US left
Having friends in the U.S.A. with roughly the same politics as myself has meant that we regularly swap information about local and international events.
The latest news concerning Cuba, El Salvador and Guatemala might be of interest to readers of Green Left.
Different groups are calling Congresspeople "in an effort to head off economic aid to El Salvador until voters cards are all distributed and death squad activity ceases."
The next "Friendshipment" to Cuba will pass through Arizona in early March and some people from Phoenix are going.
Letters are being written about the blockade on Cuba, stating that it has been lifted against Vietnam for trade, so why not Cuba.
Some groups are also pushing for Congress to end joint U.S.-Guatemalan military exercises. "Our (U.S.) and National Guard troops are going down there ostensibly to help the people by building roads, medical clinics and drilling wells."
"This is how they characterised it when they went into Honduras and helped the Contras."
As my friends have contacts with groups in Central America, any action by the U.S. is seen only as a means to wipe out all opposition to right-wing forces.
A. Gibson
Penrith NSW
Fluoridation
It's hard to believe the ideologists who are advocating the fluoridation of the water supplies that their purpose is to reduce the incidence of tooth decay in children.
The plausibility of this excuse, plus the gullibility of the public and the cupidity of the public officials is responsible for the present spread of artificial water fluoridation in this country.
The water fluoridation proponents target children aged between 0 and 12 years and say it drastically reduces the incidence of tooth decay of young children. This is humbug. No study has proved this statement.
Figures show out of the millions of tons of hydrofluoric acid or sodium silico fluoride, depending on which municipality you live in, only 0.01% reaches the target group.
Where's the ethics or realistic approach of reducing tooth decay in pouring a S8 schedule poisons warning (fluoride) into the drinking water?
Don Mackay
Port Macquarie NSW
Spies
What a funny world we live in. The hugely embarrassing revelation that a senior CIA officer (Ames) was a double agent for the Russians, has caused a U.S. senate committee to pressure the bastion of propriety Willy Clinton into suspending U.S. aid to Russia.
Sounds fair enough — after all the world has changed since the end of the cold war ... maybe the CIA has gone from playing dominoes to playing draughts at Langley, Virginia. But no the good senators' argument (CNN) was along the lines "we're supplying the aid money so we can still spy on them" (Ames' main charge was dobbing in Russians spying for the U.S.).
Poor old Boris Yeltsin about to address the Russian Parliament after "solving' the Balkans war and winning western aid — finds himself labelled a spy; U.S. aid possibly suspended and the people he tried to destroy in the previous Russian parliament (Rutskoi and co.) have been pardoned overwhelmingly by the new one. Maybe he should seek warmer climates a la Porky Norman Schwartzkopf, who's reporting the Lillehammer Games.
Robert Wood
Surry Hills NSW
Health reforms
Chris Spindler's article about the proposed reforms to the health system in the Feb 16th issue of Green Left deserves further comment. So-called "casemix" funding of private and public hospitals is a bipartisan attempt to limit the voracious appetite for public money which characterises medical diagnosis and treatment services in Australia.
Meanwhile, illness prevention and health promotion activities are seriously underfunded, and the community health sector is in an unseemly shambles. As a consequence, Australia has one of the highest hospital admission rates per head of population in the western world. By reforming the way in which hospitals are funded while at the same time insisting on efficiencies, resources will hopefully be freed up for use at the community level, before people get seriously ill.
The driving force behind the current system's preoccupation with diagnoses, diseases and treatments are multinational drug companies, the medical profession, and the various purveyors of high tech hospital equipment, All three groups are politically powerful and have a strong vested interest in not closing the barn door until after the horse has bolted — ie until after people have become ill.
It is fair to say that, so far, the debate in Australia about "casemix" funding of hospitals has been inconclusive. However, one of the greatest difficulties will be gaining the acceptance of the medical profession and, in particular, of the specialists and their industrial body, the AMA.
The reason for their opposition is that this way of funding hospitals will require specialists to limit their charges to previously agreed levels. By contrast, many specialists are charging whatever the market will stand. Their ability to get away with this behaviour is determined by their tight control of the number of new specialists being trained.
Unfortunately, it is hard to see how "casemix" or any other reform for that matter, can overcome such a difficult obstacle in the short term at least.
Peter Lake
Adelaide