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April-June 2013
Last our issue, Class Struggle called for the occupation and expropriation of Mighty River Power (and any other of our assets that have been sold), with no compensation to the buyers. We took this to the marchers against the asset sales on 28th April and it was overwhelmingly warmly received. And given the above statistics about the buyers, it is proven to be the correct approach the sale has been a transfer of wealth / property ownership from all NZ to a capitalist elite and a few who hope to join that elite. Read Socialise our assets! Class Struggle Pamphlet
BRIEFS
John Key: US Super Spy
NACTs are comprador capitalists for US imperialism. That means they are the agents of US business taking a small share for their governance. Selling assets, cutting social spending, facilitating FDI in land, services and industry etc all facilitate the growing foreign ownership of NZ. As happens in other colonies or semicolonies (banana or milkpowder republics) there is a rapid rise in inequality and mass discontent among the poor. One of the functions of the comprador agents is to impose a state order that represses any resistance to these colonial policies. The NACTs under John Key are unapologetic about this. They actually brag about it. Hence the new GCSB law that empowers these spies already tied to the FBI and CIA to spy on NZ citizens, is part of that repressive function. This law retrospectively makes legal the illegal spying on 85 NZ citizens over many years. The NACTs are caught with their pants down breaking national and international laws to rip off more profits. Hence the new Anadarko law that is designed to stop any protests against oil and gas exploration on the high sea. We say abolish all the spies along with the bosses state. We are for overthrowing the capitalist state and replacing it with a Workers State that gets rid of capitalist exploitation and oppression.
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The worker is not born empty waiting to be filled in. The existence of the working class requires that it reproduce itself materially through its labor. What workers lack is stolen from them by the exploitation of their surplus-labor. The working class generates its own authority in struggling to make up this lack. Workers will rise up when oppressed, but as Trotsky said this head of steam needs a piston and a box to turn it into power. The steam cannot create the piston or box, but neither can the piston or box function without steam. That is Zizeks problem; he thinks that the existence of workers is a timeless psychic void that can only be filled by an outside authority. He reveals himself as a petty bourgeois who has no role in capitalist society except as the servant of the bourgeoisie. It is the petty bourgeois who needs a master class to serve. For Zizek the workers need a master but for Marx the proletariat is the coming master class.
Vienna 1913
Cafe Central in Red Vienna really is a great setting for a political play that thrashes out the arguments about genetic and social determination of politics. With Freud as the interlocutor we have a distinguished lineup on both sides. We put Freud in the middle since his theory lends itself to both genetic (libido) and social (repression) interpretations. We count Stalin as on the side of Hitler, since for him blood and nationality was a powerful influence in shaping ones fatherland in stark opposition to Lenin and Trotsky. In fact around the time (1913) Lenin took Stalin to task for his position on the national question. Stalin was sent to Vienna to write an article on the National Question. Comrade Stalin, what is a nation? Lenin didnt like the results. Stalin thought nationalism was based on national character a psychological concept he borrowed from Otto Bauer (a native Viennese). He thought there was little room for nationalities to merge and that revolutionaries had to bury these differences into common class struggle. These differences would have lead to public rows but probably not across the cafe in the hearing of Hitler. On his death bed in 1922 Lenin again took Stalin to task for this Georgian chauvinism. Trotsky called Stalins regime in 1935 fascist living off the backs of the workers. The climax of any Cafe Central exchange would be between Hitler, Stalin and Trotsky over the Stalin-Hitler pact, since the former certainly raised the threat posed by Trotsky in his conversations with Stalin.
Zizek on Thatcher
This is a contrary sideswipe at the Thatcher death euphoria that reads like a spoilsport but in fact his target is the danger of the masses rising up. For Zizek and his master, Lacan, the masses need a master to pull them out of their ignorance. Self-activity is futile and illusory. Workers need a leader with political authority to organise a revolution. The problem is that for Zizek, the master is a great leader, the left-wing equivalent of Thatcher, and not the vanguard party. What motivates individuals for Zizek is their psychology, not the class struggle. In a throwback to Adorno, the bourgeois subject has an authoritarian personality. S/He needs to be told what to do. S/He needs a leader to inspire and motivate her/him. Marx on the other hand recognised that human needs and desire motivate subjects to given social relations.
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LM Otero/Associated Press, Emergency personnel conducting a search on Thursday of an apartment complex destroyed by an explosion the day before at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas.
