Keep our coasts public!
Alan Davison (Write On, Green Left Weekly #572) claims factual errors in previous reports on opposition to Australand's proposed "Port Coogee" development. As "proof", he points out that the section of beach where the development will be centred on is an old industrial site and further that rocks have been dumped on the beach to form a seawall, such that at high tide there is no beach visible. So tell us something we don't know!
Nowhere did Anthony Benbow's article (GLW #570) to which he refers claim that the whole of Coogee Beach was in "pristine" condition. Does such a thing exist in the urban environment? The point is that the industrial remains should be removed, the dunes rehabilitated and the rocks carted away so as to create more space for the public to enjoy.
Furthermore, Davison avoids the whole crux of the issue. Does he think it makes sense to fill in the ocean floor in order to create seaside housing for the rich? The Coogee proposal, and similar "canal" developments around the country, are pushed by property developers trying to flog the idea that we can all own our own little slice of the seaside. The result is a degraded environment and the privatisation of our coastline. Our beaches belong to all of us and should stay that way.
Sam Wainwright
O'Connor WA
Socialist Alliance and the Labor left
I read Dave Riley's article regarding Latham Labor (GLW #570) with interest. I was thankful to see that, after mentioning the formation of the Nuclear Disarmament Party in the 1980s (we do not need any more little splinter parties), he then said exactly that: the Socialist Alliance is here, now and for the future, and it stands for all that Labor has forsworn, and much more.
Some of us hope that Labor wins the next federal election and that when Latham's right-wing policies disillusion ALP voters, they will swing to the Socialist Alliance.
On the same page, Brian Webb rightly points out that the left views "opportunity for all" as meaning good public health, education and other services. Perhaps Labor's slogan should be "Equal opportunity for all".
Webb also reports hearteningly on the left's jeering of Bob Carr's "absolute evil of people smuggling" statement. The absolute evil is the need for people smuggling: no-one should need or want to flee his country because of poverty of terror.
Obviously, a party should lead, not follow, public opinion, as Carmen Lawrence indicates, and "hear, hear" to Webb's last paragraph: the Labor left would surely do better with Socialist Alliance than with its own right.
The trouble with your paper is that it gives one so much food for thought!
Marie McKern
Kings Cross NSW
Naomi Klein article
I disagree with Naomi Klein's article (GLW #571) regarding democracy in Iraq and the neighbouring region.
In removing Saddam, Iraq is now under the control of the more extremist Shiite majority (60% of the country) that is religiously, ideologically and politically opposed to US-style democracy. Under democratic elections, they will vote in a less democratic Islamic government.
Ironically, it is the Iraqi Baath Party, composed of moderate Sunni Muslims (20% of the population), Christians and even had women in government, which was the most democratic in the region. Iraq will now most likely vote in anti-US representatives.
It would seem hard for Bush, Blair and Howard to justify how the region will become more democratic by making it more dangerous, influenced by more extremist Islamic governments, united against the US, and in control of nuclear weapons.
Peter Smernos
Adelaide
[Abridged.]
Trials
Can anyone explain why Saddam Hussein is to be tried by an (American-dominated) Iraqi court? Why can't he be given a reasonably fair trial with leisurely proceedings and a chance of self-defence in an international court, like Milosevic is going through at the Hague?
Poor "sick" old Pinochet and silent sinister Henry Kissinger must be laughing their heads off — but then, of course, Chile doesn't have oil.
Rosemary Evans
St Kilda, Vic
End the torture
I am writing about the dilemma of all those genuine refugees on Australian visas that are temporary. Their lives here are a torment. In the national interest, the torture must end. After three years and more, living peacefully among us, we know them as good people and good workers, who should be allowed to stay.
A 40-year-old Iraqi refugee in my community died last week. The death certificate may say "cardiac arrest", but all who knew him say he died of a broken heart, his physical and mental health broken by four years of intense grief and shame, and the forced separation from his beloved family in Iraq who looked to him as their provider and protector. His four years in Australia were hell on earth, his suffering unbelievable.
The current policy results in many of the nearly 9000 refugees on temporary protection visas suffering and being medicated for severe anxiety — men, women and children. As well, tens of thousands of Australians personally involved with this national tragedy are experiencing vicarious trauma, and are bewildered by the continuing inhumane actions of our government.
