Write on: Letters to the editor
World Bank
Thanks to the tireless staff at Green Left Weekly for continuing to produce such excellent radical journalism, and thanks particularly for Sean Healy's article on the World Bank (GLW #402). With clear definitions, and spanning opinions from Seattle, South Africa to Melbourne, it was a valuable tool for those of us beginning to organise protests against the World Economic Forum here on September 11.
Recent moves to cancel a token amount of Third World debt reflect government and elites feeling pressure and trying to "let off some steam". The clear analysis provided by GLW will be a key weapon in ensuring that such concessions are just the beginning. Keep up the excellent work!
Melbourne
Elian
It would have been much better if Elian Gonzalez had been returned to his father in a more peaceful manner.
But given the way some of the more right-wing people in Miami, who wanted to keep Elian in the US, make a living it was understandable. They work for the CIA training death squads in Latin America and when there not doing that they run drugs.
Where was the concern of the people who are shocked by the events in Miami when peaceful protesters were attacked with pepper spray by gun-toting, club-waving police in Seattle and Washington? Where was their concern when peaceful passive protesters have had pepper spray swabbed directly on to their eyeballs by American police? The people in Miami got off lightly.
The blame for the trauma Elian Gonzalez has suffered lies with the US government and the40-year war it has waged to crush the independence of the Cuban people.
Moorabbin Vic
London Socialist Alliance
Thank you for printing Phil Hearse's report on the London Socialist Alliance election campaign for the Greater London Assembly (GLW #402). It is a welcome addition to the previous one-sided report by Iggy Kim on the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation's (CATP) campaign for the same body (GLW #394).
The LSA is a tremendous achievement by the British left which has for years existed in isolated ghettos determined by this or that particular doctrine.
Two points of clarification. One: comrade Hearse fails to mention the CATP. This list is led by one Patrick Sikorski — a supporter of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, a former comrade of Phil. Also on the list (mentioned in comrade Kim's article) is Dave Lyons, a former member and co-founder of Hearse's group Socialist Democracy. Why no accounting of these little matters?
The other significant silence is that comrade Hearse fails to list the organisation which initiated the establishment of the LSA in January 1998 — the Communist Party of Great Britain. The CPGB has a candidate on the list.
As a member of that organisation — and as chair of the LSA — I find comrade Hearse's silences curious in an otherwise informative article. (Ian Page is a Lewisham councillor, not a Southwark councillor, for the Socialist Party by the way.)
CPGB London
rort.gov.au
Between July 1996 and March 1998, there were 4471 convictions for social security fraud with a further 3000 alleged cases before the courts. The total cases represent 0.12% of the 6.3 million welfare claimants. So what could have prompted the Prime Minister's extraordinary call to "dob in a dole bludger"?
During the Howard government's first term, nine of its MPs were forced to resign over travel rorts or conflicts of interest, almost 8% of government seats in both houses.
Three Coalition MPs were convicted of fraud. This equates to 2600 convicted thieves per 100,000 of the population. Figures like this in the general community would have tough on crime sloganeers running rabid. The convicted rorters received a slap on the wrist and walked away with million dollar superannuation payouts and other benefits, funded by taxpayers. Where does this fit into the government's good welfare/bad welfare divide, a system which imposes $1300 fines for minor "breaches" such as not answering a letter from Centrelink?
The Australian public has the same right to expect that those who make the rules, the politicians, should act with integrity and for appropriate penalties to be imposed upon those convicted of dishonesty.
What was that about people in glass houses?
Unemployed Persons Advocacy
Brisbane
[Abridged.]
UN hypocrisy
Little Johnny Howard, as he stumbles from disaster to disaster, cannot have it both ways. When the United Nations condemned mandatory sentencing, his representatives grumbled that they hadn't voted for the UN members concerned, and how dare an outside body interfere in Australia's home crises.
Yet, when Ruddock brutally throws out the weeping Kosovars (some of whom will have to live in Serb areas, and all of whom will be in danger of mines), he says he is doing this with the support of his good friend the UN Committee for Refugees.
New Zealand, Canada, Germany and Turkey (a much poorer country than Australia, which however took 20,000 refugees compared to Australia's 4000) all welcomed there suffering people, and so far there is no talk of throwing them out to "homes", which in many cases do not exist any more.
The chasing of refugees in hiding and threats to use force bring back appalling memories of Nazis hunting Jews.
St Kilda Vic
[Abridged.]
Shane Stone
So there we have it: the "Stolen Generations" and the alleged wrongs done to Aboriginal mothers and their children in the past is just a big gammon (bullshit) myth! It never happened, so everyone can now shut-up, cease and desist from all this baseless fuss and go and take a running jump in a poisoned water-hole!
"Sorry" is not really needful, nor is reconciliation an issue of real legitimacy.
The United Nations are also a mob of whingeing, whining, carping exaggerators and can pull their heads in too!
Yes, it does appear Shane Stone Q.C. is settling in to the federal Liberal presidency quite "hands on". But then, I had no doubts that our Shane would do just marvellously there. He may even excel himself!
Darwin
Privatisation
The arguments for the full privatisation of Telstra are seriously silly.
Telstra needs capital to expand, it is said. Yes, but transferring existing ownership from public to private will not, of itself, generate any new Telstra capital. Moreover, what's wrong with taxation as the source of additional investment?
Tax can be collected primarily from the better-off and Telstra profits can be used chiefly to benefit the disadvantaged. With private investment, profits go mainly to the wealth who can always reclaim their capital as well.
Taxpayer-funded investments could lose money, it is remarked. Of course. However, they'll probably make money.
Are the affluent stupid to invest because they could do some dosh? Hardly. Overall, and over time, they usually finish well ahead. Precisely the same analysis supports expanded government investment in Telstra and elsewhere.
Rydalmere NSW