Medicare
As an unemployed and part-time student, I am extremely concerned about the Howard Government's clandestine plan to eradicate Medicare.
It states in the Autumn public policy magazine that there will be a gradual removal of health care — and now with the Australian Medical Association pressuring the government for user-pays hospital care there is the danger that free health care will be eliminated.
This is totally unfair because it is poorer people who suffer more sickness than the wealthier ones.
The Left-wing need to do something before it is too late! Beginning with massive protests against the AMA and Howard government. Otherwise our voices will be muted like with the GST debate.
New Zealand had free hospital care before their GST was introduced. Now, one of the most basic human needs has been forced into the rapacious market place, contributing already to some deaths.
Because the Labor party has veered to the right and Howard's Liberal Government is extending itself dangerously to the Far Right, there must be a strong Left-wing presence to correct this political imbalance. We can no longer look to the Democrats as an Independent party, but as an appendage of the Liberals or whatever other party has the goods.
Spring Hill Qld
[Abridged.]
Racism and Star Wars
Mary Merkenich's article on Star Wars, Episode 1 (GLW, July 7) raised some interesting issues about racial stereotypes in the film, but also missed some crucial ones.
In the film, the two creatures plotting to control the "trade federation" speak with noticeable Asian accents and appear oriental in their features and dress. If we look at recent events and media campaigns, this framing of Asians as troublemakers is hardly an accident.
After the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the media showed angry Chinese demonstrations denouncing NATO actions in the Balkans. The framing of Chinese in these reports was that they were loyal followers of their fanatical government.
The portrayal was demeaning, but not as bad as Time magazine's 10-page article (June 7) claiming that "Chinese spies have been so eagerly vacuuming the US for military secrets during the past three decades" and that "no other country ... has succeeded in stealing so much from the US". The article portrayed China as eager to provoke another "cold war".
In the Australian media, we've had the recent reporting on "boat people". We are expected to believe our country is experiencing a tidal wave of "illegal aliens" bent on getting a free ride on the backs of hard working Australians. On July 18, 60 Minutes ran a story on study crazed Asian children "taking over our classrooms".
It may be that anti-Asian sentiment is being fanned in the mass media to aid US moves to contain China economically. Bill Clinton's visit to China in April failed to bring about any significant trade agreement, and so a demonising of the Chinese would facilitate any economic moves against them, ensuring a passive consent at home.
It could also be motivated by the US's need for an enemy to justify its enormous military budget and the ongoing war for "democracy" (in 1998, the US maintained a military presence in more than 100 countries).
So, it comes as little surprise that a movie to come out of the powerful corporate entertainment sector is loaded with racist propaganda.
[Abridged.]
Disabled
The recent strike action by Victorian health workers who care for those who are profoundly disabled and handicapped is unprecedented.
Shamefully, these dedicated workers are being forced to defend their rapidly eroding incomes and working conditions, while unregulated executive salaries and incomes continue to soar to new heights.
Imagine, then, the plight of the 1.5 million home-bound, family Carers who labour 365 days per year without pay or an annual holiday break, often for decades, while senior bureaucrats, politicians and obscenely rewarded corporate employees travel the world defending the free market and democracy.
Traralgon Vic
Feminism
Helen Lobato writes (GLW #367) that "true feminism is about liberation, for all human beings, not a search for equality in a flawed system".
True. Women's liberation must mean more than sharing equally with men the inequalities of a society divided by class, nationality, sexuality and race.
Real liberation means the elimination of all forms of systematic discrimination. To aim for an "equality" with men that leaves intact the other forms of oppression that accompany class-divided society is to fall short of liberation and a feminism worth its name.
However, I disagree with Lobato's claim, "[l]iberation ... is about asserting difference". It relies on the same framework of biological determinism that is used to justify women's oppression.
Women's oppression is not the result of innate differences between women and men. It is socially determined, and indispensable to one of the vital institutions of class society, the family.
