B2 bombers are now at the Amberly RAF base. An East Coast nuclear submarine base site has not yet been announced, but $10 billion has been set aside to build one, perhaps in the Brisbane region.
It’s time to send the government another message!
Bring your banners and stand together to declare that WE OPPOSE NUCLEAR SUBMARINES AND AIRCRAFT IN OUR TERRITORY. We stand for addressing climate change and for the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons to be signed by our government.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2022 AT 4 PM
Public Protest for Peace and against AUKUS
Reddacliff Place
Event organised by the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition
Visit: www.antiaukuscoalition.org
Contact: noaukusqld@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/events/1313734889461440
One of the groups involved in this campaign is Solidarity … here is their rationale for why we should oppose the alliance with the US. This group did not support the USSR because it saw the Soviets as state capitalism … see below. They see the anti-war movement as part of a broader struggle for socialism.
What Mikhail Gorbachev really offered the West was to reform Russia into social democracy. Instead the Americans sent in the Chicago boys and the poor Russian people ended up with oligarchs and Putin instead.
Ian Curr
18 Sept 2022
| Solidarity Meeting MIKHAIL GORBACHEV AND THE END OF THE USSR – WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS SAY?6pm, Tuesday 20th September Western leaders have rushed to praise Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, who recently died, as a “radical social reformer” who “made the world a safer place”. Gorbachev rose to the top of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1985 and presided over its collapse in 1991. Its collapse was seen by many right wing ideologues as the final victory of capitalism over socialism, proof that socialism doesn’t work. What should Socialist say about Gorbachev? For some hard line Stalinists he is seen as a “disaster” who betrayed socialism. For others, he was seen as a genuine reformer who, with his policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring), wanted to democratize what was essentially a socialist economy, making it more palatable. Unfortunately he failed, they argue. Others, like Solidarity, recognise that the USSR created by Stalin was a form of capitalism – state capitalism – and Gorbachev’s market reforms were an attempt to solve the deep economic crisis of the Russian economy. Ordinary workers lost their jobs and living standards fell as Gorbachev tried to revitalise Russian state capitalism. As NATO and Russia face–off in Ukraine, and the world economy faces economic crisis and climate disaster, it is important for socialists to be clear. This meeting will discuss what Mikhail Gorbachev represented and the lessons for the struggle for socialism from below. Please join the discussion. Facebook event here, |
On September 26 the asteroid Dimorphus was hit by a spacecraft the size of a golf cart in order to deflect its orbit which was earth threatening. Space agencies around the world scan the skies for likely earthbound asteroids and ponder whether nuclear missiles what could be used to destroy them. However, the irony is that the greatest threat comes from humans themselves who now possess the power to wipe out life as we know it on this planet.
Dimorphos (Δίμορφος) – ‘having two forms’.
Australia, New Zealand and other South Pacific nations signed and ratified the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (the Rarotonga Treaty) which forbids the stationing of nuclear weapons on their soil. However, Australia, currently in thrall to the US yet again, is party to its anti-China bellicosity to such an extent that it has joined AUKUS in its bid to acquire nuclear powered submarines and has agreed to US nuclear capable B52 bombers being stationed at RAAF Tindal. It beggars belief that the US in a state of wartime emergency would have to fly its bombers to Guam or have them delivered to Darwin by ship. It’s far more likely that N-warheads will be stored at Tindal in violation of the SPNFZT.
The Albanese government would do well to seriously ponder Einstein’s words: ” “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
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Gareth W R Smith
Palestine Liberation Centre
14 Cumbebin Park
Byron Bay
NSW 2481
Australia
Tel: (61)2-56058404
MOB: 0491107279
“Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire
George Orwell, ‘Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’
“The sleep of reason produces monsters.” Goya