SCHOOLS FACE EXTRA COSTS, MINISTERS GET EXTRA MINDERS

Two pieces of information reveal the self-serving hypocrisy of our elected leaders in South Australia.

Today’s capitalist press has revealed that the State’s Labor Party Government has increased the number of minders appointed to Ministerial offices by 44 per cent over five years. Nearly 100 extra staff have been appointed to work in the personal offices of Ministers, most as advisers and media monitors.

That is, they provide the spin that enables Ministers to look good. They exist to protect Ministerial butt.

Their role is to serve the political needs of Ministers, as distinct from public servants who work in Government Departments and who are meant to be “above politics” and of service to the Government of the day, regardless of which party constitutes that Government.

So we have an expense growth of perhaps $25 million on additional party political salaries over four years paid, not by the Party, but by the taxpayer.

Compare this with the same Government’s commitment to quality public education.

So-called “savings measures” required from the Education Department, called for in the last State Budget, are now being identified by an Education Efficiency and Effectiveness (EEE) Group whose only role is to decide whether to cut off an arm or a leg.

They have been told by Education Department officials of a number of measures to cut Department costs by transferring costs to schools.

South Australian schools are now “locally managed” with a “global budget” that includes staff salaries. Out of that global budget is now to come a 1% levy on the salaries component to cover staff workers compensation payments.

Note that schools are not the employers of their teaching and support staff. The Department remains the central employing authority and has until now accepted responsibility for workers compensation (WorkCover) claims.

But now, claims costs will be attributed to the sites where the injury occurred. Sites will pay for the first four weeks of lost time wherever there is any new accepted claim but will not be provided with additional temporary relieving teachers to cover the absence of the injured staff member.

School Governing Councils, the majority of whom are parent volunteers, will be responsible for the WorkCover levy and must register separately with WorkCover. They will be responsible for paying injured workers their salaries as required by WorkCover.

This should be a matter for great concern on the part of any parent who has a child in a Government school in South Australia.

It follows closely on the heels of other Government cuts, for example to the small schools grant, and the proposed axing of swimming and instrumental music programs.

Parents of children in Government schools in SA should ring their child’s principal, ask how much the transfer of WorkCover responsibility to their school is likely to cost, both financially and in terms of workload, and then write to their local Member of parliament to express their concerns.

As for the Principals, if they have any guts and any sense at all, they will work through their respective Associations and alongside the Australian Education Union and get out into the streets and onto the steps of Parliament House and tell the Department to do its job, and let them get on with theirs.

Democratic Socialism Is Capitalism - Introduction

(Some time ago I came across this article on www.maoflag.net - one of the websites maintained with apparent official sanction by supporters of Mao Zedong Thought in China today. The article reminds me of the series initiated by Chairman Mao in the early stages of the skirmish with the Soviet revisionists and published under the title The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement in Beijing in 1965, a year before the launching of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. I am not a translator - I have fulltime job and lots of comittee memberships - but I know a little bit of Chinese, and I've decided to try my hand at translating the 80 or so pages of the original of this article. Where I just can't understand a reference, or where I just can't get at what the Chinese original is trying to say, I'll add a little note of my own so that you'll know I've run into trouble. But I hope enough of what follows is clear so that some idea of current ideological struggle in China comes through. You might like to look at my post Chinese Marxist-Leninists Oppose the Sale of Xu Gong in the December 2006 archive (see link opposite and scroll down to article) so that you can see a practical example of how the restorationists are dismantling the socialist state established in Mao Zedong's time and handing it over to the capitalists and the imperialists. I'm not a quick translator: some days I get a couple of sentences done, and maybe on a weekend I can do a page or so, so don't hold your breath waiting for each new section t be completed. The table of contents (below) will give you some idea of the scope of this work, so if you're interested, keep coming back and seeing how far I've got up to. Mike)

Democratic Socialism Is Capitalism
A criticism of Xie Tao’s "Only Democratic Socialism Can Save China"
Wu Bing
Contents:

1. The real features of democratic socialism
2. Violent revolution is the only way to realise socialism
3. The superiority of socialism over capitalism cannot be denied
4. The main difference between socialism and capitalism is public ownership and private ownership
5. Antagonism between socialist and capitalist systems of distribution
6. On how the question of the two systems of ownership and the two systems of distribution are compared
7. Shamelessly tampering with and distorting the fundamentals of Marxist theory
8. Distorting the New Economic Policy and attacking Leninism
9. Misrepresenting "The Three Big Transformations", Negating Mao Zedong Thought
10. Promoting the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and wanting China to take the path of Western constitutional government
11. Confusing black and white and reversing the verdict on new and old revisionism
12. Be sure not to forget the mistakes of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries
…………………………………………………………………….
Early last December, the author saw People’s University former Deputy Principal Mr Xie Tao’s preface written for Mr Xin Ziling’s "Mao Zedong: A Century of Merits and Faults", on the internet, entitled "Only Democratic Socialism Can Save China" (hereafter referred to as "The Preface"). This "Preface" was reprinted in the February 2007 edition of "Yan Huang Chun Qiu". This magazine possibly considered it should "play it safe", and made a slight change to the title renaming it "The Pattern of Democratic Socialism and China’s Future", besides concealing Mr Xin Ziling’s title "Mao Zedong: A Century of Merits and Faults" and engaging in "technical processing" of some individual barefaced words and sentences. However, no matter how this magazine tries to conceal it, Mr Xie Tao is completely unmasked for opposing socialism, opposing Marxism, opposing the proletarian revolution and the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It can be said that everyone who has read this article has the same kind of response: this is one of the wildest and most undisguised reactionary articles in our domestic open publications. This article touches on several major theoretical and practical questions: what is socialism, and should China continue along the socialist road; what is Marxism, and should China continue under the direction of Marxism; what is the dictatorship of the proletariat, and should China continue to persist with the dictatorship of the proletariat? What is most annoying and also most laughable is that this trumpeter of capitalism unexpectedly resorts to all means of fabricating rumours about and attacks on the teachers and leaders of the proletarian revolution, talking rubbish about Marx and Engels being some sort of "social democrats", some sort of originators of "peaceful evolution to socialism" in their old age; talking rubbish about Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong being the "greatest revisionists"; and moreover legitimising the founder of revisionism, Bernstein, as "Marxism"?! Shameless slander like this that distorts the facts floods through the article from beginning to end. Chairman Mao said: "All mistaken ideas, all poisonous weeds, all monsters and demons should be subjected to criticism and under no circumstances be allowed to spread unchecked." Following this guidance, the author makes some superficial analyses and commentaries on several of the main points of view and falsehoods respectively, of this "strange piece of writing".

