Waterfront performance
Chris Corrigan wants his company, Patrick Stevedores, to make a profit. If Mr Corrigan's performance, in relation to Dubai and Webb Dock, Melbourne, are his standard level of executive excellence, then what other explanation for Patrick's poor performance is necessary?
Wentworth Falls NSW
Elections
Kym Leather (Write on, February 18), in criticising Green Left's February 4 editorial on selecting a president, simply repeats, without evidence or argument, the assertion of Howard, Beazley and the establishment media, that a popularly elected president would have greater powers than one selected by other methods.
The reality, however, is that the "reserve powers" are going to exist while we have a capitalist state in Australia. Should the person who exercises them be popularly elected or chosen by parliamentarians?
Leather argues against popular election on the basis that people sometimes elect the wrong candidates: just look at who won the last federal election.
Aside from the fact that the Coalition victory was not an overwhelming democratic mandate (a huge majority in the lower house on less than half of first-preference votes), the possibility that the wrong candidate will win is inherent in democracy. Leather fails to explain, however, why the "wrong" candidates elected to parliament should be expected to vote in a better fashion than the people who elected them.
Leather's other point, on the "discourtesy" of writing Friedrich Engels' given name as Frederick, is directed to the wrong place. The offender is Engels himself, who habitually put his name as "Frederick" on English-language editions of his writings. Moreover, the title page of the 1893 Italian edition of the Communist Manifesto lists the authors as "Carlo Marx" and "Federico Engels", and Italian socialists didn't think it at all a discourtesy to present a copy to Engels.
If Engels were living in Australia today, he would answer to "Fred" or "Freddie". But what else could you expect from someone who was such a notorious democrat?
Sydney
Profanity and left politics
As a seller of Green Left, I must say I remain dismayed at Chris Kelly's occasional usage of profane language in his cartoons. While not offended by swearing per se, the appearance of obscenities in our revolutionary press never fails to raise my ire.
Green Left is the means by which we attempt to win the people over to revolutionary socialist conclusions. If we cannot put forward and argue our case for socialism without resorting to such vulgar curses, then we are not demonstrating a high level of intellect. Indeed, we exhibit unhealthy signs of intellectual laziness and as such effectively disqualify ourselves from being meaningful contributors to debate on any issue, let alone the emancipation of humanity. Moreover, we lower ourselves into the very gutter from whence this dissolute dialect emerged.
Rednecks cannot participate in edifying debates because they are not articulate enough to express themselves further than the use of expletives to give emphasis to anything and everything. As socialists, we are proposing a new direction for our society, and in order to put forward the most thought-out and considered case, we must display greater cerebral capacity than our critics and our rivals. It is impossible to do this while anchored at the lowest level, through the blatant use of repugnant words.
Wellington Point Qld
Vegetarianism
Although I am not a vegetarian, I would like to object to the line of reasoning put forward by Alan Bradley (GLW #305). His basic argument is that rights should be in proportion to one's ability to defend them. I don't question the fact that under capitalism your rights are in proportion to your ability to defend them.
The point however is that it shouldn't be that way. For example, the fact that children are incapable of organising to defend their rights doesn't mean that they shouldn't have any rights. In my opinion, rights should be in proportion to an organism's capacity to think and feel.
The question of whose rights to prioritise fighting for is another matter though. Obviously, animal rights cannot be won under capitalism, where decisions about production are made by an elite minority in the search for higher profits. So therefore we must prioritise fighting for the rights of those who can unite with us to help overthrow capitalism. Clearly this does not include chickens and pigs.
Hobart
Tax rorts
Unsolicited I received from Asset Management an invitation to attend a seminar on tax saving for negative gearing. I did not attend because I believe that if you want to maintain social services such as public schools, hospitals, legal aid and so on we should pay our fair share of taxes.
It infuriated me some years ago to discover Kerry Packer was paying six cents in the dollar and upon inquiry I was paying 29 cents in the dollar. In the Sydney Morning Herald on the 17th of January was an article "Plea for end to tax loopholes". Amongst the schemes mentioned is the fact that negative gearing is likely to provide a tax loophole of $1 billion.
Balmain NSW
Political opportunism
The member for Lowe, Paul Zammit's resignation from the Liberal Party should be seen for what it is: a classic piece of political opportunism in the mould of Gary Punch (the ALP minister who resigned over the same issue, his electorate's opposition to aircraft noise).
