scaled communications towers outside the perimeter of the base, using these as flag poles for the Southern Cross.

Sympathetic US marines at the base, who reported having been fed stories that Whitlam was a communist who was going to nationalise the supermarkets, smuggled a Eureka flag inside the base and had it flying over their headquarters the next day.

Not long afterwards, the militant Builders Laborers Federation (now the CFMEU) adopted the flag, carrying it with them on strikes and demonstrations and using it in all their literature.

Organisations of the Worker-Student Alliance, then active in factories and universities in Adelaide and Melbourne, also adopted the flag and it became a regular sight at a wide rage of protests and demonstrations.

The biggest boost to the use of the Eureka flag was the CIA-engineered dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975. Recognising that Australia was still enmeshed in the web of imperialism, organisations calling for genuine Australian independence proliferated and the wave of subsequent protest engulfed tens of thousands across the political spectrum.

Writing of those times, republican small-l liberal Donald Horne remarked "I had never before worn a political badge – "Independence for Australia", it said, with the Eureka flag on it… It was a coming out occasion, a declaration".

As demonstrations against Governor-General Kerr and new Prime Minister Fraser continued, the Eureka flag grew in popularity. Some newspaper reports talked of protests "wondrously covered with a canopy of Eureka flags" and a fascinating assortment of posters, bumper bar stickers and clothing, featuring the Eureka flag, appeared throughout the country.

Indeed the very popularity of the flag caused some problems, with right wing racist and anti-immigrant organisations attempting to capitalise on the flag’s uniquely Australian character to promote a racist chauvinism.

In reality the flag was the first truly multicultural symbol in Australia’s history. Coming from all quarters of the globe in search of gold, the Eureka rebels comprised a wide cross-section of nationalities and ethnicities. The dead included Irish, Prussians and Canadians, whilst among the thirteen rebel leaders put on trial by the colonial authorities were an Italian, a black Jamaican and a black American.

Nevertheless, this unity of peoples against oppression was incomplete, reflecting the immaturity of the proletariat in Australia. Large numbers of Chinese had also come to the goldfields. They were potential allies of the miners and had good cause to sympathise with rebellion against British colonialism in Australia, having seen how their own country had suffered at the hands of the British during the First Opium War (1839-42). However, little attempt was made to communicate in a constructive fashion with the Chinese.

Today, the Eureka flag is synonymous with anti-imperialism, republicanism, and working class solidarity and struggle. In a country with a large and growing immigrant population striving to realise the ideal of "many peoples, one nation", this flag has more to commend it than the official national flag which still carries the Union Jack in the top left corner.

Workers Rally Against Federal IR Laws

Waiting for the rally to begin, with his family next to him, this construction workers proudly wears a t-shirt emblazoned with a cobra, and the militant challenge "If provoked...will strike..."






More than 100,000 workers rallied yesterday throughout Australia against the Federal Government's Industrial Relations laws.

The essence of the laws has been the shift from collective bargaining and union representation in the workplace to individual un-Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), resulting in loss of many hard-won working conditions and entitlements.　

The ruling class has particularly singled out building workers, who have been in the forefront of the class battle for many years. One hundred and seven building workers in Western Australia have been individually fined $28,000 for taking what would have once been regarded as legitimate and protected industrial action. Many face the prospect of gaol for being unable or unwilling to pay the fine.

These are Australian families that are being attacked by an Australian Prime Minister. As Henry Lawson, Australia's finest poet wrote: "When they gaol a man for striking, it's a rich man's country yet!"

Here in Adelaide we didn't quite get the numbers of the big Kathmandu rally (see post below), but a respectable 10,000 still left their workplaces to show their opposition to the IR laws. The massive rally at the MCG in Melbourne was beamed into the Adelaide rally, and into other rallies around the country in cities and regional centres.


Community-based organisations are emerging in this struggle to stand alongside the unions. One such, the Southern Workers Defence Committee, based in the southern Adelaide suburbs, carried a banner commemorating the late John Cummins, a solid Marxist-Leninist and leader of the construction workers union in Melbourne.

The nationwide rallies, organised by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, could have been a gift for the Labor Party had not its various factions decided to renew their public brawling. Labor leader Kim Beazely looked supremely confident as he addressed the Melbourne rally, pledging to "rip these laws up" if elected to office next year, but many must have wondered if this was something of a swan song on his part. Australian rock legend Jimmy Barnes, resplendent in a Eureka t-shirt, fittingly closed the Melbourne rally with an exuberant version of his anthemic "Working Class Man".

At the end of the Adelaide rally, participants held a march through the city.

