Mabo
It's sickening to see the way certain politicians, prominent people and mining interests are performing over the Mabo decision. They just hate to see the Aboriginal people getting anything.
Most Australians would be the most selfish people on the face of this earth. The government of the day seized this entire country off the Aboriginal people and after 200 years of occupation, they do not want to give the Aboriginal people back any part of the land that once was theirs.
The blunt question is: do we need Mabo decisions to decide what land the Aboriginal people are entitled too? The truth is that they are fully entitled to this entire country. It was theirs for hundreds of thousands of years before the white man came. It seems that certain people and most Australians have forgotten that the government of the day stole this country from the Aboriginal people.
In all fairness to the Aboriginal owners of this country let us do the right thing by them for once in our lives and give them back at least part of the land that once was theirs. Why not declare the whole of the Northern Territory and part of north Queensland an Aboriginal state where the Aboriginal people can have self-government, their own culture and their own flag in the country of their origin. It's about time the whites showed a bit of respect for the Aboriginal owners of this country and acted accordingly.
W.G. Fox
Brisbane
US and Vietnam
After having seen the ABC's program on the infamous CIA "Phoenix" war crimes in Vietnam and read the GL's issue on war and the environment my blood began to boil once again. To top it all off the fascist power clique in the US has Clinton dangling on a string and points to the missing American soldiers as their excuse to punish Vietnam.
Instead of apologizing to Vietnam and paying reparations for the genocide, rape and massive destruction of the environment the Yanks and those other war criminals, the Vatican, have kept this
country on its knees. The issue of the missing US servicemen needs to be linked to an acknowledgement of American responsibility for the rape of Vietnam.
Michael Rose-Schwab
Gurambai NT
.OJ OFF
Democracy vs demarchy
Brian Martin's article "Are elections the ultimate in democracy?" (GLW #106) tended to brush over the limits of today's democracy. He mentioned "many on the left want to abolish private ownership", which is a point that can not be understated. Large scale private ownership explains why parliament today is only window dressing for those that do rule. Examples of this are common:
- Clinton's back-down on gay and lesbians in the army, because of the power of the upper echelons in the military.
- The severe limitations of Mabo with the hysteria and disinformation that is a racist backlash, all inspired by the power of mining companies.
- Labor's cuts to company taxes and move to indirect taxes (any similarities to a GST will be purely coincidental), showing the power of big business.
The logical conclusion is simple, the people who rule our society are the ones that own it! But even given a socialist society, I can see no advantages of a demarchy, that is "decision making groups of randomly selected citizens".
- It does not "get rid of politicians and governments" and is not anarchism. It simply means that the content of "government" would be arbitrary.
- Certainly the nature of this government would be different with "a whole network of groups, each one dealing with a particular policy area in a local area". But this is not restricted to demarchy. Such a system can still exist with participatory democracy (though it tends to ignore the need for coordination and collective requirements which is particularly relevant in an industrialised society).
- Relating to this factor is the claim that demarchy allows people to gain expertise in certain fields. The specialising of decision makers can also occur in a democracy, and may make an unaccountable machine of civil servants become relatively redundant.
- The point that limited terms would limit corruption is, yet again, also applicable to participatory democracy.
- The final advantage put forward was that randomly elected citizens "can claim no mandate for their positions". I do not doubt this, but then again I would not call it an advantage. It is true that Labor claims a mandate for everything it does just because people have voted against the Liberals. This however is more to do with today's electoral bankruptcy and unaccountability than it has to do with participatory democracy.
Despite these criticisms I was glad to read Brian Martin's article. Today the left must contend with the political baggage of Stalinism; thus a safeguarded socialist democracy must be discussed, thought out and of course fought for. Even so, I would call the jump to a "demarchy" an unnecessary and reactionary one.
Arun Pradhan
Adelaide.