Comrades Please Support this Rally: Oceania-DPRK Solidarity Committee: STOP IMPERIALIST PROVOCATIONS AGAINST SOCIALISTIC NORTH KOREA!

Posted on May 10, 2013 by

Hi friends,

The Oceania-DPRK Solidarity Committee is building an important demonstration in Sydney for June 22 in solidarity with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (i.e. North Korea) in the face of heightened threats by U.S. and Australian imperialism and their South Korean junior partners. The rally will demand, “Stop Imperialist Provocations Against Socialistic North Korea!”

Please find attached the call for the rally.

Trotskyist Platform comrades are, alongside other leftists and pro-DPRK activists, part of the Oceania-DPRK Solidarity Committee. We urge all our friends and readers to get involved in this united-front campaign both by participating in the June 22 action and by doing work to help build the rally.

As background reading on the issue please check out these links to earlier Trotskyist Platform articles on the DPRK:

This is an article from 2011 about a speakout that Trotskyist Platform organised in February 2011 in defence of the DPRK workers state:
http://www.trotskyistplatform.com/speakout-demands-stop-the-capitalists-provocations-against-socialistic-north-korea/

And this article is from 2009: http://www.trotskyistplatform.com/Korea.html

Rally:

Oceania-DPRK Solidarity Committee
오세아니아 – 조선 민주주의 인민 공화국 단결위원회

The capitalist exploiters hate it when workers get together to form a union to defend their rights. That hatred is multiplied many times over when workers organise to actually take over state power and establish a socialist system. This explains the violent attempts of the imperialists to overthrow the socialistic DPRK (the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, i.e. North Korea) ever since it was formed. North Koreans remember the horrific crimes of the U.S. and its allies during the 1950-53 Korean War. Yet through heroic efforts, the DPRK people and their Chinese comrades defeated the attempts of the most powerful imperialist armies in the world to drown the workers’ state in blood.

This year marks the 60^th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War. One of the conditions of the Armistice Agreement was that it would be converted to a genuine peace agreement. After 60 years, the US has failed to honour and uphold this and they continue under the false command of the UN to maintain over 30,000 troops plus nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.

One would never trust the imperialist marauders to respect a peace agreement. However, their failure to even sign one exposes their intentions. This has been highlighted in recent months. As well as additional sanctions being imposed on the DPRK by the UN, the US together with its allies Great Britain, Australia, Japan and its puppet regime South Korea on the 1^st March launched two simultaneous military exercises known as “Key Resolve” and “Foal Eagle.” As a result of combining these military exercises, they assembled the largest military contingent ever seen around the Korean peninsula in sixty years including nuclear warships and stealth bombers armed with nuclear weapons. Clearly it is the intention of the US along with its allies to cause as much tension as possible and create an atmosphere of military confrontation on the Korean peninsula.

Today the enmity of the imperialists (and the media that they own) to the defiantly socialistic DPRK is on a larger scale a version of the hostility of the capitalist bosses to unions like the CFMEU construction union and especially the staunch, former Builders Labourers Federation trade union which was so viciously attacked for daring to defy the bosses’ state. Every proud worker knows that when the bosses attack another trade union, we should defend that union regardless of whether we agree 100% with every policy of the union’s leaders or not. So too must we defend the DPRK and stand by their people’s courageous struggle to maintain their hard won workers state.

STOP Imperialist provocations Against Socialistic North Korea!
Working Class People – we must protect our gains:
Defend our Trade Unions And
Defend Our workers state in North Korea!

Rally 3:30Pm SATURDAY June 22
Cnr Rawson St & Northumberland Rd, Auburn, near north exit of Auburn Train Station

Rally Chair: Peter Woods (Co-Chair of the Asia-Pacific DPRK Solidarity Committee)
Initial List of Speakers:
Ray Ferguson (Secretary, Australia-DPR Korea Association for Friendship and Cultural Relations)
Sarah Fitzenmeyer (Chairperson, Trotskyist Platform)
Behrooz (Supporters of Iranian People’s Fadaee Guerillas)
Sam Bullock (Marxist-Leninist activist from Brisbane and Socialist Alliance* member)
Samuel Kim (Trotskyist Platform activist of Korean background)
*Organisation listed for identification purposes only

Rally: Just Like What China is Doing, Massively Increase Public Housing

Posted on March 23, 2013 by

Rents are rising. Wages are too low. And bosses are sacking workers. With rents so high, millions are struggling to make ends meet. The working poor and especially their children are suffering! People try to get lower rents by joining the public housing waiting list. But governments are selling off public housing! People are driven into ruin paying high rents while waiting up to twenty years on the public housing list! And it’s gotten so hard now to even get on this list that even full-time workers on the minimum wage aren’t eligible for it.

