By an Australian oil industry worker

I knew before I went to Singapore to do work on a rig in a shipyard that foreign workers were exploited but the actual experience was eye opening. By comparison the standards we worked under were positively regal compared to the Indian and Bangladeshi foreign workers.

The Indian and Bangladeshi workers don’t see their families for two years. They work five and a half to six days a week, 12 hours a day, and receive the princely sum of about $400-600 (Singapore dollars) a month for their sweat. Time is so short for these workers you can see hundreds of them sleeping on the lawn or under the job in the pre-dawn hour before the lift home. The project managers were appalled when the Australian workers demanded to go home after a month. They are too used to exploiting the workforce for the entire project without a break.

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October fast news

At least 1000 jobs are to be cut in the Australian steel sector as BlueScope Steel closes down a blast furnace in Port Kembla, Sydney and its Western Port mill in Victoria. BlueScope blamed the high Australian dollar for the $1.05 billion loss it made in the last financial year.

Upon announcing the job losses the Labor government rushed to give BlueScope $100 million while offering minimal support to the 800 workers in Port Kembla and 200 in Western Port who will find themselves jobless.

The negative effects of the mining boom, which has created a two speed economy, are now becoming more and more apparent with jobs in the steel industry the first of what will be many casualties. The manufacturing industry is facing one of its worst periods since the Great Depression. Retail, tourism and services also are being hit hard.

Unions must be prepared to fight all job losses and public service cuts as the world economic situation gets worse.

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Brutal assault as protesters hold their ground

Occupy Melbourne protesters were brutally assaulted by riot police wielding pepper spray and police on horse back on Friday, 21 October. The British Queen’s visit next week is clearly linked to the timing of this attack.

The occupation of the ‘City Square’ in Melbourne began last Saturday 15 October as part of the global ‘Occupy’ movement. This magnificent movement is inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the mass occupations in Spain, Greece and the US which have taken place this year.

One thousand people took part in the launching of the protest camp on 15 October with between two and three hundred continuing the occupation daily. These numbers are significant in a country which has not yet been severely impacted by the global economic crisis.

By Kirk Leonard, Socialist Party

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SP Newsletter No.376

Fight capitalism – For a socialist alternative to the failed profit-driven system!

On 15 October, all around the globe, the “enraged”, the “indignad@s”, the “occupiers of Wall Street”, demonstrators all over Portugal, in Santiago Chile and in Cairo – and many, many more – will take the streets to challenge the power of big business. The magnificent movements of young people and workers in these struggles, with common causes, methods and demands, instinctively reach out to each other across borders and continents.

After more than three years of ongoing capitalist crisis, the capitalists and their politicians show their inability to offer any way out of ongoing misery for the vast majority, called the “99%” in the movement in the US. Instead, the ruling elites want to make workers and youth pay for the failure of their system, to continue to bail out bankers and millionaires. That’s what this rebellion is against and where the demand for fundamental change, the demand for “revolution” as the youth movement for example in Spain puts it, comes from.

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Matt Dobson reviews: Power and Terror: Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force, by Noam Chomsky

In response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the Bush neo-con administration unleashed a military onslaught on Afghanistan and Iraq that seemed to display invincible power. Writers churned out articles and books predicting the dawn of a “new world order”. Commentators claimed the US ruling elite was building a Roman-like empire that would exert hegemony for decades across the world. What a different world we live in today!

This collection of Chomsky’s essays, interviews and lectures shows how much can change in ten years. Chomsky highlights the change in the balance of power in terms of inter-imperialist relations. The US empire is now in decline. US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are besieged garrisons. But he never fully explains the changed world situation and the change in the imperialist policy of the US ruling class.

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Two articles on Palestine in the lead up to the UN vote on ‘statehood’

This month the United Nations General Assembly will vote on recognising Palestine as an independent state. The acceptance of even a truncated, Bantustan-like Palestinian state into the United Nations as an independent nation would be too much for the Israeli ruling class to accept.

Therefore, even if such a motion is passed, it will almost certainly be vetoed at the UN Security Council due to the opposition of the United States who are Israel’s main backers. Australia will probably vote with the US as under Gillard foreign policy is back to the same pro-US craven approach as it was under John Howard.

By Stephen Jolly, Socialist Party

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SP Newsletter No.372

Trillions of dollars were lost from stock markets last month as the world economic situation took a turn for the worse. It has become increasingly clear that far from ensuring a recovery, the measures put in place by capitalist leaders have only deepened the crisis. A global double dip recession is now very much on the cards.

The stock market losses were the worst since the collapse of the American bank Lehman Brothers in 2008. This collapse was the trigger for the financial crisis which spread across the world leading to bank bailouts and the need for huge stimulus packages. This comparison shows how serious and precarious the current situation is, as the world economy stands poised to slip into a prolonged slump.

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A world turned upside down

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11 we publish this article as a contribution to the discussions and debates taking place internationally on the significance and consequences of this event.

It is ten years since the twin towers came crashing down in New York. In the aftermath of that terrorist attack, US imperialism unleashed mass slaughter in Afghanistan and Iraq, leading some to believe that an era of total domination by the world’s only superpower had arrived. But today’s global economic crisis and US impotence in the face of revolution in North Africa and the Middle East has exposed the falsity of that view. PETER TAAFFE assesses the changed world situation.

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No to foreign military intervention

After six long months of bloody, protracted struggle the overthrow of the dictatorial Gaddafi regime was greeted with rejoicing by large numbers of, but by no means all, Libyans. Another autocratic ruler, surrounded by his privileged family and cronies, has been overthrown. If this had been purely the result of struggle by the Libyan working masses it would have been widely acclaimed but the direct involvement of imperialism casts a dark shadow over the revolution’s future. The continuing battles in Tripoli and elsewhere indicate the instability of the current situation in Libya and also how the revolution that began there last February has, in many ways, been thrown off course.

By Robert Bechert, CWI

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Capitalist strategists are filled with gloom at the prospect of a new economic downturn.

Fear of recession in the US, its credit rating downgrade and political dysfunction, not to mention the ongoing eurozone crisis, Japanese stagnation and slowdown in China, have all led to convulsions on world stock markets. LYNN WALSH reports.

The world economy appears to be sliding into a ‘double-dip’ recession or, more accurately, a continuation of the ‘great recession’ of 2008-09, following a feeble ‘recovery’ in 2010. The advanced capitalist countries are most severely affected, but the brightly burning furnaces of the semi-developed giants of China, India and Brazil (so-called ‘emerging markets’) are beginning to flicker. Until recently, signs of a slowdown which appeared in the second quarter of 2011 were regarded by many capitalist commentators as merely a ‘soft patch’. But the outlook changed dramatically with the convulsions in global stock exchanges during the first three weeks of August.

By Lynn Walsh, editor of Socialism Today

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