Socialist alliance in the Qld elections?
The Democratic Socialists ran two candidates in the February 17 Queensland elections under a slogans: End corruption! Support socialism! For a workers' alternative to Labor!. The two candidates, Adam Baker for South Brisbane, and Coral Wynter for Brisbane Central, were, as far as I am aware, the only candidates raising the red flag of socialism in the whole state.
At a time when "economic rationalism" is the common ideology of both the Coalition and the ALP, the need for the building of a socialist alternative is greater than ever.
In this context it was pleasing to see in the February 9 issue of Socialist Worker, paper of the International Socialist Organisation, the call for "socialist alliances" to oppose economic rationalism:
"A real alternative needed would put people before profits, demand more money for schools and hospitals, not Super Stadiums, union rights, taxing the rich, an end to land clearing and real land rights for Aboriginal people.
"Such an alternative could bring together all the resistance and struggles of those who hate the Coalition and have fought the economic rationalism of Beattie's Labor."
It was, however, disappointing that Socialist Worker didn't go on to take note of, let alone give endorsement to, the Democratic Socialist campaign in the Queensland elections, many of whose policies are virtually summarised in the passage above.
Hopefully, this oversight will be rectified in the near future. And, as the preparations for a nation-wide socialist alliance of left parties in the coming federal elections gather momentum, past sectarianism on all sides will gradually be overcome.
Jim McIlroy
Brisbane secretary
Democratic Socialist Party
Waste
The Waste Crisis Network is delighted to hear that a recent Commonwealth study of kerbside recycling shows the community is still committed to protecting the environment by eliminating waste.
We are even more delighted that in NSW an inquiry is underway to investigate the introduction of refundable deposits on beverage containers and other types of packaging. Such a scheme has been introduced in South Australia with considerable success. To solve the waste crisis we need to look, in this way, beyond recycling.
However, we are alarmed by recent developments in the overall management of waste in this state. Most recently and importantly government approval has been given to a monstrous landfill site 35km south of Goulburn which will take waste from Sydney for the next 50 years. Is it right for city dwellers to dump on their friends in the country in this way?
In an effort to help solve the waste crisis affecting communities, not just in NSW but around the world, we recommend a waste elimination strategy by adopting a zero waste policy. This has been developed by the Waste Crisis Network. Recently endorsed and adopted by the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, the strategy aims to achieve zero waste by 2010.
The zero waste strategy, and further information about the other issues mentioned above, can be found on the Waste Crisis Network's web site at <http://www.nccnsw.org.au/waste>.
Virginia Milson
Convenor, Waste Crisis Network
Sydney
@letterhead =
Viv Miley's expose of Labor's expensive fantasy of University of Australia Online is a welcome contribution to Green Left's coverage of the upcoming Federal elections ("Higher Education on the Line", GLW #436). It exposes the shallow nature of the ALP's promises and shows up the mirage of actually existing online education.
Miley uses good research from the National Tertiary Education Union to do this and indeed there is more available. However, the NTEU's own response to the release of the Knowledge Nation policy is far from unequivocal in its critique.
NTEU's first press release ("A Bold Start for Knowledge Nation", 21/1/2001) cautiously welcomes the policy and its promises of expanded places and lifelong learning opportunities. It is a chance for universities to develop relationships of cooperation rather than competition and commercialisation. The crisis of workloads and lack of infrastructure and training programs are detailed in the press release as problems that a future Labor government will have to address.
At this stage the union has not endorsed the policy. NTEU is in a bind, however. Its federal election strategy revolves around a targeted seats campaign that seeks to make higher education a priority issue, but is unlikely to endorse candidates to the left of the ALP that champion the union's own policies on social justice, education, unions and reconciliation.
There is a grave danger that this will be another "throw the Coalition out"-style campaign that some unions have pursued in recent elections. This amounts to active support for the ALP.
Having opted for this style of campaign, NTEU will find it politically difficult to comprehensively criticise the ALP's policies in the depth that Miley has done. The result will be a half-hearted response (at best) when workers in the industry need the kind of scrutiny shown by Miley.
Jeremy Smith
Branch president, University of Ballarat NTEU
Ballarat Vic
Angels
I thought the movie Charlie's Angels was awesome because of its superstrong women characters. Of course, there's a dodgy overemphasis on their beauty. But I think to characterise the film as nothing more than anti-feminist, as Alison Dellit does (GLW #434), misses something.
A study done on women who watched the '70s TV series revealed interesting tactics on the part of these viewers. The study found many women preferred to turn off the TV before Charlie phoned to give the Angels their next assignment, thus avoiding this patriarchal closure and thus creating their own ending.
