Write on: Letters to the editor
Rape trials
I am writing about the article "Courts and injustice" by Jennifer Thompson (GLW #255). It concerns me that her criticism of rape trials (based on a government report) attacks the right to cross-examine witnesses and the presumption of innocence.
While obviously very distressing to the witnesses, many lines of questioning she objects to are relevant: motives behind accusations, intoxication, the circumstances, their resistance to assault. Lying pure and simple is of course a routine defence attack. To ban the raising of such issues would mean banning whole arguments on behalf of the accused. To see such attacks merely as harassment of "victims", as Thompson does, is to presume the guilt of the defendant. This amounts to injustice itself.
While Thompson is concerned with rape, the same principle could be used in countless cases to limit the right to a legal defence. The Police Royal Commission has made the nature of our "justice system" clear, but institutionalised injustice is a reason not to strengthen the position of prosecutors.
Niall Clugston
Springwood NSW
Language
I was impressed by Dave Abbott's "Defeating Howard" in GLW #254. This wasn't only because of the content. Equally important was his use of clear, concise, direct and non-doctrinaire English. The only quarrel I have is with his transcriber. S/he failed to put quote-marks round "rationalism" in the phrase "economic rationalism".
This may seem a quibble. However, I believe it is vital always to put in the quote marks when using this phrase. By this simple means, we have a quick shorthand to highlight the fact that the doctrine is not rational at all. Instead it is merely a rationalisation of terminal greed. That, too, we must repeat often. The word "rationalisation" itself, as a pejorative, helps get the message over.
This is just one of the cases where simple, politically correct words can spring people out of false consciousness. We need to do this to counter what is put over all the time by the mass media.
When seeking, as Dave urges, to build alliances, we must always look for and use such means. If we do not, the allies will not hear the message. And, somewhere in there, we have to find the simple language that will prevent the faction fights that will otherwise arise to try to control the alliance.
Ron Guignard
Brompton SA
Zionism
Philip Mendes (Write on, GLW #255) claims that "there is absolutely no doubt Marx was an anti-Semite" because his "writings contain numerous smatterings of anti-Jewish sentiment." Marx's writings also contain "numerous smatterings" of antiChristian sentiment. One would be surprised if they didn't. After all Marx was a militant atheist who was hostile to all religions.
According to Mendes, Marx "regularly associated Jews with dirtiness, describing them as the 'filthiest of all races', and employed gross anti-Jewish stereotypes in his criticisms of Jewish socialist leaders Ferdinand Lassalle and Leo Frankel." Mendes, however, fails to tell us where Marx made this description of the Jews, or where Marx "employed gross anti-Jewish stereotypes" in his criticisms of Lassalle and Frankel. But, even on the face of it, these claims lack credibility. First, Marx did not regard the Jews as a "race" but as a religious grouping. Secondly, neither Lassalle nor Frankel were Jewish. They, like Marx, were atheists.
Doug Lorimer
Summer Hill NSW
Censorship
It is unfortunate that some members of the International Socialist Organisation involved in the Anti-Racist Campaign in Brisbane (ARC) are arguing to exclude left organisations from sponsoring the campaign and are trying to hide the central role that socialist organisations are playing in the campaign, including the ISO and the DSP.
The ISO argues in ARC meetings that groups such as Resistance should not be allowed to sponsor the campaign, because it helps to distribute the same paper that the DSP distributes — Green Left Weekly. Does this mean that every individual or organisation who sponsors or helps in the distribution of GLW should be banned from sponsoring anti-racism rallies?
The DSP and Resistance are separate organisations with different constitutions, memberships and membership requirements. One can not speak for the other.
Other groups that should not be allowed to sponsor the campaign, according to the ISO, include the Committee in Solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean, and Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor. They too, say the ISO, are DSP fronts. Once again, separate aims + separate membership + separate structures = separate organisations.
The ISO has tail-ended the ALP for the last 13 years and continues to do so, but it becomes outrageous and scary when it begins to tail-end the right-wing ideologues by attempting to censor left organisations from speaking out against the attacks on working people. So much for freedom of speech and organisation among the left.
Roberto Jorquera
Brisbane
[Abridged.]