Timor Gap
Warren Snowdon, MHR, says that exploration for oil in the Timor Gap in partnership with Indonesia is not connected to the Dili massacre and other human rights abuses in East Timor.
In fact, they are all results of the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia.
It is not only possible, but probable, that the prospect of a major oil field in the Timor Gap had a great influence on Indonesia's decision to invade and that Australia's de jure recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor stems from a desire to get a share of that oil at whatever cost of principle.
Mr. Snowdon's double stance does not wash.
C.M. Friel
Alawa NT
Arnott
Your biscuits article (Michael Rafferty, November 4) will do a good job promoting United States multi-national economic strategy in neo-colonies and colonies. This strategy has been detailed by hundreds of writers, including many Marxists. Marxists from the Caribbean have been very good at detailing this strategy. What did the Cuban Revolutionary Army do as soon as they took power in Cuba? They nationalized most foreign-owned banks and enterprises. M.R. is advocating the opposite, surrendering our Companies to foreign multi-nationals.
Nick Greiner's Master in Business Studies at Harvard would teach him to say the same thing. He spearheaded the privatization (ex-propriation) of hospitals, utilities, public service buildings, school buildings, land, rivers, lakes, super funds, highways, and forests. The reason the US Companies can't take over the Cuban Companies is that Cuba has an Army to defend itself. The Revolutionary Government will not allow this to happen. Von Clausewitz said, "War is business carried on by another means."
The Cuban "gusanos" in Miami have already drawn up their hit list of Cuban Companies they will take over, in the event of their destruction of the Cuban Government, and its Communist Party and leadership. Before Greiner was elected, his cronies drew up a hit list of public companies and enterprises in NSW that they demanded for themselves. This was their expected reward for donating to the Liberal Party. Trujillo of Panama described the US takeover of Panama, and said: "we must defend our country against this threat of disintegration, within a state of occupation, and slow surrender. Despite being a frontier to the United States, and despite having been subjected to its subtlest, and most highly developed, mechanisms of cultural and economic absorption."
The US is very good at it. So good is their propaganda that they have now got Australian socialists and revolutionaries agreeing with them.
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
Endangered species
I support the general thrust of your editorial "Endangered species: Back to square one" (GLW, November 4). However there is one serious omission and a flawed conclusion.
The omission: There was no mention of the alternative and comprehensive Australian Democrats Endangered Species Bill that had been before the Parliament since the end of last year. The Bill was amended after wide consultations with the environment movement.
Your editorial properly criticises the ALP Bill but doesn't acknowledge the existence of the Democrats initiative. Perhaps you could be excused because the media focused solely on Labor's rush to provide itself with green clothes before the elections and GLW merely reflected the mass media.
A flawed conclusion: The editorial suffers from an enduring problem for many on the left. Grassroots activity is set against work in institutions such as parliament. No doubt there are some who look forward to "the socialist revolution" that will readily solve all our social and environmental problems. Ordinary members of grassroots green/left organisations must be very disappointed that the Democrats Endangered Species Bill was ignored not only by the mass media but also by GLW. I expect they will combine their daily grind at the grassroots with the hope that some legislative response can be forged (without a revolution).
The Democrats are, and are likely to remain, the only national parliamentary party in Australia committed to promoting truly sound environmental legislation.
Vince Englart
Brisbane
US election
"A new America" quotes the Brisbane Courier Mail. Just who are they kidding? The American Presidential Election was a farce. As you say, a three ring circus. It was a million dollar contest between millionaires only.
Nothing will change. Capitalism is still in power. With 10 million people unemployed. Nothing has changed and nothing will change. The election changes one capitalist tyrant for another in the greatest jingoistic mud slinging contest in history. What we have just witnessed is a shocking bad example of what capitalism will do to men fighting for political power.
Nothing will change. Ten million people will still be out of work in ten years time and America will still go on being the capitalist tyrant it has always been, who in the face of great wealth, denies those on the lower rung of the economic ladder adequate shelter, welfare and medicare.
What the United States needs is a good Socialist Party who will fight for the needs of the working class, who will give the people on the lower rung of the economic ladder a fair go. It needs a Government by the people for the people, not a Government of the capitalist class for the capitalist with its unjust political system.
W.G. Fox
Brisbane
Youth and Kennett
Young people of Victoria are feeling the brunt of Kennett's attacks. As young workers are concentrated in casual and part-time work, they will be most affected by Kennett's abolition of penalty rates. Without work young people are forced to stay at or return to school, yet the Liberals will close 200 schools next year, slashing 2000 teaching positions.
Young people are beginning to realize that they have to fight to guarantee our basic rights. That's why there were so many of us at the Melbourne strike last week.
For the last ten years, despite continuing attacks on wages and conditions, the union leaderships have tied the unions to the Accord process and ignored the need to involve their workers in struggle. A whole generation of young people have no experience of campaigning for working conditions — if they have a job at all! It is no surprise that young people are the least unionised sector of the work force.
The ALP/ACTU bureaucrats have carefully paved the way for all of the attacks delivered by their Liberal colleagues. If we are to defeat today's attacks, we have to break with yesterday's Accord-style politics. We ought to be fighting for a "rationalism" which places human rights and needs before profits.
Young people, the leaders of tomorrow, will not succeed unless they are drawn into today's struggle.
Kylie Budge
Melbourne
Which bank?
A photocopy of the GL cover and article on the World Bank (October 14) was included in the briefing kits that FACS [Sandino Foundation] delegates took to the World Bank NGO committee in Washington last month. I'm told that many of the representatives from the 25 NGOs on the committee wanted their own photocopies. The cover was especially appreciated and regarded as a great joke.
Stephen Marks
Managua, Nicaragua