An assessment of Charlie's Angels as simply anti-feminist fails to acknowledge the many feminist readings that can be made from the movie and classifies viewers of Charlie's Angels (mostly young women) as passive victims of their chosen popular culture.
Popular culture is above all contradictory. It serves the interests of those that consume it and help to construct it but also runs counter to their interests.
Popular culture can be viewed as a site of struggle between those who have power and those who don't. A characterisation of it as simply top-down fails to appreciate the role that the mass of people play in making popular culture popular and using it for their own ends.
Jo Ellis
Darwin
More with Gore
Phil Shannon misses so much else in his recent assesment of the life and work of Gore Vidal (GLW #436). While Phil tends towards sometimes formulaic reviews — "so and so was kosher then went bad" — Vidal doesn't play by those rules.
He is a classic liberal. His outlook belongs in the last century fostered by the sentiments of the bourgeois revolutions. But he has a steeled purity of approach that has shielded him from wallowing in pragmatism.
When you are related to Al Gore and Jackie Kennedy, and you are a regular guest at Jimmy Carter's ranch, then you know that you're part of the establishment — and Gore Vidal recognises that. He even calls electoral politics "the family business".
The fact that he broke from the comfortable assumptions inherent in his ruling-class roots and sustains a savage critique of the US establishment indicates that he is somewhat culturally significant. Even compared to the "New York intellectuals" — the Norman Mailers, the Mary McCarthys, the Woody Allens, et al — with their dilettantish on again/off again radicalism, Vidal is streets ahead.
So he's not a socialist: that hardly makes him unique. My view is that if you are looking for commentary on how the liberal promise of capitalism simply doesn't work — then Vidal's your man. Compared to most of the rest in American arts and letters, you get more with Gore!
Dave Riley
Brisbane
Voices from the Valley
Thanks for your review of the Voices from the Valley CD (GLW #433), which raises the call to action against the woodchipping of Tasmania's Huon Valley.
Melbourne readers may wish to know that the benefit CD, soon to go into a second run of production, is also available at the Friends of the Earth Coop Store, at 312 Smith Street, Collingwood, Melbourne.
Robbie Casey
Sydney
Bob Dylan
I reject Phil Shannon's description of Bob Dylan as a "shell of his former self" (GLW #433). I would argue that Dylan's 1997 Time Out of Mind is among his finest works, at least as good as 1989's Oh Mercy.
Dylan's "degeneration" into the "apolitical" in the 1970s mirrors the degeneration of the 1960s counterculture into a drug-induced stupor (a stupor that was, incidentally, sponsored in part by the US State Department).
Moreover, the radical impulse of 1968, which gave the far left an unparalleled opportunity to become a significant political force, was dissipated in an orgy of political cults and idiotic sectarianism. So can anyone blame Bob Dylan for turning his back on the music of hope?
Moving out of the '60s counterculture probably saved Dylan from the same fate as the musical genius Jimi Hendrix or the magical and introspective songwriter Nick Drake, who committed suicide in 1973 at the age of 26.
Dylan today is the prophet of darkness and despair, a chronicler of the tragic loneliness, banality and cruelty of an individualised, atomised society. Unlike many Americans he has a sense of irony, a quality which some reviewers seem to miss. He is also able to parody himself.
His use of the Christian religious idiom is not surprising in a country where people often articulate their political interests in the language of faith rather than class. Would you criticise the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield for their use of the religious idiom to express their radical political and philosophical messages?
Jeff Richards
Stepney SA
Propaganda breakdown
It's claimed the Howard government has found itself sitting atop a vast mountain of consolidated revenue windfall, never before realized and far above and beyond any predictions or calculations for their new tax arrangement and GST etc. — though the great magician still insists we are all better off, taxwise.
Despite what the great magician and all his cunning stage assistants seem to be implying, I have this strong suspicion that such a record pile of revenue was not extracted from the bottom of an upturned top-hat but rather, in basic reality, from the back pocket of "Australia" — and, the majority of it, from the lower income/disadvatanged depths of it in particular.
Recently, it appears the Howard government has begun to bombard us (ad nauseum) with barrage after barrage of propaganda media releases claiming either how much cheaper we are all living orhow much less we're being taxed and how simplified it all is now or how great everything is going or how vast their present approval rating is etc., and all of it completely contradictory to the great majority of feelings and views I've been hearing expressed out here in reality land.
I fear for anybody working on or around John Howard and co's propaganda pump. The pressure-heads must be red hot, the bearings must be belching smoke and the whole thing must be violently lurching and vibrating with all critical overload indicators illuminated and screaming out for somebody to hit the big red emergency shut down button.
I swear, if they try to crank it up just one more RPM to push just one extra pound per square inch of crap through it, the main bearing is going to blow or the big fan belt is going to throw or something is going to go!
P.M.McVean
Darwin NT