Remembering Alex

For S., with thanks

Last night, more than 50 comrades gathered to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the passing of a mate and comrade.

That mate was Comrade Alex, who was shot and killed on the Cooper Pedy opal fields on April 14, 1982.

Alex was one of the first of our generation of youthful Marxist-Leninists who, in the late 1960’s, rallied to the call of the Party and united to fight capitalism and imperialism.

Alex stood out. For a start, he was a tall bloke (first from right in photo above, looking at camera), but his presence went beyond his height. He could light up a room with his dry sense of humour, his famous one-liners and ascerbic wit.

Alex was a practical bloke and made the smoke bombs for demos, handing out recipes for molotovs and generally looking for ways to push the envelope against the coppers. If they were there taking photos of marchers, Alex was there taking photos of them.

One of the coppers who specialised in harassing young left-wing opponents of the US imperialist war of aggression against Vietnam was "Curly" Marshall. "Curly" wasn’t big for a copper, but he let us know that he was on our tail night and day, often brushing past us in a pub and asking casually about something we had said or done the previous day.

One of those at the commemoration recalled how he had been helping Alex with an offset printer one day when "Curly" and another Special Branch copper arrived and started niggling Alex, trying to bait him into saying or doing something to warrant an arrest. For over half an hour this kept up, with Alex keeping his cool throughout, defusing their antagonism with his humour until they left.

When the situation was in his favour, Alex wasn’t quite the gentleman as far as the cops went. A number of them wore bruises that corresponded to the shape of Alex’s big knuckles after having rashly waded into lines of anti-war demonstrators.

Unfortunately for Alex, he was very much influenced by one particular friend who had a dominant personality and a tendency to commit a few too many political mistakes. One of those mistakes was not taking the women’s movement seriously. But there were other major errors on this friend’s part too. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when the friend arrived a day late for a conference of the Worker-Student Alliance, entered disruptively, refused to heed warnings of the Chair, and responded to a female comrade with "I think you might find the dictatorship of the proletariat a bit too physical". In the end it was decided that the friend and Alex should be expelled from a particular organisation which expected a higher level of discipline and understanding. To the friend, this was water off a duck’s back; to Alex, it was devastating. He had not thought that silly behaviour could carry such consequences, and he wept as the decision was delivered.

Within WSA, it was only the friend who was expelled. Alex bounced back and continued to make his valuable contributions to the revolutionary socialist movement.

However, it was clear that Alex was a marked man in Adelaide and that the cops would make it difficult for him to keep a job and provide for the family that he was building.

So Alex left for Cooper Pedy, a frontier town in the outback where law and order was pretty much provided by the miners themselves.

Alex had some success and started building a small business. Despite the remoteness of Cooper Pedy from Adelaide, Alex remained devoted to the cause of the people. I remember when WSA members at the big Chrysler plant in Adelaide were involved in a rank and file dispute with the management. There had been a strike, an occupation, and several arrests. Alex sent down two thousand dollars to the rank and file to help see them through the dispute, a characteristically selfless act of genuine commitment.

Those of us who met yesterday to remember Alex – and there were some from interstate and overseas – did so with great love and respect for the man.

He died too young in a lawless town.

He left a gap in all of our lives, and it was fitting that Henry Lawson’s poem "The Glass on the Bar" should have been read in his memory:

Three bushmen one morning rode up to an inn,
And one of them called for the drinks with a grin;
They’d only returned from a trip to the North,
And, eager to greet them, the landlord came forth.
He absently poured out a glass of Three Star,
And set down that drink with the rest on the bar.

"There, that is for Harry," he said, "and it’s queer,
‘Tis the very same glass that he drank from last year;
His name’s on the glass, you can read it like print,
He scratched it himself with an old piece of flint;
I remember his drink – it was always Three Star" –
And the landlord looked out through the door of the bar.

He looked at the horses, and counted but three:
"You were always together - where’s Harry?" cried he.
Oh, sadly they looked at the glass as they said,
"You may put it away, for our old mate is dead;"
But one, gazing out o’er the ridges afar,
Said, "We owe him a shout – leave the glass on the bar.

They thought of the far-away grave on the plain,
They thought of the comrade who came not again,
They lifted their glasses, and sadly they said:
"We drink to the name of the mate who is dead."
And the sunlight streamed in, and a light like a star
Seemed to glow in the depth of the glass on the bar.

And still in that shanty a tumbler is seen,
It stands by the clock, ever polished and clean;
And often the strangers will read as they pass
The name of a bushman engraved on the glass;
And though on the shelf but a dozen there are,
That glass never stands with the rest on the bar.

