Tibet
I read your article "TIBET: China's 'Sky Train'— fast-track to genocide?" by Lynette Dumble and Susanne Menihane (GLW #678). Out of curiosity, did you every consider that people from the West, especially from the "new" world, where natives were displaced and systematically exterminated, are not in a great position to be criticising the Chinese for minor infractions of the same nature?
Yes, the trains from Beijing will cause cultural changes and it's quite evident that things will be quite different in Tibet in 100 years, but that's also true everywhere. Native Americans, Aborigines in Australia, Pacific Islanders are all now facing a vastly different future due to cultural invasions.
I have never read in your paper any criticism of how European descendants treated native South Americans. Have you ever wondered why present-day Argentina is mostly white? Your double standard is very shocking.
X.Y. Liang
Via email
[Editor's note: GLW #31 carried an article on the European colonisation of, and attempted genocide in, the South American continent — "Five centuries of plunder" by Pip Hinman (available at <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1991/31/31cen.htm>.]
Unbiased?
Peter Panania (Write On, GLW #679) claims that GLW would be "a credible alternative to the mainstream" media if its writers joined him in his allegedly dogma-free, unbiased world-view in which there is no "villain and victim". Tell that to the survivors of the Nazi death camps — or to the survivors of the Zionist colonisation of the Palestinians' national homeland, or the hundreds of thousands of homeless Lebanese victims of Israel's 34-day war to destroy their country!
Panania accuses GLW of being hypocritical because it "claims to stand for freedom and liberation" but it allegedly closes down "debate and an exchange of ideas" by "labelling people 'racist', 'imperialist', 'capitalist' and a range of other well-worn cliches". In Panania's fantasy world there are no racists, no imperialists and no capitalists, just as there are no villains and victims. "Freedom and liberation", apparently, are only about "debate and an exchange of ideas" and have nothing to do with oppressed people's struggles to end actual social injustices and inequalities.
GLW, he alleges, lacks "fresh ideas" because its writers are "lost" in a "polarised world" in which "complexities, paradoxes and nuances are dismissed". To recognise that we live in a world that is socially polarised — between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed — is not to ignore or dismiss any of this world's "complexities, paradoxes and nuances". But, in contrast to the middle-class "sit-on-the-fence" social relativism that Panania appears to subscribe to, GLW's writers do not use them as an excuse to avoid taking the side of the victims of our world's fundamental social polarities.
Of course, Panania doesn't really sit on the fence. As was clear from his first letter (Write On, GLW #677), in which he accused GLW of "anti-Jewish" bias for opposing Israel's wars on the Palestinian and Lebanese nations, he stands firmly in the camp of the Zionist oppressor state.
Doug Lorimer
Summer Hill, NSW
SSP crisis
I have just read your article about the crisis in the SSP (GLW #679). I don't agree with your approach or conclusions. You appear to have made up your mind before hearing Sheridan's response to the one-sided August 7 SSP bulletin reflecting the views of McCombes and Sheridan's other political opponents in the SSP. How can a one-viewpoint document of this kind possibly "set the record straight"? Any truly democratic party would present all viewpoints side by side — not just those of the apparatchiks.
Sheridan is a fighter whose willingness to struggle on behalf of the working class has seen him go to jail and made him an MSP and a well-known public figure. Public prominence brings vulnerability to attack by the right-wing gutter media.
The fact of the matter is that Sheridan had every right to go to the courts and defend himself. And Sheridan is more than a match for Murdoch — as we have just seen. It is not often that Murdoch loses, but he has lost badly on this occasion.
Sheridan had every right to expect the support of his comrades in this struggle. But they failed to support him at the critical moment.
I am not in the least bit interested in Sheridan's private life or whether he may or may not have lied to a capitalist court about it. Read Lenin's "Left Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder and see what it has to say about the need for socialists to lie, if necessary, to defeat the class enemy. This issue of whether Sherdian is lying is completely subordinate to the question of defeating a vicious representative of the class enemy and making the semi-fascist porno-comics pay dearly every time they take a pot shot at a socialist.
In my opinion, McCombes and his cronies are adopting a phony moralistic stance on this question — typical of the Calvinist hypocrisy that prevails in certain quarters of the Scottish petty bourgeoisie, including, evidently, in some sectors of the left intelligentsia.
The SSP "comrades" who failed to defend Sheridan should hang their heads in shame. They are indeed the "mothers of all backstabbers" and "scabs". They have brought their own present misfortune on themselves.
Chris Edwards
Manchester, England [Abridged]
Elephants
Abducted from their homes, packed in crates and transported to a foreign land, Thai elephants — illegally removed from their environment and transported to Australia — are destined to spend their lives in tiny barren cages, half a world way from their native habitat. The federal government is responsible for allowing their importation and detention. It is impossible to simulate their native homeland nor to meet the complex needs of these highly intelligent animals in Australian zoos. To attempt to breed these animals in captivity is inhumane, since these animals will never be returned to the wild. Ethically and responsibly, zoos should serve these animals by funding efforts to stop poaching and habitat loss.
Ian Bell
Sandgate, Qld