On September 20, the Bush administration released a new National Security Strategy (NSS) document. The document justifies US aggression on a world scale – pre-emptive strikes, “regime change”, unilateral action. “We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively”, it states.

Bush’s National Security Strategy document – his “manifesto” for imperialism – justifies aggression on a world scale, pre-emptive strikes, “regime change”, unilateral action. “We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively.” It demands – asserts – total rule of the globe by US imperialism.

Comrades, this has been a very good conference, especially the liveliness and the seriousness of the discussion. At the end of most sessions there’s still been a of hands unable to get the call to speak! I think this reflects both the international political situation, and the keen interest sparked by the DSP’s proposals regarding the Socialist Alliance (SA). Certainly for next Resistance conference you’ll have to consider changing the agenda, to allow longer sessions for discussion.

On September 2, the Democratic Socialist Party’s national executive agreed to propose to the party’s membership that the DSP cease to operate as a public organisation from January 2003 so as to devote much more resources to building the Socialist Alliance.

The second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference, held in Sydney March 28-April 1 was an outstanding success. Seven hundred and fifty people, including international participants from more than thirty countries, attended.

Exhausting but exhilarating, sometimes a bit chaotic, but always politically stimulating, it provided a unique opportunity for left activists in the Asia Pacific region to get together, exchange views, discuss politics and build closer collaboration and foster solidarity actions with each other’s struggles.

In this period of a stepped up ideological offensive by the ruling class, with the neoliberal attack on all past working class gains, the glorification of the market economy, the boasting about the end of communism, many on the left have retreated.

This is a report that tries to take a long-term look at building the party, as well as addressing our current party-building tasks and perspectives. It’s in the context of a significant change in the world situation, where although imperialism’s offensive against the people of the world is just as fierce, just as irrational.

The decision of the Sydney Palm Sunday 2002 organising committee to ban participation by members of the Democratic Socialist Party sets a dangerous precedent. Parties and other political organisations obviously have a right to determine their membership, based on their political program or basis of interest and whatever rules they choose.

Among Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s most outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of Marxism are his writings on nationalism and the national question.

Assembled in this volume are a comprehensive selection, presented in chronological order, of Lenin’s writings on this subject covering the period from the preparations for the second congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903 to the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922.

”The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy [are] to prevent collusion and maintain security among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”. This statement was not made by an official in the ancient Roman imperial bureaucracy. It was made by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a central figure in the US foreign policy elite, national security adviser to us President Jimmy Carter and chief architect of Washington’s policy of creating a network of fanatically anti-communist Islamic terrorists to spearhead the counter-revolutionary war against the Afghan workers and peasants’ government in the late 1970s.