1889

DUSTBOWL - Environment vs Capitalism

April 14 1935 is the day, so Woody Guthrie reminds us, that the Great Duststorm swept over Kansas and Oklahoma as the dustbowl took its vengeance on capitalist farming in the United States.

John Steinbeck chronicled that double disaster - the disaster of nature and the disaster of capitalism -in his powerful novel The Grapes of Wrath; Guthrie captured both disasters and the sweep and import of the novel in his Dustbowl Ballads, some of which namechecked Preacher Casey and Tom Joad, characters from the novel.

Woody was a communist who never joined the Party. He is famous for the slogan "This machine kills fascists!" that he emblazoned on his guitar.

On this day we commemorate Woody and the tragedy of the Dustbowl by reprinting the lyrics to The Great Duststorm (Great Storm Disaster).

Dust Storm Disaster(The Great Dust Storm)

On the 14th day of April of 1935,
There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky.
You could see that dust storm comin', the cloud looked deathlike black,
And through our mighty nation, it left a dreadful track.

From Oklahoma City to the Arizona line,
Dakota and Nebraska to the lazy Rio Grande,
It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down,
We thought it was our judgement, we thought it was our doom.

The radio reported, we listened with alarm,
The wild and windy actions of this great mysterious storm;
From Albuquerque and Clovis, and all New Mexico,
They said it was the blackest that ever they had saw.

From old Dodge City, Kansas, the dust had rung their knell,
And a few more comrades sleeping on top of old Boot Hill.
From Denver, Colorado, they said it blew so strong,
They thought that they could hold out, but they didn't know how long.

Our relatives were huddled into their oil boom shacks,
And the children they was cryin' as it whistled through the cracks.
And the family it was crowded into their little room,
They thought the world had ended, and they thought it was their doom.

The storm took place at sundown, it lasted through the night,
When we looked out next morning, we saw a terrible sight.
We saw outside our window where wheat fields they had grown
Was now a rippling ocean of dust the wind had blown.

It covered up our fences, it covered up our barns,
It covered up our tractors in this wild and dusty storm.
We loaded our jalopies and piled our families in,
We rattled down that highway to never come back again.

Support the Struggle of the Nandigram Peasants

The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) has recently released its report on the second wave of killings of peasants in the Nandigram region. Nandigram is approximately 150 kilometres south of Kolkata (Calcutta), the state capital of West Bengal.

The killings have been carried out by thugs organised by the revisionist CPI (Marxist)-led Left Front Government, which has sought to create a series of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as a means of attracting foreign investment capital into West Bengal.

The Nandigram area was previously very pro-CPI(M). The only reason why this very strong mass base suddenly turned against the CPI(M) was the proposed land acquisition for an SEZ to built by the Indonesian MNC Salem International.

The founder of the Salim Group is Liem Sioe Liong. Reportedly the richest man in Indonesia, Liem owes much of his fortune to privileges granted him by the fascist dictator Suharto, whom he befriended in the 1940s.

It was precisely because Nandigram was emerging as a model for anti-SEZ, anti-corporate-land grab resistance that it invited such horrible repression. It had become a sore spot and a source of concern and anxiety, not just for local CPI(M) leaders or the LF Government, but for all Governments all over the country.

The repression started with a massacre of villagers on January 7, 2007. In Singur, police arrested nearly 500 Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation activists at a January 8 solidarity protest.

Then the goons came back on March 14 and conducted a further massacre over a three-day period. On March 23, the CPI(ML) launched a nationwide campaign in solidarity with the Singur and Nandigram struggles.

An excellent in-depth analysis of this struggle can be found here on the Marxist-Leninist Lists website.

The Right to Food website has asked all concerned people to write letters of protest to the national and state authorities in India and West Bengal:

Recipient of letter:

Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
Chief Minister
Government of West Bengal
Writers' Building,
Kolkata 700001
India

Shri Abdur Rezzak Mollab
Minister In Charge
Land and Land Reforms Department,
Government of West Bengal
Writer's Building
Kolkata - 700001
India

Hon'ble Justice Shri Shyamal Kumar Sen
Chairperson
West Bengal Human Rights CommissionIndia

Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister of India
South BlockRoom No. 152
New Delhi- 110001
India

Rat

I know it is the prerogative of editorial cartoonists to caricature their subjects, but surely this depiction of the Australian Prime Minister as a rat goes too far. My son had a pet rat which was decent and clean, and to compare it to the Prime Minister is most unfair.

Howard is Australia's worst Prime Monster.

Couldn't say "Sorry" to the Stolen Generation (indigenous children stolen from their parents by Government "welfare" officers mid-last century).

Wouldn't say "Welcome" to asylum seekers (demonising them as illegal immigrants, placing them in concentration camps for years on end, depriving them of all rights).

Didn't ask "Why?" - just said "how high?" when told to join Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq.

Attacked the working class by legislating for "unAustralian Workplace Agreements" that have stripped workers of defence against unfair dismissal, slashed overtime and penalty rates, and taken away holiday and sick leave.

Was the originator of the racist policies of Pauline Hanson's "One Nation Party" with his "one nation, one people" bullshit.

Grovelled to Dick Cheney for the early trial of David Hicks, held for five years at Guantanamo, when it became evident that Australian public opinion was strongly behind Hicks being given a "fair go"; achieved that and an order that will see Hicks in goal in Australia until just after this year's Federal election, and unable to comment to the media for a year. What a gift from the US overlords!

Even members of his own Government have allegedly described him as a "lying rodent":

Mr Galt told Channel 9 that Senator Brandis said Mr Howard was a "lying rodent" and that the party would have to "cover his arse" again over the children overboard affair. Mr Galt has given the network a signed statutory declaration of his version of events at the meeting.
It quotes Senator Brandis as saying of Mr Howard: "He is a lying rodent" and "we’ve got to go off and cover his arse again on this".

