The rise of China has produced tensions with the US, and shows how imperialist patterns of great power competition still define our world, writes Feiyi Zhang

Review: All Along the Watchtower, by Michael Hyde, The Vulgar Press, $32.95.

The avalanche of secret US diplomatic cables has raised the rage of world leaders against Julian Assange and Wikileaks to fever pitch. They have launched a concerted international campaign to shut Assange and Wikileaks down—seemingly by whatever means at their disposal.

The Gillard Labor government has further committed itself to the US alliance, agreeing to a major increase in US military operations and use of military bases in Australia.

George W Bush once described the invasion of Iraq as a “noble mission” targeting terrorists who had an “utter contempt for innocent life”. Thousands of US military documents leaked to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, however, reveal where the real “utter contempt for innocent life” lies.

As the war in Afghanistan approaches its 10th anniversary, political support for it among Western rulers is crumbling.

Barack Obama’s much-lauded nuclear summit in April was nothing more than a show of muscle by the world’s biggest nuclear powers, in an increasingly volative global environment. Despite his talk of efforts to create a “nuclear free world”, Barack Obama showed that he has no plans to abandon US nuclear supremacy.

Review: What’s Wrong with Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History
Edited byMarilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, University of New South Wales Press, $29.95

Review: The Hurt Locker
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, In cinemas now

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 they thought they were in for an easy victory. But they underestimated the power of the resistance, writes Dave Crouch

NATO began a massive new offensive in Afghanistan in February when 15,000 troops began an assault on the southern provincial town of Marjah. Operation Moshtarak is the biggest offensive since the 2001 and after two weeks of heavy fighting NATO commanders were claiming victory.

Foreign affairs Minister Stephen Smith claimed the elections in Afghanistan would be “an important step for Afghanistan’s developing democracy”. Instead they have seen the credibility of the US-led occupation completely collapse after Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of a planned run-off election on November 7.

Afghanistan has reached a turning point. Recent media headlines such as “where Empires go to die” and “Afghanistan: Tipping Point” signal that after eight years, the future of Western control of the country looks doubtful.

Seventy years after the end of World War II, it is still celebrated as the good war, a necessary war for democracy to counter the threat of fascism.

At the end of July Private Benjamin Ranaudo became the eleventh Australian soldier to die in Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan is rapidly spreading into Pakistan to create what is becoming known as the Af-Pak war. The US has undertaken about 48 drone air strikes in Pakistan since the beginning of 2008, killing about 465 people. The attacks are focused along the border areas with Afghanistan.

Malalai Joya visited Australia recently to promote her new book, which tells the story of how civil war and foreign intervention have ripped Afghanistan apart, and why the government supported by the US-led occupiers is every bit as vicious as the Taliban was. She spoke to Solidarity.

Review: Katyn,
Directed by Andrzej Wadja

In early May the Rudd government released Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030, a White Paper detailing their defence plans for the coming years. The paper argues for a further melding of Australian and US military forces and an extension of Australia’s imperial reach in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US has blamed Hamas for causing Israel’s assault. Kevin Rudd has called them a “terrorist organisation”. Israel would have us believe they are “Islamic terrorists” who cannot be negotiated with. In fact Hamas are the legitimate elected leaders of the Palestinians.

Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza has, once again, been willingly backed by the US. Israel is the key US ally in the Middle East. Its army is, in effect, an extension of the US military due to massive US military aid. This is set at $3 billion a year for the next decade—the most received by any single country.

IRAQ WAR resisters in Canada received an important victory in late September. On September 22 Jeremy Hinzman and his family successfully appealed their deportation order. The family was scheduled for deportation the next day.

Academic and author Elaheh Rostami-Povey visited Sydney recently, speaking on her research in Afghanistan under the US-led occupation. Below we reprint part of a speech she gave

THIS IS shaping up to be the bloodiest year on record since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began in 2001.

Review: Waltz With Bashir
Directed by Ari Folman, Limited cinema release

Review: Australians At War: A Pictorial History
By A. K. MacDougall, The Five Mile Press, RRP $39.95, 2008 edition

Activists from around the country are celebrating the cancellation of the first arms fair planned in Australia in 17 years.

Solidarity interviewed one of the key thinkers from the global justice movement, Walden Bello, of Focus on the Global South, during his visit to Sydney to talk about the decline of US power

Review: Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn, Allen and Unwin $29.95

Hiroshima Day in Sydney
12.30pm, Sat August 2, at Town Hall
Abolish all nuclear weapons: come to the march and rally
www.hiroshimacommittee.org

Hiroshima Day in Melbourne
Sat August 9, 1pm State Library
http://www.nukefreeaus.org/

AS SOLIDARITY grows to print, radical Shia leader Moqtada Al Sadr had postponed plans for a million strong march in Baghdad calling for an end to the presence of foreign troops. With the forces of Iraqi president Nouri El Maliki backed up by US troops continuing to attack Al Sadr’s Mahdi army, he was threatening to lift the agreed ceasefire. This comes after the El Maliki launched an offensive against the Mahdi army in Basra two weeks ago.

What was the purpose of the Winter Soldier testimonies?

JANUARY 2008 marked the 40th anniversary of the Vietnamese “Tet Offensive” against US and South Vietnamese armies. On the 31st of January 1968 the National Liberation Front (NLF) entered 36 major towns and cities in South Vietnam. Since the beginning of the war three years earlier the US had been backing the southern government with troops, armaments and aid. The vast majority of this war was fought out in the countryside. But in the second half of 1967 the NLF had begun planning an incursion into the south with the aim of either defeating the US rapidly, or forcing the US into a gradual withdrawal.

In the Valley of ElahWritten and directed by Paul Haggis

IN ITS campaign for yet another war, members of George W Bush’s decaying administration have been making almost daily condemnations of Iran over its uranium enrichment and its support for Hamas, Hezbollah or Shia militias inside Iraq.

HUNDREDS RALLIED across the country to mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on March 16. The demonstrations were smaller than previous anniversary rallies, with 350 in Sydney, 400 in Melbourne and 100 in Brisbane.

After five years, war in Iraq continues without pause. Turkey’s invasion of northern Iraq is further evidence that the headaches for US imperialism in controlling the region continue to grow.

Rudd’s aggressive determination to support NATO in Afghanistan is almost the flip side to that of his position on Iraq, seeing it as the “good” war, with the occupation of Iraq the “wrong” war. The Labor government sees Afghanistan as the real war on terror, where the west is confronting “Islamofascism” and fighting to “liberate Afghani women”.

by Jean Parker

MAY DAY in the US this year was marked by dockworkers along the West Coast taking industrial action against the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some 25,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), representing 29 ports from Seattle to San Diego, took part in the 8-hour day stoppage during their busy day shift.

IN LATE March this year the sixth Cairo Conference was held. Hundreds of representatives from opposition parties and organisations including the Muslim Brotherhood attended as well as international participants.

ONE HUNDRED years ago the United States was the biggest oil producer in the world. California alone accounted for 22 per cent of global output.