US Greens
In response to Tennessee reader Howard Switzer's complaints (Write On, GLW #596) about my comments on the US Greens in my article in "Democrats sabotage Nader-Camejo campaign" (GLW #595), the main point of my article was the fact that the Democratic Party has gone all-out to prevent the Nader-Camejo ticket from being on the ballot. I wrote about the Green Party convention within that context.
Leaving aside the question of the procedures at the convention, let's review the politics of its decision not to endorse Nader-Camejo. Immediately following the 2000 election, the Democratic Party and its liberal and leftist hangers-on began a campaign charging that Nader's Green Party candidacy had thrown the election to Bush.
In this election year, the anti-Nader campaign reached a crescendo. A section of Green party leaders and members were affected by this campaign, and they sought ways to dodge the charge. They came up with the ploy of the "safe states" strategy, where the Greens would in effect call for a vote for Kerry in those states where the election appeared to be close.
David Cobb championed this "safe states" strategy. The decision of the convention to endorse Cobb against Nader-Camejo was an endorsement of this backhanded support of Kerry. But its effect goes beyond even that. It meant that Nader-Camejo were denied the ballot status they would have automatically had if the party had nominated them. Thus the Nader-Camejo ticket was forced to rely on collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions. This opened the way for the Democrats to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent the ticket from being on the ballot.
The Green Party is sidelined, while it could have been in the centre of the election debates if it had endorsed Nader-Camejo. But that would have meant standing up to the anti-Nader campaign, something which the "safe state" supporters want to avoid at all costs. A case in point: Well-known activist Media Benjamin attended the Green convention to press for the endorsement of Cobb as against Nader-Camejo. Right after the convention she began to campaign not for the unknown Cobb but for Kerry.
On the procedures at the convention, Switzer does not mention the fact that in those states where Green Party members got to vote their preference before the convention, over 80% were for candidates who were for endorsing Nader-Camejo. Cobb got a bit over 12%. These states contain the overwhelming majority of Green Party members. How was this majority turned into a minority at the convention?
Barry Sheppard
Oakland, California
Terrorism I
If ever the political stupidity of individual terrorism was displayed for all to see it was with the kidnapping of two French citizens in Iraq to pressure the French government over its anti-democratic ban on female Muslim school students wearing headscarves. Muslim students were primed to defy the ban in a nation-wide display of civil disobedience but the campaign collapsed in the wake of the kidnappings.
It is a perfect demonstration of how terrorists, no matter what their intentions, reduce the masses to spectators in the drama of their own liberation. That is fundamentally anti-democratic. It is the suffering masses of humanity who will act in the service of their own liberation or there will be no liberation.
Terrorism of this kind is understandable, as the anguished response by humiliated and powerless peoples but it is politically bankrupt.
Barry Healy
Darlington, WA
Terrorism II
Philip Ruddock refers to the Russian children's hostage crisis in criticising the ALP's stance on security but obviously the Coalition has more in common with Chechen terrorists than the ALP. Both the Howard government and the terrorists use children as political pawns and have no compunction about locking them up and separating them from their loved ones. Both ignore the devastating effect of their actions on the well-being of these innocents.
To parody the Bible, Mr Howard, man shall not live by dread alone. The electorate is alert but not alarmed by your muck-raking minister.
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay, NSW
Health insurance rebate
Dear Mr Howard, please explain to the 90% of my elderly patients who cannot afford private health insurance why you are giving a rebate of up to 40% to those who can. Through no fault of their own, they are not able to afford private health insurance, yet my patients have contributed to the Australia we younger people benefit from. They donated 10 shillings a week from their basic wages to establish a medical school here in WA. Most are women, who as mothers could not earn the wages of those who could acquire assets. Yet they also deserve the best medical care we as a nation can offer. The $3 billion used to give rebates would solve the shortages in the public health system and allow all Australians to share a fairer Medicare.
Dr Colin Hughes
Glen Forrest, WA
Emperor's clothes
How much more before Australians say the emperor has no clothes? There were no kids overboard, no weapons of mass destruction, the UN did not sanction Bush's attack on Iraq, but we continue supporting bloody murder in Najaf. Kyoto-wise Japan will not buy our filthy coal. The premiers are fighting them but Howard says there is no list of radioactive waste dumps. Will truth in government ever rise out of the media fog? Will we find our own way or have we grown too fond of the cut of the cloth and the stars and stripes?
Yvonne Francis
Queanbeyan, NSW
Refugees
So, the Liberal MHR for Adelaide, Trish Worth, compares refugees to cats or dogs at a refugee forum. I say, thank you, Trish Worth. The comparison is valid in many ways. Who does not now remember the repeated calls coming from Australia's detention centres by detainees, "We are human, we are not animals"?
It's not the only comparison that holds. It takes an "asylum seeking" stray cat just five weeks, assisted by the intervention of refugee advocates, the Australian Democrats and high profile "golden tonsils" show host John Laws, to enter Australia. After that it's quarantine for the cat for about eight weeks, and then, finally, the cat gets reunited with "its family".
That's the story of Honey the cat, the feline friend of Aladdin Sisalem — the last person held on Manus Island, at a daily cost to the Australian taxpayer of $23,000.
But it takes asylum seekers two to six years of being locked up in a detention centre. And once they have been declared refugees, they get a temporary visa, which excludes reunion with any family members.
On September 9, it's the start of the seventh year in Australian detention for Peter Qasim, who arrived in a little dinghy on Australian shores to seek asylum. And with the full High Court decision of four weeks ago, it's legal for the Australian government to keep him there until he dies. That's the result of legislation crafted by Trish Worth's bosses in the Howard government.
Jack H. Smit From Green Left Weekly, September 8, 2004.
Narrogin, WA
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