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings that killed 3 people and injured 282 on April 15th, the capitalist press has been whipped into an anti-Muslim frenzy of the by now usual sort frenzy. We have no idea what happened in Boston. What really happened? We notice the official story is not finding any greater ready acceptance than the official 9/11 story did. This terrible act was allegedly carried out by two Muslim brothers whose family originally emigrated from Chechnya. Just as after 9/11, this incident is being used to whip up anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hysteria and will be used as an excuse to further the U.S. governments war on terror and erode democratic rights. The bombing will doubtless be exploited for all its worth to free the funding for the homeland security racquet from the effects of the sequester. The people of Boston and surrounding towns were subjected to Gestapo style dragnet while the FBI and Russian intelligence agencies played at finger pointing at each other for their information trading screw-ups. The police and federal agents turned Boston into a police state in the aftermath of the bombings. Calls from the right wing media for more surveillance and the use of inner city drones echo Obamas stepped up police state tactics. Following Clintons Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Bush/Cheneys Patriot Act and Obamas use of the FBI to coordinate dismantling of the OCCUPY movement, the hounding to death of internet
This company was fined last June for violations involving anhydrous ammonia by the federal Department of Transportations Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Of course the criminally negligent homicides of workers by the profitdriven bosses are downplayed, as they dont serve the class interests of the bourgeois media. In the free market capitalist economy workers daily face injury and death on the job.
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It is also rather ironic that West Texas is just north of Waco, the same area where, in 1993, a religious sect, the Branch Davidians were targeted by President Clintons Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In a true case of U.S. state terrorism, 83 Branch Davidians were killed by the government after a 51 day siege. From a Marxist standpoint, the Boston bombings are indefensible acts of terrorism that targeted the working class as much as anyone or anything else. Marxists oppose individual acts of terrorism as a method of political struggle, even when directed against legitimate bourgeois targets or politicians. We are for politically organizing the working class to collectively abolish this barbaric and truly criminal system of capitalism once and for all; this we maintain requires a high level of independent working class self organization. As Leon Trotsky wrote in 1911: In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes toward a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only because individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary called a minister. To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction. (Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism, November 1911) These three events come on the eve of Workers Memorial Day, April 28th, and International Workers Day, May 1st. Workers must not let the lessons of these events go unheeded. Our struggle must not be limited to raising the minimum wage to a poverty wage of $15 per hour or to getting more OSHA inspectors. Capitalism has proven itself unreformable it must be buried. The capitalist politicians are debating ending the 40 hour work week and ending overtime after 40 hours this is their idea of reform. We have to finish with them; we have a world to win we have nothing to lose but to lose but our chains. For an economy where production and distribution are planned and controlled by the workers deputies! Build a Revolutionary Workers International! For workers Power Forward to a workers government based on workers councils!
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/revolutionarygreetings-from-cwg.html
That West, Texas disaster was not a Bhopal is only due to the lower population density in West. And meanwhile Bhopal has had another disaster of its own A hospital has collapsed, killing hundreds of hospital workers and patients and trapping hundreds more. Expect to see casualties from all over the world in this hospital collapse, as the impossible prices of medical procedures has given rise to "medical tourism," during this world crisis of the capitalist system.
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April-June 2013 We demand a sliding scale of wages and prices and employment for all who can work, working conditions should improve for all workers! We demand the introduction of state projects to employ all the unemployed; the government must stop the attack on the vendors! Land must be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide inputs to all small farmers! Jobs for all with a reduction in working hours until all who want to work can find a job! Workers form action committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor! We call on the workers and the oppressed groups to convene a congress of delegates from the working people, peasants, urban poor, youth and soldiers to come up with a constitution that guarantees a good life for all! Workers break with the MDC and ZANU (PF) and form a workers party that truly champions the interests of the workers and the poor masses, form rank and file unions to lead action in all unions and break with the reformist trade union leadership! For a workers state that defends workers and peasants against the local and foreign capitalists! No to US and Chinese imperialism fronted by the parties of the GNU! No to reformism and fake Trotskyism, build a fighting socialist party! For a workers and peasants government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor! For an African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all! For a new world party of socialist revolution based on the Transitional Program of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!
April-June 2013
United States/South Korea and their Allies: Hands Off North Korea!
Down with UN sanctions! Defeat the imperialist war drive against North Korea!