REVOLUTION IN NEPAL ENTERS NEW STAGE

300,000 CPN (M) supporters

at June 2 Kathmandu rally

Momentous events have unfolded in Nepal over the last six months.

The democratic movement in the cities, and the armed struggle waged by the People’s Liberation Army, led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has resulted in a major defeat for the reactionary monarch King Gyendra.

Gyendra has been forced to hand executive powers back to the House of Representatives following an agreement between the Maoists and the parliamentary Seven Party Alliance (SPA) to coordinate their activities in a mass anti-monarchy uprising.

This occurred in April. To advance the aims of the anti-monarchist united front, the Maoists and the SPA agreed to a ceasefire and for CPN (M) participation in elections for the House of Representatives.

On June 2, a mass rally of 300,000 supporters of the CPN (M) was held in Kathmandu to celebrate developments (see picture above).

Details of arms accountability had to be worked out. In layman’s terms, troops of the former Royal Nepalese Army and of the PLA will each place their arms into storerooms under UN supervision, with each side effectively retaining the key and able to access its own arms at any time. Soldiers in both armies will likewise be housed in separate barracks (or designated villages in the case of the PLA), again under UN supervision.

This allows the CPN (M) to exercise independence and initiative within the united front on the basis that political power has come from the barrel of the gun, and can and will be maintained by it if and when circumstances warrant.

The culmination of this series of developments has been the signing on November 21 of a formal peace treaty between the CPN (M) and the SPA, and the entry of the CPN (M) into an interim government.

This should not be seen as a surrender to parliamentarism on the part of the CPA (M). Like the Bolsheviks and the Communist Party of China before it, it has had to seize the moment for a change in its tactical direction. The Bolsheviks opted at one stage for participation in the Duma. The CPC went through three stages of cooperation with the Guomindang, and in the course of the anti-Japanese War, the Red Army was reorganised by the CCP into the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army to serve the aims of the United Front against Japan. At the end of the War, the CCP put forward proposals for a Coalition Government that were scuttled by the GMD and the US imperialists, and so the armed struggle was resumed.

An excellent analysis of the Nepalese revolution in its current stage can be found here in the Indian publication Revolutionary Democracy (Rajesh Tyagi, Sept 2006 edition). Although it predates the arms accountability agreement, it is incisive and thorough in its analysis.

For keeping up with the most recent developments in Nepal, the most helpful website is Comrade Haisanlu’s Reason and Revolution. There is a link to his site in the list opposite.

Backpacker at Maoist checkpoint in PLA-controlled countryside

Values in Schools

First it was Australian Prime Minister John Howard saying that public schools should appoint chaplains, and then it was South Australian Independent MP Bob Such proposing that state primary schools needed to have a religious education program.

It seems as though for some, it is the absence of the guiding hand of the Church that best explains the decline in standards of behaviour of young people.

The fact of their continual immersion in a culture shaped by US imperialism is hardly acknowledged.

There is good and bad in the culture of the United States, but overwhelmingly it is saturated with racism, with violence, with a mentality of blaming the victim and despising the weak.
Hollywood, TV and rap all contribute their share of this at the level of popular culture. US foreign policy acts it all out in real life.

In fundamental ways, traditional Aussie values were different to those of the contemporary United States.

We stuck up for the underdog and thought that two onto one was gutless. We didn’t like bullies and told them to pick on someone their own size. We stood by our mates.
We cut down tall poppies and thought that Jack was as good as his master.

We had our bad points, but got over the worst of them. We accepted that a woman’s place wasn’t necessarily at home, we got rid of the White Australia Policy and we gave indigenous Australians the vote.

But all along we remained enmeshed in the economic, cultural, social, political, military and diplomatic web of imperialism. We had the cultural cringe, the Queen, the butcher’s apron on our national flag, multinationals, ANZUS, SEATO, British atomic weapons tests, US military bases, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.

We had Aussie Rules, but the Yanks had their own little Aussie Gurkhas whenever they wanted them.

So why this push for religious values in public schools?

In the first place it represents a failure on the part of conservatives to understand what it’s like to be young in a family that is not wealthy, and that may not be particularly stable for various reasons. When these conservatives see kids behaving badly they think of what shaped their own social values and behaviour. They don’t see it in terms of privilege and wealth but in terms of values and example. They think of Family and they think of Church. They think: it worked for me, and it will work for them. We gotta put chaplains in schools so they have some healthy influences, and get religion back on the curriculum so that they are taught good values again.

This is essentially a deficit view of teachers and public schools. And they label teachers as "trendies" or "leftists" who just want to teach kids to experiment with gay lifestyles and to question all authority.

