International solidarity

On the one hand there is a highly militarised state, with one of the best equipped armed forces in the world, generously subsidised by billions of dollars in Western military and non-military aid. On the other hand there are 1½ million people, subjects of this state, which has herded them into a walled ghetto on which it imposes a starvation siege.

“Civilians were the overwhelming majority of the more than 1400 people Israel killed in it’s 2009 assault on Gaza. Today, Israel is beginning another assault. A quarter of the Palestinians killed so far are children, including babies,” Sue Bolton, newly elected Socialist Alliance member of the Moreland City Council said.

Policy background

Successive Australian governments are using the pretext of the “war on terror” and the danger of “failed states” to aggressively assert and extend imperialist domination of the Asia Pacific region.

Australia is the economic and military giant of the region, responsible for:

Policy background

The Socialist Alliance recognises the essential role that international, including Australian, imperialism plays in supporting the Israeli system of apartheid and occupation through massive political, economic and military aid. It condemns the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the state of Israel and the denial of Palestinian rights by Israel throughout what was historic Palestine, both within the 1948 borders of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The Socialist Alliance demands that the Sri Lankan government stops the bombing, shelling and all military operations against the Tamil minority, and starts political negotiations based on the right to self-determination of the Tamils. We also demand the Australian government:

Over the last two decades mass movements of the oppressed have arisen across Latin America to challenge neoliberalism and US corporate domination. These movements are a response to the brutal neoliberal polices enforced in the 1980s and 1990s by the US government and international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The struggle for profit leads inevitably to war. For this reason opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the proxy wars being waged by imperialist powers around the world, are closely interconnected with the fight for global social and economy justice.

Morocco invaded and illegally occupied Western Sahara in 1975. Since then more than 165,000 Saharawis have been living in refugee camps in South West of Algeria in dire conditions, and facing the threat of violence and imprisonment, waiting to return to their homeland.