Anti-nuclear campaigning
Greg Adamson's anti-nuclear movement history is wonderful, so many memories come back. Every paragraph deserves to be amplified. Could you provide a special space for readers' recollections?
The reference to the Perth marches against US warship visits reminded me of the surrounding debates.
People for Nuclear Disarmament argued its opposition entirely on sexual morality. US sailors were "seducing innocent young WA girls" and leaving them broken-hearted. It seems hilarious now but that was the line pushed by PND leaders Annabel Newberry-Knight and Jo Vallentine.
Perth socialists not only opposed this stupidity, we circumvented it. For one of the huge flotillas we distributed a leaflet headed "Don't Die for Exxon" with a gory photo of a tank laden with dead Vietnam War GIs. It was poorly printed but we swarmed the streets and discos giving it to the sailors and marines.
It was effective because later flotillas were warned en route to Perth not to accept the communist propaganda. But we got around that, too. We got in a load of high-quality presidential campaign literature from the US Socialist Workers Party featuring Andrew Pulley, a black candidate.
It blew the minds of black servicemen especially to have someone approach them so far from home and say "I want you to vote for this man for president". They could not be indoctrinated against accepting election material, even left-wing material. Several visited the Resistance Bookshop, bought up big and talked about racism and the military.
The PND leadership actively opposed politically influencing these "workers in uniform". Their conservatism prevented mobilising the broad anti-war movement to cripple the US war machine from within.
Sydney
Defining nations
Stalin defined a nation as: "a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up, manifested in a common culture".
Doug Lorimer (GLW #357) points out that both Lenin and Trotsky agreed with Stalin's article on the national question. Nevertheless, I am not altogether satisfied with this definition. What is meant by the "psychological make-up" of a nation? Does it mean (for example) that some nations are warlike while others are peaceful? Conflicts in the Balkans are often "explained" by the "warlike" nature of the peoples of the area.
I acknowledge that elements of national culture passed on from one generation to the next through family, school, church, etc. can have an impact on people's "psychology" today. For example, the Serbian myths about the medieval battle of Kosova make it easier for Milosevic to stir up hostility to the Albanians in Kosova today. But to talk of the "psychological make-up" of a nation implies that all members of a nation have the same psychology, which is not the case.
Other questions which I have are: How does the theory cope with situations where some but not all elements of the definition of a nation are present? How does the theory cope with situations where ethnic groups are intermingled in a given territory?
For example, in Bosnia neither the Serbs, Croats nor Muslims are an absolute majority. There is a high rate of intermarriage between the 3 groups. A significant proportion of the population used to identify as "Yugoslavs" (rather than Serbs, Croats or Muslims). Today many of these people identify as "Bosnians". Who has the right of self-determination? The separate Serb, Croat and Muslim "nations"? Or the "Bosnian nation"?
Perhaps Doug Lorimer would like to comment on these issues.
Melbourne
[Abridged.]
Termite poison
Is there an answer to large doses of chemicals sitting under the home to control termites, which can cause the home to become toxic — commonly known as sick building syndrome? Australia pours approximately 275 million litres of chemical on the ground each year to kill termites, and that's enough to poison 25% of the water on the Great Barrier Reef in one year alone.
Research by Professor Enrique Ostrea of Wayne State University in the US and Doctor John Whitehall, director of neonatology at Kirwan Women's Hospital in Townsville, said "samples from local babies showed traces of chemicals used in termite killers, scabies treatments and sugar cane pesticides". Townsville is not an agricultural centre and these chemicals should not be showing up.
Local councils in the southern states such as Ku-ring-gai Municipal Council are leading the way by encouraging the use of non-chemical termite protection. The small town of Kenilworth in the Maroochy Shire Council area is taking that a step further by requesting the town be made free of herbicides and pesticides.
A Townsville manufacturing company, JOSU Corporation, leads the world in chemically free termite control. A spokesman said the JOSU termite control fittings can be installed in any plumbing or electrical system and by building the concrete floor to the Australian Standard AS 2870.
The building system is called "Building Monolithically", i.e., from one side to the other without a joint. Any person can purchase the JOSU fittings from the local hardware and install them before the concrete is poured monolithically.
As we lead the world in the chemically free termite control with fully patented systems that are available off the shelf and manufactured in Australia, we now need to educate builders to use the products.