In the first week of April the United States along with South Korea and its other allies continued its escalation against the North Korean (DPRK) bureaucratically deformed workers state (DWS), one of the historic gains for the international working class in the aftermath of World War II. South Korea on April 5th deployed two Aegis destroyers to monitor North Korea, while 2500 US marines have deployed to Australia and there has been a military buildup in Guam as well. Under the pretext of the DPRK developing a nuclear weapons capability, the United States, the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in a war, is going after the North Korean regime to promote its imperialist interests in the region. This is scare-mongering by the Obama administration to rally support for their adventures, much like the Weapons of Mass Destruction claim used by the Bush administration to wage war on Iraq. The DPRK has no capacity to hit the USA with long range missiles or any nuclear payload. North Korea possesses zero nuclear warheads! No reports that can be independently verified estimate any North Korean delivery systems capability in the next five years. Meanwhile, the US, which has about 8,000 nuclear warheads ready for use, also has ABM missiles deployed in Alaska and Guam. ABMs are not a defensive system but an offensive system based on maintaining First Strike capability. It can hit missiles on their liftoff minutes before they reach the apex of trajectory. In an operational scenario the USA strikes first, and then Russia or China launch with their depleted reaction force, then the ABM can hit the depleted enemy reaction force. This is an offensive system aimed at China, not Korea, which is not a threat to the United States. Japans current Prime Minister Abe, who hails from a war criminal family, wants to rearm Japan with nuclear weapons. The five permanent members of this UN Security Council which imposed sanctions on North Korea: USA, Russia, China, France and Britain all possess nuclear weapons. The United Nations is a reactionary tool of the major powers to stamp approval on imperialist adventures. When they cannot agree, the individual powers do as they please in any case. Obama at the DMZ prior to the March 2012 Seoul Summit, where he warned North Korea as part of US imperialist war drive in East Asia (Pool/Yonhap News via Bloomberg) While undoubtedly United States would like to overthrow the North Korean deformed workers state, their larger aims in this whole affair are to assert U.S. imperialist authority in East Asia and the Pacific, primarily against the rising imperialist power of China. As part of its interimperialist war drive against China, these actions by the US are really about encircling and spending China to death. This standoff is less about Korea and more about the struggle between emergent imperialist China and its attempt to control its own back yard and beyond and the dominant imperialist thug attempting to maintain hegemony. Conflict between United States, its Japanese ally, and China spell increased imperialist rivalry as Mother Jones reported in January, 2013 in an article entitled Will China-Japan-US Tensions Sink the Global Economy?: a potential crisis of far greater magnitude, and potentially far more imminent than most of us imagine. China's determination to assert control over disputed islands in the potentially energy-rich waters of the East and South China Seas, in the face of stiffening resistance from Japan and the Philippines along with greater regional assertiveness by the United States, spells trouble not just regionally, but potentially globally. For its part, while capitalist China would like to see the collectivized economy of the DPRK overthrown and capitalism restored, they certainly do not want it done by the United States, as that would place the United States strategically on their border. However, China doesnt want to shed blood for North Korea or mess up their economic relationship with the United States at
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now. Amid concerns that the US provocations could lead to miscalculations by North Korea, unnamed American officials have stated that Washington was now stepping back. That miscalculation could include considering the 1.1 million-strong active DPRK army, their 180,000 special operations forces and their 8 million reservists. The United States may have the technological superiority, but it would be a bloody war. US Imperialists are the Real Threat The imperialist butchers of the United States have a lot of gall condemning North Korea for wanting weapons to defend themselves. After destroying North Koreas 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, US General Lemay remarked, Over a period of three years or so we killed off what twenty percent of the population. This amounted to an estimated 4 million Korean civilians killed. North Korea actually lost close to thirty percent of its population as a result of US-led bombings in the 1950s, while the United States military and their South Korean allies committed atrocities against civilians, like the now well-known No Gun Ri massacre of men, women and children. These war crimes were continued into the next decade in Vietnam, through executions, napalming, and the burning of Vietnamese villages and the carpet-bombing of North Vietnamese cities. My Lai has become synonymous with 20th Century imperialist war crimes. The US ruling class criminal actions continued into the 21st Century with their butchery in Afghanistan and Iraq, as documented by Wikileaks. PFC Bradley Manning is being made a scapegoat for these leaks. We demand his freedom. In World War II, the United States used nuclear weapons for the only time in history, not once, but twice, murdering hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. This followed the campaign of fire-bombing (that also took place in Europe), which were just as devastating. The atomic bombing of Japan served no real military purpose and was primarily a warning to the bureaucratically degenerated workers state of the Soviet Union whose Red Army had moved into Northeast China, Korea and Manchuria, liberating it from Japanese oppression. As Admiral William D. Leahy, President Trumans Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff, stated: [T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . For International Working Class Defense of North Korea Against All Imperialists! For Workers Political Revolution in North Korea! For Socialist Revolution from China to South Korea to Japan!