We share the pain of our refugee friends. May mercy, kindness and compassion be restored, and quickly.
Frederika Steen
Romero Centre
Chapel Hill Qld
Advance Australia Fair?
I recently attended the Rural Australians for Refugees second national conference in Albury. There were over 300 representatives there from around Australia.
We were inspired by doctors, lawyers, farmers, politicians, priests and nuns, and the average country person, all working to provide support for refugees in and out of our detention camps. Of course, we were harrowed by their years of suffering before they arrived at our shores, as well as the years of suffering at Australia's hands.
At the closing ceremony, we tied a ribbon to the wire for each person, we prayed for and then we sang the National Anthem.
As I thought of the words, I found myself choking back the tears. It is so hard to sing the words and know we are doing the opposite. How can I rejoice when so many little children are not free? How can I sing the second verse about "plains to share", when there are people behind electric fences in the desert and families fenced into a football field for the third year on Nauru?
I have come to know so many of these people. I hear the news about the baby's first words as well as the mother sobbing.
So I took a deep breath and thought, I would sing in the spirit of hope, that we could one day again be proud of our country's moral leadership.
Advance Australia Fair.
Elaine Smith
West Haven NSW
Redfern cops
Many years ago, "Dolly" Dunn, the infamous paedophile, had a house near the Block in Redfern, where he paid underaged Aboriginal boys for sex with money and drugs. Mum Shirl, the great leader of the community, forced the Redfern police to do something about it.
In the NSW Police Royal Commission, the story came out that when the Redfern cops raided Dunn, they found him in bed with a boy, found drugs, money, videos and photos. They took him to the station and shook him down for a $40,000 bribe. Dunn ended up in jail, but the cops were allowed to retire with their dirty money. The community on the Block is well aware of this story.
I mention this because a friend in Redfern has told me that on the morning of Sunday February 16, Pam Ingram, a leading woman on the Block, went to St Vincent's Church and announced after mass that another paedophile ring was operating and that the women were preparing to protest at the Redfern police station again. That afternoon, completely unrelatedly, TJ Hickey died.
I have seen no mention of this in the mainstream press. But if the women were preparing to mobilise, memories of the last time the Redfern cops dealt with a paedophile ring were being recalled and then the news came through of TJ's death. I'm not surprised that there was a riot.
Given their record, the NSW Police deserve to be pelted.
Barry Healy
Perth
Chris Kempster
Chris Kempster (born 1930) died in Katoomba Hospital of emphysema. Chris compiled and edited The Songs of Henry Lawson. He was once told "there are no Henry Lawson songs". Chris was sent 400 tunes and arrangements of 100 Lawson poems. And they're still coming. Chris wrote his immortal setting of Lawson's poem "Reedy River", when he was 15 years old, an apprentice electrician, and member of the Eureka Youth League.
This song was the theme of the Australian musical Reedy River, Dick Diamond's musical story of Australian shearers in the outback. The play has had hundreds of performances, and is still going strong. Chris was in the original Bushwackers Band of Jack Barry, John Meredith, Harry Kaye and Brian Loughlin, which did the first recordings of Australian bush songs. He recorded three CDS of Lawson songs for the ABC, with Sonia Bennett.
Chris taught maths at senior high school level.
Loved by all, he spent his life helping others, and built four homes during his lifetime. Survived by Megan and Alysson.
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
Kurdish tragedy
The Kurds in general and the Iraqi Kurds in particular are among the worst victims of the US and its close allies' political games. There is plenty of evidence that shows how the Kurdish people have always been misled and victimised by the US and its regional friends in recent decades.
One example is the Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party's rebellion for autonomy in 1974. It was cruelly suppressed by the Iraqi armed forces thanks to Iranian Shah's betrayal.
The Shah, who first supported the rebels as a leverage to contain the Iraqi regime's expansionism, left them out following the settlement of the boundary disputes between the two countries in 1975.
The KDP rebels led by General Mustafa Barzani (Masood Barzani's father) were brutally massacred and displaced by the Iraqi army in the following years.
The bloody repression of the Kurds' uprising in 1991 by Saddam Hussein is another clear example for the US and its allies' conspiratorial policies towards the Iraqi Kurds.