But then, I've never heard a rodent lie, have you?

Eternal Mao Zedong

(Reverence for Comrade Mao Zedong still runs high in China despite, or perhaps because, of the activities of the restorationists to deny his proletarian revolutionary legacy. I have translated the poem below from the "maoflag" website. My Chinese is not too good, but I think I've got the gist of it)

By Ren Ping
5/9/2006

No military strategist can
Compare to you in courage:
You led an army of 30,000
And walked the most difficult 25,000 li
From then on
The Long March became
The eternal motif of the Chinese Revolution

"On Protracted War"
Showed how a small force
Can defeat a strong,
Became a marvel of military matters,
Winning the admiration of foreigners.
From then on
Asian, African and Latin American peoples
Began to raise the curtain
On their independence and liberation.

No leader can
Compare to you as a thinker.
Your family sacrificed
Six young lives for the revolution,
Your lovely wife
Even your beloved son.
Your tears flowed
Your grief lying quietly in
The depths of your heart.

No ancient Chinese emperor can
Compare to your lofty dignity.
You are a leader of a nation
Keeping in your mind
From beginning to end
The broad masses of the people.
The power and strength of the nation
The sufferings of the people
Down to the final moment of your life
You were still pondering deeply.

Who can be rated as a great person?
Inspiration in the waving hands.
No explanation is necessary
In the hearts of the people
You are the eternal leader.

Notes:

"Your lovely wife": Yáng Kāihuì (Traditional Chinese: 楊開慧; Simplified Chinese: 杨开慧; courtesy name: Yúnjǐn 云锦; 1901 – November 14, 1930) was the second wife of Mao Zedong from 1920 to 1927. She was born in Bancang village, Changsha, Hunan and was the daughter of Yang Changji, head of the Hunan First Normal School and one of Mao's favorite teachers. She joined the Communist Party of China in 1921. In October 1930, the Kuomintang captured her with her son, Anying. The KMT put them in prison. Anying, then 8, was forced to watch as the KMT tortured and killed her. (Source: Wikipedia)

"Even your beloved son": Mao Anying (Chinese: 毛岸英, Pinyin: Máo Ànyīng) (October 24, 1922 – November 25, 1950) was the eldest son of Mao Zedong and Yang Kaihui. Educated in Moscow, he was killed in action by an air attack during the Korean War. (Source: Wikipedia)

Photo L-R: Mao Zedong, daughter Li Na, son Mao Anying and his wife Liu Songlin

More Struggles Against US Military Bases

I've recently commented on the opposition that exists in Australia to established US military bases like Pine Gap, and to the growing opposition to the proposed US base at Geraldton.

US imperialism is running into opposition everywhere.

On February 17 2007, tens of thousands of Italians took to the streets of Vicenza to demand that plans to build a new US military base in the city be scrapped. Police estimated that 25,000 participated; march organisers said 100, 000.

Vicenza already has a US military base on the city's northwest outskirts. Now the US plans to build a second, in the southeast, doubling the number of its personnel to 4500.

Meanwhile, opposition has been growing in the Czech Republic to plans for a US radar base in that country. On March 17, 150 people demonstrated abogainst the base in Prague's Wenceslas Square. The small numbers at the rally don't do tribute to the widespread opposition to the planned base, established through polls and petitions.

The following piece provides some background to circumstances in the Czech Republic. It comes from the Communist Youth Union (KSM) which was declared illegal by the Czech Republic on October 12, 2006 because it proclaimed the necessity of replacing the private ownership of the means of production with collective ownership of the means of production. The KSM is allied with the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moldavia, the former ruling revisionist party of Czechoslovakia.

The KSM struggles against US military base in the Czech Republic

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:39:57 -0800No military bases of imperialism on our territory!

The KSM struggles against US military base in the Czech Republic

The Communist Youth Union (KSM) in the Czech Republic has launched a campaign against a plan to construct a US military missile base in the Czech Republic. This base would be a part of the missile defence system of the USA. The campaign was launched before the parliamentary elections in summer 2006. The KSM was the first organization in the country to take such a stand.

Negotiations about this plan were started by the government of the USA and the government of the Czech Republic led by the Social Democratic Party in secrecy several years before information about them were published thanks to MPs of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia. The KSM subsequently started its struggle against this plan and was gradually joined by a number of organizations.

The KSM leads its campaign against the US military base on two lines: 1/ the KSM organizes its own communist campaign together with the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia and a couple of other civic associations and 2/ the KSM actively participates in a wider initiative called "No to military bases"
which is a politically more diverse coalition of forces.

The situation in the Czech Republic after the 2006 parliamentary elections was very complicated. After 7 months of political crisis without a government backed by a majority in the parliament, a new majority right-wing government led by the strongest right-wing political party in the country - Civic Democratic Party (ODS) has been installed.

It is relevant to mention that the government of the USA waited until the right-wing government led by the ODS gained its majority in the House of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic to announce officially its decision to ask the Czech Republic’s government for agreement with the building of the US military base in the country. This announcement of the USA government was published just SEVERAL MINUTES after the Czech right-wing government received majority support in the parliament (winning 2 of the Social Democratic MPs). The KSM demanded in its campaign publication of all the documents on the secret negotiations about the plan to construct the US military base in the country, resolutely opposed this plan and asked for a referendum on this crucial issue concerning the whole country and all its inhabitants.

The position of the relevant political parties on the question of the US military base and to the referendum on this matter differs significantly. The right-wing Civic Democratic Party (ODS) refuses the democratic institution of referendum generally, states that the people are not competent to decide about questions of national security like this crucial issue and eagerly struggles for the interests of the USA to show its loyalty to its ally.

