Hemingway
Phil Shannon's review of James R. Mellow's Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (GLW #180 22/3/95) is an unwitting regurgitation of the strategy of the reactionary literati to try yet again to defame their old enemy: Ernest Hemingway.
This exercise in double-speak began in 1987 with K.S. Lynn.
Lynn twisted Hemingway into knots to portray a homophobic who cross-dressed, a misogynist who fantasised of having vaginal orgasm, a war hero who abandoned fallen comrades, a racist who impertinently upbraided his fellow Americans for their anti-Semitism, a neurotic tyrant who had the gall to oppose US involvement in Vietnam, a self-abusing drunk who threatened to punch out Senator McCarthy's lights, etc, etc, etc.
Mellow, while not coming up with one jot of new evidence, let alone insight, into Hemingway has picked up the Lynn baton with gusto.
Now we have Shannon telling us Hemingway had an "infatuation with Mussolini", which must sit awkwardly with Lynn's disgust at Hemingway as the "fair-haired boy of communism."
As if this is not enough, Shannon then claims Hemingway died from some sort of crisis of political correctness when the fact is Hemingway suffered from an inherited, degenerative disease which killed many in the Hemingway line and which finally inflicted Ernest too with chronic depression, ending in his suicide.
There is not the space here to detail Hemingway's unflagging attack against the right, except to refer to Castro's appraisal of For Whom The Bell Tolls as both a source of moral inspiration and tactical insight for the guerrilla campaign against Batista. If that is not of consequence then the Cuban Revolution was a CIA plot.
Robert Hodder
Canberra
[Edited for length.]
Live sheep exports
Animal welfare groups were sickened and outraged by Tuesday's decision by Federal Primary Industries Minister, Senator Bob Collins, to resume the live sheep export trade with Saudi Arabia after a four year ban.
The decision by Senator Collins means that an additional 75,000 sheep a year, or 200 a day, can be conservatively expected to die at sea if the trade reaches former levels. Current death rates are about 125,000 a year, or well over 300 a day, due to extremely inhumane conditions on board ships.
An even worse fate awaits those sheep that survive the voyage. Unlike Australia, the Middle East has no requirement for pre-stunning prior to slaughter so the sheep are still fully conscious when their throats are cut by hand in the normal "halal" method of slaughter. Some sheep remain conscious for up to 2 minutes. This barbaric cruelty would be inflicted upon an additional 3 million sheep annually if the trade were to reach former levels.
The live sheep export trade is also environmentally harmful, a contributing factor to unemployment within Australia and economically unsound. The Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare recommended in its report in 1985 that the trade be replaced with the frozen carcass trade because it was, and still is, so inhumane. People interested in joining us in our struggle against the trade should phone (09) 341 2304.
Andrew Connard
People Against Cruelty in Animal Transport
South Fremantle WA
[Edited for length.]
Women and Environment conference
The Women and Environment conference held at Melbourne's World Congress Centre last weekend has to be one of the most blatant examples yet of the ALP's efforts to cloak their environmentally disastrous policies and practices with a veneer of greenness. This conference was simultaneously one of their glossiest attempts to shore up their, of late rather tarnished, image as the thinking woman's party.
The target audience was supposed to include "women decision makers across all levels of the community, women active in environment and community groups [and] all those involved in, or affected by, environmental decision making". At $300 a head to attend, we can be confident that they were joking.
Just to be sure that the more radical environment activists would not find out much about it afterwards, conference organisers refused GLW's request for a media pass to cover the proceedings, insisting that we pay the concession registration fee of $100, an amount which we cannot afford.
It is no surprise to learn that the conference organising was contracted out to MCi International, that sponsors included federal government departments, the EPA and the latest "green" corporate giant Down to Earth, and that the line-up of speakers looked like a who's who of Labor's sisters in suits.
Women who are activists around ecological issues do need conferences. We need to discuss, debate, educate and learn, network and plan activities. And we need to enthuse, inspire and actively involve as many other women as possible.
What we don't need are more exclusive gatherings of relatively wealthy women making decisions on behalf of the majority of us in the movements, and doing so within a political framework set by the very party and its bureaucracy which is overseeing a massive attack on both the environment and most women's standard of living.
Lisa Macdonald
Summer Hill NSW
[Edited for length.]
The woodchip lies
Woodchipping does not create jobs. Woodchipping creates trucking contractors. Automated mills destroy mill jobs. Mills that rely on woodchipping are not viable. An alternative: making furniture.
Woodchipping does not balance overseas debt. A truck creates $250,000 overseas debt. Logging causes big debts to the taxpayers in roads and cleaning up the mess.
Woodchipping does not clean up the forest. Woodchip trucks pick up big trees and leave the waste. More forest roads, more clearing and more burning is not better forest management. Regenerated forests are a poorer, drier tree crop. Logging poisons water catchment forests. Rainforests may never recover from regeneration. An alternative: create tree plantations and the leave the forests for water and tourism.
One thing that woodchipping does is provide an excuse for a failing industry to blame someone else.
The woodchipping debate causes greenie bashing.
There is no excuse for the million dollar timber media campaigns. There is no excuse for State governments to woodchip our precious forests. There is no excuse for the Federal government to issue Midways or anyone else a licence to export woodchips from native Australian forests to Japan.
Yvonne Francis
Queanbeyan NSW
Old growth forest
Timber Workers' Secretary Gavin Hillier is a brave man, admitting on national radio that his workers "sugared" trucks and let environmentalists take the blame. He's honest, he concedes that the old growth resource will be gone in the next four years and that his workers' jobs will then be "dead", because regrowth won't sustain the industry.
Everyone is concerned about jobs, but the coalition inflicted unemployment on tens of thousands of workers in SRA, ABC, hospitals, the public service, the teaching profession and Qantas — and there was little fuss about that. At least there are plantations and alternative fibre crops that could create jobs.
A timber worker for 36 years, Arthur Lynch claims that the threat of unemployment is social blackmail used by the companies to stop the preservation of "the last of the tall old growth forests". He said: "Mechanisation and technology have put men out of work, the timber companies have shed 3000 or 4000 jobs over the last ten years and yet they've doubled production.
Without doubt the jobs are going, mills were closing down long before Green activism generated community concern. The question for politicians now is whether the remnant old growth forest heritage will disappear with the jobs.
Jenny Sheed
Elands NSW