The Kurds who had risen up against Saddam's tyrannical regime under the US protection were left out by the first Bush administration and massacred in the fiercest way.
Turkey's deceptive and repressive manners towards the Kurdish groups in recent years constitute another example of indecent policies against the Kurds.
Turkish policymakers, along with their anti-Kurd military actions at home and abroad, have always tried to divide the Kurdish people and provoke them against each other by pursuing vague and hypocritical policies towards them.
Particularly since the beginning of the PKK's armed battle against Ankara in 1984, the Turkish officials have conducted a ceaseless effort to infiltrate the Kurdish groups to prevent their unity and thwart their attempts to gain autonomy.
The above examples are just a few of many oppressive policies pursued by the US and its close friends against the Kurdish people.
Today, there is no sign of change in the US and its allies' long-term policies towards the Kurdish people. No reason can be found to believe that the US would not betray the Iraqi Kurds once more.
It would be extremely optimistic to suppose that the US will forgo all its illegitimate interests in Iraq and ignore its regional close allies such as Turkey only for the sake of the Kurds' autonomy!
Nasser Frounchi, Iran
Excuses of mass deception
There has been a lot of comment in the mainstream media lately concerning Libya's decision to abandon its nuclear weapons program. It has been suggested the decision shows that Libya been concerned by what happened in Iraq War, thereby justifying the war.
However, if you look at the facts, this claim just does not stand up. By the end of April, the US had effectively won the war, so if the claim that it caused Libya to abandon the nuclear program were true, Libya would have abandoned its nuclear program at that time.
Yet it was not until December 19 that Libya announced it had ended its nuclear ambitions. We now know that parts to do with uranium enrichment were discovered and confiscated from a ship travelling through the Suez Canal in October. There would have been plenty of time between the end of the war and the leaving of this Libya-bound shipment for it to be cancelled.
If Libya was so concerned by the result of the Iraq War, why did it still allow the shipment to take place? The evidence seems to indicate that if anything, the war prompted Libya to continue with its nuclear program, possibly to give it a better bargaining position in its talks with the US, as with North Korea.
It is just another attempt to excuse what was an unjustified war that the mainstream media has swallowed without question.
Brendan Dobson
Macgregor ACT
Close Pine Gap!
Pine Gap is a joint facility in name only. In reality, it is a US base on Australian soil; a little USA in remote Australia. But it isn't small with respect to its strategic significance or the threat it poses to our national security.
Pine Gap provides the US with crucial satellite information on which they base decisions about military deployments. Information from Pine Gap was used in the unprovoked and illegal attack on Iraq in March last year. Pine Gap is also being used in the development of the Bush administration's missile defence system or Son of Star Wars.
Pine Gap is a major threat to Australia's security because it is a primary target for nations who may come into conflict with the US in the future. It threatens our independence as a nation because successive Australian government's have been unwilling to question its existence for fear of jeopardising our relationship with Uncle Sam. Make no mistake — Pine Gap is primarily a secretive facility that benefits the US far more than it does Australia.
The Howard government has demonstrated a sycophantic relationship with the Bush administration. Instead of acting in the best interests of Australians, Howard has put US interests above those of his own countrypeople. There are many examples: the unilateral attack on Iraq; the participation in US war games training to illegally interdict ships on the high seas; support for the US missile defence system; discussions with the US to locate further military bases on Australian soil; and our government's refusal to countenance other more suitable suppliers of military hardware.
Each of the above mentioned examples are small fry compared to Pine Gap. The US relies on this facility and they will not allow its existence to be jeopardised, even by the supposedly sovereign government on whose land it is situated. Australians must take back what is theirs, and their politicians must stand up for their own country, no matter who it offends!
Adam Bonner
Meroo Meadow NSW
Michael Lee for mayor?
Michael Lee has broken a commitment made by him even before the election for Lord Mayor of Sydney has begun.
On ABC Lateline on February 6, he said, "the Labor Party at my urging has now agreed to conduct rank and file ballots to select the candidates for council."
However, the rank and file selected only three of the candidates for the Sydney City Council, the rest were appointed by head office.
How can one trust anything Michael Lee says?
Craig Dunnett From Green Left Weekly, March 3, 2004.
North Rocks NSW
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