Liberation will not be achieved by denying the biological differences between the sexes (which are real, but irrelevant), nor by elevating the social distinctions between men and women into permanent characteristics to be defended and/or celebrated.
Because the social distinctions between men and women are socially derived we can eliminate them, and win our liberation, by mass political struggle to radically reconstruct the whole of society, replacing the old institutions of oppression with means of meeting human needs and potential.
Hobart
[Abridged.]
Welfare
Do the words poverty, injustice and deprivation mean nothing to John Howard and Tony Abbott?
Their obsession is that welfare may create disincentives to work. However, there can be no serious work-disincentive argument against pensions for the sick, disabled, elderly and single parents, who either physically cannot work, or should not be expected to.
So why doesn't the government increase these pensions?
And the research evidence is that the overwhelming majority of the unemployed want work for psychological reasons, irrespective of income considerations and the imposition of job-search tests.
The minority of idlers often have problems and, in any case, they are doing a good deed by increasing the employment prospects of others. Even if a vacancy goes unfilled, that's a plus for the environment.
Whilst tens of billions in tax deductions and investment income handouts continue for the rich with no questions asked, the government makes life miserable for the 95% of decent people on welfare in the hope of giving the hurry-up to a few. This is about as defensible as hanging 20 people because you know one of them is a criminal.
Rydalmere NSW
Yugoslavia
Although I haven't been following GLW's coverage of the US attack on Yugoslavia closely, I have the impression that GLW contributors are tending to do exactly what we and they would criticize the Right-wing media for doing: having chosen to follow a certain course, anything that is inconsistent with that course is glossed over or simply distorted.
Having chosen to take the black-and-white view that the Serbs are the aggressors and the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are the victims, contributors have uncritically adopted the slogan of "Kosovo for the Kosovars". Consequently, they tend to gloss over the murders of rivals within the KLA, magnify the mass murders by the Serb forces and inevitably minimize the war crimes of NATO.
Even if the KLA and the gangs associated with it really were willing to be deprived of all power by NATO, the lack of political representation of Albanians within the NATO "administration" is likely to create severe political tensions that may lead to NATO troops becoming quite unpopular, and quite quickly.
Given the pathetic state of the Left, it isn't surprising that little has been said about the form that any "aid" should take, or how the economy should be rebuilt. As the Palestinian, South African, and Russian examples should be solemn warnings of the utter wastefulness of the private sector, the rebuilding of Kosovo and of the rest of Yugoslavia should be by government trading organisations as part of an egalitarian economic and social plan.
Let us hear rather more of that.
Maylands WA
KKK
On hearing the KKK may be sending one of their recruitment people on a drive to our fair shores, my feelings see-sawed between anger and nausea. I can't keep quiet any longer. Indeed, it is unfair to do so whilst this poor sap feels the need to go hither and thither on this recruitment drive while here I sit on a veritable goldmine for KKK candidates.
The racist taunts my daughter (half Asian) receives at a local high school would warm the cockles of the heart of any true KKK member. Don't waste time dilly dallying, come up to Hanson territory, Red Neck Capital of the world.
PS: I think if you dig in the bottom of the wardrobes of some of these Hitler reincarnates, you'd probably find white sheets with the holes cut out in anticipation.
Ipswich Qld
Meg-a tax
Whilst the GST is now set in concrete for its ignominious bellyflop prelude to the next Olympics — a sort of Meg Lees stumbling backflip off the high platform into the abyss (Sorry, no points for that performance Meg) — we can at least take heart that this Meg-a Tax will be the Albatross that condemns these Democrats as the (Closet) Bastards they are. Bastards, who when the crunch came, couldn't even keep themselves honest.
All their promise(s) in other areas will seem mere flimflam; just background noise, when their Mega stuff up stenches them electorally into the new millennium.
Surry Hills NSW
John Howard
John Howard's in the USA
Inspiration's come to stay —
John Howard you met Bill Clinton,
And the Pope, too, I understand,
Yes, but I like the Pope much better,
I only had to kiss his hand.
Wentworth Falls NSW