Yet while all this is happening, governments are letting big business owners like Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest, Frank Lowy and Richard Pratt get away with making billions by doing nothing other than exploiting other people’s labour. We need to fight to ensure that the wealth of this country is used to fund the public housing that we so badly need (and for properly funded public hospitals and schools). So we must rally to demand:

JUST LIKE WHAT CHINA IS DOING
MASSIVELY INCREASE
PUBLIC HOUSING
3:30PM SATURDAY MAY 4
Corner of Rawson St and Northumberland Rd, Auburn
(Near the Northern Exit of Auburn Railway Station) Continue reading →

Unleash Militant Class Struggle. Fight for a Huge Increase in the Newstart Allowance and Smash the ALP Government’s Attack on Low-Income Single Mothers!

Posted on March 21, 2013 by

Don’t Let Our Fellow Workers Who Lose Their Jobs Become Destitute!
Unleash Militant Class Struggle

Fight for a Huge Increase in the Newstart Allowance and Smash the ALP Government’s Attack on Low-Income Single Mothers!

ALP’s Slashing of Payments to Poor Single Parents Proves Once Again that None of The Current Parliamentary Parties Should Be Supported at The Upcoming Elections

March 8, 2013: At the turn of the year, Australian billionaire James Packer and his family were enjoying first uses of their latest family toy: a 52-metre super yacht costing over $50 million! However, for tens of thousands of low-income, single parents the reality could not be more different. They are now going to struggle, even more than before, to buy their children medicine let alone merely a $2 toy. The ALP federal government has thrown over 84,000 low-income single parents off the Parenting Payment and on to the much lower Newstart Allowance. If this isn’t bad enough, those single parents who have part-time jobs face even more savage cuts to their income as the Newstart Allowance is more ruthless than the Parenting Payment in cutting payments to those who do manage to find any part-time work. Continue reading →

Issue 15

Posted on January 21, 2013 by

Massively Increase Public Housing! Socialistic China is Doing That So Let’s Fight for the Same Here!

Oppose Police Terror against Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Youth And All The Poor! Don’t Allow Business as Usual – Build Mass Actions Backed by Trade Union Power!

No to Neo-Colonialism: Defend Syria against the Pro-Imperialist “Rebels”
Oppose All NATO/Australia Diplomatic, Military & Political Intervention in Syria!

Crush the QLD Government’s Attacks on Public Sector Workers! Let’s Not Get Diverted into Campaigning for an ALP/Greens Government! The Only Thing That Can Save Jobs is All Out Strike Action!

The Struggle for the Left to Take an Anti-Imperialist Position on the Syria Conflict

PDF of TP Issue 15:TP15

Oppose All NATO/Australia Diplomatic, Military & Political Intervention in Syria! No to Neo-Colonialism: Defend Syria against the Pro-Imperialist “Rebels”

Posted on January 17, 2013 by

Sydney, August 5: Syrian origin youth pose for a photo in front of the Trotskyist Platform banner at the thousands strong, Hands Off Syria rally.

Oppose All NATO/Australia Diplomatic, Military & Political Intervention in Syria!

No to Neo-Colonialism: Defend Syria against the Pro-Imperialist “Rebels”

July 27 – It was disturbing footage. Picked up by Reuters and then shown on SBS and ABC News, the video which they noted on the side, “could not be independently verified,” claimed to show supposed Syriansoldiers beating captured anti-government protesters. There was a problem, however! An email to the ABC program Media Watch noted that the accents of the troops shown in the footage were Lebanese not Syrian, that the car shown in the background had a Lebanese number plate and that the soldiers were not even wearing Syrian army uniforms. After some research Media Watch independently verified that this was indeed not footage from Syria but from Lebanon (http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3218415.htm). The clip that had claimed to show Syrian Army brutality turned out to be taken from a YouTube posting of a couple of Lebanese militias bragging about their actions. What is more, the original posting to YouTube took place several years earlier in August 2008! Such is the deception being spread by the pro-Western Syrian Opposition forces. Continue reading →

Crush the QLD Government’s Attacks On Public Sector Workers!

Posted on January 16, 2013 by

LET’S NOT GET DIVERTED INTO CAMPAIGNING FOR AN ALP/GREENS GOVERNMENT!

THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE JOBS IS ALL OUT STRIKE ACTION!

An unlucky participant at the September 12 rally in Brisbane – one of thousands being laid off from the public sector in an austerity drive resembling those occurring across Europe.

Queensland is in shock. Far from being a death by a thousand cuts, the unprecedented slashing of the public sector in Queensland enacted by the recently elected Liberal National Party (LNP) government headed by Premier Campbell Newman almost amounts to instant decapitation. For a long time a job in the public service meant greater job security than in the private sector. This has been demolished as the Liberal National Party moves to make the public service operate along lines identical to the private sector ie “perform” or you are out. Legislation has been passed by the LNP which overrides job security provisions in collective agreements. Continue reading →

Oppose Police Terror against Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Youth And All The Poor!

