The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is holding meetings in Australia and New Zealand to alert students, youth and workers to the greatest danger they face, the threat of a Third World War.
Fifteen years after the United States launched the “war on terror,” the entire world is being dragged into an ever-expanding maelstrom of imperialist violence. The invasions and interventions organized by the US, with the direct support and participation of successive Australian governments have devastated Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Amid the deepest crisis of the capitalist system since the 1930s, the war drive of the major imperialist powers has created flashpoints in every corner of the globe, any one of which could trigger a catastrophic global conflagration. The US and NATO are engaged in a massive rearmament program aimed at Russia. In the Asia-Pacific, the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” is embroiling the entire region in the United States’ preparations for war with China.
The Australian ruling elite has placed the entire population at the front and centre of Washington’s military confrontation with China. The Turnbull government’s Defence White Paper, released in February, outlines expenditure of $195 billion on new submarines, warships, jet fighters and an array of other military hardware over the next decade. US basing arrangements will be expanded, while every aspect of social and economic life will be subordinated to the drive to war.
The implications of the agenda being pursued by the imperialist powers in the United States, Australia and in Europe lead inexorably in the direction of a nuclear war, with cataclysmic consequences for the entire population of the world.
The Australian political establishment—Labor, the Liberals, the Greens and their pseudo-left apologists, as well as the corporate media—have maintained a conspiracy of silence over the criminal preparations for war with China.
This is because they know that among working people and youth, there is widespread anti-war sentiment. But there is, as yet, no organized international political movement opposing the reckless policies of the imperialist pyromaniacs.
This meeting, along with similar ones being held by the IYSSE on campuses across the United States, will review the present state of the global war drive, examine its causes and implications, and outline a political strategy for the building of a new mass, anti-war movement. We urge all students to attend.
Macquarie University
Thursday, March 31, 1pm
Campus Hub Building C10A, Level 3, Lindsey Room
University of Western Sydney
Thursday, April 7, 3pm
Bankstown Campus, Room BA01.1.099
(Please note change of date and time)
University of New South Wales
Thursday, April 7, 6:30pm
Central Lecture Block 4
Melbourne
Wednesday, April 13, 6:30pm
Arts House Meat Market, 5 Blackwood St. North Melbourne
University of Newcastle
Friday, April 15, 5pm
Clubhouse, under The Bar on the Hill
New Zealand
Victoria University of Wellington
Wednesday, April 13, 5pm
Student Union Building, Room SU220
Details for a meeting at Griffith University in Queensland will be posted soon.