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Korean DWS the parasitic bureaucracy must be defeated. Yet the North Korean workers cannot do this alone, as the military actions of imperialism will increase tenfold to stop a working class upsurge in the north. To win the political revolution in the north must link with the workers in the south and complete the expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the Korean peninsula and drive out imperialist forces. This scenario is feared as much by the CCP as it is by the South Korean bourgeoisie, Japanese and American imperialists. All these forces are arrayed against the North Korean workers, whose destiny depends on the ability of the Chinese and American workers to join hands across the pacific vowing to defeat their own imperialist bourgeoisie and turning the war drive toward WWIII into the socialist revolution. We call on all workers organizations in the USA, JAPAN and CHINA to commence labor actions against the bosses war drive. We know that when they kill us in our millions their stock portfolios swell. We know the North Korean and Chinese workers are not our enemies. Our enemies are the big capitalists driving the nation-states toward war. As Murray Weiss, a spokesman for the Trotskyist majority led by James P. Cannon (Founder of American Trotskyism,) wrote in answer to the Third Camp minority: [I]t was this slight misconception as to who was the main enemy that helped to bury the German revolution. For the Marxists, the main enemy of the Russian working class, as well as the international working class, is the class enemy. The BolshevikLeninists in the U.S.S.R. will be the best fighters and because of that they will tell the Russian workers the truth: In order to win this war against imperialism we must overthrow the traitor Stalin and appeal to the revolutionary working class of the world to come to our aid.(our emphasis) Marxist Criteria and the Character of the War, [SWP] Internal Bulletin, February 1940 As capitalism everywhere continues to reel from its systemic crisis, it is ever more vital that the international working class organize struggle against this system of exploitation and war, before the imperialist madmen embroil the world in another major, possibly nuclear, war. We must stop any war escalating into a 3rd World War that will destroy the working class as well as civilization. Reprinted from Class War Vol 1 No 4 Spring 2013
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Government and the infamous Pact between Morales and the fascist Media Luna!
COB collaborationist bureaucracy seeks to erode the energy of the workers and lead the vanguard of the mineworkers to a defeat
The leadership of the COB has finally called an intermission in the strike, to continue negotiating with the Government and its ministers and meanwhile they have called the workers to stay in a "state of emergency" and "stay awake" -yielding to the conditions of the Government to lift any measure of pressure and strike to be able to resume the negotiation. The collaborationist bureaucracy, without losing time, sent their leaders to lift the blockades that the rural teachers were keeping. Meanwhile the miners in Huanuni who arrived in La Paz were left marching alone, without their sticks of dynamite, separated from the teachers that were carried by the leadership of the POR to sporadic blockades at different times, a far cry from the miners. This perfidious policy of the leaderships of the COB and the SMTMH (the latter led by the POR), is part of the plan of the collaborationist bureaucracy of the COB, while it is still negotiating with the Government; leading the miners to go on foot to La Paz, it separated them from the rest of the workers in order to wear out the energies and predisposition to the struggle of the whole Bolivian working class: miners, teachers, industrial workers and the rest of the workers in struggle. What the collaborationist leadership of the COB is seeking is to defeat the mineworkers vanguard, taking them to fight in an uncoordinated way, systematically isolated from the rest of the workers, leaving them alone in the roadblocks to be a prey for the brutal repression of the Government, so that the miners draw the conclusion that the rest of the workers does not support them. So the bureaucrats think, not only to wear down the forces of the miners, leaving them alone before the brutal repression Government prepares for them, but they also seek to demoralize them by making them think that it is of no use to fight, we did everything and not get anything... In a word, the leaderships wants to get the miners to only "give the fight through elections" entering the trap of the Worker's Party mounted by the collaborationist bureaucracy of the COB. The tragedy of the mining proletariat is that the collaborationist bureaucracy of the COB has managed to dissolve the revolutionary Alliance of workers and poor peasants which had been welded during the revolutionary fighting in the 2003-05 and with which we defeated the Government of Goni and then Carlos