It’s a double-dose of "blame the victim": blame the kids for their behaviour, and blame the teachers for encouraging it.

And because the conservatives are so enmeshed in reliance upon their special relationship with the United States, they dare not make critical analysis of it, nor do they promote independence from it. They certainly would never think of blaming our national servility to the US for anything to do with the values and behaviours of young people.

So John Howard makes available $90 million a year for the appointment of chaplains to schools. The same John Howard who axed programs supporting the teaching of Asian languages in schools, worth only $30 million a year.

These chaplains of Howard’s should not be confused with Christian volunteers, who already have a presence in many Government schools, and who are often referred to as "chaplains". The Christian volunteers make friends with the kids, talk to them, help them sort out personal problems, run fun activities at lunch time, recruit kids for Church youth groups and create a profile for the local Christian Churches. Some of this is legitimate, and some of it infringes on the secular atmosphere of public schooling. Some parents are happy with it, some are not, believing that it is a parent’s right to decide when, and how, and through whom their children will be involved with religious groups and religious activists.

What Howard’s proposal does is of a different order of magnitude. It puts chaplains into schools as chaplains, as officials of Government schools, on the Government payroll.

In one move it ends the historical separation of Church and State and overthrows the basic premise of a secular system of public education. It creates the impression that some religions are "more Australian" than others by virtue of their officially sanctioned presence in State schools. It will inevitably favour some religions over others, and within religions, of some denominations over others. Whilst it is theoretically possible for chaplains representing religions other than Christianity to be appointed, these will be the exception rather than the rule.

And it may not even be the exception if some people in our community, such as Ian Clarkson, Chairman of the Schools Ministry of Tea Tree Gully have their way. In a letter to the editor of the Advertiser (17/11/06), Clarkson states that "Chaplains are Christians. This is how it ought to be."

This claim to ownership of chaplaincy by the Christians is justified by saying: "Christianity is the source of the ideas from which has emerged the open, ordered, free, democratic, multicultural society that we all enjoy…"

The only problem with this is that the history of chaplaincy is multi-faith. The Jews used priests attached to their armies in a role similar to that of today’s military chaplains in Old Testament Times. Jewish chaplains have traditionally been a part of the British Armed Services, whilst in recent times both the British and US armed forces have appointed Islamic and Buddhist chaplains. Likewise, the Japanese Imperial Army that carried the enlightened philosophies of Emperor Hirohito into Eastern Asian from 1931 to 1945, also had Buddhist chaplains appointed - for all the good they did.

And the sad thing is that the same kids who are anti-social, violent, disrespectful and rude now, will be anti-social, violent, disrespectful and rude in the future because they will remain locked out of the wealth, the success, the self-assured lifestyles of those who do well in our capitalist democracy dominated, as it is, by US imperialism.

We only have to look at the behaviour of kids in private schools to see the flaws in the argument. Sure, working class kids get involved in street gangs, and that’s not a good thing. But there are gangs (let’s not be polite about it) of private school kids who hang out at certain pubs and bars and whose behaviour is also aggressive and selfish.

Even the "best" schools have their dark side, although they are better at hushing it up than public schools. Remember when rival gangs from St Peters College and Prince Alfred College (Anglican and Uniting Church schools respectively) bashed the crap out of each other at the Adelaide Cup a few years ago?

And what about the report of this year’s "muck-up day" activities at St Peters?

A gang of about a dozen Year 12 boys went on a rampage of offensive behaviour destroying school property, in the course of which one lad was videotaped by others defecating in a school washbasin.

The poor lad may only have been doing to the washbasin what the US has been doing to the world for years, but it was hardly a good advertisement for "the values which many parents want their children to have" and which, according to Bob Such, Independent Member of Parliament, State schools can’t deliver because they don’t have religious education!

So it all comes down to this. Putting chaplains and religious education back into State schools is a recipe for no significant change in kids’ behaviour at all. Kids respond to their social environment and the opportunities for escapism and/or acting out their frustrations that are afforded through the popular media.

Trained school counsellors, who may or may not privately be Christians, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Maoists or followers of any other set of beliefs best serve the social and emotional needs of students. They are trained teachers whose educational qualifications support their counselling role, making them better suited to dealing with student problems in an educational setting than lay chaplains with religious agendas.

Rupert Murdoch pleaded with us, in the wake of the anti-Bush vote in the US mid-term Congressional elections, "to reject the facile, reflexive, unthinking anti-Americanism that has gripped much of Europe".

The reality is, that unless we do some intelligent, reflective thinking about the grip that the US has on us, we’re going to slide down further along the path of aping their lifestyle and their atrocious behaviour.

