East Timorese refugees
The GLW #511 editorial "Let Timorese stay!" is spot on. Many of us remember the almost sadistic trap the East Timorese refugees were deliberately caught in when they arrived after 1991. Before the Dili massacre there was no question that East Timorese arrivals would be assessed according to objective standards and found to be the refugees that they were. It was the wretched Labor government and Gareth Evans who changed all that, pretending that the East Timorese were Portuguese citizens (although East Timor's oil must be Indonesian or Australian!).
Let's let the Howard government know that we expect the bureaucratic torture of the East Timorese to stop. Those who want to stay, and many would because they have been here for more than 10 years, must be allowed citizenship immediately.
It has not escaped the notice of solidarity groups that Australia is taking 60% of East Timor's oil and gas, and has withdrawn from World Court injunctions on seabed boundaries to deny redress, independent arbitration. Classic bullying by a resources-rich country of one of the poorest countries in the world. It must not pass.
What was it Alexander Downer said when East Timor joined the United Nations? "Australia is committed to supporting East Timor as it reaches its full potential as an independent and successful nation, actively engaged in regional and global affairs." How, Mr Downer?
Stephen Langford
Secretary
Australia East Timor Association
Paddington NSW
Palestinians
Recently, John Howard offered to help negotiate an Israeli/Palestinian peace settlement. He might need to brush up on the art of compromising the last time he did any was during the GST legislation. And anyway, there are no Australian Democrats in the Israeli parliament.
However, there are about four million Palestinian refugees what would the reaction be if he recommended the Australian refugee policy? Declare the Palestinians "illegal immigrants", then put them in camps and/or expel them? Already happened, in 1948 and 1967, particularly.
Cut off social security services? Been done, and Israel even taxes Palestinian earnings, too.
Get a Labor Party with the same sort of policies? Too late, the Israeli Labour Party even refused to negotiate with Sadat in the 1970s, and Israeli Labour PM Barak's offer in 2000 refused to readmit all but a fraction of the refugees.
Maybe PM Howard could recommend his anti-terrorist legislation? Too late: the Palestinian response to Israeli prisons, beatings and spy networks was first stone throwing and then suicide bombing.
Stay at home, John. The only problem your policies have solved was how to win the 2001 federal election. Also, don't say "trade not aid" to the Israelis. They get about half of the billions of dollars of US aid. Military aid, that is.
And whatever you do, don't pretend to identify with "battlers" and expect them to take you seriously.
Howard Marosi
Nth Carlton Vic
Socialist Alliance I
Writers (GLW #512) responding to my recent letter in GLW #510 have gone some way to clarifying what might be the attitude of the International Socialist Organisation to the Socialist Alliance: the alliance is not supposed to be a regroupment project, instead it is only meant to be an electoral alliance whose future would be endangered if (a) it adopts too radical a program or (b) the Democratic Socialist Party unilaterally dissolves into the alliance.
To sweeten this blunt response, these correspondents instead argue that the alliance is "about building a bigger left, not just about regrouping the existing left" (Robert Stainsby) and "that the future development of the Socialist Alliance is primarily a political question" (Hamish McPherson).
Excuse me, but I fear I missed something here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I read it Stainsby and McPherson are telling us that regroupment of the left (by which they mean the organised, party and proto party left not the broad unaffiliated left which they exclude from their scenario) may be possible so long as it is pursued outside the Socialist Alliance. Indeed, for any group (or is it just the DSP?) to entertain the idea of dissolving into the alliance would be, in their estimation, tantamount to its destruction!
Both writers share a blinkered outlook: that the Socialist Alliance is about one thing and "left regroupment" is sitting on another agenda (which they don't spell out) somewhere else. The two things are supposed to be separate.
I disagree. The future potential of the alliance and the opportunities that exist for left regroupment in this country are married to one another.
Dave Riley
Brisbane
Socialist Alliance II
We want to briefly respond to Hamish McPherson (Write on, GLW #512) who writes that "any decision by the DSP to 'dissolve' into the alliance after January 2003 represents an unwelcome ultimatum".
According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1982) an ultimatum is a "final proposal or statement of terms, rejection of which by opposite party may lead to end of harmonious relations, declaration of war".
If the DSP's January congress adopts the proposal to cease to operate as a public organisation and to function only as a tendency within the alliance, it will be demanding nothing in return for its "unilateral" commitment to build the Socialist Alliance, as it stands today.