Another government right-centrist party Christian Democratic Party- Czechoslovak People’s Party has not engaged itself so visibly in this issue but generally supports the line followed by the ODS. The third ruling party - the Green Party, which originally advocated the institution of referendum in its pre-elections expressions very vehemently and profiled itself as a non-militarist political party, dropped its previous promises which attracted a significant number of especially young people. Together with its anticommunism, it preferred its government position to result in an unprincipled stance supporting the US base under a precondition that the US base should be officially part of a NATO system. The position of the Green Party in the Czech Republic on the issue of military bases as well as its anticommunist behaviour makes this political party an object of critical views from its foreign Green fellow-parties.

Also positions of the Czech Social Democratic Party concerning the issue of the US military base are worthy of a more detailed comment. The negotiations about the plan to construct a US military base in the Czech Republic were started during the period of the government led by Social Democrats. Also chairman of the Social Democratic Party Jiri Paroubek, after his initial unclear statements, declared that he would support the US base in the country. Nevertheless, when the social democratic party was ousted from power it officially declared a negative attitude to the US military base plan and supported the idea of a referendum on the issue. Simultaneously, significant voices from inside of the Social Democratic Party speak out in favour of the construction of the US military base.

Generally it may be summed up that the Social Democratic Party’s position was determined by its non-government position. It followed the logic of maximisation of its political capital in the situation where a vast majority of society opposes the US military base to plan its new opposition position to win political points. The only consistent opponent of the US military base is the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, which also proposed a bill on the referendum on the US military base that was nevertheless defeated in the parliament. The attitude to the demand of a national referendum documents the real attitude to democracy of relevant political parties in the Czech Republic where the Communist Party is in debates repeatedly accused by the other political parties of its alleged lack of democratic character - an argument which is instrumentally used as a tool for delegitimization of their principal political opponent.

There have also been demands to organize local referenda on the issue of the US military base in the municipalities that are potential neighbours of the US military base. Such a referendum has been organized in the municipality of Trokavec where a vast majority of its inhabitants opposed the US military base plan. It is also relevant to mention that in 3 out of 4 municipalities in the close neighbourhood of the potential US military base the mayors are representatives of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia.

Originally the official plan was to build the US military base either in the Czech Republic or in Poland. Later the plan was modified, as it was presented because of a strong opposition to the plan from the mobilised public opinion in the Czech Republic where approximately 80% of the people oppose the US military base in their country. The new proposal was to build a missile base in Poland and a radar base as a part of this military base in the Czech Republic.

The KSM’s anti-base campaign has been very successful. The KSM has organized a number of public protests, demonstrations, debates with citizens and also a very successful petition for which 80,000 signatures have been gathered so far. This is a great success taking into consideration that it is a petition organized by the KSM - an organization of young people which has been officially dissolved by the state. (A simultaneously organized petition of the large initiative "No to military bases" has so far gathered 20 000 signatures.)

The work of the KSM among the people on the streets is important also because it shows them that this banned youth organization struggles in the front line for the concrete demands of the majority of people.

Radim Gonda
Vice-chairman of the KSM
Czech Republic

KATHMANDU

for haisanlu

I dreamed I saw the Spirit of Mao
Rising from the marble mausoleum
"Where you going and watcha gonna do?"
I asked as he went by
"I once set out for Anyuan," he said,
"Now I’m setting out for Kathmandu."

Youthful grace shone from the face
Of the Spirit of Mao Zedong
"Why are you going, can this be true?"
I asked the red, red sun
"The reason I went to Ruijin," he said,
"Is why I’m going to Kathmandu."

A cloud whisked him off ten thousand li
Across the land he loved
"You’re up so high, how is the view?"
I asked and the ether replied
"Just as good as from Jinganshan," he said,
"And just as good as from Kathmandu."

There’s rich again in China
Corruption stalks the land
"I’m going to see what Prachanda can do,"
The solemn voice went on
"I’m going to retrieve the spirit of Yan’an
And bring it back from Kathmandu.
I’ll be coming back from Kathmandu!"

100th Mao Badge Posted on Flickr

For anyone interested in an aesthetic and ideological history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, there is no better primary source than the thousands of differently-designed badges of Chairman Mao Zedong.

I buy a bunch every time I go to China, adding them to the ones I started wearing as a teenager in the late 1960s.

Where I can, I provide a brief description of the front image of the badge, and a translation of the inscription on the rear, which often identifies the event commemorated by the badge and/or the issuing authority.

If you got to Flickr through the "Mike's Mao Badges" link opposite, you'll now see one hundred badges of Chairman Mao.

The information I've provided on each is similar in format to that for badge no. 100 (above):

Aluminium
Diam: 40mm
Red, gold
Front: Mao Zedong against red background, golden waves below
Rear: 国庆 inside red lantern
欢庆国庆十九周年 1968.10.1 (Huanqing Guoqing shijiu zhounian – Celebrate the 19th Anniversary of National Day 1st October 1968)

Preserve the people's history!

For a revolutionary aesthetics!

DOWN WITH JAPANESE MILITARISM!

LET THE JAPANESE PEOPLE ACT!

The Japanese people learned much from the adventures of their militarist regime in the 30’s and 40’s of the previous century.

They also learnt about the cruelty of Western imperialism when the US attacked two of their cities with atom bombs to force a surrender before Soviet troops could arrive in the country and be involved in shaping its future.

They were then betrayed by the MacArthur regime, which protected both the huge zaibatsu corporate regimes like Mitsubishi and Sumitomo, and the criminal Emperor Hirohito.

The zaibatsu should have been nationalised, if not socialised; Hirohito should have been jailed for life, if not executed.