And the kids will keep behaving badly.

Mississippi Meadowlark

MISSISSIPPI MEADOWLARK
G C G
He sat at the feet of a black blues man
C D G
Tappin’ his toes and clappin’ his hands
C G
Got a job drivin’ trucks, but he had another plan
C G D
Cut an Arthur Crudup record and that’s how it all
G
began
C G D G
Hark, hark, let the truckie make his mark
C G D G
Singin’ like a Mississippi meadowlark

The racists hated him "singin’ like a nigger"
But he didn’t give a damn he just got bigger and bigger
When his left leg moved it made the old folks snigger
But the young kids thought he cut a right royal figure
Hark, hark, let that hound dog bark
Listening to the Mississippi meadowlark
Hark, hark, let that hound dog bark,
Listening to the Mississippi meadowlark

Well there’s never been a singer like the King
But they took that stallion and they broke him in
The Colonel, the Army and everything
Just took that bird and broke its wing
Hark, hark, lovers in the dark
Listening for the Mississippi meadowlark
Hark, hark, lovers in the dark
Listening for a Mississippi meadowlark
Hark, hark, lovers in the dark
Listening for another Mississippi meadowlark

In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned how I grew up listening to Elvis and became a huge fan. But just as I was getting into Elvis, he was getting into the US Army and even I could see that songs like G.I. Blues had nothing I common with the blues music that Elvis appropriated and made his own at the start of his career.

Elvis was a white working class kid in the deeply racist South. He was fascinated by the sounds of black music coming from Church gospel choirs at one end of town and from boozy juke joints at the other.

"Down in Tupelo, Mississippi," he said, "I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel like old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw."

Elvis’ first hit record was his version of Crudup’s That’s All Right, Mama. He was immediately criticised by racists, and banned from performing in some places, for crossing the divide and singing "nigger music".

But he remained drawn to it, going down to Memphis’ Beale Street to catch acts by artists such as B.B. King (pictured with Elvis in a 1956 radio station Goodwill Revue).

The young ex-truckie also recorded Crudup’s My Baby Left Me and So Glad You’re Mine before the Colonel came along and made him clean his act up.

Crudup, (1905-1974) never saw any royalty payments from these recordings. Speaking prophetically, he once said, "I was born poor, I live poor, and I’m going to die poor."

Elvis died a multi-millionaire, bloated by the excesses of the capitalist system, a tragic testament to the old Biblical rhetoric: "What profiteth it a man that he gain the whole world yet lose his soul?"

I honour the talent of the man in this song, and try to describe, in a nutshell, where it all went wrong.

Perhaps one day a socialist Shakespeare will write a tragedy, King Elvis. As he takes his final gasps of air on the cold toilet floor, the dying singer remembers the sound of Arthur Crudup’s voice and laments, "That place, that place, all my wealth and fame for that place…"

More Mao Badges Up

If anyone's interested, I've now got 60 badges of Chairman Mao up on Flickr. Each is annotated in terms of the size, materials used (Plastic and paper, like this one, or ceramic, aluminium, bamboo etc) and the inscription on the reverse side, if there is one. Just click on the link to Mike's Mao Badges in the column opposite and you'll be taken there.

Good to see that Nazi death's head SS swine Rumsfeld has got the bullet (only metaphorically, though, more's the pity!) It's good to see him gone, but the imperialist system remains and the task for us is to continue finding appropriate ways to further develop the people's forces.

Noonkanbah

TRUCKS OF AMAX

Like Nazis marching
into Poland
comes this convoy
from the city:
snake of chrome

with snake-evil task,
the trucks of Amax,
going to Noonkanbah,
place of the goanna,
to rip and tear.

In this time and place
a Nazi raid
into the lands of those who
with sacredness and gentility
uphold civilisation
against the perfidious
god of profit.

With conqueror’s sneer
at the roadside few
the police drive straight
at the camera crew

Superiority – so base, so low,
as on the trucks of Amax
go…

In my dull routine
far from the jellied
heat of the road,
an aching to fight:

to swoop from the skies
in wedgetail glory
leaving the trucks of Amax
gory

But police stand guard
with batons hard
along the road
to Noonkanbah…

Under the banner of plunder
the Nazis march today
all through the great
Down Under
if Amax has its way.

And a fight it shall be,
for in these things -
incompatibility!