Given that no supporter of the alliance is likely to be opposed to greater commitment to build the alliance from any of its members, we find it difficult to understand where McPherson sees the "ultimatum" coming from. We find it even more difficult to understand who or what would constitute the "opposite party" that would reject such commitment.
Kathy Newnam & Peter Robson
Newcastle
Socialist Alliance III
I do not believe that the DSP's proposal is something that would be good for the future of the Socialist Alliance.
The primary concern that I have is linked to the perception of the SA within the broader left community and the aim of creating a political party that would unite the left and allow us to provide a left alternative at the ballot box.
I believe that if the DSP goes ahead with its proposal then the SA will no longer be perceived by the broad left community as a coalition of left socialist parties, but instead as an arm of the DSP.
While I have been assured by the DSP that this will not be the case, and in fact our constitution does not allow this to happen those outside the party, and indeed those unaligned, inactive members are not to know this.
When it comes to politics, as we have seen time and time again, the importance of perception is everything (the example of the queue jumpers leaps out).
I absolutely believe that the SA will lose its attraction to the broader left community should the DSP dissolve.
Instead of the perception that the SA is a unity of the DSP and other socialist parties (too numerous to mention here), the perception will be that the DSP has taken over or usurped the SA.
If our aims are indeed to provide an attractive left alternative at the ballot box, I think that we should campaign against this proposal.
Angela Budai
Chatswood NSW
Iraqi holocaust
When questioned in 1996 about the death of 500,000 or more Iraqis as a consequence of US actions and the ongoing (genocidal) UN sanctions against Iraq since the Gulf War, Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it". This US-UN "sanctioned" Iraqi holocaust rarely rates a mention. Such is the "invisibility" of "non people".
But the "price" wasn't high enough, as George Bush junior and his "bomb the bejesus" cronies, are busting themselves to unleash further savagery. Apparently, any "price" is worth it, so non-stop civilian ("collateral") carnage will continue as usual. No wonder the US refuses to sign up to the International Criminal Court.
German Justice Minister Herta Daeubier-Gmelin made a strange analogy, likening George Bush junior to Adolph Hitler. Surely Hitler wasn't that thick.
Meanwhile, the Howard-Downer "chorus" keep parroting the rhetoric of mass deception, i.e., "weapons of mass destruction", "nuclear capability", "terrorists" etc ad infinitum. Paranoid ranting should be directed at the hegemonic US-Israeli hydra, where it's appropriate.
Flouting international law by torturing captives, invading and occupying sovereign states and territories, terrorising civilian populations and persistent non-compliance with UN resolutions, qualifies Israel as a rogue state. Yet the US and its UK-Australian proxies, the axis of duplicity, never bring Israel to account! Is the Zionist lobby that pervasive?
"Freedom loving" USA used napalm and agent orange on a massive scale in Vietnam, and in Afghanistan they bombed Canadian troops, a wedding party and thousands of civilians, including the cowardly World War II firebombing of Dresden, an undefended city of Germany (135,000 plus civilians burned alive), to mention just a few atrocities. To therefore criticise Saddam Hussein for having used chemical and biological weapons, which, not surprisingly, were acquired under the auspices of "freedom loving" US President George Bush senior, Saddam's ally during the 1980s, is of the utmost hypocrisy.
If the colluding US-UK duopoly ceased equipping such regimes in the first place, the world would be a safer place. Especially so, if first world countries did with their weapons what Saddam is being asked to do with his.
As for the "Lib-Labrador" party, both Howard and Crean, including their sycophantic minions, know nothing about leadership, but everything about deceit. Throw them out at the next election, or sooner!
Richard Nixon
Geelong
Public schools
The community struggle to keep Hunters Hill High and Erskineville public schools in public hands has finally resulted in a victory to those communities with the announcement by NSW education minister John Watkins that the schools would remain open.
Maree O'Halloran, the president of the NSW Teachers Federation, congratulated the magnificent and intelligent effort stating, "the victory demonstrates the power of public education supporters speaking with a united opposition to the government's ill-conceived Building the Future plan".
That same united and relentless community action led to the overturning of the decisions to merge Marrickville and Dulwich High schools just months ago. The same resolve is evident in the community of Maroubra High School who have vowed to put up as hefty a fight to keep their local comprehensive high school open as the one that kept their local football club.
The decision to close Maroubra High School must be overturned in the same way that all the other decisions were overturned through joint community action.
To get involved in the campaign to keep Maroubra High open, contact SOS (Save Our Schools) on 0438 64 1587 or 0415 437 997.
Noreen Navin
Sydney
From Green Left Weekly, October 23, 2002.
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