Posted on January 16, 2013 by

Horrific Racist Savagery: After shooting Aboriginal youth Troy Taylor in Sydney’s Kings Cross, police drag and bash the teenager as he bleeds to within an inch of death.
-Sunday Telegraph

Oppose Police Terror against Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Youth And All The Poor!

Don’t Allow Business as Usual – Build Mass Actions Backed by Trade Union Power!

May 11 – Enough is enough! How many more mothers and fathers must grieve over a child killed by Australian police? How many more close friends must agonise over a dear one whose life hangs in the balance because they were attacked by cops? Police are getting ever more vicious. They must be opposed! Recent events have made this all too clear.

On March 21, six Sydney cops viciously killed Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio. After having identified Roberto as having allegedly stolen, of all things, a packet of biscuits, the cops hounded him as if he was the target of a hunting expedition. They smashed him against a shop window, capsicum sprayed him and then, in what resembled an horrific game of cat and mouse, repeatedly tasered him to death. Continue reading →

MASSIVELY INCREASE PUBLIC HOUSING! SOCIALISTIC CHINA IS DOING THAT SO LET’S FIGHT FOR THE SAME HERE!

Posted on January 16, 2013 by

One of China’s many new public housing complexes. Last year China started construction of over ten million new public housing dwellings.

MASSIVELY INCREASE PUBLIC HOUSING!
SOCIALISTIC CHINA IS DOING THAT
SO LET’S FIGHT FOR THE SAME HERE!

5 June 2012 – More and more of Australia’s poor are skipping meals because they can’t afford to pay for the food. In an annual survey by the Salvation Army of those who have sought its help, more than half the respondents admitted to skipping meals in order to pay for other necessities (ABC News Website, 16 May.) Other startling findings were that a third of those surveyed could not afford heating and a third could not afford medicine prescribed by their doctor.

Charities are reporting that an increasing number of people are seeking their help. Low-income people are being crippled by punishing rents and utility charges. And job slashing by business bosses are hitting working class people hard. The official spin about the supposedly low unemployment rate masks the reality that about 600,000 people are officially unemployed in this country. However, perhaps an even greater number of people are not recorded in official unemployment figures only because long-term lack of success in finding a job has discouraged them from looking for work or because they are a single parent unable to find affordable childcare. Meanwhile, one and a half million people are not able to get as many hours of work as they want to. They are not counted in the deceitful, official unemployment figures as those figures will not classify a person as unemployed if they obtain as little as one hour of work in a week. The drive of the business owners to maximize profits is forcing more and more workers into tenuous, low-wage casual jobs. That is why charities are reporting that an increasing proportion of those seeking help are not unemployed people but the working poor. These are typically people with young children who just can’t get enough hours in part-time jobs to get by or can’t make ends meet on the paltry minimum wage. Continue reading →

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LEFT TO TAKE AN ANTI-IMPERIALIST POSITION ON THE SYRIA CONFLICT

Posted on January 7, 2013 by

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LEFT TO TAKE AN ANTI-IMPERIALIST POSITION ON THE SYRIA CONFLICT

July 29 2012 – The imperialists are in a de facto war with Syria. From massively arming the Syrian “Rebels” to providing them with money and military intelligence to organising foreign mercenaries to fight for them to having special forces assist these “Rebels” to the media’s overwhelming propaganda campaign against the Syrian government, the imperial powers are doing everything short of a full-scale invasion to ensure regime change in Syria. In such a clash between imperialism and a small, ex-colony, the position of leftists should be clear. As Russian revolutionary leader Lenin stated in his Marxist classic, Socialism and War, written in 1915 (i.e. written in the days of Tsarist Russia prior to the Russian Revolution):

… if tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be “just”, “defensive” wars, irrespective of who attacked first; and every Socialist would sympathise with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slaveowning, predatory `great’ powers.

That means that we must today stand for the defence of Syria against the predatory NATO “great” powers and their proxies within Syria. This is the position that we in Trotskyist Platform fight for. This is why we have joined in solidarity with demonstrations called by those Syrian migrants who are opposed to imperialism and its “Rebels.” We do this while recognising, in the spirit of Lenin, that while we are in a temporary alliance with the capitalist, Baathist government in Syria against the imperialists and their allies, we should maintain our strict political independence from the Baathists and should continue to stand for the development of an independent, anti-imperialist, working class movement in Syria.

Continue reading →

2011 Feb, Rally Leaflet: Down with the Capitalists’ Provocations Against Socialistic North Korea!

Posted on January 7, 2013 by

Do you hate capitalism? Well if you truly do then you must take a stand with the socialistic DPRK against the intense threats it is facing from capitalist states.

Rally to demand: U.S. Military Get out of the Korean Peninsula and the Yellow Sea!

Down with the Capitalists’ Provocations Against Socialistic North Korea!

12 February 2011, Saturday 2pm, Sydney Town Hall Square

The governments of the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Australia have launched a volley of threats against North Korea. It is only support for the DPRK from the Peoples Republic of China that has thus far prevented an all out U.S.-led invasion of North Korea.

Continue reading →