Kindly accept my congratulations on such an excellent and long awaited source of true Labor information. I was surprised to note that the copy of Green Left Weekly which I purchased as I entered the public protest against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment was the 309th issue; and yet that was the very first occasion I had heard of it.
Your paper (the issue of March 11) covers Wik, Telstra privatisation, the MUA battle, the SRWU vs AWU conflict, BHP vs Green Left Weekly, downsizing (of labour), green light to pollute, Cuba's struggle, Latin American conflicts, MAI, US warmongers, Indonesian crisis, Russian whistle blowers, and Northern Ireland's peace process etc.
That's the kind of journal I've been waiting for years to buy and my cheque for the next 25 issues is enclosed.
Tennyson SA
Every so often GLW's letters column has some real gems. Last issue's (GLW #310) letter from Ben Courtice was brilliant in favour of the free speech right to swear as much as any speaker likes. Those who don't agree — F#@% off, as Oasis would say.
Sydney
No to 10 point plan!
In view of the push to implement the Howard government's 10 point plan, the most important issue facing the country is not the 10 point plan but land rights for the Aboriginal people. If we cannot give the indigenous people of this country part of the land that once was theirs we cannot claim to be a just people.
Past and present governments have brought hundreds of thousands of people from foreign countries to occupy this country and sold millions of hectares of Aboriginal land to foreign investors.
It raises the question what sort of people are we? — that we cannot do the right thing by the indigenous people of this country, to even think of allowing this outrageous injustice to take place.
To hell with Howard's 10 point plan to deprive the Aboriginal people of their just rights. Land rights for the original owners of this country now! Don't let Howard put the skids under the Aboriginal people.
Brisbane
[Abridged.]
Male-only space
Lisa MacDonald's article about male-only bars seems a tad misguided, although she's right to say that the major threat to gay and bi men is homophobic men. However, I want to ask a few questions here. For one thing, why do women want to go into gay male spaces?
One of the reasons that lesbians and bi women want a women only space at Mardi Gras is to have a comfortable space to be with other women without being cruised by men. That's exactly the same reason that gay and bi men are asking for male only space in some bars — they don't want to be cruised by women.
I have many friends who have reported straight women coming up to them in queer venues and saying "Oh, what a waste!" or trying to pick them up. No, this isn't threatening, but it is discomforting and offensive, and I think that's a legitimate reason to want a male-only space. In addition, I believe it's less likely that homophobic men would enter an establishment in which there were no women at all.
There's also the matter of backlash and perception. The last thing that feminism needs is the perception from our gay brothers, with whom we should have solidarity, that we want one thing for us (women's only spaces) but we're not willing to support the same thing for them. The end result of our struggles must be equality and must be perceived to be equality or it will not garner support from our siblings in struggle.
There are more of us — women, queers, blacks, Asians, working class people — than of the right wing moral "majority", yet we persist in fighting each other instead of the system. Don't waste your energy.
East Timor marginalised
It is disgraceful that Australians have to consult the Jakarta Post to find out what is happening to the media in their own country. On December 2, 1997 senior editors met in Sydney for the third meeting under the auspices of the Australia-Indonesia Institute (chaired by ex-ambassador to Indonesia and Suharto mouthpiece, Richard Woolcott) to discuss ways of reporting Indonesia more "responsibly".
The Jakarta Post reports that they agreed "that news reports filed by the Australian press on East Timor had so far posed an obstacle for ties between the two countries" (December 3 "Australian Press Loses Interest in East Timor"). On the following day they met Prime Minister Howard in Canberra. There is no report of these meetings in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian or the Canberra Times even though their editors attended.
More ominously, there is evidence that the Canberra Times is stifling the voice of East Timor. As part of Canberra's Multicultural Festival, Chief Minister Kate Carnell officiated at the opening of Indonesian Cultural Day on February 7.
During this event however, the Indonesian embassy distributed expensive propaganda brochures "East Timor Today: Building For the Future" which claim that, "The people of East Timor awoke in 1975 and found themselves alone in the world. They had no government, no law and no order. Facing anarchy from within, they turned to Indonesia to restore peace, order and stability."
