Meeting at VUW: Socialism and the Fight Against War

Meeting at VUW: Socialism and the Fight Against War

Build an International Movement of the Working Class and Youth Against Imperialism!

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is holding a meeting at Victoria University of Wellington, to alert students, youth and workers to the greatest danger they face, the threat of a Third World War.

Meeting: Wednesday, April 13, 5p.m., in Student Union Building room SU220

Fifteen years after the US 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 support of successive New Zealand 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 US preparations for war with China.

The New Zealand and Australian ruling elites are dragging their populations into Washington’s confrontation with China. Australia’s Defence White Paper outlines expenditure of $195 billion on new submarines, warships, jet fighters and other military hardware over the next decade. US basing arrangements will be expanded and every aspect of economic life will be subordinated to the drive to war.

Since 2012, US troops have returned to New Zealand soil for regular training. Last year Edward Snowden revealed that the NZ spy agency, the GCSB, spies on China on behalf of the US National Security Agency. The opposition Labour Party and its allies, including the right wing, anti-immigrant NZ First Party, are seeking to divide the working class and pave the way for war by whipping up xenophobia against Chinese people, scapegoating them for the housing shortage and the social crisis.

The agenda being pursued by the imperialist powers in the US and Europe leads inexorably in the direction of nuclear war, with cataclysmic consequences for the entire population of the world.

The NZ political establishment—the National government, Labour, the Greens, the Mana Party and their pseudo-left apologists—and the corporate media have maintained a conspiracy of silence on 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 organised international movement opposing the reckless policies of the imperialist pyromaniacs.

This meeting, along with similar ones being held by the IYSSE on campuses across Australia and 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.

For more information, visit the World Socialist Web Site, www.wsws.org

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