Instead, the germ of militarism and the festering sore of capitalist industry and finance were left to grow and enjoy good and long-lasting life.

The monarchy has been given a prettier, if no less reactionary, face.

Japanese industrial corporations and financial institutions plunder much of the world.

A succession of Prime Monsters pay their respects to dead war criminals in annual pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine.

There is strict control over text books so that young Japanese people are not taught the criminal history of Japanese imperialism and its numerous crimes like the Rape of Nanjing, the sex slavery of the so-called "comfort women", the live experimentation on humans of chemical and biological weapons, the Bataan Death March and countless other glories of the Bushido spirit.

For every gain that is made by the victims of these crimes, the organised Japanese Right fights tooth and nail to divest its ruling class of responsibility.

There is a refusal to formally apologise to the comfort women.

There is the weird logic of the Tokyo High Court, which two days ago overturned Niigata District Court’s landmark ruling that had ordered the Japanese Government and a Japanese company to pay compensation to the Chinese who were made to work as slave labourers during World War 2.

And yet this is the "great Asian democracy" to which Australian Prime Monster John Howard has tied Australia’s military fortunes in the interests of a declining US imperialism.

The only positive out of all this is that it will further develop the emergence of those conditions that will allow the Japanese people to act with responsibility towards themselves and the people of the whole world.

They are the key to exposing and defeating US imperialism and Japanese militarism.

Let the Japanese people act!

DOWN WITH THE AUSTRALIA-JAPAN SECURITY PACT

Japan and Australia have just announced that they have signed a joint declaration on "security"

The "security" they are talking about is the security of US imperialism.

The overlords of the earth have come unstuck in Iraq and Afghanistan and are looking to farm out some of the responsibility for maintaining US global supremacy to those who are under its control (Australia) or benefiting, for the moment, from its military might (Japan).

Their much-vaunted "full spectrum dominance" was recently challenged by China’s demonstration of its ability to shoot down a satellite. "Full spectrum dominance" was originally coined by the United States Air Force to describe its goal of completely controlling outer space as a sphere for military operations, and then came to be used to describe its stated intention of crushing any opposition to, or independence from, its complete control of global resources, markets and investment opportunities.

It is the most naked expression of imperialist arrogance and bluster, and the Chinese literally shot it out of the skies.

By way of retaliation, US imperialism has decided to increase the antagonistic aspect of its contradiction with China. Hence the Australia-Japan joint declaration on "security".

The joint declaration is Japan’s first on military ties with a country other than the United States. Australia’s Prime Monster Howard has tried to ease Chinese concerns about the nature of the pact, denying that it is aimed at that country.

The signing of the agreement is likely to lead to intelligence sharing and the participation of Japanese troops in exercises on Australian soil. They could possibly participate in the Talisman Sabre exercise in Queensland, beginning in May and already scheduled to involve 20,000 US and Australian troops. If they do, it will boost the growing alliance of anti-imperialists, peace activists and environmentalists who are opposing these war games.

Other recent developments, which suggest a growing role for Australia and Japan in US plans to secure its interests in the East Asian region, include the announcement in February of a new US satellite base at Geraldton in WA. The base will be a critical link in a network of satellites that will enhance US combat communications and specifically, its ability to wage wars in the Middle East and Asia (see previous post:For Australian Independence - No More US Bases).

Visiting Fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Philip Dorling, has stated that "once (the base is) operational, it would be almost impossible for Australia to be fully neutral or stand back from any war in which the US was involved."

Japan, for its part, upgraded its Defense Agency to full ministerial status in January, indicating a move away from the role assigned to its troops following the defeat of its aggressions in World War 2.

Both countries showed their closeness to the US by sending troops to support its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Japan’s ground forces, which Australian troops had been protecting, were withdrawn last year, but air force personnel were left in Kuwait to transport supplies to US forces in Iraq.

These developments have been closely orchestrated by the US imperialists. Howard faces an election soon and his fortunes are fast fading, so he has to act fast to render his final services to his masters. One of those, US Vice-President Dick Cheney, recently "visited" (doesn’t that sound friendly!) Australia and Japan, and pushed for India to join the new "security arrangement" to "offset China’s emerging power". This was reported on Thursday 15 March by ninemsn staff under the heading "Australia security pact to encircle China".

Of course, a nation of 20 million people can’t physically encircle a nation of 1.3 billion, but Australia can host sophisticated US military bases like Pine Gap, and now Geraldton. It is small militarily, but has a large landmass to place at the disposal of the US imperialists and their militarist Japanese partners.

China’s reaction to these developments has been polite, but pointed.

Commenting on the same day, China’s PLA Daily saw the pact as "paving the way for more overseas deployment of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces in the future."

In response to Japanese and Australian assurances that the security pact does not target China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said he "hoped the Japanese and Australian leaders are true to their word."

The PLA Daily called on the two countries to "do things to promote the trust among countries in the region and refrain from doing anything which would harm regional peace and security."

The world’s people call for opposition to imperialism, for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist regimes and say "Down with the Australia-Japan Security Pact!"

Juan Garrido-Salgado

Juan Garrido-Salgado, a former political prisoner in Chile, now lives in my home town of Adelaide. He came with his family to Australia from Chile under the Humanitarian Programme in 1990, fleeing from a regime which burned his poetry and imprisoned him for his political activism. Last year, he attended this city’s annual Writers’ Week Festival, where he heard Robert Fisk talking about his book "The Great War for Civilisation".

