Lost the plot
Those in charge of the Labor Party have lost the plot. They have failed to educate the young people about Labor's objective. The election proved that the young people are going away from Labor.
In older times the Labor Party had a socialist objective. There was always the working class and the capitalist class. The Labor Party bosses and the politicians have drifted away from that attitude. They failed to educate the younger generation about socialism and the class struggle. Younger working people know nothing about the past and the class struggles. To them everything in society seems OK and they are voting for the Liberals and other right-wing parties. They are going away from Labor.
Those in the Labor Party have failed to tell them there will always be a working class and a capitalist class, that it's most important to vote for the class they belong to, and in this case, the working class and other left-wing parties, not for the capitalist class.
Seeing that the working class is the majority of the population, Labor should have no trouble getting elected to power.
The Labor Party needs to do a lot more to educate the working class it depends on to get into power.
W.G. Fox
Spring Hill, Qld
Drugged
So you wonder what Colin Powell's been smoking? He takes it in tablet form according to the November 10 Washington Post, quoting Arab News from London. The Post quotes Powell as saying: "Everybody in the admin is using the pharmaceutical Ambien [zolpidem tartrate]."
"So you use sleeping tablets to organise yourself?", Powell was asked.
"Yes. Well, I wouldn't call them that. They're a wonderful medication — not medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien", Powell replied.
Then follows a list of some Ambien side-effects which include dizziness, nausea, and hallucination. (See http://www.unknowonews.net/03111ambien.html>)
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls, NSW
Iraq
The Lancet has published a study suggesting that about 98,000 additional deaths may have occurred in Iraq since the war began last year. Some people have attacked the authors, but their work is legitimate.
The researchers note that there is a significant possibility that the extra mortality could be many tens of thousands higher, or lower, than their best estimate. However, this doesn't mean their research methods were careless, just that it was hard, given the obviously difficult circumstances in Iraq, to have a high degree of certainty that the households they surveyed were representative of the entire nation.
The authors deliberately excluded data from Fallujah (with its atypically high death rate) before preparing the 98,000 estimate. The Lancet study constitutes important and valid research — research which the "coalition of the willing" governments were not prepared to do.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere, NSW
Pardons
The "witches" of Prestonpans are to receive their pardons 400 years after being burnt at the stake. However, the Roman Catholic Church did not stop burning them until 1835 when the sentences imposed by the auto da fe became less severe. This was also the year that those who held a round Weltanschauung were spared immolation.
I suspect that the Roman Catholic Church still believes witches exist and that the Earth is flat — they just do not actually burn those who say otherwise.
The witches are apparently very grateful. Those in the Flat Earth Society, less pleased.
Mark Clarkson
Sydney
From Green Left Weekly, November 17, 2004.
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