Compassion and the greed of the plunderer
Respect and the superior man’s contempt
Understanding and the arrogance of the profiteer
Independence and prostitution to the foreign dollar
Freedom and police in the pay of traitors

No - there are no
swastikas, only dollar signs

but like Nazis
marching into Poland
go the trucks of Amax


I wrote the poem above in 1980. This is the background:

Australia is a nation created by British colonialism, which seized the southern continent from its indigenous owners in 1788 and succeeding years. Ruling class historians describe this as "discovery" and "settlement" and even today try to deny that the process was one by which one group of people, the colonialists, used violence and the threat of violence to overturn the traditional rights of another people, the tribal communities of Aboriginal Australia.

As a Second World country, Australia is denied its full rights to independence by imperialism. The injustice of this is visited many times over on the indigenous peoples, many of whom live in worse than Third World conditions.

Twenty-six years ago, the Texas-based multinational Amax decided that it wanted to drill for oil on the Noonkanbah pastoral lease near Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia. The traditional Aboriginal owners saw themselves as custodians of the land and it’s Dreaming sites and resisted this encroachment on their land. The labour movement swung into action behind them.

The right wing Premier of Western Australia mobilised the state forces behind Amax and a vicious police presence was used to guard a convoy of 49 Amax trucks on their journey from Perth to Noonkanbah, 3000 kilometre to the north.

The arrogance of the reactionaries and their contempt for indigenous culture is seen in the cartoon.

Twenty-five years later, in December 2004, the Noonkanbah community won a native land title claim to 1811 square kilometres of their traditional land.

The "place of the goanna" refers to an indigenous belief about a part of the mining lease being sacred to the large Australian lizard called the goanna.

The wedgetail eagle is a magnificent and majestic bird, the largest of Australia’s birds of prey.

(For a history of indigenous struggle in the 70’s and 80’s, see here)

Ted Hill

Comrade Haisanlu referred to Comrade E. F. (Ted) Hill, late former Chairman of the CPA(M-L) in his reply to my blog on North Korea.

I remember Ted Hill well. He was an older generation of communist to most of my contemporaries, but he was the undisputed leader of the CPA (M-L) and had a thorough grasp of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. He provided active leadership over many years politically, ideologically and organisationally. I still go to his writings for guidance.

Ted Hill and Mao Zedong had many discussions over the years. This is an early photo of the two.

I mentioned Charlie McCaffrey in an earlier blog. Here, he and Ted meet with Comrade Enver Hoxha.

Great servants of the people, all of them!

Hands Off North Korea!

This then is the insomniac’s nightmare:
The monster’s claw above the face
The black emptiness of terror
The mind’s frantic paralysis
The pounding of the rigid body
The frozen palpitations
The shivering warmth of sweat
The sleepless fear
Of the eternal second
When, with undue haste
To beat the morning sun
The world is bathed
In the final light
Of the megaton

I am no lover of nuclear weapons.

I wrote the poem above in 1990, when it still seemed possible that nuclear conflict might occur.

Why then do I salute the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for conducting an underground nuclear test on October 9, 2006?

Because this tests was done in revolutionary defiance of threats from US imperialism.

Defiance of imperialism is not a bad thing, but a good thing, even when it means a proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world.

My view is that we should continue to call for the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of all nuclear weapons. The onus must be on the biggest nuclear powers to destroy their stockpiles first to a level at which a general process of destruction in all nuclear weapons possessing states can occur.

Only twice used in conflict, the massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the world have long been used as a means to bully and oppress small nations striving for independence from imperialism.

Nations not wanting to be controlled by US imperialism are inevitably designated "rogue nation" status, or are declared to be part of an "Axis of Evil". They are subjected to every form of threat and sanction from US imperialism and its followers.

They are told that it is the right of US imperialism to initiate "pre-emptive first strikes" against sovereign nations so as to effect "regime change". They are openly told that they are on the US imperialist hit-list.

When they offer to talk on a one-to-one basis with US imperialism or to sign pacts of mutual non-aggression with US imperialism they are spurned.

North Korea would willingly sign a "no first use" of nuclear weapons clause with US imperialism, but the latter will not agree.

The response of Australia’s politicians, who are out and out lickspittles of US imperialism, has been to spur the US on to retaliation against North Korea. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has upgraded North Korea from "rogue state" to "outlaw rogue state" status. One wonders how much worse they can get! Prime Minister Howard declares North Korea to be a "seriously crazy regime" and warns that a military strike against it may be necessary!

Meanwhile, the common sense of the people rises to the surface. Nearly all letters to the editor of the local capitalist press blame the US for provoking North Korea into conducting a nuclear test. Many direct ridicule and scorn at Bush and Co.

We need to state quite clearly:

Hands off North Korea!

For the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of all nuclear weapons!