The following poem was the result:

Sonnet (Writers’ Week in Adelaide, 2006)

I am sitting in different shadows.
Chairs are the roots of trees,
the white tents a nest of words and creation.
I am listening to the sound and face of vowels.
Names and authors are beings of the image world.
Stories of lands, struggles, deaths,
beauty and ugliness an equal part of the journey.
Foreign sounds are rare birds under native trees.
A kookaburra sings to the wind and the heat of the evening.
Yahia Al-Samawy reads his poem in Arabic:
Leave my country.
The helmet of occupiers can never be a pigeon’s nest
I am listening to the rhythm of hearts next to a tree.
I am listening to Robert Fisk’s flesh,
wounded lines,
Baghdad and Gaza his home,
ancient cities without rivers,
only dried dreams of the oppressors.

Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

YOUTUBE video on Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

I’ve just come across this great video (above) full of proletarian imagery. Not only is it an interesting video, but the following comments from people who have viewed it on Youtube are worth reading.

It's important that we honour the proletarian past without lapsing into passive nostalgia. The task that we all face is how to remain embedded in the working class whilst striving to continually raise the level of struggle going on around us.

Long live Mao Zedong Thought!

xxfireb0ixx (2 days ago)
this is a great video. The East is Red.. beautiful song
sanvera18 (5 days ago)
Most of this "I know everything bird brains" have not really studied the the true history and struggles of the Great Proletarian Revolution, truly there have been grave mistakes, but this mistakes have been recognized. There was a need at that time to for the Cultural revolution it was a means of cleansing, against the growing number of opportunists in the party. Same as the need for a Second Proletarian Cultural Revolution in modern China.
xgreatking (4 days ago)
I don't really endorse a "Second Proletarian Cultural Revolution", because I don't feel that it is necessary right now. Many people in China have grown more nationalistic, as a result of our economic success as of late. But you're right, the Cultural Revolution did have achieve some of its goals back then.
xgreatking (6 days ago)
(cont) Everyone went through this tough time together, knowing that the Communist Party was doing the best for not only China, but other struggling nations as well. Many 3rd world developing nations at that time were in need of assistance, and China commonly supplied them with foodstuffs and other needs. I do agree with you that Deng Xiaoping brought about the means for modern China, but the successes of the early Communist party also cannot be forgotten.
xgreatking (6 days ago)
If you have ever read about the history of China from 1949 forward, you would know that there was a period of great droughts, and of great famines during the period of the 60s and 70s. My parents, who are from Beijing and Shandong countryside have told me stories about their first-hand experiences, and they say, yes it was a difficult time and sometimes there was nothing to eat but plain rice, but they lived through it together with the nation as a whole.
xgreatking (1 week ago)
Chairman Mao was the one who originally turned China around. Sure, some of his ideas may have turned out bad (Great Leap Forward) and even the Cultural Revolution was not as successful as it is portrayed here, but you cannot deny that his intent was for the advancement of the Chinese people. If it was not for Mao, I doubt China would have seen as much reform as they have in the last 50 years...it is incredible how much China has improved since the founding of the People's Republic.
vickymouf (1 week ago)
Awesome!!! But a little too glowing. Doesn't mention that the GPCR actually failed to get rid of the "Thermidorians", despite its attempts. Did the person who made this actually forget about Deng and the capitalist roaders?
Asguitar (1 week ago)
LONG LIVE TO CHAIRMAN MAO
markma5511 (1 month ago)
this is the best video in youtube.
Lycan87 (1 month ago)
To a New Great Proletarian Revolution!
Vlader75 (3 months ago)
The core force leading our cause is the Chinese Communist Party.The theoretical base guiding our thinking is Marxism-Leninism.(Shouting) Long live the Communist Party!Long live Chairman Mao! Long live the Communist Party!A long, long life!
Xuemangong (4 months ago)
Excellent work. a gigantic experiment such as Cultural Revolution, people still will talk about it 1000 years later
arobotar (5 months ago)
I'm glad someone is finally presenting this perspective -- surely the perspective of the millions and millions of individuals who democratically participated in the Cultural Revolution. Though I do have some reservations with regards to the GPCR, this video rather accurately summarizes the attitude of the time.
MaoTzu (5 months ago)
Long Live Marxism Leninism Mao Tse Tung Thought!

REDGUM: I Was Only 19

Back in the 1970’s Brian Medlin, Greg O’Hair and others in the Flinders University Philosophy Department created a course in Marxism-Leninism into which a number of anti-war and anti-imperialist activists enrolled.

One of the issues tackled by the course was the applicability of Chairman Mao’s theories on art to the situation in an advanced capitalist nation, albeit one itself oppressed by imperialism.

Out of this came the band Redgum.

The three originators of the band, John Schumann, Mick Atkinson and Verity Truman were all active in the anti-war movement.

I first new Mick when he was at Underdale High, where there was a group of students keen to find out what was happening at my school, where we had established a student underground movement and were bringing out leaflets on a regular basis.

Verity was a very good comrade, and identified with the CPA(M-L) and the Worker-Student Alliance.

Redgum's first album was "If You Don't Fight You Lose". The title was the fighting slogan of the Builders Laborers Federation, the most militant Australian union at the time, led by CPA(M-L) Vice-Chairman Norm Gallagher. The album cover art featured an Aussie battler taking an axe to a US base in the outback (see recent posts on US bases in Australia).

After several very successful albums, John was inspired by discussion with a Vietnam vet to write the song "I Was Only 19", a damning condemnation of the use by the imperialists of Australian youth as cannon fodder in Vietnam. (Access Redgum mp3's and lyrics here.)

It would have been easy to have written something sloganistic in the atmosphere that prevailed amongst anti-imperialists at that time; instead John wrote a piece that expressed the viewpoint of the boys who went off to war, and then suffered afterwards through their exposure to Agent Orange.

The song was a number 1 hit and prompted an enquiry into the effects of Agent Orange on Australian servicemen who had been in Vietnam.