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Meanwhile the reformists as the LOR-CI /PTS claim that the brutal repression of Morales is explained by having them launched the shamefacedly electoral PT with the bureaucracy of the COB, so making believe it was a true fighting policy and strengthening the position of the bureaucracy and its mockery of the PT. While the POR denunciation and ranting against the bureaucracy of the COB, do not explain that it was it which defeated the two great general strikes against the Government and the MNCs, ensuring the mineworkers not to intervene through the subjugation of the Huanuni mineworkers to Morales's Government from the 31st Congress of the FSTMB; Congress that the POR in its time congratulated as "radical and anti ruling party". This is the role of the "popular front of combat", put in place between the POR which is still holding its old reformist politics of the Anti-imperialist United Front-, Solares, Quispe and former Trotskyists of the LOR-CI, LIT-CI, PO, etc., which have divided among themselves the tasks to support from the left the popular front of Morales. In order to conquer our demands: jobs, wages, free education and health to give the land to the poor peasants: We must set up again the revolutionary Alliance of workers and poor peasants to defeat Morales government which is a servant of Wall Street and Morgan Bank Congress of delegates from COB, one every 100 workers, militant students and poor peasants to vote a fight plan and revolutionary general strike
The militant miners, factory workers and teachers must call to set up in Huanuni a big Congress of rank and file delegates from COB, one every 100 workers, poor peasants and militant students, to change the begging for crumbs by the bureaucracy to a real fight plan and to prepare a real revolutionary general strike conquering workers and peasants alliance to defeat the government and the infamous pact of Morales and fascist Media Luna! For the return of the 2003-2005 revolution to be led to victory establishing a Workers and Peasants government of COB based on direct democracy and its militias, which is the only one that can guarantee all our demands! Whether proletarian revolution returns with its militias from COB in 52 o there will be more defeats for the submission to the bourgeoisie, whether by the PT for the elections of the bureaucracy with the RAF of the fake Trotskyists called POR! Out with exploiters! Expropriation of imperialist TNCs, without compensation and under worker control to
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In order to triumph: we must fight as the miners of Marikana, Libya and the entire Northern Africa and Middle East! We must re-take the path to the revolution of 2003-05 and this time lead to the triumph imposing a revolutionary government of COB, based on their workers and peasants militias! Only this government can break with imperialism and will carry on a real agrarian reform. The working class and its vanguard must call their class brothers all over the continent and particularly to the miners of Peru, Chile and Argentina, so they can face the same class enemy together that over exploit us and plunder our nations: imperialism and TNCs. For a continental fight against imperialism, TNCs and their lackeys Bolivarian and the FTA governments. They are all guarantors of selling out our national sources to the imperialist voracity. The Miners vanguard of Huanuni have been deepening the process of breaking with Morales government and they are now fighting again in the streets, with dynamites in their hands. This way of fighting that they retook was anticipated by the events in Colquiri and cost the life of Hector Choque in hands of the cooperativist bosses. It was also anticipated by the unions elections early this year, where miners voted for the Green List headed by leaders of POR and 600 miners voted for the program of Trotskyism expressed in the Blue List. However, miners and all workers dont have a revolutionary internationalist leadership that can lead them to the victory, as they didnt have this leadership in 2003/05. To win we must set up this revolutionary leadership, we must refound Trotskyism, the one of the 4th International, which in 1946 gave the miners the program to win and to take power expressed in the Pulacayo Thesis. This is the party that the working class needs and deserves as part of the fight to refound the 4th International of 1938. 13 May 2013 We reproduce the above article from the FLTI http://flti-ci.org/index_eng.html [original title Bolivia: Breaking news]. Despite our programmatic differences causing our split from the FLTI in 2010, and our view (currently under review) that Cuba has not yet completed the process of capitalist restoration, we continue to agree with the the FLTI position on Bolivia.
Against the reformist policy of POR of calling their police friends to join the struggle of workers, we, the workers, must fight for: Dissolution of the police! Against the repression of the government and its hunt dogs of the police: lets set up Self-defense committees in the way to conquer workers and peasant militias based on destroying the murderous officer caste and setting up Rank and file Soldiers Committees. For worker and popular courts to judge and punish all the killers of workers and poor peasants in October 2003. Immediate freedom and end of prosecution to all miners, teachers and factory workers prosecuted for Morales government! End of prosecutions of the oil workers of Las Heras! Liberty to the prisoners of Ayo Ayo, Guantanamo and all political prisoners of the world! Down with the capitalist restoration of Cuba imposed by the Bolivarian Castroist bourgeoisie which is lackey of US imperialism!
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Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist today, standing between the working class and socialism are political, social and cultural barriers. They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that Marxism is a living science that explains both capitalisms continued exploitation and its attempts to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist party, produces a revolutionary classconsciousness.
New Zealand/Aotearoa, in a Liaison Committee of Communists with Communist Workers Group (USA) and Revolutionary Workers Group (Zimbabwe)
Online at http://redrave.blogspot.com Phone +64 0272800080 Email cwg006@yahoo.com Archive http://communistworker.blogspot.com/
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