Canberra Program For Peace wrote three different letters to the Canberra Times about the Indonesian abuse of the Multicultural Festival — none was published and no reasons were given. Clearly the Canberra Times believes it is more important to kowtow to the Suharto regime than it is to facilitate the free exchange of ideas. Australians should be alert to the increasing political censorship which is taking place in our media with the connivance of the Howard Liberal Government. When big money is at stake, as in war, the first casualty is always truth.
Canberra Program For Peace
O'Connor ACT
[Abridged.]
GST
What great democratic ideals our Federal Treasurer has. With the proposed goods and services tax every multi-millionaire in the country will have to pay the same tax on a loaf of bread as a pensioner does. At the same time the pensioner will only have to pay the very much reduced tax on a Rolls Royce that a multi-millionaire must. Now that's real democracy!
Col Friel
Alawa NT
B.A. Santamaria
When (Saint) Bob Santamaria was fighting "Communism in the Unions", the Unions were very strong. Today, with the defeat of "Communism in the Unions", the unions are weak. What did Saint Bob defeat? "Communism in the Unions" or "Unions in Australia"?
Wentworth Falls NSW
Spiritualism
Charles Smith's letter "Spiritualism" (GLW #308) may have lost some of its dialectical integrity through your cuts. Nevertheless, I cautiously support his thrust. We should always learn from history, especially that of the sciences.
A good example is the French Academy of Sciences in the late 19th century. "There are no stones in the skies, therefore stones can not fall from the sky", they said with impeccable logic. In doing so, they ignored as "superstitious figments" countless well-documented instances of sightings and subsequent retrievals of meteorites.
Many Marxists decry as idealist superstitions that which they call "spiritual". They complain that such beliefs sidetrack people from facing material reality. It's often true. About as often as materialist beliefs turn people into capitalists or lead them into class treachery.
There is nothing compelling about dialectical materialism to someone who is not first an idealist. Certainly, once you embrace it, it leads to conclusions and actions which (if our "science" gets its key predictions right all the time and applies them accurately to our strategies) will lead to a world Socialist revolution. Who cares, unless s/he starts off with the unprovable axiom (ideal) that every disadvantaged person has the right to a better life?
Strangely enough, many of the people who are into Tarot, Astrology, the Medicine Wheel, the I Ching etc have that ideal. I don't believe the mechanisms of these methodologies are what they claim to be. Instead, I believe that each is merely a means of focussing a type of energy that is ill-understood, if at all, by current science. We can't (yet) measure it consistently, so it's a superstitious figment! Be that as it may; we put off a vast body of people who might otherwise support us, by "exposing" their "superstitious" idealism and ideals.
Brompton SA
Republic farce
What a mediocre beginning to the process of making Australia a Republic and how to elect a President. We have a Federal Government led by a PM who detests a Republic and less than 50% of the busy and bewildered population bothering to vote for delegates.
The serving Politicians invited themselves along just in case the PM's appointed delegates and the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) were not enough to protect the Political parties stranglehold on the Parliamentary System. Polls repeatedly said that the public wanted a direct vote for President, the Direct Public Vote for President delegates never had a chance because of the ARM and its policy of allowing Politicians to choose the President.
A glance at the ARM delegates line up shows them to be a mixture of the Rich and the Political, as were the Government's appointed delegates. The ARM delegates consisted of the Rich, e.g. Turnbull, Russo, Vizard, Poppy King, Lindsay Fox, Holmes a Court and Cocchiaro etc. Plus the Politically Cosy ex-politicians and Party workers such as Wran, Machin, Sowada, Hazel Hawke, Lavarch, Sally Anne Atkinson, Edwards, Teague, Kigariff, Witheford and Jenny George etc.
The ARM policy of the Community somehow deciding on a short list of Presidential Candidates to send to the Politicians for final approval omits which part of the Community chooses the delegates. Will it be the Double Bay Tennis Club or the Vaucluse ladies lawn bowlers society or even the Futures Exchange Brokers Wine Appreciation Club?
No wonder Mr Howard and Mr Beazley warmly shook hands after the convention, they and the ARM had stolen the election of the Presidency from the people. I believe that the Public should Vote direct for a President, other nations do it, and also that no millionaire and no retired or serving politician should be able to stand for President.
Newcastle NSW
[Abridged.]