From time to time some right-wing idiot will write to the capitalist press to remind us all that Vietnam vets were spat on by anti-war protesters when they came back from Vietnam.

Personally, I never heard of this happening, although it would be silly to deny that it may have happened on the odd occasion.

The fact remains, though, that the most eloquent plea for understanding the plight of the ordinary soldier came from the ranks of the anti-war and anti-imperialist movement.

Listen and reflect.

Redgum I was only 19

Redgum:I Was Only 19.

Bring Hicks Home!

David Hicks is an Australian citizen who has been held at Guantanamo base for five years by the US imperialists.

Hicks was captured by Northern Alliance soldiers in Afghanistan and handed over to the US imperialists.

Hicks was born in a working class satellite suburb just to the north of Adelaide. The suburb was created for the US multinational General Motors and named (to our everlasting national shame) Elizabeth, after the then youthful British monarch.

Hicks had something of a "troubled" youth, as did many of his peers out at Elizabeth.
He left school early, passed through several labouring jobs and several relationships, rode horses at rodeos, became a horse-breaker, has a child by an indigenous woman whose whereabouts are unknown, got a job in a Japanese stable as a horse trainer, converted to Islam, ate rotting chicken to prepare his body for a life of deprivation as a fighter overseas for the fascist wing of Islam, fought for a short while with the Kosovo Liberation Front, trained with the Taliban, and maybe with Al-Quaeda, and is now in solitary confinement in a concentration camp whose location is a flagrant denial of the territorial integrity of socialist Cuba.

Given that he espouses values and lives by beliefs that the average Australian, living somewhere within John Howard’s "mainstream Australia", would find repugnant, it is amazing to see the unfolding of a mass campaign to bring David Hicks home.

The iconic Australian sentiment of the "fair go" is the unifying factor in this campaign. I’ve just watched Ray Martin’s Sunday national TV show, which has added to the clamour for Hick’s release for precisely that reason – he may be a "terrorist", but he’s one of us and he’s not been given a fair go.

Once again the calmly heroic visage of Hick’s US-appointed defence lawyer, Major Michael Mori, was there, telling us Aussies that the US simply wouldn’t allow any of their citizens to be charged before the revamped military commissions because they didn’t protect the rights to which US citizens were entitled. Nor, he said, would the British.

So why was Hicks physically and emotionally rotting in his cell? (Ray Martin had used the services of an identikit artist in Melbourne to draw a haunting picture of Hicks, left, which, according to his Adelaide lawyer, resembled the man he had seen a few weeks ago.)

Self-made millionaire Dick Smith, as iconic an Aussie as you can get for a capitalist, had no doubts. "He’s in Guantanamo because he’s a working class kid from a working class suburb. If he was a politician’s son or from some well-off family, he would have been released from there long ago," he told Martin. Putting some money where his mouth was, Smith then kicked in $60,000 to Hicks’ defence campaign.

From the very first day of his incarceration, Hicks has been something of an oddity at Guantanamo: a white, Anglo-Saxon from one of "our" countries turned Muslim and allegedly an Al-Quaeda trained terrorist.

As a counter to the charge that the US might be persecuting Arabs in its "war on terror", Hicks is worth his weight in gold for US propaganda purposes.

And "How high?" Howard, and "Do nothing" Downer (Australian Prime Monster and Monster for Foreign Affairs respectively) have offered up his scalp to the Empire which has their total loyalty.

They have conceded that Hicks has broken no Australian law, and would have to be set free if brought home. So they endorse the military commissions later ruled to be illegal by the US Supreme Court, and place him at the mercy of the revamped commissions that are described as "in some ways worse than the original" by Mori. They are happy for him to be charged under retrospective legislation, for coerced testimony to be used, for his legal team to be denied access to evidence, and all for the sake of having what former Liberal Party Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser described last week as "a guaranteed verdict of guilty".

At first this sat well with the Australian public, but it’s now wearing very thin.

No one has done more (with the exception, perhaps of Mori), to bring about this change than Hicks’ father, Terry. The grizzled features of this humble, but resolute worker, are a constant reminder of the ordinariness of David Hicks, of the "family next door" that produced an alleged "terrorist". Terry has had himself put in a Guantanamo-like cage on the streets of New York, and has had a film made of his efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan to discover the truth of his son’s circumstances prior to his capture.

Terry has so much sympathy and support that he has been suggested as Australian Father of the Year on several occasions, for doing the right thing by his son, for sticking by him no matter what.

His simple loyalty to a member of his family stands in stark and very public contrast to the Australian Government’s perceived betrayal of one of its citizens.

After five years in Guantanamo, charges have now been tabled against Hicks. Perhaps more worrying than the shortcomings of the revamped military commissions already identified, given the length and circumstances of his imprisonment, is that there is no requirement for Hicks to be of sound enough mind to be able to deal with all the pressures of contesting a case in what is still little more than a kangaroo court.

The US imperialists have refused to allow an independent psychological assessment of Hicks. Howard and Co. cravenly assert that he’s been well-looked after. His lawyer, who recently spent three hours with him, says he has a hollow, sunken look. In a brief statement, Hicks himself says that he is not well.

Hicks may or may not have fought for the clerical fascists of the Taliban. Murderous rabble that they are, they were the legitimate Government of Afghanistan when Hicks is alleged to have entered their service. Had Bush and Co not invaded Afghanistan in support of the Northern Alliance, Hicks would not have become a potential "enemy combatant" of the United States.

The cause of a "fair go" for Hicks is a just one.

The US imperialists and their lickspittle Australian accomplices will not give him a fair trial or a fair go.

Get him out of the concentration camp and bring him home!

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