Queensland
[Abridged.]
World masters
Any remaining vestiges of doubt regarding the intellectual and ethical/moral bankruptcy of the Australian Institute of "Management" (AIM) have been finally swept away with their widespread and expensive advertisement of the performance "LIVE, on stage, ALL IN ONE DAY" (May 30 at Melbourne Park) of several of the most ruthless and anti-social "masters" in the modern world.
Under banner headlines of "WORLD MASTERS OF BUSINESS ... 1999 Australian Tour", the man who oversaw the collapse of the corrupt system in the former USSR and the re-introduction of an even more corrupt system — under which the same class of wealthy elites continue to prosper while millions of their fellow citizens have been thrown on the scrap heap or go unpaid for months, amid a series of environmental disasters of mind-numbing proportion — is on the same platform as his former long-time sworn enemy, US military supremo General Schwarzkopf, whose "dynamic leadership" has contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands or more of innocent, non-combat Iraqi citizens, including women and children.
Such "world masters of business" will be complemented by, among lesser notables, one Al (Chainsaw) Dunlap, one of the more ruthless members of the US managerial class, whose notoriety and nickname derive from his "leadership" skills (?) in "cost-cutting and restoring shareholder value".
One of his more infamous assignments resulted in his sacking tens of thousands of workers at Kimberly Clark in the USA, for which he is reliably said to have walked away with a management fee of US$100,000,000! The same individual was called upon to "doctor" or "restructure" the Packer empire, with similar outcome.
Still, the AIM "initiative" at least brings out into the open for all to see the symbiotic relationship between big business, oppression, politics and profits!
Traralgon Vic
US hypocrisy
During the past several weeks US reporters on network television and in major newspapers have conscientiously imparted the plight of ethnic Albanians residing in and fleeing Kosovo while US-led NATO forces are depicted as liberators valiantly battling the Serbs to arrest the mounting humanitarian crisis.
In the 1970s and intensifying in the 1980s, Guatemalans and Salvadorans were victims of ethnic cleansing as their countries became theatres of state-sponsored mass murder. Those occasional reports which were published or broadcast concentrated on guerrilla violence and relied nearly exclusively on information supplied by US, Guatemalan and Salvadoran government sources.
Many pundits contend that past US actions in Central America and elsewhere can reasonably be attributed to the Cold War and present US endeavours in Yugoslavia are predicated on an authentic concern for human rights abroad. To posit this argument, however, requires an ignorance of events in Colombia, Turkey and other nations, which the US media dutifully ensures. As the primary recipient of US foreign aid and training under the guise of a "war on drugs", the Colombian military in alliance with paramilitary associates is one of the leading human rights violators in the world, implicated in the vast majority (an estimated 85%) of the more than 30,000 politically motivated killings in the last decade.
The contemporary US commitment to international human rights was further illustrated in an interview with Secretary of State (then ambassador to the UN) Madeleine Albright a few years ago. Asked about claims that US-imposed sanctions had resulted in the death of half a million Iraqi children, Albright was questioned on whether the pursuit of US policy was worth this price, to which she responded: "we think the price is worth it".
Hamilton, Canada
[Abridged.]
Nuclear ammunition
Does Australia support the use of nuclear weapons in the NATO strikes in Yugoslavia?
I ask this question because today NATO admitted that it has used "depleted uranium" bombs on Yugoslav targets. NATO commanders on the BBC (May 14) stated the following:
1. These were not dangerous bombs.
2. They were not atomic bombs.
3. The amount of uranium released was equivalent to the amount of uranium that was in the air whilst travelling in a train.
Ask yourself why is NATO using these bombs if they are not hazardous bombs! Has the media gone mad? Why isn't the media questioning these ridiculous allegations? Do not any of us remember the lies of the Pentagon in the 1960s and 1970s and the book called The Pentagon Papers which revealed all at the time?
These "nuclear depleted" weapons are now acceptable nuclear ammunition in NATO's bombing! What a disgrace the West has foisted upon itself.
I do not hear the cries of the Foreign Minister Mr Downing. Why is the Australian Government not protesting about the use of these bombs? After all, Australia did object to the use of atomic tests by the French and other governments.
Netherby SA