Clutching at straws
I must endorse, with feeling, the recent WET Tank's award of the brass tampon to the Court government of WA for monumental incompetence and uselessness.
Not only have we had Court denouncing the Gay Mardi Gras with the immortal words "If you ask me, they're sick", now we are being titillated with the promise of a return to the death penalty; Operation Sweep which has now been called off after arresting, without charge, thousands of our young citizens who visit Northbridge after dark on the grounds of "moral danger" (where was Sooty, I wonder); and now we have the ludicrous proposal to open boot camps for young crims.
How much this is the result of Court listening to advice from his Singapore government buddies on how to govern without interference from democratic principles is anybody's guess.
Arrest without trial was a corner stone of Lee's policy, the repression of the Communist Party and of the organised trade union movement, jail sentences of thirty years and more for dissidents, canings and beatings as a routine policy in these jails, and more recently, compulsory military hair cuts for men and compulsory breeding for upper class women, and very, very clean streets.
Has the premier gone barking mad, deluded that his power in WA is in any way similar to Lee's control in Singapore, or is this just delusions of grandeur of a not very grand little man? Let's hope that West Australians bring Court and his boys back to reality, once we can stop laughing, otherwise we might find ourselves wearing gingham, going yeehaw with straws clamped between our teeth as we hokey our way through the corn to a happy little police state set up.
Jane Widdess
Victoria Park WA
[Edited for length.]
Brunswick Nazis
I write in reference to the article ["Nazi thugs chased out of Brunswick", March 16.]
I subscribe to your newspaper mainly because it presents articles which are, seemingly, written to appeal to those in our community who appreciate precision in the use of language, logical progression in argument, and who abhor the emotive cliches and simplistic presentation of the "mainstream" Australian press.
Dave Holmes writes with apparent approval of the harassment of a political group of which he disapproves, and, while I concede his right to do this, such an article, common enough in the "popular" press, I was surprised to see in Green Left. My impression, formed by reading previous issues, was that you would have been committed to the idea that, and probably I misquote, "I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it."
If the article had been written "Some 30 Negro toughs trying to hold a 'black power' demonstration ..." or "Some 30 Jewish toughs trying to hold a 'Zionist' demonstration ..." with appropriate changes, then I suggest that such, being "politically" incorrect in this age of the 90s in Australia, would not have been given space in a paper such as yours, and I was surprised that the writing of Dave Holmes was.
I deplore an Australia when police are needed to ensure that any group who wish to make political expression can do so in safety and freedom.
David Horton
South Perth
Numbers
David Kault (Write on, March 23) is a mathematician, so his fascination with geometrical progressions is understandable. But I object to his attempt to paint my views as in any way conformable with the "logic" of Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population.
Whenever it is pointed out that the world's problems are caused by social/economic/political injustices rather than by human numbers as such, AESP rushes in shouting that too many people are "also" an environmental problem, and after all, the world can't possibly support 20 billion or 200 billion or 2000 billion people. Hence population is a "problem" that must be solved along with social/economic/political inequality.
What this "logic" does is to lump causes (social/economic/political conditions) together with effects ("too many" people) and then declare, as David does, that we have to find a solution to the effect before we can go on to attack its causes.
However, I thank David for the honest admission that in AESP's view even a halving of the world's population comes nowhere near solving the people "problem". It would be helpful to the discussion if AESP would indicate the population, in Australia and worldwide, which they regard as ecologically sustainable. Mathematicians among them should note that the only human population which cannot increase geometrically is one.
Allen Myers
Sydney
Not racist
Regarding recent GLW inferences about the characters of Jenny Goldie and Diana Evans. Let me set the record straight on at least a few points. Both these women are contributors to Community Aid Abroad, both subscribe to New Internationalist, they are both ACF members; Diana subscribes, as you would realise, to GLW (she must be a masochist); and Jenny was a Peace Worker and has five children, four of whom were adopted from diverse races, including Vietnamese/Black American, Korean and Koori. Partially because she is the mother of children of such diverse origins, but mostly because it is untrue, she is greatly distressed by accusations of racism.
I am attaching a graph demonstrating a relationship between Population Density and Loss of Wildlife Habitat, which I personally find incredibly distressing. Note, the major arable areas of coastal Australia are densely populated. We should not be misled by the illusion that all space on this continent is habitable, any more than we believe the Sahara should or could support a dense population.
Sheila Newman
President, Victorian Branch, AESP
World Bank
The World Bank merits the criticisms Susan George (GL March 23) for its lending practices over the past 50 years, but change is happening at the Bank.
In December 1991, the Bank started using social indicators from UNICEF's 1990 World Summit for Children, as performance indicators for its loans. They're different than the traditional "GDP per capita" indicators and include child immunization rates and under five mortality rates.
In November 1993, the Bank made its first grant (instead of a loan) and made it to a non-Government organisation - the Grameen Trust (GL January 19). The US$2 million grant will provide self-help credits to the poorest of the world's poor. That's less than one ten-thousandth of the Bank's total lending and more is necessary, but it's a worthwhile policy signal to other donor governments.
Let's give some credit for small change from the World Bank.
Peter Graves
Campbell ACT
Population
I would like briefly to reply to Emma Webb's article "What is an ecologically sustainable population?" in GLW 136. I should say though that I do not speak officially on behalf of the AESP.
Firstly how many times does it have to be said that the AESP do not want to "close off our borders". Nor does the AESP think that such an act would "solve Australia's environmental crisis". Jenny Goldie outlined the immigration policy of the AESP in GLW 135. A policy that advocates restricting immigration to its humanitarian component, i.e. refugees and close family reunion.
Secondly Webb's "logical conclusions" drawn from AESP's policies are not, as far as I know, the conclusions of the AESP or the members I know.
"Any serious struggle for the environment", says Webb, "necessarily involves taking on the struggle for democracy, freedom from poverty, against racism, sexism, unemployment and similar social evils."
An ecologically sustainable population must be added to that list of struggles, not seen as something separate.
The factors that Emma Webb says represent an ecologically sustainable population are ones that I agree with for an ideal society, but they are not necessarily ones that represent "an ecologically sustainable population". Until the revolution we are fighting for comes, and that is what will bring about such change, I will continue to believe that the most urgent matter in the environmental crisis that can be managed by existing structures now, is population growth.
Can a world of 11 billion people, even with the wealth spread, have the diverse natural beauty of a world we know has existed? Natural beauty that for some has made life worth living. And a diverse world that we as environmentalists are fighting to save.
Pete Johnson
Norman Park Qld
[Edited for length.]
Darwin port
Calls for a new port in Darwin are not supported by any evidence of some expected massive increase in either exports or imports of such degree that the present facilities will be overloaded.
However, given the continuing build-up in military activities, including training the armed forces of some of the most repressive governments in the region, shifting the present cargo handling area would enable the establishment of naval facilities and provide a support base for more United States military adventures to our north.
This theory is reinforced by the continuing attempts by the US and South Korea to provoke North Korea into some military retaliation, thereby justifying another brutal onslaught on one of the few nations that will not lie down to American might.
Australia can be expected to adopt its usual supine position and rationalise the slaughter of innocents in the name of democracy, American style.
C. M. Friel
Alawa NT