Allende's Chile
James Vassilopoulos, GLW #325, writes : "the key lesson from Chile 1973 is that capitalists will not give up their wealth willingly, even if the majority say they must". Thus, Vassilopoulos says, the Left has no alternative but violence. Actually, Allende's Popular Front — the vast majority of which was committed to non-violence — never achieved a majority. Its largest vote was 44% in 1973. By 1975, when Pinochet finally won over enough of the military to mount a successful coup (several failed before), Allende's vote was down to 40%. If the Left is going to get anywhere, it would be a good idea to be truthful about facts.
Surry Hills NSW
Sectarian conflict
As an Australian of Anglo-Irish descent, some of whose ancestors, the Lees, left Cork in the potato famine in the 1850s to migrate to Australia, and as unionist I have been profoundly disturbed by the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
I was pleased to hear on ABC radio 2CN on 15 July that Mr Michael Fitzgerald (Peace in Ireland, PO Box 1950, Canberra ACT 2601) was organising a campaign of letter writing to British, Northern Ireland and Eire Governments protesting about the continuing conflict and urging them to take strong action against extremists. I have written to Mr Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England and to Mr David Trimble MP, First Minister of Northern Ireland, along the following lines.
I am pleased that the referendum for a peace settlement was passed by large majorities and that a new Assembly representing all the people of Northern Ireland has been elected.
I was, however, disturbed by the furore after Protestant Orange men were blocked from marching through a predominantly Catholic area in defiance of the spirit of the peace settlement and was appalled when three children of a mixed Protestant-Catholic marriage were burnt to death when their house was firebombed by Protestant extremists. I believe that the death of these children is on the conscience of all who have participated in the sectarian conflict in northern Ireland.
I believe that the conflict has gone on for far too long and that measures must be taken to bring it to an end as soon as possible. This must include stern measures taken against extremists on both sides.
Perhaps, a peace memorial centre for the persons killed and wounded in the conflict could be built as a beginning to the solution.
Farrer ACT
[Abridged.]
PNG tragedy
You will have heard about the tidal wave which has devastated the people of Papua New Guinea's north coast. It is expected that the death toll will go to 6,000 people. The remainder of the 10,000 villagers swamped by the huge wave are shocked, wounded, hungry, homeless and faced with disease (from the corpses that litter the jungle and waterways).
For the survivors of the tidal wave to rebuild their lives they need our support. They urgently need: make-shift shelters, water containers, plaster, anti-biotics, cooking utensils, water bottles, blankets, sheets, pillows, mattresses, clothing, hammers, saws, nails etc.
You can help by making financial contributions through the PNG Banking Corporation account No. 6143787, relief funds, tidal wave, Aitape, Madang branch.
Women for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific
Annandale NSW
KKK
The office of the western Sydney branch of the Democratic Socialist Party recently had an unexpected guest. Stuck on the front door of the office was an A4-size leaflet from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
The leaflet was a racist attack against Aborigines, claiming that white Australia had provided decent health care, education, roads, housing and infrastructure for indigenous Australians.
It is no surprise that the KKK (as well as other neo-Nazi, white supremacist groups with a history of racist violence) have rallied behind One Nation.
While One Nation leaders have tried to distance themselves from the KKK, they espouse the same white supremacist bigotry.
One Nation disguises its racism by hypocritically calling for "equal treatment" for all races. One Nation intends to reverse all the gains made by indigenous Australians in their struggle for social justice.
Labor has counselled us to "ignore" Hanson and hope she "disappears", and the Coalition has made only paltry, personal attacks against Hanson, not politically combating the racist scapegoating of migrants and Aborigines by One Nation.
The policies implemented by both Labor and Coalition governments have greatly contributed to the racist climate fuelling One Nation.
The only way to defeat the racist One Nation (and their racist sponsors, the mainstream political parties) is to mobilise community campaigns uniting indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The Democratic Socialist Party is committed to building a genuine, antiracist political alternative and will continue to do so.
Democratic Socialist Party
Western Sydney branch
[Abridged.]
