UN and Gulf War
At a public meeting hosted by the United Nations Association of Australia and Greenhouse Action Australia, Dr Noel Brown, Regional Director, North America, United Nations Environment Programme, stated that the United Nations should look clearly at the consequences of the decision to support armed conflict in the Gulf.
Brown added that the UN had set a precedent with its decision, a decision that was taken "behind closed doors" contravening the integrity of its charter, and should set a second precedent by establishing a commission to investigate and assess the extent of the damage done, who is to be held responsible and who will bear the financial cost.
According to Brown, the war in the Gulf came in under budget. Brown stated that the UN will recommend that the remaining funds be directed to the environmental rehabilitation of the Gulf.
Brown had recently visited the Gulf and discovered that the extent of the damage may not be fully realized for years to come. The UN has counted to date 560 oil well fires. Further reports indicate a further 100 wells ablaze. The Gulf waters prior to the war were already 45 times more polluted than any other body of water in the world. It is a heavily salinated shallow body of water feeding into some of the most sensitive ecosystems of the Middle East.
With soot being reported on the slopes of the Himalayas, black rain in Turkey, clouds of dust raised by heavy artillery fire adrift in the stratosphere, it is clear, concluded Brown, that the world must overcome its pathological desire to destroy what precious little we have left to sustain life on Earth.
Andrew Garton
Melbourne
Sports
Rosemary Evans (April 17) criticises the suggestion that sports coverage be included in Green Left on the grounds hat "we get endless and enormous coverage of sports on television ... and ... in all newspapers already". The same criticism could be made of the coverage of political, social and environmental issues, all of which get considerable coverage in the mainstream press.
What the mainstream press lacks is a coverage of issues that gives analysis from an alternative green and left perspective. Green Left does this, thus justifying its existence. This is also true in sports coverage.
I agree that it would be inappropriate to give descriptive accounts of sporting events in Green Left given the extensive coverage of that in the mainstream press.
However, little is said in this press of the continual manipulation of popular Australian pastimes by advertisers and television stations in order to further their commercial interests.
The mainstream press has a large vested interest in maintaining this silence given their commercial interest in sport. It is therefore regrettable that left newspapers might shy away from reporting on this issue. I feel that many people must be concerned about this commercial manipulation of their interests, and to deny them objective reportage of this issue is unfair.
Malcolm Abbott
Fitzroy
Editorials
Look at most newspapers and you will find a section entitled Editorial. These editorials presume to be an echo of the thoughts of their readership. Yet these editorials can be seen as a way of manipulating the minds of the readers by a small group of writers week after week. This is a long way from what Greens see as an egalitarian process.
Though the editorials of the Green Left Weekly are written in such a way as not to be manipulative, the use of this style of reporting may in default fall into that category one day. Even only through the reader not analysing information for themselves and relying on the editorial for their thoughts.
In a paper such as the Green Left I also feel the readers will get confused by the difference in "Left Theories" and the emerging "Green Philosophy". The two are similar in some respects but are not identical.
Ideally the Green Left Weekly should drop the editorial section. Because if we expect society to change we must first change ourselves.
Ian Murrell
Arana Hills Qld
Kurds don't have oil
Surely the way the US betrayed Iraqis (Kurds are Iraqis too) was exactly the way it betrayed invading Cuban right-wingers at Playa Giró (Bay of Pigs) in 1961, and the South Vietnamese in 1975. Whenever it looks as if its allies may lose, US scuttles home, leaving them to bear the brunt of defeat.
I don't remember US telling Chileans to rise against murderous Pinochet, whose bloodthirsty regime was for 16 years perfectly acceptable to various American presidents.
And, of course, Kurds don't have oil.
Rosemary Evans
St Kilda