The 1000-strong protest meeting at Ashfield, just days before Zammit's resignation, heard that after a concerted lobbying campaign by Save Our Skies, he had changed his position and was arguing on behalf of local resident's against his government's policies.
Perhaps Zammit's change of heart was to do with recent public opinion polls, which showed a swing to the ALP sufficient to unseat him.
Zammit never showed much interest in responding to lobbying from local housing activists in 1996, concerned about the impact of proposed Liberal government cuts to public housing. In fact he was downright belligerent to delegations which met with him.
The mood at the Ashfield aircraft noise meeting was of cynicism with the major parties. The ALP member for Grayndler (a safe ALP seat) was booed when he appealed to parochialism, confirming his party's support for a second airport at Badgerys Creek.
Zammit's resignation exposes the opportunism of the major parties, and the limitation of confining grassroots campaigning for social change to lobbying local politicians.
Ashfield NSW
[Abridged.]
TB in Australia
Health-care cuts in Russia have resulted in the spread of tuberculosis which "preys above all on the people who fall through the cracks of an uncaring society" (GLW #304). What is true for Russia is true for the Northern Territory where TB is four times more prevalent than in other states.
In remote Territory communities, where people live seventeen to a house, tuberculosis is common. Aborigines who leave their neglected outback communities to seek better services in Darwin often live in bush camps around the city without water, power or sewerage.
After several advanced cases of TB were detected in the camps of the Darwin homeless, the NT Disease Control Centre belatedly organised buses to ferry the "long grasses" (as the homeless are known) to hospital for x-rays and tests. As in Russia and New York, "the sufferings of the poor are a necessity, to be lamented but not seriously combated".
Darwin
I am a concerned Australian. Australia is no longer the united community we once were. The reason is because the government policies are designed to pit Australians against each other. The governments of today are actively encouraging social unrest by ensuring those people at the bottom of the social spectrum remain where they are.
Every policy decision is formulated to maintain or reduce the status quo, meaning, instead of Australians uniting to overthrow the Westminster system, we are kept vulnerable by creating a police state. We have become a nation too frightened to speak out against authority and this is having a huge detrimental effect on the masses.
I am much saddened by what I am witnessing, but what can one person do? Australians used to be known for their fighting spirit but after decades of endemic corruption by all political parties we no longer have the guts to stand up for our rights. How can you mobilise a community against the system when the authorities employ military style tactics against any uprising.
Unfortunately, Australia has signed on the dotted line of too many worldly organisations so we must toe the line or suffer economic ruin. By creating social unrest amongst ourselves, the authorities are deflecting our anger away from themselves, thus ensuring their continued dominance of us all. Is a revolution possible?
Fremantle WA
Class struggle continues
GLW always has at least a few articles that make me very glad that I subscribe. However, issues are too infrequent when nearly the whole paper gives me that feeling. Your #304 is one such. The John Percy excerpt seems to have set the tone for most of the editors and contributors. It was basic Marxism nearly at its best, with little of the sloganeering that gave us Stalin and his by-blows and successors.
John's excerpt had two main messages. They are the most important we can ever hear. We must never forget nor ignore them. One is that capitalism, by its nature, must destroy itself. The other is that, short of a successful class struggle, it will take the planet and all its people with it as it goes.
We have one main problem in Australia, as in many other places. Not enough people, even among the many who struggle in another sense, realise that the class struggle exists. Even fewer realise that they have many allies to hand, if they only knew how to reach out to them.
Those who do are often spurned by — and in their turn spurn — potential allies whose most immediate concern may seem trivial, unrelated to or even opposed to their own. The role of the mass media, as capitalism's voice, is to keep it so. GLW's role is to encourage us all to overcome such divisiveness. Keep up the good work.
Brompton SA
Consistent policy on weapons
Australia has no place in the dispute between America and Iraq. If it is ethical and necessary for United Nations inspectors to monitor Iraq's alleged stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, then it must also be ethical and necessary for the United Nations to monitor the stockpiles and manufacturing capabilities of the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France and Australia, all of whom are reasonably suspected of having the capacity to manufacture these weapons and who are also probably holders of stockpiles.
But we are not likely to see that eventuate. What Australia's involvement does do is put us offside with nations who see the inherent one-sidedness of America's rhetoric.
Alawa NT