Elections
When last we heard of Roger Clarke in these pages, it was to urge us all to join him in the Labor Party. Now (Write on, #325) he has the unmitigated gall to tell the Democratic Socialists how they should be running their own election campaigns.
Maybe Comrade Clarke should follow his own advice by declaring himself a parliamentary candidate in order to show the DSP how it should be done.
How about it, Roger? Resign from the ALP (that's imperative, I'm afraid, as you're sure not to get a look in otherwise) and stand — let's see — for the seat of Oxley at the next federal election.
Do it. Prove to me that you're not simply all wind. Show us all the way to fight racism according to the formulas of Comrades Clarke and Thomas.
If that's not feasible, I offer myself as candidate instead. I'll require at least $1,000 to cover basic campaign expenses. I also hope I can count on the labour of Comrades Clarke and Thomas for letter box drops and on polling day.
A personal cheque will suffice.
Brisbane
Support for Resistance
We wanted to express our support and sympathy to the two Resistance members interviewed on the TVW7 11am program. Ann Fulwood treated the two as though the fact that they were 16 years old and had not been in employment meant that they were unable to think for themselves and have a perspective on social issues.
Her question about who had told them to oppose Pauline Hanson was not only insulting but offensive. I am sure that within the week they will be running some story on how young people are apathetic.
Congratulations to your members, Jackie and Rueben, for restraining themselves in the face of such treatment and also for getting actively involved in the political system.
Ann Fulwood's performance was uncalled for and extremely biased. I hope you contact the network to complain about the interview.
Perth
ABC's anti-green program
Move over Pauline Hanson! According to the propaganda machine of the rape and pillage merchants we greenies are Nazis! I suppose greenies should be flattered that the programme, Against Nature ABC 21 July, has been commissioned. It shows that we're having an effect at last.
Of course, greenies copped the usual 'tree hugger' blast and according to them, global warming is just a figment of everyone's imagination. They didn't say, but I guess we're dreaming about the ozone hole, decimation of the world's arable land and nuclear proliferation.
Greenies have never been against technological advances. Most of us realise that without technology we can't hope to clean up the mess humans have already made, and maintain stability at the same time.
As for us liking animals more than humans, I can't speak for other greenies, but my personal view is that because humans have ignored their environmental responsibility in the past, we are obliged to put the needs of humanity second to the needs of the environment. When humans begin to level off their populations, to consider the environment as a whole, in every activity they undertake, then we'll be in a position to raise everyone's standard of living. Not just that of a few!
World music
Norm Dixon's review of Somalian singer Maryam Mursal's Real World release The Journey (GLW #324) reveals the culpability of the left in sustaining a corporatist, commodified model of "world music" production that panders to a simpering middle of the road reformism and an easy-listening activism.
That Mursal's popcorn fusion has attracted any attention in your paper, beyond dismissing its queasy patchwork of diaspora cliches, highlights the failure of the "new" left to develop an adequate political theory of art.
The lack of serious materialist analysis of the music itself (other than a few gratuitous facts about Somalia, which say nothing, either about the qualities of the music, or the social conditions in which the music has been created) reinforces the chronic blandness of a music designed primarily (as Dixon notes) as exotic ambience.
Dixon also argues that Mursal has, through this particular collection of songs, taken her place amongst the international elite of Afro-pop. His strange desire to apply all the multinational criteria of the western pop stardom to a number of over hyped African singers (is it just that they are from Africa?), aligning their "chart success" with the bourgeois rewards for creative individuality, blinds him to the social aspect of a musical form that has about as much a critical relation to African politics as The Lion King.
His review, far from explaining any of the cultural distortions and economic violence that have facilitated the growth of "world music" and its uncritical adoption by the left as an automatic sign of "alternative" expression, simply affirms the power of those who control cultural production — in this case a British "cock"-rock dinosaur (Peter Gabriel & Real World) and an Australian-American billionaire (Rupert Murdoch and Festival Records).
Surely "cultural dissent" can find CDS to review that offer more than benign acquiescence to the accepted logic of global middle-class consumption and the anaemia of a digitised world beat?
Elizabeth Bay NSW